Resto Druid Guide - Updated for 3.3

[Myrrar]

Yes, it is. There are 100 topics on this but they are kind of hidden so...

Yes, no amount of stats you can get from gear out in the game right now will make up for the healing 4 piece does. The same for trauma. My last HM ICC25 raid 4 piece did 6.6% of my healing and Trauma did 6%.

The Sindra OH is BiS. The princes one isn't too bad if you can't down Sind yet.

[Nudepanda]

Alright, thanks for your help guys!


Edit- One more thing, after i get my t10 helm, should i the t10 for legs or chest?

[Myrrar]

You want the helm, legs, gloves, and shoulders. Get the badge chest. You wont upgrade it until the 277 chest off princes.

[axxey]

You can use 277 shoulders from princes as your off set item, particularly if have a lot of clothies after 277 sanguine silk robes or different luck on drops.

Basically using trauma you want a haste offset item to replace one of your stupid crit tier pieces in head shoulder or chest slot and the high item budget options are few and far between.

Due to correct itemisation your gloves and legs are far and away your best tier pieces.

[Myrrar]

The reason people take the chest and not the shoulders is because it's a 98 haste up instead of a 74 haste up. If you choose the set shoulders and off set chest you gain 14 haste.

Though that isn't a lot, that is what BiS is.
The reason HE should be going for the normal set is because he wont be seeing the offset 277 anything for a very long time, and the badge chest is the best he is going to get. So by the time you are to the point where you can get to that gear, you will not only already have the badge chest and would have to buy the set chest and upgrade it to 264 to make the switch worthwhile, but you should be aiming towards your BiS and nothing less.

[axxey]

Not sure about your server but some heroic content is kind of rediculously easy here, if I start a new character it's highly likely I'll have 277 gear before I can collect enough badges for tier let alone 95badge non tier items. Leather shoulders have far less demand from others than cloth chest.

30% buff is rediculous. Marrowgar, gunship, fester, rotface, valithria and blood wing heroic in the alt pug i was in this last week. 7/12.

If i was doing it over again I'd get boomkin tier chest as an off-set item before i thought about wasting 95 badges off tier, you need haste, you end up with plenty of spirit.

---------- Post added 2010-08-14 at 01:10 AM ----------

To elaborate, not saying shoulders are BiS offset item, but a very viable option.

Myself as an example, resto is one of my offspecs, I got shoulders from princes our first or second kill in april and I'm pretty sure we've only had 2 heroic sanguine silk robes since then with shoulders DEed a bunch.

[Myrrar]

Yeah, it will really depend on drops. I had the robes drop like, 2nd kill and we've had a ton of them. Shoulders a lot too though.

Our pugs fail in HMs. Our alt pugs can easily get through wing bosses but that's the alts from the few top guilds on the server, we are in the top 70 world and they're in the top 300.

Regular pugs though, they have trouble on normal wing bosses. I wont run anything with our pugs, even on my alt. =[

[Daemonis]

What should I get for my first Frost badge piece of gear? Should I save up for the chest (95 emblems), or should I get the idol first? I currently have 45 frosts at the moment.

[Cerelli]

circle of ossus or purified lunar dust. personally, i'd go with the belt fist since that will be your biggest upgrade followed pretty closely by the trinket. also you wouldn't be breaking your t9 set bonus if you get the belt.

when you get enough triumphs you should grab the haste leather helmet as well.

[Daemonis]

circle of ossus or purified lunar dust. personally, i'd go with the belt fist since that will be your biggest upgrade followed pretty closely by the trinket. also you wouldn't be breaking your t9 set bonus if you get the belt.

when you get enough triumphs you should grab the haste leather helmet as well.

I've got about 20 triumph emblems at the moment, so I'll have a session or two to get some more, head piece first, then the conquest belt, could also farm another 50 for a new ring as well.

[Mengucekli]

I am afraid i cannot agree with the idea of the OP about glyphed healing touch is "useless". Try to be more unorthodox about the issue.

Yes i know druid is a hot healer and its main strenght lies within hots and stuff.. After playing 4 years of restoration i am well aware of these. I want to give you some insight about another aspect of the spec. Those "wasted" talents you talk about, improve HT. Isnt it ironic that calling a talent that improves what spell you use useless or wasted? If you put the HT talents properly, with glyph, you will end up with the FASTEST heal that could be casted in the entire game. And it heals for a great load of heal in that limited time. I believe this is a strenght. And it should not be underestimated.

