Okay, Horse asked me to update the wiki page. I found that to be a bit of a pain. So I just rewrote everything from scratch and put it here.
If you've been playing a resto druid at all lately (and I know there are a few of you!) please offer comments and corrections as you see fit. Specifically my guild isn't raiding yet, and I haven't PvP'd yet this expansion, so those parts are prime for picking apart. Simple spelling/grammer corrections are a bonus. If you've found a cool tip or healing trick, we'd love to hear about it. Also if you'd like to propose other witty titles for the sections that's good too.
I'm still planning on adding links over the weekend, and will make further corrections, and do more formatting and stuff.
Let's make this so good even a drunk bear can use it.
Horse: I tried to follow the formatting in the sticky as close as possible, let me know if there's something you want me to change.
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Tree durid is 4 heel.
Running around in circles while casting heals for beginners
So you think you have what it takes to heal as a druid huh? Well welcome to the forest my friend. There aren’t as many trees around here as there used to be, and when they do show up they don’t stay long; but still, it’s a good place to call home.
Chances are you’ll see your first action when you can access the dungeon finder at level 15. By that point you’ll have all the basic tools you’ll need to keep your group alive. If you’ve healed as other classes in the past the biggest change will be your increased reliance on Heal-over-time spells (HoTs) as a druid.
In general Druids have a lot of HoT spells and a lot of instant cast spells. The plus side of this is that you’ll have a lot of mobility as a druid healer. You can heal while on the run and not lose nearly as much output as the other classes. Use this to your advantage; stay mobile and stay out of danger.
The down side of all those instant-cast HoTs is the lack of burst healing. This isn’t as bad as it used to be, but still most of your healing spells will take time to be fully effective. You’ll need to be extra aware of the fight and what’s going to happen next so that you can have your HoTs ticking when the health bars start shrinking.
Healing at lower levels is pretty straight forward:
1) If someone is taking damage, put Rejuvenation on them.
2) If Rejuvenation isn’t enough, heal with a casted spell (i.e. Nourish, Regrowth)
3) If those still aren’t enough use an emergency button or two (i.e. Swiftmend)
4) If all that doesn’t work one of your group members probably screwed something up and deserves to die anyway.
As you reach later levels you’ll be given more spells, more emergency buttons, and other neat tricks to keep you and your friends alive. So what are all these fancy spells? Glad you asked, let’s take a look.
I’ve got the HoTs for you
HoT spells:
Rejuvenation: (level 3) – Basic heal over time spell, your workhorse in many cases.
Lifebloom: (level 64) – Stackable HoT with a mid-sized heal when it expires. Can normally only be on one target at a time.
Wild Growth: (level 49 with talents) – Group HoT that hits up to 5 targets, 8 second cooldown.
Casted spells:
Regrowth: (level 12) – Quick expensive heal with a short duration HoT. Most useful on low health targets.
Healing Touch: (level 78) – Large heal with a long cast time.
Nourish: (level 8) – Your cheap heal. It doesn’t cost much mana to cast, and doesn’t heal for much. More effective if there is already a HoT on the target.
Emergency buttons:
Swiftmend: (level 10 with specialization) – Consumes an active rejuvenation or regrowth HoT on the target and instantly heals it.
Effloresence: (fully talented at level 53) – An AoE heal proc’d by Swiftmend; it heals everyone who stands in its green glow for a small amount. Most useful when group members are forced to stack on each other.
Tranquility: (level 68) – Very strong channeled group heal on a long 8 minute cool down. It’s usually strong enough to heal all 5 people it targets to full health over 8 second duration.
Nature’s Swiftness: (level 29 with talents) – Makes the next nature spell instant cast. Usually macroed with either Rebirth of a quick b-rez or Healing Touch for an instant-cast big heal.
Rebirth: (level 20) – In combat resurrection spell. One of the druid signature spells.
Tree of Life: (level 69 with talents) – Transforms you into a tree for a short time. Spells heal for 15% more, and many spells gain additional effects (see below).
Lifebloom: Can be cast on multiple targets.
Wild Growth: Applies the HoT to 2 additional targets.
Regrowth: Becomes an instant cast spell.
Entangling Roots: Is now instant cast, and damage is increased by 200%.
Wrath: Cast time is decreased by 50% and Damage done is increased by 30%.
Other spells of importance:
Remove Corruption: (level 24) – Reoves 1 poison and 1 curse from a target. When talented it also removes a harmful magic effect.
Revive: (level 12) – Your out of combat resurrection spell.
Barkskin: (level 58) – Reduces damage taken by you. Useful when there’s unavoidable damage, or if your tank has the reaction time of an inebriated snail.
Innervate: (level 28) – Recharges a good amount of mana to the target. Often used to keep yourself from going OOM.
Racials:
Shadowmeld is an effective aggro drop if you are a night elf. The worgen dash spell and Tauren AoE stun can be useful for escaping bad guys and kiting them back to the tank. The troll racial is nice for putting out a bit of extra healing through damage spikes.
Making full use of your natural talents, and glyphs
There’s a lot of wiggle-room to talent your Druid as you see fit. However the following talents should be a part of almost every restoration build: Natural Shapeshifter, Master Shapeshifter, Naturalist, Heart of the Wild, Improved Rejuvenation, Revitalize, Empowered Touch, Malfurion’s Gift, Wild Growth, Tree of Life.
These talents are solid choices but are more optional, depending on what you want to do:
Living Seed –If you heal a tank at all you’ll want this. May be dropped from some pure raid-healing builds.
Efflorescence – Useful on fights where people need to stack on each other, questionable other times.
