[Restoration] 5.4 Guide: I Wanna Tree the Very Best

Kazistrasz · March 31, 2014

Restoration 5.4 Guide: I Wanna Tree the Very Best

Okay, we’re not necessarily trees anymore (but you should really take the glyph to make yourself a tree). I’m writing this guide, because I’m simply not satisfied with the quality of resto druid resources out there right now. The influx of boosted 90s demands there be better information available for us. This guide is fully reflective of the way that I play my resto druid and is the result of much experimentation, mathematical modeling via spreadsheets that reflect my live numbers, and college courses teaching me how to write.

Table of Contents

I. Be the Tree

II. Philosophy on Healing

III. Basic Tool Kit: Direct Heals

IV. Basic Tool Kit: HoTs

V. Basic Tool Kit: Wild Mushrooom

VI. Setting Up: Talents

VII. Setting Up: Glyphs

VIII. Setting Up: Stats, Gems, and Enchants

IX. Setting Up: Food, Flasks, and Potions

X. Setting Up: Race and Professions

XI. Setting Up: Your UI

XII. Setting Up: Macros

XIII. Healing: Mana Usage

XIV. Healing: Cooldowns

XV. Healing: Symbiosis

XVI. Healing: Dispelling

XVII. Healing: Tank Healing

XVIII. Healing: Raid Healing

XIX: Healing: Healing OoM

XX. Healing: Other Utility

XXI. Gearing: What You Want

XXII. Thanks and Credits

XXIII: Feedback and Questions

I. Be the Tree

What does it mean to be a resto druid? Just as each tank class and most DPS classes have things they do particularly better at than other classes, resto druids have their own niche. We’re not priests, and we’re not paladins. We’re not going to fully heal a tank at 5% with one spell, and we’re certainly not going to absorb half of a major raid mechanic’s damage. We’re there for the in-between. Resto druids provide very solid, steady throughput (actual healing going through to the target; I think it’s a silly term) with healing-over-time effects (HoTs). Where other classes heal in one solid chunk, we heal with lots of tiny bits repeatedly. By knowing the fight and anticipating damage, we can be in position to provide the most burst healing and highest on-demand throughput of any healing class in the game. We’re also the most mobile healer you could possibly ask for, given that most of our spells are instant cast. Our only major weakness comes in our inability to react quickly to unexpected damage. If we don’t know it’s coming, we have a very limited toolkit for crisis healing.

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II. Philosophy on Healing

This is the general mindset with which I approach healing. Read it. Believe it. Heal it.

When your health goes from 1 to 0, you die. Going from 2 to 1 or even 850k to 1 does not kill you. Going from 1 to 0 is the moment you die. Any health above 1 is a buffer to prevent something from taking our last 1 health.

You do not need to keep your raid at 100% all of the time. Keeping your raid at 100% is the maximum buffer you can naturally achieve to keep that last 1 hp safe. There are times you simply do not have the output to keep your raid at 100%, and that is okay. Any time we can reduce incoming damage, whether it be through damage reduction cooldowns or absorption effects, we are effectively increasing that buffer even more.

When damage is high or out of control, you do not panic. You simply figure out how much that buffer needs to be before the last 1 health and focus on getting anyone there that is not currently there. When the damage stops, then you can work on getting the raid back to 100%. Whenever there is a threat of damage, your raid needs to have enough health to eat the entire threatened damage plus that last 1 hp. When there is no threat of damage, you can take your time rebuilding your buffer.

Every heal is a conscious choice. We are not DPS who have a set list of things they should be doing in a given order or priority. Every button we push involves at least some decision making. This decision making process needs to be based on that buffer mentality and the likelihood of the buffer being needed. If someone takes damage from a one-time hit, no matter how big the hit is, they should become back burner to someone likely to take another big chunk of damage.

The hardest decision to make is when damage is completely out of control. You will face the moment where you realize you simply do not have the ability to get everyone through something. If you continue trying to heal everyone, everyone will die. If you continue trying to heal everyone, you may yourself die to some other mechanic. Sometimes letting one person die frees up enough of your time to save everyone else.

You have to consciously decide who is going to die, and you need to make this decision based on who has an important job in the remainder of the fight, who you simply cannot live without, and who will give you the best chance of successfully finishing the fight. Sometimes it’s your top DPS that needs to die, and sometimes you have to take one for the team and get everyone else into a good place before you die. Death isn’t optimal, but it’s okay when the alternative is an immediate wipe.