First of all, glyph yourself with HT glyph, innervate and WG. Gem Haste/SP or spirit whenever possible. Get loads of mana regen by spirit, and some useful sp. here is the build: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0VGzu0hZZfVcui0xbuA0sVo

Use healbot and put HT on your left click and WG on your right click. Now all you need to do is to cast your 0.5-0.6 secs HT whenever and wherever someone gets hurt. You should run out of mana in 2 mins (if the fighting is intense) or 3-4 mins (more relaxed fights). Then you should use innervate on yourself. It should fill you up with the glyph. And there still is mana pots when emergency needs be. With some practise you should be able to maintain mana/spam rate at about 5 mins before utterly running out of mana. Keep in mind that better gear may improvise amount of that time. Many boss fights have free times that you can regenerate and the time needed could decrease with better the gear you have. Replenishment buff is also crucial. You dont need endless mana or 30 mins of mana pool after all, many boss fights take place between 5 mins to 10 mins at best.

All in all, in emergency situations like nothing could save your fellas (or yourself!) this build can walk them off hell. It is the fastest healing spec available in game, and if you really need terribly fast intense healing (i dont want to throw numbers here but your 0.5 sec HT could crit up to 15k or something with GOOD gear) this can very well be a viable spec. I personally saved 2 people that were caught up by Deathbringer's adds AT THE SAME TIME. That 5 secs could save your raid from a wipe. Also there are some heroic difficulty fights that require insane amount of speed and response time in some situations. When people fail, you shall shine.

Also to warn you, this is not a build for low gearead or low experienced players. You will just run out of mana before you realise how.

That is all for me now, you fellow druids should try it out to see if it works for you.

AND FOR GODS SAKE, DONT COMMENT/CRITISIZE THIS BUILD IF YOU DID NOT TRY IT OUT YUORSELF PROPERLY.

I am sick of those people that speak whatever they imagine.

[Cerelli]

I am afraid i cannot agree with the idea of the OP about glyphed healing touch is "useless". Try to be more unorthodox about the issue.

Yes i know druid is a hot healer and its main strenght lies within hots and stuff.. After playing 4 years of restoration i am well aware of these. I want to give you some insight about another aspect of the spec. Those "wasted" talents you talk about, improve HT. Isnt it ironic that calling a talent that improves what spell you use useless or wasted? If you put the HT talents properly, with glyph, you will end up with the FASTEST heal that could be casted in the entire game. And it heals for a great load of heal in that limited time. I believe this is a strenght. And it should not be underestimated.

that you can still only cast once per second... just like... nourish... and a heal that doesn't heal for so substantially more than nourish does without a specialized spec.

First of all, glyph yourself with HT glyph, innervate and WG. Gem Haste/SP or spirit whenever possible. Get loads of mana regen by spirit, and some useful sp. here is the build: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0VGzu0hZZfVcui0xbuA0sVo

Use healbot and put HT on your left click and WG on your right click. Now all you need to do is to cast your 0.5-0.6 secs HT whenever and wherever someone gets hurt. You should run out of mana in 2 mins (if the fighting is intense) or 3-4 mins (more relaxed fights). Then you should use innervate on yourself. It should fill you up with the glyph. And there still is mana pots when emergency needs be. With some practise you should be able to maintain mana/spam rate at about 5 mins before utterly running out of mana. Keep in mind that better gear may improvise amount of that time. Many boss fights have free times that you can regenerate and the time needed could decrease with better the gear you have. Replenishment buff is also crucial. You dont need endless mana or 30 mins of mana pool after all, many boss fights take place between 5 mins to 10 mins at best.

thats all well and good... but... a standard hot spec with nourish/regrowth direct heals will still blow it out of the water and with better mana efficiency.

All in all, in emergency situations like nothing could save your fellas (or yourself!) this build can walk them off hell. It is the fastest healing spec available in game, and if you really need terribly fast intense healing (i dont want to throw numbers here but your 0.5 sec HT could crit up to 15k or something with GOOD gear) this can very well be a viable spec. I personally saved 2 people that were caught up by Deathbringer's adds AT THE SAME TIME. That 5 secs could save your raid from a wipe. Also there are some heroic difficulty fights that require insane amount of speed and response time in some situations. When people fail, you shall shine.

your spec didn't accomplish that. you as a player did. congrats you saved noobs from getting killed. you would have done the same if you were playing a standard spec properly.

Also to warn you, this is not a build for low gearead or low experienced players. You will just run out of mana before you realise how.

