Restoration Druid: Raiding Essentials

Talents for Restoration Druids

Talent Calculator

Tier 1 -  Mobility

  ˚  Displacer Beast (Recommended): Teleports the druid up to 20 yards forward and increases movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds.
This talent gives you excellent mobility, the ability to avoid some raid mechanics and get out of void zones instantly.

  ˚  Feline Swiftness (Recommended): Passive 15% speed increase, a solid choice, but I will again stress the usefulness of Displacer Beast.

  ˚  Wild Charge (Situational): This talent offers limited mobility when compared to the other two.

• Non-Shapeshifted : Fly to ally's position. (Reliant on other players)
• Bear Form :Charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4 seconds.
• Cat Form : Leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
• Travel Form : Leap forward 20 yards. (Reliant on being outdoors)
• Aquatic Form : Increases Swim Speed by 150% for 5 seconds.

Displacer Beast or Feline Swiftness will be your best choices.

Tier 2 - Healing

  ˚  Ysera's Gift (Recommended): Heals %5 health every 5 seconds. An excellent passive heal, we have plenty HoTs to manage as it is.

  ˚  Cenarion Ward (Situational): If you're having to heal 2 tanks at a time, this can be useful to keep Lifebloom up on one and Cenarion ward on the other.

  ˚   Renewal (Not Recommended): is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a 2-minute cooldown. This is not the best talent for raiding situations as you cannot heal anyone but yourself.

Ysera's Gift will be the best choice in most situations.

Tier 3 - Crowd Control

  ˚  Typhoon (Situational): 30 yard frontal cone AoE, knocks back and dazes enemies for 6 sec. 

  ˚  Mass Entanglement (Situational): Roots your target in place for 20 sec and spreads to additional nearby enemies. Damage cancels effect.

  ˚  Faerie Swarm (Situational): Reduces the target's movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Replaces Faerie Fire.


Typhoon is a great choice as the knockback is useful for interrupting spell casting and ravages.

Tier 4 - Performance-Enhancing

  ˚  Soul of the Forest (Recommended): You gain 100% haste for your next 
spell when you cast Swiftmend. 

Notable spell combinations:

• Swiftmend + Wild Growth = increases the number of ticks of Wild Growth.
• Swiftmend + Tranquility = greatly decreases cast time of Tranquility.

(Note that you will need at least 12.518% (5320) haste to benefit from this talent)

  ˚  Incarnation (Recommended): Shapeshift into the Tree of Life, increasing healing done by 15%, increasing your armor by 120%, and gaining protection from Polymorph effects for 30 seconds.

While active these spells are enhanced:

• Lifebloom: Can be placed on unlimited targets (causes increased Omen of Clarity procs)
• Wild Growth: Effects 2 additional players
• Regrowth: Instant cast (utilize the Omen of Clarity procs from multiple lifeblooms by instant-casting Regrowth on players with low health)

  ˚  Force of Nature (Not Recommended): is an active ability that summons a treant which casts Swiftmend on your current target and heals it with Healing Touch for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges, and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds.


Soul of the Forest: Offers frequent increased AoE heals with Wild Growth.
Incarnation: Provides great burst healing and helps preserve mana through Omen of Clarity.

 Both are strong, viable talents.

Tier 5 - Crowd Control

  ˚  Mighty Bash (Situational): Single target 5-second stun.

  ˚  Ursol's Vortex (Situational): Reduces the movement speed of all enemies within 8 yards by 50%. The enemy will be pulled back to its center the first time they attempt to leave the vortex
attempts to leave the vortex.

  ˚  Disorienting Roar (Situational): Disorients all enemies within 10 yards for 3 sec. Damage cancels effect.


  Mighty Bash is a solid choice as it can stun and interrupt harmful spells.

Tier 6 - Performance-Enhancing

  ˚  Nature's Vigil (Recommended): Increases all damage and healing done by 12% for 30 sec. Healing with Nature's Vigil active will cause you to damage a nearby enemy for 25% of healing done while the spell is active. All single-target healing and damage also heal a nearby friendly target for 25% of the amount done.  

