Druid Restoration Guide

[JD]

Hey guys,

So I was looking around on ensidia's website (Welcome - Ensidia) and I found this amazing guide by Tjani. I felt that you guys might like it. All props go to Tjani and NOT to me!

Written by Tjani


I'll first start by introducing myself. My name is Tjani, and I have been playing a resto druid for just over 4 years now, so when it comes to resto healing I generally have a lot of experience in how it has changed over time. I am not the biggest theory crafter out there when it comes to resto healing, however, I do put a lot of time and research into how to optimise my own performance on raids. For those new to rolling a druid, or those who want some basis for comparison, I have prepared a introductory guide to start with, which will be followed up by more in depth guides over time.

This first guide will look at some of the basics for a resto druid, such as stats, talents, gemming, enchants, consumables along with some basic tips for healing in raids.


As we have seen with the Naxx tier items, we had both haste and crit on the restoration set. The theme has continued on into ulduar sets with 3 items out of the 5 opting for crit instead of haste. At first heading into WotLK and seeing the items from the initial naxx sets, I wasn't best pleased with the amount of crit that they were dumping onto our gear and it did make me think of what blizzard actually wanted the resto druid role to be. It was nice at first to be given more raid healing utilisation. The way things were pre wotlk haste was the stat to have to incoropate the additional lifebloom tick! Now I wasn't so sure on how this would be effected with itemisation, but my doubts were soon soothed with some of the talent changes which I will cover briefly in specs.

Spell Power:

This is always the key stat when gearing your tree, the more you have the bigger the burst on your heals and the larger ticks on your HoTs. A lot of druids have worried about mana problems by gemming purely in spell power, even more so with the so-called lifebloom nerf in the latest patch. However do not let this put you off, spell power is the way to go. If you are newly starting out you will struggle with regen at the start, especially if you are jumping head first into raiding. Do not be dismayed, over time it will change with gear and experience.

Whatever your playstyle may be, spell power is your friend and you should maximise it as much as possible. Over time you will notice the difference with your heals and hots (particularly rejuv as this currently has the biggest scale with spell power).

Haste:

Now here is one of the trickier stats to manage. The aim with haste for a tree is to get your global cooldown on HoT's to 1 sec (unfortunately we cannot get it any lower than that). So of course for this to happen, there is a cap you need to obtain. You can however go over this cap if you wish to shorten your regrowth and healing touch spells, but functionally this is not really needed in a raiding environment. Haste for a druid is purely dependent on talents such as Gift of the Earthmother and Celestial Focus, basically the less points you have in those talents, the more haste you should be stacking. You will also notice in raids haste being granted by auras/totems from other classes (Balance druids, Ret paladins and shamans will provide boosters, but you may not have all present in your raid).

So how much haste does it take?

Well it's purely dependent on how confident you are that your 'owl' will not fall flat on his face! For myself I currently have 555 haste which gives me a buffer I need when I have the necessary raid buffs (which you would be surprised at how often that isn't!). I mean many factors come into play other than the dead aura, such as range (and yes some of those rooms in ulduar are huge!). So at least you can see my reasoning as to why I am trying to stack so much (plus I do not opt to spec into celestial focus). Now as I mentioned earlier, I am far from the world's best theory crafter, but I will provide a couple of links below as to how the calculation is obtained.
Calculator curtousy of http://www.resto4life.com/2009/02/06...he-nerfmother/
For those who prefer more number crunching: http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1019

Crit:

Crit in my personal opinion is not really optional, we have it thrown at us and you will see this with the new ulduar tier sets (if you do aim to get the set bonuses that is). It's not a bad stat to have in your gear, but it's not really a favoured stat either since a lot of druids have always opted for haste. The crit mechanic isnt really going to effect your HoT's much, but it is nice to have some crit to work well with Living Seed. This will proc more as you crit and is great to try and proc on tanks since you will generally take a fair bit of effective healing from it. The bad thing about crit is they are not reliable, you cannot control when the crit will proc. So by stacking it and praying for a crit, you will most likely be accumulating much wasted overheal. I view living seed as a bonus, if it procs is great, but trying to focus on keeping it up 100% is a waste.

So Haste vs Crit?