The utmost important facet to being a healer is remaining calm and centered. If you let yourself get frustrated or panic, your ability to make the right decisions will be hindered. More than anyone else you have to keep doing what you do no matter what interrupt got missed, which tank has the wrong boss, or how close the boss is to falling over. The moment we stop making the right decisions, everyone dies. Of course, sometimes people die and there’s nothing we can do about it. You can’t let a death get you down, even if it is your fault (but especially if it’s not).

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III. Basic Tool Kit: Direct Heals

We only actually have four direct heals in our toolkit. Using any of them on any target triggers our Mastery: Harmony buff that increases the healing of our HoTs for 20 seconds. Our direct heal crits trigger Living Seed, to heal the target for 30% of the direct heal when they’re attacked again.

Nourish is simply a cheap, small heal. Heals for more if they have a HoT on them.

Healing Touch costs a lot but heals for a lot.

Regrowth costs a lot, casts fast, and heals for a medium amount. It has a 60% increased chance to crit, however, and crits as hard as Healing Touch non-crit. It also applies a HoT for approximately 25% (not actually 25%) of the amount healed over 8 seconds that refreshes automatically if it ticks on a target below 50% health.

Swiftmend costs very little but heals on an instant cast for a solid amount (more than Regrowth but less than Healing Touch), but it can only be cast on someone with an active Rejuvenation or Regrowth HoT (even if it isn’t your HoT). It also triggers Efflorescence, a green circle on the ground around the target that heals up to three targets in it every 2 seconds. In the Glyphs section of the guide, we’ll change this so for now only think about this as a solid, instant, direct heal for cheap.

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IV. Basic Tool Kit: HoTs

Our HoTs are our bread and butter. Most of our healing comes from our healing-over-time effects. The longer they’re able to work their magic on a target before the target is healed to full the better.

Lifebloom is a very weak HoT that we can only put on one target at a time. It stacks up to three times, but even at three stacks it’s very week. When it falls off, the target is healed (at three stacks, it’s not quite the strength of a Healing Touch). Despite this, we MUST keep it up at all times without wearing off, because it procs Omen of Clarity, which is crucial to our mana management.

Rejuvenation is our most-used heal. It’s a single-target HoT for 12 seconds. This is your main heal for most damage. Rejuvenation on all targets can be sped up to 400% speed using Genesis(meaning if you have 4 ticks left for 8 seconds, you’ll get all 4 ticks within the next 2 seconds). Keep in mind this only speeds up healing and does not add any extra healing to the HoT. Overhealing is recycled into Wild Mushroom, which we’ll talk about in the next section.

Wild Growth is our primary multi-target heal. It’s a “smart heal”, so it applies itself to the lowest 5 people within 30 yards of its target. This means it may not apply to your target at all if everyone else is lower, and may not apply to 5 people if there are only a few in range of the target.

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V. Basic Tool Kit: Wild Mushroom

Wild Mushroom is one of our best and most mana-efficient abilities to learn to use well, but it requires both a major and minor glyph slot. We’re only going to talk about how it works WITH the glyph. When you place it, you simply ground target your mushroom. Once placed, it activates your Efflorescence effect around it, creating a green healing circle that will smart heal 3 targets in it every 2 seconds. Placing and moving the mushroom is free (with a 3-second cooldown), making this our most mana-efficient ability.

The other component of the mushroom is Wild Mushroom: Bloom, which detonates your mushroom, healing anyone within the green circle. You can use this any time as long as your mushroom is down (though the 3 second cooldown on placing the mushroom also applies to this part of the skill). While your mushroom is down, it absorbs all overhealing from Rejuvenation on all targets up to 200% of your health. When you reach the 200%, the Wild Mushroom: Bloombutton will light up and you will see a combat text notification that the spell is ready if you have Spell Alerts enabled in your Floating Combat Text. When bloomed, the mushroom evenly distributes the absorbed overhealing among all targets affected in addition to a base amount healed to everyone.

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VI. Setting Up: Talents

Okay, you’ve seen the basic stuff you can do, so let’s get set up and ready to heal. First thing first is let’s talk about talents. You should always keep your talents in mind and be able to change them if the situation calls for it.

First Tier (Level 15)

Feline Swiftness is simply a passive movement speed buff.
Displacer Beast is, essentially, a mage’s Blink forward followed by a short speed boost.
Wild Charge varies by form, but since we stay in Treant Form (or at least you should because it’s awesome), which counts as caster form/no form, it just charges you at a friendly target.

I take Feline Swiftness for every fight, simply it lets me get into position and out of bad stuff more quickly with precision. If I really need to book it to get somewhere, we have other movement speed increases. There are druids that use Displacer Beast with success, but I simply don’t find it necessary. Mages struggle all the time with their Blink catching on every tiny pebble sticking out of the ground and only moving them 5 yards.

