Welcome to the Resto Druid Guide!
This guide has been broken down into several sections:
-Talents
-Specs
-Glyphs
-Healing, Spells and Strategies
-Stats (Including Haste Breakpoints)
-Gear, Gems and Enchants
-Professions
-Factions
-Useful Links
Talents
Restoration
Blessing of the Grove: Increases the healing done by your Rejuvenation spell by 2/4%.
Natural Shapeshifter: Reduces the mana cost of all shapeshifting by 10/20% and increases the duration of Tree of Life by 3/6 sec.
Naturalist: Reduces the cast time of your Healing Touch and Nourish spells by 0.25/0.5 sec.
Heart of the Wild: Increases your Intellect by 2/4/6%. In addition, while in Bear Form your Stamina is increased by 2/4/6% and while in Cat Form your attack power is increased by 3/7/10%.
Perseverance: Reduces all spell damage taken by 2/4/6%.
Master Shapeshifter: Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form. Bear Form - Increases physical damage by 4%. Cat Form - Increases critical strike chance by 4%. Moonkin Form - Increases spell damage by 4%. Tree of Life/Caster Form - Increases healing by 4%.
Improved Rejuvenation: Increases the effect of your Rejuvenation and Swiftmend spells by 5/10/15%.
Living Seed: When you critically heal a target with Swiftmend, Regrowth, Nourish, or Healing Touch you plant a Living Seed on the target for 10/20/30% of the amount healed. The Living Seed will bloom when the target is next attacked. Lasts 15 sec.
Revitalize: When you periodically heal with your Rejuvenation or Lifebloom spells, you have a 20% chance to instantly regenerate 1/2% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 sec. In addition, you grant Replenishment when you cast or refresh Lifebloom
Revitalize: When you periodically heal with your Rejuvenation or Lifebloom spells, you have a 20% chance to instantly regenerate 1/2% of your total mana. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 sec. In addition, you grant Replenishment when you cast or refresh Lifebloom
Nature’s Swiftness: When activated, your next Nature spell with a base casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell. If that spell is a healing spell, the amount healed is increased by 50%.
Fury of Stormrage: Reduces the mana cost of your Wrath spell by 50/100% and when you deal damage with your Wrath spell you have a 6/12% chance to cause your next Starfire to be instant cast within 8 sec.
Nature’s Bounty: Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth spell by 20/40/60% and when the Druid has Rejuvenation on 3 or more targets, the cast time of their Nourish spell is reduced by 10/20/30%.
Empowered Touch: Increases the healing done by your Healing Touch, Nourish, and Regrowth spells by 5/10% and causes those spells to have a 50/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Lifebloom on targets.
Malfurion’s Gift: Whenever you heal with your Lifebloom spell, you have a 2/4% chance to cause Omen of Clarity. In addition, the cooldown of your Tranquility is reduced by 3/5 minutes.
Efflorescence: Your Swiftmend spell causes healing flora to sprout beneath the target, restoring health equal to 4/8/12% of the amount healed by your Swiftmend to the three most injured targets every second for 7 seconds.
Wild Growth: Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first and slows down as Wild Growth reaches its full duration.
Nature’s Cure: Empowers your Remove Corruption spell to also remove a magic effect from a friendly target.
Nature’s Ward: Whenever you take an attack while at or below 50% health, you have a 50/100% chance to automatically cast Rejuvenation on yourself with no mana cost.
Gift of the Earthmother: Increases the healing done when your Lifebloom expires by 5/10/15% and causes your Rejuvenation spell to also instantly heal for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
Swift Rejuvenation: Reduces the global cooldown of your Rejuvenation by 0.5 sec.
Swift Rejuvenation: Reduces the global cooldown of your Rejuvenation by 0.5 sec.
Tree of Life: Shapeshift into the Tree of Life, increasing healing done by 15% and increasing your armour by 120%. In addition, some of your spells are temporarily enhanced while shapeshifted. Lasts 30 sec.
Feral
Furor: Increases your maximum mana by 5/10/15%, grants you 33/66/100% chance to gain 10 rage when you shapeshift into Bear Form, and allows you to keep up to 30/60/100 energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form.
Balance
Nature’s Grace: You gain 5/10/15% spell haste after you cast Moonfire, Regrowth, or Insect Swarm, lasting 15 sec. This effect has a 1 minute cooldown.
Nature’s Majesty: Increases the critical strike chance with spells by 2/4%.
Starlight Wrath: Reduces the cast time of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 0.15/0.25/0.5 sec.
Genesis: Increases the healing done by your periodic spells and by Swiftmend by 2/4/6% and increases the duration of your Moonfire and Insect Swarm by 6 sec.
Moonglow: Reduces the Mana cost of your damage and healing spells by 3/6/9%.
Balance of Power: Increases your Nature and Arcane spell damage by 1/2% and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 50/100% of your Spirit.
(Including two DPS talents (Starlight Wrath and Balance of Power) for those who may be looking at incorporating DPS into their healing - see Specs)
Specs
I’ll start with an example of a solid starter spec, discuss some of the choices and reasoning in this spec, and then how you can take this base and play with it to find the spec that best suits your needs.
