Legion Resto Druid Guide:
1) Intro
2) Pro/Con
3) Talents
4) Artifact Weapon+Relics
5) Stats+Gearing
6) Playstyle (Raid+5man)
7) Legendary Items
8) Conclusion
1: Intro
Hi guys I’m Tomali and I am a mythic raider. I’ve been playing the game since Vanilla and have always mained a healer. I loved restoration druids and they are looking to be quite strong in legion. Although they have not changed a whole lot in comparison to other specializations, there are a few differences that change how to heal most effectively and efficiently. I made this guide to help beginning and intermediate druids hone their skills, and that the current guide is outdated.
If you are looking for advanced information, I would suggest looking at the druid discord called "dreamgrove". There are frequently knowledgeable druids in the resto channel. See Link: https://discord.gg/vY2S4cY
This guide assumes that you have ACTUALLY READ the abilities given to you as a resto druid. This includes talents. Reading each tooltip is absolutely essential to play any class to its fullest. Knowledge is power! This also shortens the guide so I can focus on the meaty subjects involved with the restoration specialization.
I know I said that you should actually read your spells, but I am going to go over a few big changes in legion because they are so important. First, our secondary stat Mastery was completely reworked. Mastery will increase your healing on a target for each resto heal over time (HoT) on the target. This means that each HoT will heal for more if you stack them on a target. The mastery does increase healing if just one HoT is on the target, but it is not very efficient.
An example to help explain: a rejuv normally heals for 100 and the regrowth HoT heals for 100. Casting these individually on a target will have them heal for 100. If both the rejuv and regrowth HoT are on a target at the same time, they BOTH will start healing for 105. This makes our tank healing A LOT better, and is a positive change to restoration.
Second, mana regeneration was nerfed. If you have played in other expansion, you will feel this change, and must think more about how you spend your mana. Gone are the days of rejuvenating anything that moves (at least for now).
Thanks and let me know if I made a typo/error!
2: Pro/Con
Pros:
-The most mobile healer (read: easier to avoid fire)
-Amazing throughput
-Strong in both raid healing and in tank healing
-Tranquility is one of the strongest raid heal cooldowns in the game
-Innervate is a very useful cooldown, especially with the changes to mana
-Has a great external damage reduction cooldown for tanks.
Cons:
-Limited toolkit for instant burst healing
-Less overall utility than other healers
-Need to be proactive to heal most effectively
-Can run out of mana very quickly
3: Talents
Talents are a lot more interesting in legion, and give a few different builds that are viable. Each build has their strengths and weaknesses. I will put forward different potential builds that I find useful. I am considering these builds to be a ‘cookie-cutter’ type for new and intermediate players. Changes could and will likely be made as you master your class and adapt to different issues in game.
If you are looking for specific talents for a boss in a raid, check out warcraft logs. This link will show the talents of the top healing druids for each boss: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking...ec=Restoration
Raiding build 1:
This build allows for large throughput for a raid sized group. It focuses on consistent mid level damage by taking advantage of soul of the forest with wild growth.
Lv15: Prosperity
Having two charges of swiftmend plays very well with our Lv 75 talent.
Lv30: Displacer Beast
While renewal is also viable, avoiding damage through your positioning saves you mana. Wild Charge could also be useful to fly to an ally in a good position, but that would require you to rely on another raid member or PUG.
Lv45: Guardian Affinity
This is a debatable talent choice, and higher skill players might consider taking a DPS affinity to help their raid group. However, the damage reduction is useful while you focus on healing your raid. Healing is your first priority, and the damage reduction will allow you to survive longer!
Lv 60: Typhoon
This tier is not super useful in a raid environment as many mobs are immune to crowd control. If trash mobs end up on you due to healer aggro, typhoon allows you to push them out of the way until your tank realizes you’re in some trouble.
Lv 75: Soul of the Forest
The combination of this talent with Prosperity gives our kit a lot of control on when we want to push out some juicy HPS to the raid, or buff a tanks healing. Inner Peace should only be used if the raid leader needs your Tranq for a specific mechanic less than 3 minutes apart.
Lv 90: Spring Blossoms OR Inner Peace*
Spring Blossoms not only increases the passive healing of your efflorescence, but also synergizes very well with our mastery, which is a hefty throughput increase. *Inner Peace is viable ONLY for certain fights with big damage less than three minutes apart, but only if you cast tranquility more than you would with a 3 minute cooldown.
