This guide has not been updated for 4.0.1. Most of the information in this guide is no longer valid. I apologize for the inconvenience. Hopefully a knowledgeable and skilled resto druid will write an updated guide for Cataclysm.
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Guide Index
1. Druid Healing
2. Specs
3. Glyphs
- 2.1. Basic Point Allocation
- 2.2. Healing Specs
4. Stat Priorities
- 3.1. Major Glyphs
- 3.2. Minor Glyphs
5. Gems
6. Enchants
7. Spells
8. Healing Rotations
- 7.1. Healing Spells
- 7.2. Utility Spells
9. How to Avoid Going OOM
10. Detailed Stat Breakdown
11. Macros
- 10.1. Spell Power
- 10.2. Haste
- 10.3. Crit
- 10.4. Spirit
- 10.5. Intellect
- 10.6. Mp5
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1. Druid Healing
Resto Druids are hot healers! I'm sure that goes without saying. After all, there's nothing quite as sexy as a dancing tree! But one could also argue that this is true because druid healers have a large arsenal of Heal Over Time (HoT) spells (in addition to many other spells that synergize well with druid hots) to heal with.
Hots are spells that heal their target once every few seconds (or once every second, depending on the spell). Unlike direct heals, which must be cast after damage is taken in order to be effective, HoTs can be cast in preparation for incoming damage. When present on a target, hots guarantee that the target will receive a steady stream of healing any time damage is taken.
Druids have a variety of tools to use, making them very versatile healers. With the ability to heal many players at once, druids are among the best raid healers in the game. Likewise, with a large arsenal of HoTs and direct heals to choose from, druids make excellent secondary (support) tank healers, and can even excel as the solo or primary tank healer, depending on the difficulty of the encounter. A skilled resto druid is a valuable asset to any party or raid.
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2. Specs
2.1. Basic Point Allocation
Base Spec (11/0/50) - 10 points remaining (ignore the one point in Improved Tranquility*).
This is the bare-bone spec that all resto druids should use, leaving several points to be distributed based on your own style of healing.
Highlights:
- Master Shapeshifter - It increases your healing while in Tree of Life.
- Omen of Clarity - Periodically makes one of your spells cost 0 mana to cast.
- Intensity - Provides a large amount of mana regen while casting.
- Nature's Swiftness - Can be used to make any number of spells, including Healing Touch and Rebirth, instant cast.
- Nature's Bounty - Increases the critical strike chance of Nourish and Regrowth by a lot, making them benefit more from other talents like Living Seed and Nature's Grace.
- Swiftmend - An instant-cast direct heal requiring that Rejuvenation or Regrowth be present on the target.
- Tree of Life - Allows you to shift into the Tree of Life form, reducing the mana cost of some spells, providing immunity to certain CC effects, and allowing you to benefit from talents like Master Shapeshifter and Improved Tree of Life. This talent defines what it means to be a resto druid.
- Improved Tree of Life - Increases armor (which decreases physical damage taken) and increases healing done based on your spirit stat.
- Gift of the Earthmother - Increases spell haste by a VERY LARGE amount. No self-respecting druid should go without this.
- Wild Growth - An important AoE raid healing spell that I recommend no druid go without.
- Nature's Spendor - Increases the duration of all druid hots.
Optional Talents:
- Living Seed - This provides extra healing if Nourish, Regrowth, Swiftmend, or Healing Touch crits. Considering Nourish's and Regrowth's high crit rate this may be a worthwhile talent to get if you use direct heals often.
- Empowered Touch - This improves the amount of healing that Nourish provides and should be considered in any Nourish-based build.
- Natural Perfection - This increases your total critical strike rating, which primarily boosts your direct heals. It's really only useful if you tank heal often.
- Revitalize - This allows Rejuvenation and Wild Growth to restore mana/rage/energy/runic power to party/raid members, adding utility to two of your most prominent healing spells. This is a worthwhile, though not mandatory, talent for any build.
- Nature's Grace - This makes the cast time of all spells lower whenever you get a crit from a direct heal. This is worth getting if you use Nourish or Regrowth often.
- Celestial Focus - This talent is used to increase your spell haste by 3%. (Note: it does require you to take 1 point in Brambles, which is a wasted talent point, but the 3% haste may well be worth it.)
Talents to Avoid:
- Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate - These talents are far too deep in the Balance tree and require too many wasted talent points to be worth obtaining.
- Improved Tranquility - Tranquility is not very useful for raid healing. You can justify getting this talent if you do mostly 5 mans, but for 10 and 25 man content don't bother with this.