The most important thing is don't be afraid to play with and adjust your spec as you need to! You may find it helpful to alter your spec based on what you're healing (5 mans, 10 mans, or 25 mans, heroic or normal mode content), whether you're having troubles with mana or not, your own personal playstyle and preferences, gear changes, specific encounters, etc!
This 8/2/31 spec is an excellent base spec for five man dungeons on up to 10 and 25 man raids. It picks up mana talents in Moonglow (reduces mana cost of healing spells by 2/4/6%) and Furor (increases maximum mana pool by 5/10/15%). These two talents can be extremely helpful in reducing the strain on your mana pool, especially at earlier gear levels or in more difficult content.
8/2/31 Spec - A solid, all-around healing spec. |
Other crucial talents in this spec are Revitalize, which provides Replenishment, and Malfurion’s Gift. From patch 4.0.6, you will only be able to proc Omen of Clarity for your healing spells by speccing into Malfurion’s Gift, so this talent is essential for your healing and mana savings.
There are several talents which can be moved around depending on your healing style, your healing role, and the content you're facing (5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans, normal modes or heroic modes). Those are Gift of the Earthmother, Nature’s Bounty, Nature’s Cure, Nature’s Swiftness, Swift Rejuvenation, Living Seed, Blessing of the Grove, and Perseverance.
I'll put up some sample specs (using the Balance and Feral 8/2/31 as a basis, though those points can be shifted as well) then discuss some of the points which can be moved around.
The 8/2/31 spec is a useful Tank Healing spec, picking up 3 points in Living Seed for its contribution to Tank healing, as well as Nature's Swiftness.
You could also pick up a spec like this 8/2/31 spec, picking up points in Nature's Bounty. In this spec I've combined the Rejuv boost of Blessing of the Grove, Swift Rejuv for the reduced Rejuv GCD, Gift of the Earthmother to help frontload those Rejuvs, and Nature's Bounty to reduce the Nourish cast times for spot healing with all those Rejuvs out.
As you can see, the tree can be fairly flexible! You can also adjust the Balance and Feral trees (discussed further below in the Mana and Utility talents section), for example in this 10/0/31 version of the all-around spec, picking up Genesis instead of Furor:
Given Regrowth's high mana cost and relatively weak punch, Nature’s Bounty may be a nice candidate to move some points out of, as we generally aren't using Regrowth often enough for that increased crit chance to be extremely valuable. Regrowth is generally best used in Tree of Life with Omen of Clarity procs (for the free, instant Regrowths). The 4.0.6 changes to Nature’s Bounty may warrant additional points in this talent, though, with the reduced cast times on our Nourish spell. Ideally this will help our spot-healing as we’re covering the raid and tanks with our HoTs. If you are spreading your Rejuvs liberally and are often spot-healing or topping up your tank with Nourishes, this may be a nice talent to spend some additional points in.
You could move the point from Swift Rejuvenation, whether or not this is recommended is debatable. Our haste will be low when we hit 85 and in the early dungeon, heroic, and raid gear. This talent will bring our Rejuv down to a 1 sec GCD which is very useful. However, due to mana constraints, although we will still be using Rejuvs a lot, the incredibly rapid firing out of Rejuvs is less feasible with the high mana cost, so it may not be so critical to drop this point. At higher gear levels, though, when you can afford to lay out more quick Rejuvs, this may be a more desirable talent. Swift Rejuv is also helpful if taking points in Blessing of the Grove and/or Nature's Bounty for helping spread those Rejuvs around the raid.
You could also potentially remove the point in Nature’s Swiftness, though I personally do not recommend doing so. NS can be a lifesaver in many situations when combined with Healing Touch. While you won’t get the satisfaction of healing someone to full that you might have gotten with a NS+HT crit in Wrath (healthpools are so large that it’s incredibly unlikely to do so), you can still save someone at a crucial moment with this spell. Even if you’re focussed on raid heals, this spell can still be useful for an instant help on the tanks or on a raid member, especially with the 50% increased healing of the heal spell used. I would only suggest removing the point if you absolutely never use the spell because you forget to or for whatever reason you don’t have it keybound or macro’d (though even then I’d suggest doing something to help yourself use it more). Ultimately if you'll use it, spend the talent point, if you absolutely never do, move it elsewhere.
Patch 4.1 saw the unlinking of Living Seed from Efflorescence, freeing up points in the tree and making this talent optional again. Currently, though, points in this talent can still be valuable (even if the talent itself is a bit lackluster), and can still be more valuable than Blessing of the Grove, which is fairly weak. Tangedyn's Living Seed Replacement talent post at The Inconspicuous Bear can be helpful in determining whether points in Living Seed or Nature's Bounty might be more valuable for you, as well as some more explanation and maths on the values of the different talents.
I highly advise examining how you heal and which spells you use most often and how to determine which talents may be most beneficial for you.
Mana talents
The following talents are useful to help with your mana and regen and your spec can be tweaked to pick some of these up.