Crit is very good for regrowth and nourish (or for some of those that to prefer to use glyphed healing touch). However from personal experiences, haste is very much prefered over the two stats for the time being due to the reasons mentioned in haste and crit sections.

Intellect:

Having a healthy mana pool is a good start for a druid, some would say the more mana the better. You will also gain more mana regen from Replenishment the more larger your mana pool becomes. It's also a way to gain a little additional crit into your stats. I would agree its a vital stat for a druid, but not the most important. Most of the intellect you will get will be from the gear you choose (alongside important raid buffs) since we do not have a lot of sockets where we can integrate intellect gems. This however will be discussed a little more in the gemming section.

Spirit and MP5:

With the recent spirit changes, spirit is not as strong as it used to be when it comes to regen and the 5 second rule. It is still a vital stat for a druid and again like intellect, the majority of your spirit will come from itemisation (same for mp5). If you are newly starting you may be a bit dubious at first with your regen, but over time it will improve. There are also options in consumables to make up for the lack of regen you may have starting out or playing fights with longer durations. Spirit is also great alongside Improved tree of life as it also increases spell power.

Stamina:

Again will mainly come from your items, however be prepared that being one shottable with 14k health will not get you very far.


The next thing is to concentrate on are the talents you are going to use and implement your talent build accordingly. The reason I say this is because, a druid who chooses to spec into celestial focus, can opt to have less haste in their gear set and focus more around crit as an example (see last talent spec example). However there are many good resto talents you may miss out on if you decide to do this.

For myself, I have a generic resto build. I generally have 4 talent points as fillers for afterwards which I can play around with in my dual spec. I generally try variations on the above spec quite often to test everything out in different situations.
I won't look a lot as to why the above talents are chosen, as most of them are self explanatory via the tool tips. The great things about this spec are: Wild Growth (this spell will be a large proporion of your effective healing if used correctly), Improved tree of life (as stated above), Gift of the Earthmother (great maxxed rank to get the gcd down to 20%), Omen of Clarity (proccing clear casts is great for mana efficiency) and Master Shapeshifter (more healing please!!). You can also see that by going 14 points into balance, you will cover most of the talents to increase mana efficiency and grab some additional healing from HoTs through Genesis.

Now getting back to those last 4 points, I generally go for 1 of 2 options. First is by putting all 4 remaining points into Tranquil Spirit. Since there tends to be a lot of fights where nourish is used heavily, it's great for reducing the mana cost. The other is by opting for 3/3 Revitalize (if you're feeling raid friendly). This talent is great on AOE fights where your raid will take benefit from the procs on wild growth and rejuv. The last point I will either put into Tranquil spirit or Improved Tranquility (to reduce the cool down on this, since it is a nice spell to have at hand).
There are some other nifty talents you may consider for fights where you might be taking a lot damage yourself, Improved Barkskin and Natural Perfection are two examples of these which are easily obtainable, although I would class them more as PvP talents.

Now briefly going back to haste vs crit argument, you can also opt to try the following spec if you are struggling to get your haste to gcd cap.


There isn't really a lot to cover in this section as most should now be pretty clear as to what stats you should be aiming for. All primary enchantments should be max enchant for spell power where available (weapon, gloves, bracers). You should aim to get the spell power + MP5 enchant for both shoulders and headpiece (Son of Hodir and Wyrmrest Accord respectively). Of course if you are a scribe you also opt for the cheaper and less painful route by going for inscriptors only shoulder enchant. If you are blessed by being an enchanter, you should also aim to get Greater Spellpower enchant on both of your rings.

Now as for your legs you have 2 options really, Brilliant Spellthread or Sapphire Spellthread. Generally I would opt for Brilliant unless you are having HP issues. Your cloak, you have two options for. The first option being 23 Haste if you need to get a little bit more haste, or the second option Wisdom, if you want to try get a little bit more spirit for regen/spellpower.

For chest you should opt for Powerful Stats (+10 to all stats) over 16 spirit. The 6 additional spirit is not going to give much of an impact to you in comparison to having 10 extra intellect and stamina. Lastly with boots you again have a couple of options. Before the latest patch I was generally putting spirit onto my boots, however with the change to the Death Knight Auras I have now opted for Tuskars Vitality due to the increased movement effect being a great life saver at times.