Lv100: Flourish
A no mana cost spell on a short cooldown that extends the duration of our HOTs.
Raiding Build 2
This build allows for slightly more tank healing and gives you another cooldown for periods of high damage in encounters.
LV 15: Cenarion Ward
As damage starts to ramp up, tank healing becomes more of an issue. Cenarion Ward is perfect for a high damage debuff or dot on a target.
LV30: Displacer Beast
Same reasoning as above.
LV 45: Guardian Affinity
Same reasoning as above.
LV60: Typhoon
Same reasoning as above
Lv 75: Incarnation: Tree of Life
Having another cooldown to use while tranquility is on cooldown can be important for high damage phases during raid encounters. In addition, the reduced mana cost on rejuv while in tree form and the improvement to wild growth is a great 30 second buff.
LV 90: Spring Blossoms OR Inner Peace
For the same reasoning above, either spring blossoms or inner peace is viable. For inner peace to be worth taking, you MUST cast 1 more tranquility than you normally would during an encounter. This usually requires casting tranq relatively early into the encounter. In a 5 minute fight, this would be using the spell 3 times instead of 2 times (@45 sec, 2:45, 4:45). For a 4 minute fight this would be twice instead of once (@1min, 3min).
Lv100: Flourish
Same as above.
5man specific build:
This build will be useful for dungeons and mythic+. It maximizes the healing you can do to 5 targets and specifically the tank. Dungeon healing requires much more focus on the tank than raid healing as a resto druid.
Lv15: Cenarion Ward
The ward is a great cooldown for your tank, and will be very useful to keep him topped off in a dungeon environment.
Lv30: Displacer Beast
Once again, positioning is a much better way to stop damage than trying to heal through bad. Certain fights could also call for renewal, but in my opinion, displacer beast will be useful more often.
Lv45: Feral Affinity
In a 5 mans, the DPS you do as a healer is more important than in a raid environment. For higher mythic+ (8ish and above), guardian affinity could also be viable as you have less time available to heal.
Lv60: Typhoon
Typhoon and Mighty Bash are useful in dungeons, but I tend to prefer Typhoon as a way to save myself if I get aggro, and also use it to give the tank a breather if he is getting clobbered by adds. Mighty Bash can be used to stop casts and other abilities during trash.
Lv75: Cultivation
As damage starts to ramp up in mythic+ dungeons, Cultivation is a great non-GCD consuming healing increase in situations that matter. The extra mastery stack is immense to your healing.
Lv90: Germination
In a raid, you do not have extra GCDs to blanket your raid twice. With only 5 people germination is objectively the best throughput increase in this tier.
Lv100: Stonebark
Tanks are usually harder to keep up in a 5man. Having a shorter and stronger external cooldown is invaluable. Flourish could also be used if group damage is unhealable.
4: Artifact weapon
I will first go through each major ability, and how it should be used, then I will go intro strategy on how you use your artifact power. These abilities are ranked in order of usefulness.
Essence of G’Hanir: This 1.5min cd spell is our only active ability in our artifact. It DOUBLES the throughput of all of your HoTs currently on the target. It gives us a little more burst healing into our toolkit, which we are lacking in. Pairing this with the talent Flourish will be a great addition to our healing.
Dreamwalker: Wild growth gives a 50% chance to instantly heal everyone with a rejuv for an static amount. This is a passive throughput increase to wild growth that will not change gameplay.
Tranquil Mind: 20% increased healing is a nice throughput healing, and being able to move while channeling this spell will be extremely useful for certain mechanics. This will make using tranquility much easier to not mess up.
Power of the Archdruid: This passive gives a 25% chance on wild growth cast to cause your next rejuv or regrowth to hit two additional targets. RNG does not work well with healing, and the 25% chance is not enough to rely on. I consider this to be a passive throughput increase. You will not change your playstyle much with this trait.
Assigning Artifact Power:
It is most important to gain your major traits as soon as possible. With only 16 artifact points, you can get access two major traits: Dreamwalker and Tranquil mind. To do this, take the route at the very top of the tree to Dreamwalker, then work your way down to Tranquil Mind. The upper track provides better passives than the middle track. This is the least amount of points you can use to get two majors, and will be the most useful to you the fastest.