Furor: This talent increases your maximum mana pool by 5/10/15%. This can be quite a nice talent to really maximize the size of your mana pool as much as possible. Unlike Heart of the Wild (which increases your Intellect), it won’t increase your spellpower, but it will increase your mana regen.
Revitalize: This is an excellent talent to pick up. It provides Replenishment to you and your party/raid, which is extremely useful. This also plays into Druid’s preference for Intellect (on gems, enchants, talents, etc), as the larger mana pool size increases our Replenishment. I highly suggest maxing this talent for the mana return as well as Replenishment.
Malfurion’s Gift: From 4.0.6, this talent will provide Omen of Clarity procs via healing spells. A must-have.
Moonglow: This is a straight 3/6/9% mana cost reduction to all your healing spells. This is potentially a very nice talent, though getting to it might be a bit tricky. It’s a second tier Balance talent, so to get points in it you may need to sacrifice points in your Resto tree.
Utility talents
Revitalize: Provides Replenishment to your party/raid (at 1 or 2 points). Extremely useful talent, both for party/raid utility as well as its mana return to the druid.
Nature’s Cure: Another useful utility talent, particularly if no one else in your party/raid has a Magic Dispel. Again, check with your Raid Leader if you’re debating whether or not to pick this up.
Perseverance: I see this talent as most useful for Bears (and potentially PvP), but also useful as a defensive utility talent for specific encounters as Resto. I’d only suggest sacrificing points in your tree for this talent for very specific fights where there is heavy magic damage and the reduction might make a difference - such as Heroic raid content, particularly at early gear levels.
Nature's Ward: I imagine this talent sees good use in PvP, but it can also be potentially very helpful in raids, particularly in progression fights with heavy damage.
DPS talents
These three talents I see as DPS-oriented talents. These will be very dependent, I think, on situational use and personal playstyle. I can see these being of most use for dailies/questing (if you haven’t picked up a DPS dual-spec), PvP, and possibly in 10 mans if you’re running 3 healers (and moreso if you’re the third).
My suggestion for 10s is, if running 3 healers in fights, you sacrifice a DPS spot. Oftentimes this may not be an issue, and many of the current raiding content requires additional healers. Sometimes, though, 3 healers can feel a bit overkill for a fight, when really all that might be needed is support for the primary 2 healers or roughly 2.5 healers rather than a full 3. The extra DPS output then may be helpful from a spec that picks up some of these talents, as you can help push the boss. Sometimes this can help make the difference between a win and a loss, so it’s certainly something to keep in mind. Something like this can also be utilized in 25s, but I mention it specifically for 10s as, with fewer people in the raid, it’s more likely to be noticeable.
These talents can also be useful in specific raid encounters where healer DPS is useful or even crucial to the fight. A fight such as Chimaeron is one where DPS talents may be particularly helpful - when you enter Phase 2 in this encounter, all healing effects are reduced by 99%, making any healing done futile and unnecessary. It is much more useful for healers to DPS and help with the final burn on Chimaeron.
Fury of Stormrage: No mana cost on Wrath and the chance of instant Starfires. Pretty nice DPS boost (and the free Wraths in particular can be nice as this will allow you to throw out a bit of DPS without worrying about it eating up your mana).
Starlight Wrath: Simply reduces the cast time of your Wrath and Starfire. Not a great talent unless maybe you’re spending the majority of your time DPSing rather than healing.
Balance of Power: Increases your hit rating depending on how much Spirit you have. I’d likely only pick this up if you’re doing more DPSing than healing, but a nice boost to Hit without having to make gear changes.
If you have any other questions ow want to discuss specs, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, shoot me an email, or tweet me on twitter @feraltree!
Glyphs
Prime:
Glyph of Lifebloom: Increases the critical effect chance of your Lifebloom by 10%.
Glyph of Rejuvenation: Increases the healing done by your Rejuvenation by 10%.
Glyph of Regrowth: Your Regrowth heal-over-time will automatically refresh its duration onf targets at or below 25% health.
Glyph of Swiftmend: Your Swiftmend ability no longer consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect from the target.
Major:
Glyph of Wild Growth: Wild Growth can affect 1 additional target.
Glyph of Thorns: Reduces the cooldown of your Thorns spell by 20 sec.
Glyph of Rebirth: Players resurrected by Rebirth are returned to life with 100% health.
Glyph of Innervate: When Innervate is cast on a friendly target other than the caster, the caster will gain 10% of maximum mana over 10 seconds.
Glyph of Healing Touch: When you cast Healing Touch, the cooldown on your Nature’s Swiftness is reduced by 10 sec.
Glyph of Entangling Roots: Reduces the cast time of your Entangling Roots by 100%, but increases its cooldown by 5 sec.
Minor:
Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth: Your Rebirth spell no longer requires a reagent.
Glyph of the Treant: Your Tree of Life form now resembles a Treant.
Glyph of Dash: Reduces the cooldown of your Dash ability by 20%.
Glyph of Mark of the Wild: Mana cost of your Mark of the Wild reduced by 50%.