Nature's Vigil allows the Druid to deal damage while healing, or heal while dealing damage all while providing a 30 second healing buff.



  ˚  Heart of the Wild (Recommended): Passively increases Intellect by 6%. When activated increases all healing done by 25% and allows you to perform roles outside of your normal specialization for 45 sec. 

• Bear Form: Allows the druid to Tank, granting increased Agility, Expertise, Hit, and Armor, as well as Vengeance.
• Cat Form: Allows the Druid to DPS, granting increased Agility, Expertise and Hit.
• Caster DPS: Increases Spell Damage and Hit Chance, and reduces mana cost of damaging spells by 100%. Swiftmend + Hurricaine while HotW is active provides a quick-casting AoE that deals massive amounts of damage.

Heart of the Wild is a very appealing talent, as intellect is the best stat for restoration druids.

  ˚  Dream of Cenarius (Not Recommended): Increases Wrath damage by 20% and your Wrath spell causes a nearby ally to be healed for 100% of the damage done. 

Dream of Cenarius allows the druid to heal while dealing damage but because it is a random proc and the heals are uncontrolled it is the least desirable talent.


Heart of the Wild and Nature's Vigil are the best choices for restoration druids, again it depends on your preference to manage cooldowns or if you would prefer a constant benefit from passive intellect.



The best thing you can do is experiment with these talents and find what works best for you, always keep a stack of  Tomes of the Clear mind with you, so you can switch talents between fights, also glyphs.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

 Glyph of Efflorescence -always

Gyph of Wild Growth-most situations

Glyph of Healing Touch will be slightly more useful than - Glyph of Regrowth with 2P bonus from tier 16 buffing healing touch, also paired with SoF will be very useful.

 

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Sprouting Mushroom

Stat Priority and Reforging

Saveryn's School of Thought: Reforging

 

Always reforge Critical Strike to Haste over any other stat.

• If you have Crit and Spirit, reforge Crit to Haste.
• If you have Crit and Mastery, reforge Crit to Haste.
• If you have Crit and Haste, reforge the Crit to Mastery.
• If you have Mastery and Spirit, reforge Spirit to Haste.
• If you have Sprit and Haste, reforge Spirit to Mastery.
• If you have Mastery and Haste, don't reforge.

Gems + Enchants

 

Red Slots: Reckless Vermillion Onyx

Blue Slots: Energized Wild Jade

Yellow Slots: Quick Sun's Radiance

Meta Slot: 

Prismatic: Quick Sun's Radiance 

 

Food, Flasks and Potions

Food- 300 Noodle Cart/Mogu Fish Stew

 

Intellect flasks: Flask of Warm Sun or Crystal of Instanity. +500 of all stats really is insane, and quite useful to healer druids. (And reusable!)

 

Potions: Keep Master Healing Potions around until you have a good amount of spirit

otherwise Potion of the Jade Serpent will give you essentially a healing cooldown.

 

Professions

Jewelcrafting, Engineering, Enchanting, Inscription, Leatherworking and Blacksmithing all provide the best raid benefits. Alchemy increases the benefit from flasks. Gathering professions provide the least amount of benefit to a raider.

 

Addons

Deadly Boss Mods (DBM): Shows you what spells raid bosses are about to use. Very useful to pre-meditate what heals to use and when.
ELVUI: A clean, customizable user interface.
Clique: Use with ELVUI to program spells with mouse + keyboard bindings.
Recount/Skada: Tracks HPS, DPS, Deaths, Damage, Dispels and more.
 

Macros

 

Innervate yourself:

/target *your name*

/cast innervate 

Instant Healing Touch

/cast Nature's Swiftness

/cast Healing Touch

 

This is a super rough draft, to be continued.

 

Other resources:
Icy Veins
Elitist Jerks 
Saveryn - Me! Who am I? I am a Restoration Druid on Whisperwind about to start Heroic modes with my guild - Nocturnal. I was inspired to create this blog to share the love of raid healing and create a comprehensive guide for Healing Druids.