why do so few people play druid?

[kanem]

Do they? I don't see any evidence of Resto Druids having a high skill cap. I simply see Druids performing just like any other healer on the HPS meter... which brings me to another point. Why would you want to bring another Druid when you can bring a Priest, Paladin or a Shaman who performs just as well (or better depending on the raid) but provides more utility? .

You are right about that. You wouldn't stack a raid with druids because they don't offer as much utility. I was referring to just straight healing.

[smilkovpetko]

Everyone can trashtalk , but druids are best Healers in High End if they got good skill .

As Undertaker posted Naxx best healer was Druid (friend of mine) Tirika from Feenix and nobody could match her on that duty.

[Jeniwyn]

they have a high skill cap for healing

Do they?

I'd sign off on druids probably having the highest skillcap of the healers. Although it is tight. And high skillcap doesn't automatically translate to best healer at skillcap.

Priests have more options but druids are more often faced with choises where the second best option is vastly worse than the #1 choise (on the issue of the spell, not the rank). Also their choise is less often as clear cut as it is for a priest. Since I do have a decade of priest experience I might discount the difficulty of some priest choises though.

Also, to others in the thread, linking realmplayers and making conclusions about things based on the minuscule top sample is frowned upon for good reasons. Making class determinations based on top 10 is extra bad. And I'm saying both of these things from a position where it cannot be construed as self serving.

[DrearyYew]

Druids have longer cast times so they benefit more from + healing.

While true, good fucking luck ever getting a full cast off. By the time your heal goes off, a Priest will have already fully healed the tank. All you need is a rotation of Priests firing off heals.

If Druids were actually better than Priests, healing cores would be made of Druids, not Priests.

[Undertanker]

Pre-cast brah.

And in AQ/Naxx, heal sniping is less of a thing as mana conservation comes into play.

[Taladril]

Druids have longer cast times so they benefit more from + healing.

While true, good fucking luck ever getting a full cast off. By the time your heal goes off, a Priest will have already fully healed the tank. All you need is a rotation of Priests firing off heals.

If Druids were actually better than Priests, healing cores would be made of Druids, not Priests.

You clearly do not have endgame vanilla experience. Druids will become more and more valuable as our ability to get +heal increases. Currently where we are druids have almost no options for quality weapons. While all priests get benediction by facerolling mc and paying for an eye.

Druid bread and butter spell is a 2.5s casttime learned at level 18 (almost no degredation) that is talented to 2 and with crits turns to 1.5. It is INSANELY efficient and that coupled with our ability to lay on heavy hots and do poison and curse cleansing makes druids very very valuable in AQ and Naxx.

The reason druids aren't popular is because they are night elf only and to level you are either a caster or feral so when you hit endgame (same logic with wars not being tanks) no one wants to play them as the role they should. They also have a different and more advanced style of healing that takes mastery and research and understanding. And to play a druid fully and well you need to be able to seamlessly be able to think like a warrior tank, a rogue, a caster dps, and a healer. If you pretty much haven't played each class to really understand the mechanics of threat generation, energy management, etc, then you will suck at each roll equally.

[Ana]

Druid bread and butter spell is a 2.5s casttime learned at level 18 (almost no degredation) that is talented to 2

I'm bored so I actually went and checked.
HT3 has 2.5 cast time and is lvl 14.
HT4 has 3.0 cast time and is lvl 20.

[Guirssane]

Druid bread and butter spell is a 2.5s casttime learned at level 18 (almost no degredation) that is talented to 2

I'm bored so I actually went and checked.
HT3 has 2.5 cast time and is lvl 14.
HT4 has 3.0 cast time and is lvl 20.

ok now add the 0.5 reduce cast in your talent and you're good

[Ana]

Yeah, your go-to healing spell (HT4) is basically a priest clone. Downranking has a huge penalty though and upranking throws you into super long casts range instantly. No flexibility.

[Taladril]

Umm no since it's learned at lvl 20 like you said, there is no pre 20 degradation. The only one is the fact that it gets a -.5 second penalty (very little) so a spell with a talented 2.5 sec with 2.0 sec after crits is going to scale excellently.