Recommendation
I recommend the following combination of glyphs:
Major: Rebirth; Wild Growth; Healing Touch / Innervate
Minor: Unburdened Rebirth
Swiftmend and Unburdened Rebirth are CRUCIAL glyphs - do not skip these!! You do not want your Swiftmend consuming your or other druid’s HoTs, even more so now that mana is so crucial. Lifebloom and Rejuvenation are excellent Primes to use and will boost both your tank and raid healing.
The Rebirth glyph is a very useful utility glyph and I personally feel every druid should use it, regardless of spec. It’s not a DPS or tanking loss to use the glyph in the other specs, and it can save healer mana when you no longer have to heal up the Battle Rezzed target and prevents any stupid deaths from people accepting Rezzes at bad times or an unfortunate moment of RNG targeting a BR’d person.
Glyph of Wild Growth is very useful in 10 and 25 man raids but can probably be left out in 5 man dungeons.
The Glyph of Thorns can be useful if you are good at refreshing Thorns on your tanks every time it is off cooldown. It does a decent bit of damage and can be a nice little boost for the tank. If you can’t remember to keep Thorns up, though, don’t bother glyphing it as it will just be a waste of a glyph.
Glyph of Innervate can be a nice glyph to use for times when you might want to Innervate another player. Although 4.2 nerfed Innervate's effect on friendly targets (it now only grants the target 5% of their maximum mana pool), there may be times where you want to Innervate someone else - perhaps they're completely out of mana, a just battle-rezzed healer for instance, or maybe a DPS out of mana. This glyph would then give you a bit more flexibility in that you could Innervate another member without completely losing out on the mana return.
The Glyph of Entangling Roots I only mention as you might find it useful to have an instant root in 5 or 10 mans if you’re short on CCs.
Apart from Unburdened Rebirth, your two remaining Minor Glyph spots are quite flexible. Glyph of Mark of the Wild is nice as the reduced mana cost makes it easier to rebuff Wild during an encounter if someone was Battle Rezzed and needs buffs. Glyph of Dash is also nice to have so you can use it more frequently should you need to. I personally picked up the Treant glyph as I love my Treant form too much to let it go!
I don’t particularly like the Glyph of Regrowth, but I had a thought that it could potentially be a useful glyph on Chimaeron in Blackwing Descent. The entire raid is, for the most part, kept only at just above 10,000 health. As health pools in Cata at the raid level are hovering around 100k health (at least, that’s where it was on Beta), 10k health is easily less than 25%. Theoretically, then, if you’re casting Regrowth on raid members, that Regrowth HoT should keep ticking on up and help lift up raid members above 10k health, while you move on and heal the next person. The main issue I can see is this would be very mana-intensive, though if timed well with OoC procs (and perhaps Malfurion’s Gift to help with that), it could be a nice way to help heal the raid on that fight.
Don’t be afraid to swap glyphs for different fights! Now that we learn glyphs permanently, it’s really easy to switch glyphs in and out for specific fights, it only costs one Dust of Disappearance each.
Healing, Spells, and Strategies
Spells:
Rejuvenation: Instant cast. Heals the target for 1307 every 3 sec for 12 sec. 20% base mana.
Regrowth: 1.5 sec cast. Heals the target for 3383 to 3775 and another 361 over 6 sec. 35% base mana.
Nourish: 3 sec cast (untalented). Heals the target for 2403 to 2791. Heals for an additional 20% if a HoT is active on the target. 10% base mana.
Healing Touch: 3 sec cast (untalented). Heals the target for 7211 to 8515. 30% base mana.
Wild Growth: Instant cast, 8 sec cooldown. Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target. Prioritizes healing most injured party members. The amount healed is applied quickly at first and slows as the WG reaches its full duration. 27% base mana.
Lifebloom: Instant cast. Heals the target over 10 sec. When expired or dispelled, the target is instantly healed for 2306. The effect can stack up to 3 times on the same target. 7% base mana.
Swiftmend: Instant cast. Consumes a Rejuv or Regrowth on a friendly target to instantly heal the target for 5229. 10% base mana.
Efflorescence: (talented) When you heal with your Swiftmend spell you also sprout a bed of healing flora underneath the target, healing all friendly targets within 15 yards for 60% of the amount healed by your Swiftmend over 7 sec.
Tranquility: Channeled. Heals 5 nearby lowest health party or raid targets within 30 yards every 2 sec for 8 sec, for 3882 plus an additional 343 every 2 sec, stacking up to 3 times.
Tree of Life: Instant cast, 3 min cooldown. Shapeshift into the tree of life, increasing healing done by 15% and increasing your armour by 120%. Some of your spells are temporarily enhanced while shapeshifted. Lasts 30 seconds.
Innervate: Instant cast. Causes the target to regenerate mana equal to 20% of the casting Druid's maximum mana pool over 10 sec.
Remove Corruption: Instant. Removes 1 Curse and 1 Poison effect. (Talented: Removes 1 Magic effect). 17% base mana.
Rebirth: 2 sec cast, 30 min cooldown. Restores a dead target to life with 20% health and mana (unglyphed). Can be used in combat.
Mastery:
Restoration Druid's mastery is Harmony: Your direct healing is increased by an additional 10% and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of Mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%.
