Unlike the other healers, Restoration druids will not be receiving any new spells. They have plenty to work with already, and our challenge instead is to make sure all of them have a well-defined niche. A druid should be able to tank-heal with stacks of Lifebloom, spot-heal a group with Nourish and Regrowth, and top off lightly wounded targets with Rejuvenation.

I wouldn’t argue that we have more variety in our spells than paladins or shamans, but priests? Really? The variety priests get is simply unparalleled. They get:

  • Power Word: Shield – A damage absorption spell.
  • Circle of Healing – A smart multi-target heal on a short cooldown.
  • Prayer of Healing – A cast-based, direct group heal.
  • Renew – A single-target HoT.
  • Flash Heal – A short direct heal.
  • Greater Heal – A long direct heal. (Which isn’t that useful except in situations where they can time the cast to land right as a large hit falls, admittedly.)
  • Prayer of Mending – A proc heal that smartly jumps between damaged people on an intermediate cooldown.
  • Divine Hymn – A channeled smart heal on a long cooldown.

What do druids get?

  • Lifebloom – A short-duration HoT that stacks and procs a heal at the end.
  • Wild Growth – A smart multi-target HoT on a short cooldown.
  • Rejuvenation – A single-target HoT.
  • Nourish – A short, single-target heal (that, however, requires you to have HoTs currently running to achieve maximum potency).
  • Regrowth – A direct heal that leaves a weak residual HoT. (That we don’t use for the direct heal unless the person would also benefit from the HoT.)
  • Healing Touch – A long direct heal. (Which isn’t useful except in conjunction with Nature’s Swiftness, and that’s only when an NS’d regrowth wouldn’t be better; the glyphed version is only useful on Faction Champs and Anub25 hard.)
  • Swiftmend – An instant, direct heal on an intermediate cooldown.
  • Tranquility – A group-based (meaning only the druid’s own group) channeled heal on a super-long cooldown.

In numbers, we’re roughly equal. But while druids have a high variety of HoTs, priests have a high general variety in their spells. You could argue that priests make trade-offs based on their spec, nevermind that they can simply respec to fill what role is needed at the time and druids have to work with what they have. Druids make incredible trade-offs in globals, anyway. In order to stack lifebloom, you have to spend three globals (roughly three seconds at high-end levels of gear). Nevermind that the end-heal is often prone to overhealing, something that is supposed to be penalized in Cataclysm. And if HoTs aren’t optimal for the situation, good luck relying primarily on nourish (which is weak without HoTs running), swiftmend (which requires wasting GCD’s to make it useful when HoTs aren’t optimal), and the glyphed version of healing touch (which isn’t better than nourish except when HoTs aren’t running on the target).

I’m not saying restoration druids don’t have a wider array of tools than paladins. And shamans have a smaller variety to work with, as well, though their spells are generally useful and chain heal is incredibly unique. But to say priests get a new utility spell and restoration druids don’t seems short-sighted to me. Especially when we can’t really make decent use of our direct heals without spending extra globals on HoTs. I think every single spec deserves new spells. Holy paladins moreso than anyone else, however the strength of beacon would need to be addressed in doing so.

I realize Blizzard did talk about our current spells and how they should be generally useful (which heralds perhaps changes to their potency and/or mechanics), and these can certainly be addressed. But I still feel restoration druids deserve a new baseline spell. Even if it’s solely based in utility.