Second Tier (Level 30)

Ysera’s Gift passively heals us 5% every 5 seconds or smart heals someone else if we’re at full.
Renewal is an instant 30% self-heal off the Global Cooldown.
Cenarion Ward triggers a 6 second HoT the next time the target takes damage.

I find Ysera’s Gift to be the most useful. The constant healing is useful, and because of the smart heal option it basically never overheals. Any time I would want to use Renewal, I simply eat a healthstone. I’ve simply found Cenarion Ward to be a joke.

Third Tier (Level 45)

Faerie Swarm turns our Faerie Fire into a slow.
Mass Entanglement is a root that roots your target and anything nearby it.
Typhoon simply knocks back everything “in front” of you (see below).

This is a tier where your choice depends on what you and your raid need for the fight. While the tooltip says, “targets in front of the caster,” Typhoon will hit anything whose hit box is even partially in front of you, including things on top of you. When it does so, you knock them directly away from you by their center. If they’re standing right behind you but part of their hit box is in front of you, you’re knocking them backwards. Most of the time I use Typhoon, if only because it gives people an extra moment to get away from something and isn’t affected by the target getting the snot beat out of it. That said, I’ve used Faerie Swarm on H Paragons to slow the bloods, and I’ve used Mass Entangelement on Immerseus. Use your judgement.

Fourth Tier (Level 60)

Soul of the Forest makes your next spell after Swiftmend go at double speed. This does not affect Revive or Innervate.
Incarnation is the Tree of Life Form cooldown from Cataclysm, including the awful “Wilted Broccoli”/”Afro Ancient” form when you use it. It increases your healing by 15%, increases your armor by 120%, makes your Entangling Roots and Regrowth instant cast, makes your Wild Growth affect more targets, and lets you put Lifebloom on as many targets as you’d like for 30 seconds.
Force of Nature lets you summon up to three treants at a time (using a charge system) targeted at an ally that will immediately Swiftmend your target (although a weakened version of our own) and then start using a weakened Healing Touch on allies.

Soul of the Forest is generally the best choice here, but keep reading. Using the 100% haste buff on Wild Growth provides very strong, very fast raid healing. Using it on Rejuvenation can also net significant single-target healing. Lastly, using it with Tranquility yields the strongest healing cooldown in the game by miles.

That said, Incarnation is not without use, and I recommend it for anyone at lower gear levels that are struggling on the mana side of things and don’t have enough spirit. When you use it to apply Lifebloom on many targets, you are using very little mana per cast to start stacking what ends up being fairly moderate, sustained raid healing on many targets that will eventually begin blooming for a significant amount. This will also cause you to proc Omen of Clarity more than you know what to do with, letting you freely Regrowth anyone and everyone in your raid. This basically gives you 30 seconds of not using almost any mana to do a fair bit of healing. If you find that Soul of the Forest isn’t cutting it and you really need to have that many cooldowns for what you’re doing, you are likely way too undergeared for what you are trying to do (or perhaps you simply need to read the rest of this guide).

Force of Nature is generally just really weak and uncontrollable. Don’t use it.

Fifth Tier (Level 75)

Disorienting Roar is a disorient (shares diminishing returns with other disorients, like a rogue’s Blind) on everything around you that breaks on damage.
Ursol’s Vortex slows everything around it and yanks them back into the middle if they try to walk out.
Mighty Bash is simply a 5-second, single target stun. It’s important to note that we can miss with Mighty Bash.

This is another tier that is completely dependent upon your fight and the needs of you and your raid group. On many fights I take Mighty Bash just to stun a particular add, such as Warshamans on Nazgrim or to save someone with Mesmerize via last-second stun on a Hungry Kunchong on Paragons. I also found use in Ursol’s Vortex (especially on H Siegecrafter). I don’t actually use Disorienting Roar much, because most adds of importance are immune to it.

Sixth Tier (Level 90)

Heart of the Wild is a multi-part effect. Passively, it’s a flat increase to our healing via the int buff. When we activate it, we get all sorts of tricks. As a healing cooldown, a 25% increase for 45 seconds is very powerful and insanely long, which is part of why it’s a 6 minute, once or at most twice per fight cooldown. It also lets us DPS using our offensive spells. You do more damage using those spells than you’ll do in Cat Form, and don’t even believe the crap about using Bear Form – you’ll still get two shot by a boss.
Dream of Cenarius lets us “Atonement” heal using Wrath kind of like a disc priest uses Smite.
Nature’s Vigil is a 12% damage and healing buff for 30 seconds that causes our single target damage and healing spells to do 25% of their damage and healing as healing and damage, respectively, to nearby targets.