That is all for me now, you fellow druids should try it out to see if it works for you.

AND FOR GODS SAKE, DONT COMMENT/CRITISIZE THIS BUILD IF YOU DID NOT TRY IT OUT YUORSELF PROPERLY.

I am sick of those people that speak whatever they imagine.

i'm sick of stubborn people who refuse to see two sides of a coin. the spec was marginally decent in heroic Anub, in ICC it is obsolete at best. worthless more accurately. ICC is a hot spammer's dream. Other than deathwhisper and maybe saurfang, there is not a single fight where the raid damage is focused enough to justify direct heals over hots. And on saurfang if adds are mauling your raid then you are doing it wrong.

[Mengucekli]

And because people do it wrong they should die and everyone should wipe right? That is what you understand after all i written down? Congratulations. Did you try this spec? In heroic modes of ICC? People die between 2 ticks of hots. You cant cast nourish that fast. That is the point you seem to ignore. Point of this is not spamming faster, it is to have more heals in a limited time. You cant achieve this with nourish. If you cannot see the difference, well, nothing more to say to you. And thanks for your constructive comment. This attitude really helps.

[Myrrar]

There is a thing called theorycrafters. Those people test every spec, playstyle, gearchoice, stats choices in the game. They use numbers and are most of the time far more intelligent than the rest of us.

There are also called endgame raiders. Those people see every fight at every level in the game. They know how mechanics work and are normally the ones that bring out the new ideas and try them.

Do you honestly think the HT spec/glyph healing hasn't been tested? Well, it has.

The thing you are not understanding is even glyphed and specd, our direct healing is stomped by every other class. They can ALL do it better than us even with the correct spec. We are the only class with hots. Would you put your pally on raid healing instead of tank just because they can change their spec and be the worst at it? But hey! They can do it!

The way you talk, you seem to have never healed ICC hardmodes before, and if you have, your other healers are terrible. In an endgame guild, which is what you think you need to be to be good at your spec, which is also not HMs, but competing for World 1sts or top 100s, you should hardly ever have to direct heal. We are buffers, we are good at it. Hotting the whole raid and letting other tank care of spike is what you SHOULD be doing endgame. You should trust your other healers to do their jobs. Besides that, if you need it, you have SM and nourish. You think we should be dropping talents that buff everything else, and glyphs, and your gems to fit that playstyle.

Well really think about it. Dropping the points in the spells we SHOULD be using the most to direct heal is pretty worthless. Go in any raid and heal with anyone worthwhile and see how your spec turns out. You will possibly be trailing behind your discs or even your rets/spriests using their healing buffers.


If people are dying when you have hots on them and you aren't running 3 healers that's a healing problem. But apparently pretty much every LKHM25 guild is doing it wrong and you are obviously right. Don't talk about ignorance when you wont even accept things tested over and over again.

[Cerelli]

And because people do it wrong they should die and everyone should wipe right? That is what you understand after all i written down? Congratulations. Did you try this spec? In heroic modes of ICC? People die between 2 ticks of hots. You cant cast nourish that fast. That is the point you seem to ignore. Point of this is not spamming faster, it is to have more heals in a limited time. You cant achieve this with nourish. If you cannot see the difference, well, nothing more to say to you. And thanks for your constructive comment. This attitude really helps.

I have tried the spec. It was limiting. I hated it. There is no legitimate argument that a person can make to use the spec unless you are a dedicated tank healer. And if that is your role in the raid then you need to recruit a pally or holy priest. Even then you can still tank heal adequately well in a standard spec WHILE still maintaining all of your raid healing utility. Personally I'd 100 times rather have flexibility bordering on OPness than pigeonhole myself into doing one thing good. Especially when the hallmark of a resto druid is being able to do everything well.

[axxey]

And because people do it wrong they should die and everyone should wipe right? That is what you understand after all i written down? Congratulations. Did you try this spec? In heroic modes of ICC? People die between 2 ticks of hots. You cant cast nourish that fast. That is the point you seem to ignore. Point of this is not spamming faster, it is to have more heals in a limited time. You cant achieve this with nourish. If you cannot see the difference, well, nothing more to say to you. And thanks for your constructive comment. This attitude really helps.

If you can't cast a nourish in the time between hot ticks you have problems.

In 2 seconds you can cast 2 expensive fast cast healing touch spells, locked down by the 1 second minimum global cooldown.

In 2 seconds I can cast 2 nourish, locked down by the 1 second minimum global cooldown that heals harder non crit on targets i have hots on, with 25% more crit chance and living seed to heal for 30% more after the crit as well.