As for gemming there are some general rules unless you are blessed by being a jewelcrafter. For red sockets you should always be putting in Runed Scarlet Ruby (or better if available from the new fishing daily). We are lucky enough with our items that we get a lot of red sockets to take advantage of these gems. Yellow sockets should always be filled with Luminous Monarch Topaz.

Blue however is the tricky one since I generally dont like to gem for spirit. I opted to roll Jewelcrafting and fill any blue sockets with prismatic gems - Runed Dragons Eye. However for those who don't have jewelcrafting if you feel the socket bonus is worth it you should go for Purified Twilight Opal. You will most likely find yourself with 3+ blue sockets so even for a jewelcrafter it is hard to cover those with prismatics. It's a case of choosing carefully which socket bonus to skip, which in my personal opinion should be crit. If you think you can skip more of the socket bonuses with no problems then you should instead go back to putting Runed Scarlet Rubys in those blue sockets.

As for your meta, there is only one clear obvious choice for me personally, which is Ember Skyflare Diamond. Firstly due to the meta requirements being easy to obtain and secondly being that the additional 2% mana is a blessing for a druid (since we unfortunately have the smallest mana pool of all healers). You can also explore Insightful Earthseige Diamond which has a nice proc on the mana return.


Minors

There are always two clear winners when it comes to what you choose. That is Glyph of Unburdended Rebirth and Glyph of the Wild. As for your 3rd minor, there are some trivial ones which are not really going to aid you to much in raiding. I chose Glyph of Dash in the end, due to dash being nice to get out of tricky situations if needed (since we cant use travel form inside).

Majors.

There are several options. Glyph of Swiftmend is one a lot of druids aim to get, as was Lifebloom prepatch. However with the Glyph of Nourish and Wild Growth being introduced recently, it gives soo many good glyphs to use. In my current spec I am still opting for Lifebloom as it is much easier to control your blooms with the additional second. I also have gone for Wild Growth to get it healing upto 6 targets since I do a fair bit of raid healing and still have Swiftment as my third Glyph. When opting for a spec focusing into Tranquil Spirit I switch Wild Growth and Nourish glyphs around to get the advantage of additional healing per hot on nourish.

You also have an option of Glyph of Innervate, however this is not really as strong as it used to be. It is however nice for those longer fights where that extra bit of mana can go a long way.

It is always handy to have several glyphs of each on you so can you re-glyph 'on the fly' per fight as required. For a list of all current druid glyphs, please click http://www.wowhead.com/?items=16.11


Consumables are pretty obvious in regards to what you should aiming for. You should have a large variety of each at hand if needed.

Flasks and Elixirs

You should be carrying both Flask of the Frostwyrm and Flask of Pure Mojo. Also carrying a few Flasks of Stoneblood can come in handy if you need that little bit of boost with your health. If you can afford it you should be carrying various elixirs with you such as Spell Power Elixir, Elixir of Mighty Mageblood and Elixir of Pure Thoughts. Those can come in handy for fights you know a little better and can take the risk.

Food

Again you should be carrying both mana regen and spell power varients of the two. For example, Tender Shoveltusk Steak or Firecracker Salmon for spell power, and Mighty Rhino Dogs or Spicy Fried Herring for MP5. If you have a bit more time and money on your hands though, you can always prepare some fish feasts for your raid. Also for those trying to get a little bit more haste you have options of Imperial Manta Steak or Very Burnt Worg.

Runic Mana Injections/Potions are 100% must, you should always have plenty on you. Also carrying a few Runic Healing potions can be handy if you need a quick heal.


I am not going to go into great detail on this section of the guide, as I plan to cover some more intensive healing strategys relating to boss encounters in the future.

Looking into the past druids have covered a wide range of tasks in raids. I feel personally that over this time as encounters have developed (lets start nuking the raid more and more!!), the general theme is that druids have been pushed more and more onto raid healing. By giving us more raid based healing utility at our disposal Blizzard are showing their obvious desire for this. Saying this though, it doesn't dimish the fact that we are still capable tank healers too.