Our Mastery was changed to Harmony in 4.2, which was a positive change. It actually procs a buff called Harmony, so it's very easy to keep track of. It's a flat increase to our direct heals, and using our direct heals (Healing Touch, Nourish, Regrowth, and Swiftmend) procs the Harmony buff which increases our HoTs.
Ideally we want to maintain good uptime on the buff. Raid healers particularly need to make sure they're weaving in some direct heals (whether Swiftmends on raid members or even simply refreshing Lifeblooms on the tank with a Nourish, etc) to keep the buff active to buff your HoTs on the raid.
Keeping track of the Harmony buff will go a long way to helping you maintain good uptime. The addon Power Auras is an excellent addon to use, and you can use the following code with it to keep track of the Mastery buff. It will show you the buff is active and the time remaining on it. Simply bring up Power Auras' option menu by typing /powa, and enter the following into 'Import Code'.
Version:4.19; b:0.0549; g:0.4863; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.1843; x:-85; customname:Harmony; texture:23; alpha:1; inVehicle:0; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:0.25; y:-160; ismounted:0; timer.b:0.9294; timer.h:2; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9882; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER; timer.UseOwnColor:true
The aura itself looks like this (seen with my full Resto power aura setup):
The Harmony aura is the leaf on the left hand side with the timer.
My full set of power aura codes are available in my post here: My User Interface / Addons.
Our Mastery was changed to Harmony in 4.2, which was a positive change. It actually procs a buff called Harmony, so it's very easy to keep track of. It's a flat increase to our direct heals, and using our direct heals (Healing Touch, Nourish, Regrowth, and Swiftmend) procs the Harmony buff which increases our HoTs.
Ideally we want to maintain good uptime on the buff. Raid healers particularly need to make sure they're weaving in some direct heals (whether Swiftmends on raid members or even simply refreshing Lifeblooms on the tank with a Nourish, etc) to keep the buff active to buff your HoTs on the raid.
Keeping track of the Harmony buff will go a long way to helping you maintain good uptime. The addon Power Auras is an excellent addon to use, and you can use the following code with it to keep track of the Mastery buff. It will show you the buff is active and the time remaining on it. Simply bring up Power Auras' option menu by typing /powa, and enter the following into 'Import Code'.
Version:4.19; b:0.0549; g:0.4863; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.1843; x:-85; customname:Harmony; texture:23; alpha:1; inVehicle:0; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:0.25; y:-160; ismounted:0; timer.b:0.9294; timer.h:2; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9882; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER; timer.UseOwnColor:true
The aura itself looks like this (seen with my full Resto power aura setup):
The Harmony aura is the leaf on the left hand side with the timer.
My full set of power aura codes are available in my post here: My User Interface / Addons.
Raid Healing:
Druids are still excellent raid healers and our HoTs are as strong as ever. The biggest change from WotLK is duration, mana cost and cooldown. You will NOT be pre-blanketing the entire raid with Rejuvs; you'll simply be wasting time and mana as the HoTs will end much more quickly and fall off.
Your HoTs will generally be the strongest method for dealing with raid damage. Rejuvenation is very strong now, particularly with hasted ticks and crits and with Gift of the Earthmother they now heal instantly as well. Particularly when leveling past 80, mana will become more of an issue, so you can not mindlessly spam them around the raid or try to pre-blanket. You can still preemptively heal some, but don't jump the gun too much, as overheals will be costly, particularly in Cata. Anticipating damage and applying your HoTs timely will be key to maximising your effectiveness.
Wild Growth is still an excellent AOE heal. It now has a higher mana cost and a longer cooldown, so targeting your WG effectively is more important than ever. You don't want to waste your WG by accidentally applying it so that it hits only one target - you want to make the most of every application. Tree of Life form will apply an additional Wild Growth HoT if used.
Regrowth is good for a very quick heal on targets with a short HoT on the end as well. It has a very high mana cost, so be careful not to spam it so much you run OoM. In Tree of Life form, Regrowth is an instant cast, which can be useful for many quick top-ups.
You will also want to use your Efflorescence proc as effectively as you can on the raid. While there will be points where you need to Swiftmend regardless of the target's position in emergencies, it will be a great boost to your heals if you can target that proc on a stacked group to heal as many raid or party members as possible. You should also let your raid know what your Efflorescence proc looks like so they know they can stand in it.
Your Nourish and Healing Touch spells will also be useful on members that need larger heals.
Tranquility is a good emergency heal when many in the raid need a large top up. Be aware of the cooldown! In 4.0, this spell was changed so it will affect the 5 lowest health party OR raid targets within 30 yards - it is no longer party-only, which makes it extremely useful in raids.
As Lifebloom now only stacks on one target (except when in ToL form), it's good to keep at least a stack (if not 2 or 3) rolling on your tank. Not only will it be a help on the tank, it will proc Replenishment for the party/raid if you've specced Revitalize. The Tier 11 bonus only procs from a full 3-stack of Lifebloom, so it’s a good habit to get into keeping 3 up on your tank to gain that proc when you get your t11.