This one also depends on the fight. If you need a cooldown frequently throughout a fight, take Nature’s Vigil. In all other cases, take Heart of the Wild. When you work out the power of its 25% healing buff for 45 seconds on top of the 6% int gain, it works out to be a bigger increase on the whole. The drawback, of course, is the 6 minute cooldown. Also, if there is a particular phase of a fight that is not healing intensive (or when other healers can pick up the slack) where your raid needs a lot of extra damage, you can use Heart of the Wild to help burn the boss or adds or whatever needs to die quickly. I can get up to 12mil out of this using Wrath and Moonfire with Bloodlust.

The only thing I strongly recommend against is Dream of Cenarius. Even with the 20% buff, Wrath is very weak. The healing output is subpar, and the damage it puts out just doesn’t make it worth it. If all you did was cast Wrath for an entire fight, you still would be approaching what Heart of the Wild can do in 45 seconds.

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VII. Setting Up: Glyphs

As resto druids, we actually have very useful and important glyphs. These first three majors are almost always mandatory.

Glyph of Efflorescence puts the green, healing circle around our mushroom and makes it permanent instead of around our Swiftmend target. This couldn’t possibly be more important.

Glyph of Wild Growth makes our Wild Growth hit an extra target for 2 extra seconds on the cooldown. Given that we don’t usually mash our buttons on cooldown, this is a plus even in 10-man (you shouldn’t usually be so spread out you can’t get all 6 targets).

Glyph of Regrowth simply makes Regrowth have a 100% chance to crit instead of a 60% increased chance (about a 73-77% chance) but removes the HoT. The HoT is really weak to begin with, and this glyph guarantees the extra outright heal with the crit in addition to the guaranteed Living Seed on the target.

Every now and then, another glyph is useful. Usually we try to default that to another druid that doesn’t have overly important glyphs, like a boomkin. If you’re the only druid and really have to make a choice (usually for Glyph of Stampeding Roar orGlyph of Rebirth I usually drop Glyph of Regrowth. Really though, do whatever you can to not have to do this.

As far as minor glyphs are concerned, we only have one that is mandatory for every fight. Glyph of the Sprouting Mushroom lets us place our mushroom wherever we want via targeting reticle instead of placing it on the feet of a target. This is very, very important.

Glyph of Grace can often be useful, outside of raid or on any fight where you can take fall damage (Malkorok).

Every resto druid should take Glyph of the Treant and spend your days being a tree. Why would you not? Your gear doesn’t look that good, I promise.

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VIII. Setting Up: Stats, Gems, and Enchants

Everyone likes talking about stats, so let’s talk about stats. You want enough spirit to not run out of mana (going to depend on your play style, see Healing: Mana Usage section) and the best haste breakpoint for your gear followed by mastery, crit, and excess haste/spirit. Here’s how our stats work. For gems and enchants, skip to the bottom of the section.

Spirit gives you more mana regen. I find 12k is usually enough, but will sometimes float a little higher depending on how reforging works out. Sometimes, a particular fight will demand more mana at first, but usually I sit between 12k and 13k. If you find you need more than this, do it, but I'd also recommend reading the Mana Usage section to try to work on needing less.

Haste makes everything cast faster and makes our HoTs tick faster. When our HoTs tick fast enough that you could fit another tick at the end and still be within the original duration of the spell, another tick gets added. This happens at different levels of haste per spell, and they’re called break points or thresholds. Ours are below (I did not include Lifebloom because it gets refreshed enough and should never fall off, making it irrelevant):

When break points are close, we group them together and say go for the highest one. In our case, we really have three break points: 3043 (in green, 5320 without 5% haste buff), 1 extra tick each of Wild Growth, Rejuvenation, and Tranquility, 6652 (in orange, 9110 without 5% haste buff), goes up to 2 extra ticks of Wild Growth, and 13163 (in pink, 15947 without 5% haste buff), 3 extra ticks of Wild Growth and 2 each of Rejuvenation and Tranquility.

If you use Ask Mr. Robot, ReforgeLite, or any other reforging tool, there is a high chance for them to inaccurately calculate your haste, mastery, and spirit values from using Prismatic Prison of Pride. This means you these tools can tell you that you are exactly at or even one point over your haste breakpoint but actually make you reforge yourself one or two points shy. To ensure accuracy, either reforge by hand or unequip your trinket and reforge to the value from the charts below corresponding to your desired breakpoint and your trinket's item level.

Calculations done using the formula Zagam discovered in the lock forums.