As I mentioned, my primary task is to making sure the tanks have full hots running and cover raid healing. People would call this being a primary raid healer. Due to stacking a large amount of haste into my gear I have more flexibility when it comes to raid healing with the reduced gcd on my hots. However raid healing might not be everyone's cup of tea, you may prefer taking on the tank as a full time tank healer and part time raid healing. Whatever you choose as your playstyle as resto, make sure it's one you enjoy.

So let's have a look at some basic tips:

* Always prehot the tanks before the pull. Starting with your longest cast Regrowth first, then putting up Rejuvination and a full stack of lifeblooms. Drink up after, reapply the rejuvination and lifebloom stack before it expires and quickly redrink up again before the pull. This will give the main tank healers a few seconds after the pull to get into postion. If you find the tank dips too much during this time, you can quickly cast swiftmend on the fly (due to tank being pre-hotted).
During the encounter, you should make sure at least rejuvination is constantly running on the tanks. You should should also try and keep up your initial stack of lifebloom from the pull as long as needed, refreshing it on one second left. If on that one second the tank has a significant dip in health, you can choose to let this bloom (and get the mana return) for a large instant heal on the tank. Do not rely on this 100% though as a dip on a tank can be fatal. You should always have a back up Regrowth or Nourish being casted. Alternatively if swiftmend is off cooldown, use this instead.
* You should always keep your Nature's Swiftness off cooldown for a fast emergency heal if swiftmend is on cooldown. Use this in conjunction with either Maxed rank healing touch or Regowth.
* As for topping the raid you should be using a combination of Lifebloom, Rejuvination and Wild Growth depending on what kind of damage they are taking.
* Lifebloom is still very good for spot healing as the net mana cost after the mana return is less than it was pre patch 3.0.1. However the downside of spot healing with lifebloom is you can accumulate a lot of overheal. This isn't always a bad thing, but it's better used if you can predict the raid damage a bit better.
* Rejuvination in conjunction with Wild Growth (on clustered groups) is a lot better where there is constant incoming raid damage.
* Nourish is also a great fast cast spell with or without hots if you need to top a raid member up fast, and your Nature's Swiftness and Swiftmend are on cooldown.
* Barksin and Tranquility together are your friends, do not be scared of blowing your tranquility cooldown if your group is under hurrendous pressure from raid damage. Barkskin will ensure you dont get the channel interupted.


Those are some small tips to remember. It is not gospel for every druid with every encounter however, but hopefully I will go into a bit more detail with this in my next guide.

Thanks to hams for the pictures and thanks for reading so far. If you have any questions or wish to discuss this guide in more detail, please head over to the druid forums or leave me a message here on ensidia.com.

[Don'tTazeMeBro]

Copy and pasting doesn't copy hyperlinks, you may want to fix that :P

[Vixxi]

They are coloured white, you may want to edit your post.

[Don'tTazeMeBro]

Nah it's fine assuming you read it you'll see the links.

[Willy]

Nah it's fine assuming you read it you'll see the links.

Are you blind?....





-JD- great find i just rerolled druid and dinged 80 yesterday so this is a great guide for me

[Don'tTazeMeBro]

No... I'm not blind, I was responding to Vixxi.

[dontkielmeh]

Ember Skyflare Diamond wtf? low mana pool=low outcome for 2% additional mana. additionally druids rely much on regen through spirit and other stuff so deifinately good you mentioned Insightful Earthseige Diamond. but for Ember Skyflare Diamond.. just.. no.

[zeil]

hi guis i play druid 4 years i press lifebloom and rejuv instant gladiator hi biii

[krayz]

Nevermind, just trollin.

[SilverAngul]

The basic tips this person places in his guide are rather outdated. He should update his guide a bit. Lifebloom stacking is a major no-no. A modern resto-druid that has done their homework would know this is a ridiculous spell nowadays. LB used to be supreme. I loved it back in BC but it is no longer the bread and butter signature of a restoration druid. If you want to be efficient in your heals than use 'Nourish' in its stead with a glyphed rejuv. Now that is some heavy HoTs. The nerfs to LB make it so freaking expensive to use with little healing given in return I can't imagine anyone seriously using this in a rotation. And if a tree must use it then I recommend throwing on a single-tick LB as an instant rejuv but nothing more. It's a complete waste otherwise.