Restoration Druid PvP Guide for Cataclysm Classic

Restoration Druid offers very high mobility, strong utility, and a high amount of instant casts, making it a very strong pick in all forms of PvP content.

Strengths

• Extremely high mobility with plenty of instant casts heals as well as Travel Form and Cat Form.
• Strong defensives thanks to Bear Form and Bear Form.
• Powerful crowd control in the form of Cyclone, Entangling Roots and Nature's Grasp. Melee players can have trouble sticking on a Resto Druid.

Weaknesses

• Magic dispels and Purges can heavily counter Resto Druid. Having most of your HoTs being dispellable by enemy players can make healing players efficiently very difficult. When facing these comps single target healing can become much more difficult.
• Heavy mana costs can make sustaining your mana very difficult, especially when facing comps that spam dispel your HoTs.
• When Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness are on cooldown, Resto Druid lacks an easy way to quickly top party members compared to other healers.
• Requires time to build up Lifebloom stacks on a player to really keep them healthy.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation — Increases the healing of your Rejuvenation by 10%. Giving you quite a bit of extra output.
• Glyph of Swiftmend — Causes Swiftmend to no longer consume one of your Healing over Time effects. Greatly improves your mana sustainability and healing output.
• Glyph of Lifebloom — Increases your single-target healing through buffing your Lifebloom.

• Glyph of Barkskin — Helps to increase survivability by reducing the damage taken during Barkskin.
• Glyph of Faerie Fire — Increases the range of Faerie Fire which helps you to apply it to desired targets.
• Glyph of Entangling Roots — Reduces the cast time of Entangling Roots, making it much easier to cast. Especially useful when fighting melee players.

• Glyph of Dash — The only mandatory minor glyph. Increasing your mobility by a minor amount.
• Glyph of Mark of the Wild and Glyph of Challenging Roar — Largely unimpactful glyphs but the only glyphs that can be used regularly.

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary Page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this section. In PvP you will need to react and adapt to different situations, meaning you will not always follow the recommended rotation below. Aim to do whatever allows you to stick on your target the most while dealing as much damage as possible.

1. Maintain Lifebloom on a target taking consistent damage.
2. Maintain Rejuvenation on targets taking heavy damage.
3. Cast Swiftmend to deal with heavy single-target damage.
4. Cast Regrowth when healing heavy damage over a long period of time.
5. Use Wild Growth when your party is taking heavy damage.
6. Use Nourish for very mana efficient but low healing.
7. Cast Healing Touch for very high damage, but be careful of the heavy mana cost.

In order to sustain your mana, you will want to avoid casting spells with very high mana costs such as Wild Growth, Regrowth, and Healing Touch. You need to space these abilities out and only use them when really necessary. Rejuvenation also has quite a heavy mana cost but can provide valuable healing given that it does not require a cast time. Nourish costs very little mana but also offers much less healing. The best spell will depend on the situation and the best way to understand which spell is best in any situation comes from experience.

Restoration Druid only has a few cooldowns that are important to understand as they will greatly impact your performance.

• Tree of Life — 3-minute cooldown. By far your most important cooldown, increasing your healing output and armor while also enhancing your spells. Regrowth becomes instant cast during your Tree. Lifebloom can be applied to unlimited targets. Wild Growth is applied to 2 extra targets. Entangling Roots becomes instant cast and requires much more damage to break. Wrath deals increased damage. With so much power tied to it, being successful as a Restoration Druid will come down to very good usage of this cooldown.
• Tranquility — 3-minute cooldown. Heals nearby allies for a large amount, but comes with a channel that must be maintained. You cannot move at any point during this channel or the healing will end.
• Nature's Swiftness — 3-minute cooldown. Causes your next Nature spell with a cast time less than 10 seconds to be instant cast. Mainly useful to get a quick Healing Touch or Regrowth cast off. The healing is also increased by 50%.
• Barkskin — 1-minute cooldown. Reduces your damage taken and also prevents you from suffering spellcasting delays when being attacked. Ideally you will want to use this whenever you are under heavy pressure.

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game-changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Stampeding Roar — While not always useful, the extra movement speed it provides to your group can be very useful when kitting and getting out of dangerous situations.
• Dash — Provides you with a large movement speed increase, allowing you to get out of tricky situations much easier.
• Cyclone — Your primary form of crowd control. This will prevent a target from being able to do anything, but will also prevent your allies from dealing damage to them.
• Faerie Fire — Reduces the targets armor while also preventing them for turning invisible. Very useful when fighting stealth classes.
• Nature's Grasp — Causes players who attack you to be afflicted by Entangling Roots, making it easy to get away from enemy players.
• Frenzied Regeneration — While it may have a long cooldown, it can be useful in emergency situations to give yourself extra health.

If you are looking to maximize the potential of your Holy [Paladin] in Cataclysm PvP, these are the recommended professions:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you 2 additional sockets with Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves, giving you even more Resilience.
2. Jewelcrafting — Gives you 3 powerful gems, Mystic Chimera's Eye, giving you a large Resilience boost.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Druid in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Restoration Druid place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.