- Non-Healing Talents: Furor, Improved Barkskin, Starlight Wrath, Improved Moonfire, Nature's Reach, Brambles (unless using 1 point to get Celestial Focus), etc. - None of these talents improve your healing and none should be sought after in a PvE resto build.
- Everything in the Feral tree.
Note: * The single point in Improved Tranquility is there as a filler in order to reach the talents at the end of the resto tree. This single point should be used elsewhere.
2.2. Healing Specs
*Nourish-based (Crit) Healer (11/0/60)
This is both a tank and raid healing build, but it gives special emphasis to Nourish (and to its crit modifiers) in order to make it a more powerful tank-healing spell. If you don't need the extra haste from Celestial Focus, this is perhaps the best spec to take (for raid and tank healing).
Highlights:
*Nourish-based (Haste) Healer (18/0/52) - 1 point remaining.
This build is a tank and raid healing spec that gives special emphasis to Nourish and to haste (to decrease the GCD for our instant spells and to make Nourish a faster and more reliable "flash heal"). The haste benefits hots more than a crit-build would.
Highlights:
*Dedicated Raid Healer (18/0/53)
This is a specialized raid-healing spec. It prioritizes haste and focuses on Rejuvenation and Wild Growth as the druid's primary healing spells. If you're primarily a raid healer and are short on haste this is perhaps a good choice for you.
Highlights:
Notes:
1. * These are the builds I personally recommend. All three are useful for raid and tank healing and benefit hots well. (For druids needing haste, "Dedicated Raid Healer" is the better spec for raid-healing and "Nourish-based (Haste)" is for tank-healing, otherwise "Nourish-based (Crit)" is the ideal spec to take.)
2. Do not feel that you must use one of these specs. You are free to experiment with your talent points and build a spec that works for you. Just be sure to use the Base Spec (11/0/50) (remember to ignore the point in Improved Tranquility, it's only there as a filler) in "2.1. Basic Point Allocation" and build from there.
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3. Glyphs
3.1. Major Glyphs
*Glyph of Rejuvenation - Rejuvenation provides additional healing when targets are at low health.
This glyph is a great choice for any healing spec. It's not a mandatory glyph, but it's certainly worth considering.
Pros:
Cons:
- With this glyph, Rejuv acts sort of as a safety net for players at risk of dieing by healing for more.
- If your targets (the raid, for example) are often getting low on health this glyph may get a lot of use.
- Though this is a good glyph, depending on your healing style/spec/other glyph choices, you may not have room for this glyph.
*Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation - Rejuvenation's ticks occur faster based on your total haste.
This glyph is an excellent choice in most healing situations and would be well worth the investment if you choose to use it. However, you should be aware making Rejuv tick faster is great for healing (in most situations) but can be cumbersome for the healer.
Pros:
Cons:
- Causes Rejuv to tick faster, meaning that the targets of your Rejuvs will be healed up more quickly.
- This is an excellent tank-healing glyph and *can be* an excellent raid-healing glyph, especially on fights where the raid takes a lot of damage but does not require a "blanket" method of healing.
- Because of specific haste-mechanics, using this glyph will make it so you can only Rejuv up on 12 targets at a time (vs up to 18 targets without this glyph). If your goal is to have Rejuv up on as many targets as possible this glyph will limit you. (For "blanket" healing fights, this glyph is not ideal.)
- The full duration of Rejuv decreases with the more haste you obtain, meaning that if you wish to keep it refreshed on a target (such as the tank) you will need to cast it more often (once every 12-15 seconds vs once every 18 seconds without the glyph).
- Because of the need to cast Rejuv more often, you will likely have more issues with mana and have less downtime when healing while using this glyph. The less haste you have, the less of an issue this will probably end up being.
*Glyph of Swiftmend - Makes it so that your Swiftmend no longer consumes a Rejuv or Regrowth from the target.
This is a very useful glyph for tank and raid-healing alike.
Pros:
Cons:
- This glyph will likely save you mana and a GCD since you won't need to recast Rejuv or Regrowth after using Swiftmend.
- When you're GCD locked (meaning that you're spamming heals every GCD), tank healing, or blanketing the raid with hots, you will find this glyph to be very useful.
- There aren't really any cons to using this glyph, but it's possible that you may find other glyphs that you consider to be more useful than this. Choose wisely.
*Glyph of Wild Growth - Wild Growth will heal 1 additional target.
This is a very good raid-healing glyph but loses value for druids that are primarily tank-healers.
Pros:
Cons:
- When raid healing, Wild Growth will most likely make up a large portion of your effective healing, so increasing its effectiveness is definitely a good idea.
- On fights that involve blanketing the raid with hots this glyph is arguably a "must have".