Tank Healing:
Resto druids got a great boost to our tank healing tools in 4.0. We have an excellent toolset and we should be equally competitive and useful as tank healers and as raid healers. The 4.2 buffs to our direct heals has also improved our tanking toolset.
The changes to Lifebloom make it an excellent spell for tank healing. You'll want to keep 3 stacks up on your tank at all times. You can decide whether to let the LB bloom or to keep refreshing it. Nourish and Healing Touch will generally be your primary heals on the tank and, with Empowered Touch, these spells will refresh your LB stack. You'll also likely want to use a Rejuvenation up on your tank as well (keeping aware of mana costs). The Rejuvenation and our direct heals will benefit from our Mastery due to the presence of the Lifebloom stack. Regrowth will be useful for very quick heals on the tank plus a small additional HoT, though again, don't spam yourself OoM. Your Swiftmend will also be useful on the tank in emergencies. Using Swiftmend on the tank does take your Efflorescence proc though - this can be useful to get another HoT ticking on your tank, or if the melee is stacked with the tank to hit all of them. If the tank is on his own though, keep in mind that proc may be more useful on the raid.
Healing advice:
Now that you know about all the different spells and some of the different styles and strategies, the best thing you can do now is go out and practice! It’s best to always be thinking as you’re healing, so that you can learn and adapt as you go. Find out what works for you, try out different strategies in different situations, and test things out.
It’s important to really learn the encounters you face in order to maximize your heals. As you learn fights you’ll be able to anticipate incoming damage and act and react accordingly. By learning when and where to expect incoming damage and learning what type of damage it will be (large, small, over time, etc), you will be better prepared to know which heals would be most effective, when and where your focus needs to shift, when cooldowns are best used, and when things like mana conservation or full-tilt healing (or even a bit of DPS) are needed.
I’d like to mention some additional spells which also deserve a place on your bars, even if they are not expressly 'healing' spells.
Barkskin and Nature’s Grasp. Barkskin is incredibly useful for its damage reduction and might even save your life in a fight. Along with learning encounters to know when to expect damage to heal, timing your Barkskin to protect you against large bursts of damage in a fight is incredibly helpful. Nature’s Grasp, particularly in its current inception, I find is particularly useful when clearing trash (if an add escapes the tank) or in fights with adds or several mobs with variable or no aggro table. If a mob strikes you, they’ll be afflicted by Entangling Roots, snaring them, which will give you crucial time to escape. It is also useful to keep Cat Form and Dash on your bars. There may be a moment in an encounter when you need to run, and being able to quickly shift into cat to dash away may save your life in a fight.
Mana Management
For a full post on Mana management as a Resto druid and advice, tips, and tricks, see my post here: Mana Management as a Resto Druid. IMPORTANT NOTE: Trading Innervates is NO LONGER a viable mana management strat as of Patch 4.2. See my post on the 4.2 Innervate changes here: 4.2 Resto Changes and You!
Gear, Gems, and Enchants
Stats
The following stats are desirable on any gear you pick up:
-Intellect
-Haste
-Spirit
-Crit
-Mastery
Intellect increases Spellpower, the size of our mana pool, spell critical strike chance, and increases the mana we gain through regen and replenishment.
Spirit increases our mana regen.
Haste is valuable as our HoTs are effected by haste, reducing the time between HoT ticks. As we get enough haste, we will start hitting break points where, with enough haste, we can gain additional HoT ticks within the HoT’s set duration. A good explanation of how haste now effects your HoTs can be found in this post by Malevica from Type 'H' for Heals. Haste is also helpful for tank healing throughput as well as it reduces the cast time of our cast spells, though the most significant haste ratings are centred around our haste breakpoints.
The following table is derived from this post by the excellent Tangedyn at The Inconspicuous Bear, listing the haste rating required for each Haste breakpoint, including the rating required for unbuffed, 5% raid haste buff, and combined 5% raid and 3% Dark Intent buff. The most significant breakpoints are in bold.
Spell Base Target Unbuffed Raid 5% Dark Intent +
Ticks Ticks Buffed Raid 5% Buffed
Rejuvenation 4 5 1602 916 516
Tranquility 4 5 1603 917 518
Lifebloom 10 12 1922 1221 813
Regrowth 3 4 2133 1422 1007
WG / Efflor 7 9 2745 2005 1573
Lifebloom 10 13 3212 2449 2005
Lifebloom 10 14 4488 3665 3185
WG / Efflor 7 10 4582 3754 3272
Tranquility 4 6 4803 3967 3478
Rejuvenation 4 6 4805 3967 3478
Lifebloom 10 15 5767 4883 4368
WG / Efflor 7 11 6408 5493 4960
The Warlock buff called Dark Intent links the warlock and a friendly target, increasing both players’ haste by 3%. When either target gains a critical periodic damage or healing effect, the other gains a 1% increased periodic damage and healing for 7 sec, stacking up to 3 times. Resto druids are a great target for ‘locks to place this buff on as our HoTs will be critting a lot (especially as we have such a multitude of HoTs on so many different targets), so we can pretty much guarantee 100% uptime for the lock’s buff. In many cases, though, the mutual DPS gain for the lock and a DPS target (such as a Boomkin or Shadow Priest) may be better for raid DPS overall, so keep that in mind should DPS be tight on a fight.