If your nourish is slow your gear is bad and you should go back to normals.
PS. congratz on the next clothie you save when they get crit by a beast.

---------- Post added 2010-08-27 at 09:25 AM ----------

PPS. Myrrar is also wrong, no one has worse direct heals than priests.

[Dendrek]

Mengucelkli, it's fine that you come into this thread with suggestions for how to play resto - however unorthodox those suggestions may be. However, I'd recommend you be less condescending in the future, unless you're intentionally trying to be troll bait.

First, I have played with the HT spec before. I tried it out for a period of time at the beginning of Wrath. (Edit: I also used glyphed HT when learning Heroic Anubarak in ToGC 25 in order to help with Penetrating Cold healing.) I make no argument against it being an incredibly fast heal... but that's all it is. It would be a useful spell if it weren't so costly to obtain. But the costs do not outweigh the benefits.

Consider what you're giving up:
1. Improved Rejuvenation: You have sacrificed your strongest spell, Rejuvenation, for this spec. Improved Rejuvenation is a talent which nearly all druids consider mandatory.
2. Revitalize: Arguably the best utility talent available to resto druids. It may not provide healing, but that does not make it useless. I consider there to be very few good excuses for not taking points in this talent. But if my suspicion about you neglecting Rejuv is true, then I guess this talent would be useless to you.
3. Nature's Swiftness: A very useful cooldown (and one of the few druids possess), which combined with an unglyphed HT can be a tank saver.
4. Nature's Bounty: This, combined with Empowered Touch and (possibly) Glyph of Nourish, makes Nourish an extremely powerful direct heal. It is also a very fast direct heal. Glyphed HT does not compare at all to a fully buffed Nourish. Glyphed HT is nothing more than a moderately strong heal that just happens to be very fast. In fact, both spells are limited by the GCD, so no matter how much more quickly glyphed HT's cast time will finish, it can never be cast consecutively any more quickly than Nourish can be.

You are also narrowing yourself into a very specialized play-style. It's a style which shines in small groups (5 mans mostly, but is occasionally strong in 10 mans), but pales in comparison to a normal healing style in a 25 man raid. You lack versatility (you have a weak rejuvenation and a very expensive direct heal), and though you can still play like any other druid outside of casting HT, you will never preform as well or be as invaluable to the raid as a properly spec'd druid.

Also, you mention several times in that post having a ".5 second" HT. That's BS. It may seem to be that fast, but I guarantee you it is not. It can reach that low with a Nature's Grace proc or with Bloodlust, but otherwise it's actually between a .6 and .7 second cast time (assuming high amounts of haste) and the cast-time reduction from haste suffers diminishing returns (each additional point of haste reduces the cast time by smaller amounts). I may be nitpicking tenths of a second here, but you were exaggerating.

Every other counter-argument relevant to this discussion has already been said so I'll end here: There's no way I would recommend a druid gimp themselves with a specialized and gimmicky spec/glyph-setup simply so they could reap the benefits of a really fast direct heal.

[Myrrar]

[/COLOR]PPS. Myrrar is also wrong, no one has worse direct heals than priests.

Not really. It's the same as resto druids. If we were speced for HT and they were speced for direct healing they would still probably be better than us. Priests aren't good. But us in HT spec are no better.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure how to search just this thread to avoid repeating someone so I'll just add this in.

Glyph of Healing Touch may look stupid but it makes for a nice quick direct heal if you're locking your character to play at level 70, because you don't have nourish at 70.

[Myrrar]

If you think you will play him a lot in 25s, enough to where you will eventually get your 4piece and keep raiding afterwards, it's overly worth it. 4 piece is pretty much necessary as a 25 raider.

After looking through all the posts and you don't think the 4 piece will be obtainable in a good amount of time or effort, I would take the offset BP 1st. It will help you catch up on haste cap. The belt, idol, and trinket would all be ups too, but haste cap should be the 1st thing you are trying to get. With him being your alt I wouldn't strive for non-CF 856, but at least get to 736 with CF.

If you do decide to get your 2, which isn't really worth it if you're only in 10s, get the gloves and pants 1st. Though your pants have a high ilvl, the stats are useless to us. Switching them out to 251 haste pants(the set) will give you more output. The same for your belt. The trinket will be a good up from either or those trinkets since bell is so low and sliver is terrible for restos, I'd probably take that as soon as you hit 736 haste, however you have to get it.