- Wild Growth being able to hit one extra target won't always be useful if there aren't enough players in range of your target or if there isn't enough damage going around. (It may not be particularly effective in 5 and 10 man content.)
- If you tend to be bad about using WG on cooldown this glyph becomes significantly less effective. For that reason it could be considered a "meh" glyph to tank healers.
*Glyph of Nourish - Nourish heals for more with each of your hots on the target.
This is mostly a tank-healing glyph, and as a tank healing glyph it's very good. It's rarely ever useful for raid healers.
Pros:
Cons:
- The amount of healing Nourish does on tanks increases by A LOT with this glyph, making it well worth the investment if you need to tank-heal.
- This is better than the Regrowth glyph-alternative if you're looking for a tank-healing spell and glyph.
- This requires that hots already be present on the target, which makes it nearly useless when raid healing.
Glyph of Regrowth - The direct heal and hot of Regrowth heal for more if Regrowth's hot is already present on the target.
This is a reasonable alternative to Nourish as a tank-healing glyph. By focusing on Regrowth as your main direct heal you are able to save a few talent points that would otherwise go to propping up Nourish. Also, Regrowth benefits well from haste, providing slightly more incentive to use it and this glyph if you have a lot of haste on your gear.
Pros:
Cons:
- This provides you with a decent direct heal that is boosted by haste and cynergizes well with various non-Nourish-based talent specs.
- This increases the hot of Regrowth. For tank healing, having stronger hots on the tank is always a good thing.
- Regrowth isn't quite as good as Nourish can be if appropriately glyphed and speced.
- The strength of this glyph only really shows when Regrowth's hot is already present on the target. This means it's somewhat useless for raid healing.
Glyph of Healing Touch - Healing Touch becomes a very fast, wearker, and less mana efficient spell.
This glyph is nearly useless. Glyphed HT does not compare to Nourish as a spammable "flash heal". It's mana inefficient. It doesn't have as high a crit modifier. And to make it "useful" requires a ton of wasted talent points. Glyphed HT is situationally useful at best.
Pros:
Cons:
- When glyphed and spec'd, Healing Touch is the fastest direct heal you have (that isn't instant).
- Glyphed HT costs too much mana. It's very inefficient.
- If only glyphed, HT's cast time is the exact same as Nourish's (making glyphing HT useless if it's not also accompanied by various talents).
- Making HT useful requires A LOT of talent points be wasted to prop it up.
- If HT is glyphed and spec'd, its cast time will become faster than the GCD. It can never be spammed any faster than Nourish can be.
- And the list goes on... DON'T GLYPH HEALING TOUCH
Glyph of Innervate - Innervate restores an additional 1573 mana to you over 10 seconds no matter who you cast your Innervate on.
This glyph is primarily only useful for druids that suffer from mana issues. It does provide a decent amount of mana, but there are much better glyphs to use in its place.
Pros:
Cons:
- You gain 1573 extra mana whenever you cast Innervate in addition to the effect of Innervate (if you cast your Innervate on yourself). This is about the equivolent of using half a mana pot.
- At early levels of gear, this glyph may be needed since mana can be very difficult to manage.
- This is a glyph slot that could have been used for something better.
- The mana gained from this glyph probably won't make a huge difference in the long run. You'd most likely see greater benefits by adjusting and being smarter with your healing rotations.
Note: * These are all glyphs that I personally recommend you use. Choose the ones that best fit your spec and style of healing.
3.2. Minor Glyphs
Unburdended Rebirth - Rebirth costs no reagent.
This is a must-have minor glyph.
Glyph of Wild - Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild cost less mana.
This is an optional glyph, but I recommend it.
Glyph of Dash - This can be useful if you're running back after a wipe, but usually you won't actually see a benefit of the reduced CD.
This is an optional glyph.
Glyph of Aquatic Form - This allows you to swim faster in aquatic form.
This is an optional glyph.
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4. Stat Priorities
Being primarily HoT-based healers, druids rely heavily on stats that improve the effectiveness of their HoTs. In general, stat priorities for druids are very simple, but at higher levels of gear these priorities change and become a bit more complex.
While in pre-raiding/5-man-heroic gear:
- Spell Power > Spirit > Int > Mp5 > Haste > Crit > Stam
Once mana becomes less of an issue:
- Spell Power > Spirit > Haste > Int > Mp5 > Crit > Stam
Once you have more than ~1500 Spell Power:
- Spell Power > Haste (to soft cap) > Spirit > Crit > Haste (past soft cap) > Int > Mp5 > Stam
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5. Gems
There are essentially three sets of gemming-standards that correspond to the Stat Priorities listed above (see "4. Stat Priorities").