Once you gain your two major traits, I suggest to start back at the beginning of the tree and work your way towards Power of the Archdruid. This will give all major traits with 26 total points used. Starting back at the beginning and working your way down the bottom of the tree is useful because those minor traits are some of the best in our entire artifact.
You can get to Power of the Archdruid with 24 points if you continue from tranquil mind BUT I WOULD NOT SUGGEST IT. Infusion of Nature and Persistence are amazing minor traits at the bottom of the tree and you do not want to delay getting these minors. Mark of Shifting and Seeds of the World Tree and more or less useless points.
Artifact Trait Order:
Essence of G’Hanir>Nature’s Vigor>Grovewalker>Nature’s Essence>Essence of Nordrassil>Dreamwalker>Armor of the Ancients>Blessing of the World Tree>Tranquil Mind>Infusion of Nature>Persistence>Knowledge of the Ancients>Power of the Archdruid>Blooms of G’Hanir>Natural Mending>Seeds of the World Tree>Mark of Shifting
Relics:
Relics increase the ilv of your weapon and give an additional point into a minor trait. Attaining the third relic slot is a larger increase to your gear than many item upgrades, so do this as soon as possible. You will always want increased ilv over a more useful minor trait. REPEAT: ILV IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MINOR TRAIT!!!!!!! This is because increasing ilv increases all of our healing and damage by a large amount. We will use two life relics and one frost relic.
Here are the three most useful minor traits if you have two relics of equal ilv:
Grovewalker-1% increased healing from HoTs.
Knowledge of the Ancients-2% increased mana regeneration.
Persistence-Increased duration of rejuv, moonfire, and sunfire by one second.
5: Stats and Gearing
First, it is important to remember that ILV is king in most situations. A large ilv upgrade with bad stats will be better than the lower ilv piece with good stats. Stat weights will also be different based on what you like to do in the game. Below is the stat priority for 5mans and raids. The priorities are different because mastery becomes more useful when we have less people to heal. Though stat weights are not as reliable for a healer as a DPS, they are also included as a rough guide. To decide which piece of gear is better multiply each stat by the value associated with the build you want and the higher score will be 'better'.
Raid+Offensive 5 man (Suggested):
Haste>=Crit>Versatility>Mastery
Raid Stat Weights: Int=1, Haste=0.725, Crit=0.7, Vers=0.65, Mastery=0.60
Defensive 5Man: *This build only focuses on healing, not DPS
Mastery>Haste>Crit>Versatility
5man Stat Weights: Int=1, Mastery=0.9, Haste=0.75, Crit=0.70, Vers=0.65
While a mastery heavy build will increase your healing output in a 5 man group, it will not affect your overall DPS. As you get deeper into mythic+ the DPS you deal will start to matter. A haste/crit build will provide more DPS than a mastery build as mastery is useless for your offensive abilities.
Enchants:
Ring: Binding of Haste (or the cheaper Word of Haste)
Neck: Mark of the Trained Soldier
*note: Mark of the Claw is also viable, but only procs based on offensive abilities. Only use this enchant if you can remember to constantly keep moonfire up.
Cloak: Binding of Intellect (or the cheaper Word of Intellect)
Alchemy:
Flask: Flask of the Whispered Pact
Potion: Ancient Mana Potion, Leytorrent Potion is also useful and provides more mana, but you cannot cast spells for 10 seconds. Use Leytorrent if you can afford not healing for 10 seconds in a fight.
Individual Food:
Best: Azshari Salad
Cheaper Option: Suramar Surf and Turf
6: Playstyle
In bulleted format, here are some important aspects to playing a restoration druid. There is no resto 'rotation', but there are priorities to heal most effectively.
•Spot healing is done mostly with rejuv, but healing touch is also cheap and heals for about as much.