Nature’s Bounty – 3 points here makes Regrowth a strong spell. No points here makes Regrowth almost worthless.
Nature’s Swiftness – An added emergency button. At 85 the usefulness is reduced as a single instant-cast spell isn’t usually isn’t enough to make or break a fight.
Nature’s Cure – In some raid groups magic dispelling is covered by others, making this talent point less useful.
Gift of the Earthmother – This is a reasonable healing buff; but one that must be weighed against the added utility of powering up other useful abilities such as Regrowth and Efflorescence. It’s not uncommon to only see 1 or 2 points here.
Swift Rejuvenation – We don’t spam Rejuvenation like we did in WotLK; so this has more situational usefulness. However this plus Gift of the Earthmother can give a bit more ‘bursty’ healing when needed.
Nature’s Grace & Nature’s Majesty: 2 lackluster talents that are mainly used to access better ones in the second tier of the balance tree.
Moonglow: Worth taking Nature’s Grace and Nature’s Majesty for in most cases. It’s a solid increase to mana efficiency.
Furor: Feral talent that’s worth putting at least 2 points into much of the time. However once your gear gets better, and you have more mana, you may consider dropping these points for other more appealing talents.
Genesis: A really nice healing buff, that unfortunately is stuck high up the balance tree. It’s worth putting a couple of points here if you are grabbing moonglow, and aren’t concerned about mana enough to touch furor.
Other talents are usually passed over in PvE play, however they may have situational benefits. Perseverance and Nature’s Ward are common survivability talents in PvP and for some Herioc-level raid encounters. Fury of Stormrage is more of a PvP talent, though you could conceivably use it to gather some free clearcasting procs if you are short on mana. Blessing of the Grove shouldn’t be taken anytime you have access to Genesis.
Glyphs:
Prime: Swiftmend, Lifebloom, Rejuvenation.
Major: Rebirth, Wild Growth and Innervate for PvE. Entangling Roots, Thorns and Barkskin all have PvP potential.
Minor: Unburdened Rebirth and Mark of the wild both have minor benefits and are among the more common. However feel free to choose what you like for the most part. Glyph of the Treant is the closest thing to a mandatory glyph here.
How do I make the green numbers biggerer?
Stat Priorities: Intellect > Spirit > Spellpower (only on weapons) > Haste until a break point > Mastery > Critical = Haste
Haste breakpoints (with +5% haste buff):
Haste # (@85) / Haste % /Spell
- / 0% / Lifebloom
256 / 2% / Wildgrowth
915 / 7.15% / Rejuvenation
1,220 / 9.53% / Lifebloom
1,423 / 11.05% / Regrowth
2,004 / 15.62% / Wild Growth
2,440 / 19.05% / Lifebloom
3,659 / 28.58% / Lifebloom
3,746 / 29.24% / Wild Growth
3,964 / 30.95% / Rejuvenation
At level 85 you’ll want to get 915 haste to grab an extra tick of Rejuvenation. After that point excess haste is a marginal stat, though raid healers will want to make a push to get 2004 for the extra Wild Growth tick once they get close. Mastery’s value depends on how much you’re healing someone with a HoT on them. It’s great for tank healing, and slightly less so for other jobs. Still it should be comfortably above your other options at this point. If you want a better answer use a spreadsheet, like this one: http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t116144-%5Bresto%5D_treecalcs/.
Reforging:
1) If you can reach a break point listed on the table above, or if you are under 915 haste, reforge any other stat you can into haste.
2) If you can reforge to spirit do so, at least until you are comfortable with your mana pool.
3) Reforge critical, excess haste, and hit into mastery.
4) Don’t even bother if you can’t do one of the above.
Gemming:
For end-game action your Meta should be the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. All other sockets should be Brilliant Inferno Ruby unless you can pick up a socket bonus of 20 intellect or more with Purified Demonseye or Artful Ember Topaz. In most cases don’t even consider getting a socket bonus if it isn’t intellect; though for PvP you may want gem for some extra survivability. Use 2 Artful Ember Topaz to meet the Meta requirement where you can get the best socket bonuses.
The fine art of rolling your face on the keyboard; healing at 85
As a rule of thumb try to do as much healing as possible with your more mana efficient spells, and supplement with others as the situation dictates. In short this means you should keep a 3-stack of LB rolling on someone at all times (usually a tank). Use swiftmend on cooldown as long as it won’t over-heal, and also consider where it will proc efflorescence (if you have it). Use Wild Growth on cooldown if it will hit at least 3-4 people.
Beyond that, keep the Lifebloom stacks rolling with your empowered touch spells; preferably Nourish if you won’t fall behind in your other healing responsibilities. Rejuvenation is good to keep on tanks, and can be used if Wild Growth and Efflorescence isn’t keeping up with the damage on others. Healing touch will mainly be used to tank heal, though there’s nothing wrong with using it on DPS if they need to be topped off, and aren’t in immediate danger of dying.
When things start to head south Regrowth makes a great quick heal if you have Nature’s Bounty talented; if not it’s rather lackluster. Swiftmend is nice, if you don’t have it on cooldown already. A Nature’s Swiftness/Healing Touch macro can help buy you a couple of seconds as well.
Tree of Life is good as a cooldown, or during more intense portions of an encounter. However it can be easy to exhaust your mana while in Tree form as instant-cast Regrowths are every tempting. If possible, try and get into tree form a few seconds before stuff hits the fan. This can give you a chance to get a lot of Lifeblooms rolling on different targets, resulting in plentiful OoC procs.
If all else fails hit Tranquility and watch everyone’s health bar climb (hopefully).
Edited, Feb 12th 2011 9:56am by someproteinguy