At low levels of gear, while mana is still an issue:
If the socket bonus for the piece you're gemming is any amount of Spell Power or Spirit (and possibly Int, if you need the extra help - avoid Mp5 bonuses unless you're desperate) I'd recommend you go for it.
When gemming for the socket bonus, use:
- Meta Socket = Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (21Int/Can restore 600 mana on spell cast)
- Red Socket = Runed Cardinal Ruby (23SP)
- Blue Socket = Purifined Dreadstone (12SP/10Spirit)
- Yellow Socket = Luminous Ametrine (12SP/10Int)
Otherwise, if the socket bonus is useless, use all Runed Cardinal Ruby (23SP).
At higher levels of gear, where mana is much less of an issue:
If the socket bonus for the piece you're gemming is 7+ Spell Power (ignore all other socket bonuses) I'd recommend you go for it.
When gemming for the socket bonus, use:
- Meta Socket = Ember Skyflare Diamond (25SP/+2% Int)
- OR Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (21Int/Can restore 600 mana on spell cast)
- Red Socket = Runed Cardinal Ruby (23SP)
- Blue Socket = Purifined Dreadstone (12SP/10Spirit)
- Yellow Socket = Reckless Ametrine (12SP/10Haste)
Otherwise, if the socket bonus is useless, use all Runed Cardinal Ruby (23SP).
*If you are at the highest levels of gear and below the haste soft-cap:
If the socket bonus of the piece you're gemming is any amount of SP or Haste (and the piece of gear doesn't have 2 or more blue gems) I'd recommend you go for it.
When gemming for the socket bonus, use:
- Meta Socket = Ember Skyflare Diamond (25SP/+2% Int)
- Red Socket = Reckless Ametrine (12SP/10Haste)
- Blue Socket = Purifined Dreadstone (12SP/10Spirit)
- Yellow Socket = Reckless Ametrine (12SP/10Haste)
Otherwise, if the socket bonus is useless, use all Reckless Ametrine (12SP/10Haste)[/url] (20Haste).
Note: * This recommendation is mostly only for people who *NEED* to be at the haste soft cap. That primarily applies to people in very difficult/progression content. At the moment, the only fights I can think of that this really applies to are ToGC Twins and ToGC Anub. If you aren't in great need to be haste soft capped, go with the second tier of gemming I suggested above.
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6. Enchants
Helm:
Arcanum of Burning Mysteries* - 30SP/20Crit, Kirin Tor - Revered
Arcanum of Blissful Mending - 30SP/10Mp5, Wyrmrest Accord - Revered
Shoulder:
@ Master's Inscription of the Storm* - 70SP/15 Crit, Requires Inscription (400 skill)
@ Master's Inscription of the Crag - 70SP/8Mp5, Requires Inscription (400 skill)
Greater Inscription of the Storm* - 24SP/15Crit, The Sons of Hodir - Exalted
Greater Inscription of the Crag - 24SP/8Mp5, The Sons of Hodir - Exalted
Cloak:
Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed* - 23Haste, Enchanting (430 skill)
Enchant Cloak - Wisdom - Reduce Threat/10Spirit, Enchanting (440 skill)
Chest:
Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats* - +10 to all stats, Enchanting (440 skill)
Wrist:
@ Fur Lining - Spell Power* - 76SP, Requires Leatherworking (400 skill)
@ Socket Bracer* - Adds gem socket to bracer, Requires Blacksmithing (400 skill)
Enchant Bracer - Superior Spellpower* - 30SP, Enchanting (440 skill)
Hands:
@ Socket Gloves* - Adds gem socket to gloves, Requires Blacksmithing (400 skill)
Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower* - 28SP, Enchanting (360 skill)
Belt:
Eternal Belt Buckle* - Adds gem socket to belt, Blacksmithing (415 skill)
Legs:
Brilliant Spellthread* - 50SP/20Spirit, Tailoring (430 skill)
Sapphire Spellthread - 50SP/30Stam, Tailoring (430 skill)
Boots:
Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality** - Minor Run Speed/15Sta, Echanting (440 skill)
Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit - 18Spirit, Enchanting (410 skill)
Rings:
@ Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower* - 23SP, Requires Enchanting (400 skill)
1-hand Weapon:
Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower* - 63SP, Enchanting (435 skill)
2-hand Weapon:
Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower* - 81SP, Enchanting (450 skill)
Notes:
1. * Bolded item enhancements are ones I consider to be the best enchants for the given slots.
2. ** In a raiding environment I consider Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality to be superior to Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit because the run speed will make a big difference on difficult fights in helping you to get out of harm's way.
3. @ Requires you have a certain profession and be above a certain skill level to use this item enhancement.
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