• Keep Efflorescence near the largest group, usually the tank and melee
• Keep lifebloom and rejuv on the tank 100% of the time
• When you gain clear casting, cast regrowth on whoever needs healing or the tank
• Cast wild growth if 4+ people have taken heavy damage. DO NOT cast on cooldown as it is very mana intensive
• Give your tank Ironbark when he takes a lot of damage. (Bonus points if you communicate with them so he doesn’t use a personal cooldown as well)
• Use tranquility during huge amounts of damage, or when your raid leader tells you to
• If you can anticipate when big amounts of damage is going to happen, rejuv DPS 5-7 seconds before the damage happens
• If no one needs to be healed and you are bored, wrath costs no mana so DPS away
5man Specific:
• Cenarion ward is almost always used on the tank, yourself, or someone with a heavy DoT
• Be careful to not run yourself out of mana when using Tree of Life with the instant cast regrowths
• Pre-HoT anyone that might take damage before jumping into catform to DPS
• It takes a long time to put up 10 rejuvs, so start before damage comes out
•For optimum DPS on single target keep sunfire,moonfire, and rake up full time with shred as a generator
•For optimum DPS on multi target sunfire the adds and swipe as a generator
•Only rip for a combo spender if your target will survive for the entire duration. If not ferocious bite.
Raid Specific:
• Always pair swiftmend with wild growth to use the Soul of the Forest talent most efficiently
• Both flourish and Essence of G’Hanir should be paired with a SoTF wild growth and a blanket of rejuvs. It will take ~10 seconds of prep to use this most efficiently
• Use innervate early on (<90 seconds in) to save you mana early on in the fight and so you can use the ability multiple times in an average fight.
7: Legendary Items
There are multiple legendary items available for a restoration druid. These items will be an enormous ilv boost (895) and will grant you a special passive. While you will have to be VERY lucky to get multiple legendary pieces anytime soon, I included some pros and cons to each piece.
Aman'Thul's Wisdom: These shoulders are what I am most excited about. They allow rejuv stay at their full duration on 100% health targets for up to 10 seconds.
Pros: This is great for our overhealing, mana conservation, and overall ability to heal timed mechanics. Will save GCDs
Cons: Requiring 100% health targets limits the ability of this legendary if someone takes even slight damage. It is also in a tier slot.
Edraith, Bonds of Aglaya: These wrists give swiftmend the ability to extend HoTs on your target by 10 seconds.
Pros: This will save you GCDs by extending the HoTs on a tank or high priority target.
Cons: With swiftmend being tied into soul of the forest, you might not want to spend a swiftmend to extend hots. SoTF is more important than 10 seconds of extra HoT time.
Essence of Infusion: These boots boost tranquility healing by 50% on targets below 50%.
Pros: This will make tranquility even more powerful than it already it and will ensure only this raid cooldown is needed for almost any mechanic. It will save people close to death.
Cons: It will not really change gameplay, and will become less useful after progression. It is also in a tier slot.
The Dark Titan's Advice: This waist increases the bloom of our lifebloom by 200%.
Pros: It will be great for world pvp and 5 mans for a huge heal.
Cons: It will be difficult to time the heal well as you need to cast it 15 seconds in advance, and the bloom will likely be overheal in most raid situations.
Tearstone of Elune: This ring has a 20% chance to give the target of the initial wild growth heal a rejuv.
Pros: A static throughput increase to Wildgrowth that will save you a GCD
Cons: This legendary is tied to our most expensive heal, and will be gated by mana. There is also a chance the rejuv will already be on the target.
Ekowraith, Creator of Worlds: This chest will passively increase our passive, Ysera's Gift, by 50%. This is a change to a 3% health passive heal every 5 seconds to a 4.5% passive heal. It will also increase the passive of your affinity, which is either damage reduction, movespeed, or ability range.
Pros: Provides an increase to our passive heal and will increase our affinities. An extra 5% damage reduction could be the difference between living and dying
Cons: Will not change gameplay and is in a tier slot.
Prydaz, Xavaric's Magnum Opus: This neck will give an absorb shield for 15% of your max health for 30 seconds with a 30 second cooldown.
Pros: Huge defensive boost to large raid damage will allow you to focus on other players in the raid opposed to yourself. Dying less improves your overall healing.
Cons: Does not provide a healing increase.
Sephuz's Secret: This finger gives you 70% movespeed and 15% haste for 10 seconds after casting a loss of control effect to an enemy.
Pros: Huge utility to PvP.
Cons: Little to no utility in PvE.
8: Conclusion
If you made it this far, thanks for reading my guide! Following these tips will improve any player’s ability to play a resto druid. If you have any questions my druid is Superbunz-Sargeras, US alliance. Happy Healing!
Changelog: 8/28 Added legendary section. 9/4 updated legendary section. 9/14 started on 7.1 changes. 9/22 added enchants/pots/food. 9/30 Added links to discord/warcraft logs 10/5 updated talent section