Crit is also valuable as our HoTs can crit along with our other spells.
Mastery rating will contribute to our mastery Harmony - Your direct healing is increased by an additional 10% and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of Mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%.
Stat Priority
Stat priority is a bit variable depending on what you’re doing (tank healing, raid healing, or a mix of both) and how your mana pool is fairing.
Many druids are finding the following stat priority useful:
Int > Spirit (as needed) ~ Haste to 916 > Mastery > Haste > Crit
That initial Haste to 916 gets you your additional Rejuvenation tick which is extremely important and helpful. Spirit is roughly equal at earlier gear levels when you may need more Spirit to help your initial regen. Spirit is certainly desirable on gear you pick up, however, you should aim to stop gemming or enchanting straight Spirit as you begin to pick up pieces of gear, as Intellect is a much stronger stat for us and will help our mana regen greatly through our Replenishment, mana pool size, and Innervates (Innervate is based directly off the size of our mana pool).
After getting your Haste to 916, you may find larger gains from prioritizing Mastery, particularly if you are often tank healing or simply are successful in getting multiple HoTs and heals on your targets in order to benefit from the Mastery.
Our next significant Haste breakpoint is 2005 (which gets a 9th Wild Growth tick) which is difficult to attain at early gear levels, and I would not recommend stacking Haste gems to attempt to reach this point. As you start to gain more gear with large amounts of Haste on and if you choose to do any reforging to add Haste, you’ll start to reach that point, however once you’ve passed the 916 mark, you can keep up the balance of the other stats as well.
Haste does contribute to reducing cast times as well and you may find gains from Haste affecting your cast times and GCD apart from the HoT breakpoints.
Crit is still a good stat for us as our HoT ticks can crit as well as our heals, so this is certainly a good stat for druids as well. For the moment, though, the other stats do fair a bit better.
Intellect is certainly the top priority stat as it contributes to our Spellpower, mana pool size and regen, Replenishment, our Innervates, and spell crit. For requirements such as socket bonuses on gear, one can certainly consider using mixed gems (orange/purple/green) to satisfy socket bonuses and still include an Int boost rather than pure gems in other stats. If the Int gain of a straight Int gem is larger than what you would get from a socket bonus, you may wish to not take the socket bonus and simply gem for Int. (eg, a blue socket with a +10 Int bonus, using a mixed gem would get you +30 Int overall, 10 less than simply using a +40 Int gem).
There is a nice post over on Elitist Jerks listing pre-raid Resto gear itemisation, obtained from heroics, rep and crafting here: Resto Cataclysm Pre-Raid Itemisation.
Gems
Meta:
Ember Shadowspirit Diamond: +54 Intellect and +2% Maximum Mana
Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond: +54 Spirit and 3% Increased Critical Healing Effect
Red:
Brilliant Inferno Ruby: +40 Intellect
Orange:
Reckless Ember Topaz: +20 Intellect and +20 Haste
Artful Ember Topaz: +20 Intellect and +20 Mastery
Purple:
Purified Demonseye: +20 Intellect and +20 Spirit
Yellow:
Fractured Amberjewel: +40 Mastery
Fractured Amberjewel: +40 Mastery
Quick Amberjewel: +40 Haste
Intellect is the most optimal gemming choices as Int increases so much for druids - our spellpower, mana pool, Innervates, Replenishment, regen, and spell crit. Socket bonuses are definitely worth taking in Cataclysm, as many bonuses offer at least a +10 to a stat, and in some cases give +20 to +40 bonuses, so other gems (particularly mixed gems, orange/purple/green) will be valuable as well.
I suggest picking up the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond over the Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond. The increase to Spellpower and our mana pool is excellent with the Ember meta. If you are having mana issues, you may like to try the Revitalizing to see if it helps, though it seems the Ember meta will be better as the Int and Mana pool bonus do so much for our spellpower, mana pool size and regen, as opposed to the Spirit on the Revitalizing meta which will only affect regen.
Enchants
Helm:
Arcanum of Hyjal - 60 Intellect / 35 Crit
Requires: Guardians of Hyjal - Revered
Shoulder:
Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone - 50 Intellect / 25 Haste
Requires: Therazane - Exalted
Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone - 30 Intellect / 20 Haste
Requires: Therazane - Honoured
Chest:
Peerless Stats (+20 to all stats)
Cloak:
Greater Intellect (+50 Intellect)
Gloves:
Haste (+50 Haste)
Greater Mastery (+65 Mastery)
Bracer:
Boots:
Lavawalker (+35 Mastery and increased movement speed)
Earthen Vitality (+30 Stamina and increased movement speed)
Haste (+50 Haste)
Legs:
Powerful Ghostly Spellthread (+95 Intellect and +55 Spirit)
Belt:
Ebonsteel Belt Buckle (additional gem socket)
Weapon:
Power Torrent (Sometimes increase Intellect by 500 for 12 sec when healing or dealing damage with spells)
Heartsong (Sometimes increase Spirit by 200 for 12 sec when casting spells)
Offhand:
Superior Intellect (+40 Intellect)
A Note on Weapon Enchants: I recommend picking up the Power Torrent enchant on your weapon. The Intellect increase is massive and can also give you a substantial increase in mana return if you time your Innervate use with its proc. You can see a Power Aura code to alert you to when the Power Torrent effect is active on my page on UI / Addons here: My UI / Addons.
Professions
All of the professions give a stat bonus for raiding.
Alchemy:
Mixology: bonus to flasks effect. +80 Intellect when using an Int flask
40% increased effect of potions when wearing an Alchemist Stone
Craftable Intellect / Haste Alchemist Stone Trinket: Vibrant Alchemist Stone.
Blacksmithing:
Two extra gem sockets (gloves, bracers). +80 Intellect (assuming two Brilliant gems)
Enchanting:
Ring enchants: +80 Intellect
Engineering:
Synapse Springs: Glove enchant, increases Intellect by 480 for 12 seconds, 1 minute cooldown. Amounts to +96 Intellect boost (does stack with normal glove enchants).
Herbalism:
Lifeblood: +480 haste for 20 seconds, 2 minute cooldown, plus a small self heal.
Inscription:
Felfire Inscription: Shoulder enchant, +130 Intellect and +25 Haste. +80 Intellect more than the Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone.
Jewelcrafting:
Chimera’s Eye Gems: +81 Intellect if using 3 Brilliant Chimera’s Eye.
Leatherworking:
Draconic Embossment: Bracer enchant, +130 Intellect
Mining:
Toughness: +120 Stamina
Skinning:
Master of Anatomy: +80 Crit
Tailoring:
Lightweave Embroidery: Cloak enchant, Chance to increase spellpower by 580 for 15 sec when casting a spell.
Darkglow Embroidery: Cloak enchant, Chance to increase spirit by 580 when casting a spell.
The Engineering bonus is a bit of an oddity at the moment - it’s an on-use bonus, so you don’t get a flat increase on it. Maximizing the effectiveness of this bonus will come down to using it effectively. If used well, it may come out a bit ahead of some of the other professions. One key time to use it is to definitely time it with your Innervate use - it will boost the mana you can regen through your innervate. If you can, timing your Innervate with both your Synapse Springs and your Power Torrent weapon enchant proc will boost your Innervate even more. If you decide to do that, I highly recommend picking up an addon to notify you of your Power Torrent procs (something like Power Auras should be able to accomplish this). Otherwise, the Synapse Springs can be used off cooldown or timed with points in encounters in which a spellpower boost would be most helpful.
The +Haste addition to Lifeblood is a nice change for the Herbalists out there to make Lifeblood a bit less of a joke bonus, but if you’re min/maxing for raids, you’ll still likely want to avoid this profession.
The +Crit rating from Skinning’s Master of Anatomy is still pretty decent, moreso than in Wrath now that our HoTs can crit. Mining’s Toughness, however, is really pretty useless for us as healers - the +120 Stamina can be a decent little boost for survivability, but doesn’t do much otherwise.
All the other professions are pretty equal in terms of their bonuses.
Factions
The two main factions you’ll want to get Exalted with are the Guardians of Hyjal and Therazane (in Deepholm) for your Helm and Shoulder enchants.
Many of the factions have useful gear and epics available with rep, for a full list of gear available from factions check my guide here: Cataclysm Faction Rep Guide.
Useful Links
Some useful links as well as other guides to look at for some different perspectives.
- Tangedyn's Restoration Druid Spreadsheet
- Tangedyn's Restoration Druid Spreadsheet
- Keeva's excellent and comprehensive site RestoDruid.info
- Hamlet's Resto Druid Guide at Elitist Jerks
- Greentouch's Resto Druid Guide
- Druid Theorycrafting Forums at Elitist Jerks
If you know of any useful sites which have helped you, don't hesitate to let me know and I'll try to add it to the guide.
That's all for the Resto Guide! I'll continue to update this guide through upcoming changes and patches and will add more sections should they become necessary. Thanks for reading and feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments!
Changelog:
1 Dec 2010: Implemented.
2 Dec 2010: Updates on stats and Haste breakpoints.
3 Dec 2010: Updates on specs.
5 Dec 2010: Added Links section.
16 Dec 2010: Updated Specs section.
29 Dec 2010: Updated Specs section.
23 Jan 2011: Updated Links section, minor edits.
7 Feb 2011: Overhauled Specs advice section, updated Specs, Talents, Spells, Stats, Professions for Patch 4.0.6, removed section on maintaining LB on additional targets outside of ToL as it's no longer possible in 4.0.6.
26 April 2011: Updated Talents and Specs sections for Patch 4.1 changes.
13 May 2011: Updated Haste breakpoints table.
17 June 2011: Minor updates.
9 July 2011: Updated to reflect 4.2 Mastery and Innervate changes.
17 June 2011: Minor updates.
9 July 2011: Updated to reflect 4.2 Mastery and Innervate changes.