My spreadsheet models have indicated that it is the biggest increase for actual and potential healing to always hit the highest of these, up to 13163 (15947 without 5% haste buff), that your gear allows you to get to regardless of how much mastery you lose.This is in part because haste is 425 points to 1% versus 480 to 1% for mastery and the additional healing that comes at every break point and the base 10% mastery we start with. Older, out-dated theorycrafting from guides in the past has caused many people to value mastery over haste, but everything I have been able to calculate and model shows this is simply not the case. However, going for higher breakpoints will cause our GCD to cap, limiting the value of haste.

I strongly recommend the 6652 (and 9110 without 5% haste buff) breakpoint while you’re at medium gear levels, as Wild Growth is a spell we cannot clip (so we will always get that extra tick). On average, it counts for 15%-17% on every single fight I log, going even as high as 20% on some fights, making it a big source from which to net some extra healing.

Our Mastery: Harmony increases our direct heals by 10% plus 1% per 480 points of mastery and causes our direct heals to buff our HoTs for the same amount for 20 seconds. This is our best stat after haste. I know some druids that prefer to stack mastery and go with a lower haste breakpoint to have bigger, slower heals. My theorycrafting and spreadsheet models have shown that mastery is worse than haste until the really high breakpoints. Here's a basic explanation why.

Crit simply makes our spells crit more often. Our direct healing spells apply Living Seed to the target when they crit. Crit is generally devalued for us simply due to its low scale rate (600 to 1%) and the fact that Regrowth is already a guaranteed crit with the glyph.

For lower gear levels, you’re going to struggle with getting enough spirit. Your gem choices should be as follows:

Socket Color	Gem to Use
Red	Purified Imperial Amethyst
Yellow	Energized Wild Jade, or Zen Wild Jade depending on haste needs
Blue	Sparkling River's Heart
Meta	Revitalizing Primal Diamond until you get Courageous Primal Diamond

As you get better gear, you’ll switch to gemming either haste or mastery depending on where you are with your haste cap, like so:

Socket Color	Haste Gem	Mastery Gem
Red	Reckless Vermilion Onyx	Artful Vermilion Onyx
Yellow	Quick Sun's Radiance	Fractured Sun's Radiance
Blue	Energized Wild Jade	Zen Wild Jade
Meta	Burning Primal Diamond until you get Courageous Primal Diamond	Burning Primal Diamond until you get Courageous Primal Diamond

As far as enchants go, you’ll want to use these:

Equipement Slot	Enchant to Use
Shoulder	Greater Crane Wing Inscription
Back	Enchant Cloak - Superior Intellect
Chest	Enchant Chest - Mighty Spirit when you need spirit, or Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats when you don't
Wrists	Enchant Bracer - Super Intellect
Hands	Enchant Gloves - Greater Haste, or Enchant Gloves - Superior Mastery depending on haste needs
Waist	Living Steel Belt Buckle
Legs	Greater Pearlescent Spellthread
Feet	Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step
Weapon	Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit
Off-Hand	Enchant Off-Hand - Major Intellect

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IX. Setting Up: Food, Flasks, and Potions

If you’re raiding casually, this section isn’t necessary. The flasks can help at early gear levels, but if they’re expensive on your server you can do without. Many people bring excess feasts to LFR and Flex regularly as is. If you’re going to raid more seriously, these should all be mandatory. You should never show up to raid without them.

As far as food goes, you can go for spirit when you’re short on it, but you should really be aiming for intellect. If someone uses a feast (other than from the Way of the Steamer branch of cooking) or drops a noodle cart, you’re going to be getting int by default. For spirit food, either use inv_misc_food_cooked_steamcrabsurprise.j Steamed Crab Surprise or Farmer's Delight, depending on which is cheaper. For int food, use Mogu Fish Stew or Spiced Blossom Soup, again depending on which is cheaper.

For flasks, you’re playing the same game. While you’re short on spirit, you can use Flask of Falling Leaves. Once you have enough spirit on your gear, switch to Flask of the Warm Sun.

Where potions are concerned, you have less choice. As healers, we use potions to get our extra mana back in a pinch. While we technically can use a Potion of the Jade Serpent if we’re going to help DPS, we should only do this as a pre-pot if we’re helping off the start. You don’t want to get caught later in the fight running out of mana because things went wrong and your potion unavailable because you already blew it. Master Mana Potion is our default potion. It just gives us mana back instantly. If you’re an alchemist, you can use Alchemist's Rejuvenation alternatively (cheaper to make and also heal you). The other option is Potion of Focus. Potion of Focus will give you up to 15% of your mana (compared to 10% on average of the other two), but you have to stand still and do nothing while you gain this mana back. You have to be able to stand still for 7 of the 10 seconds minimum for these to be worth it, and Siege of Orgrimmar just doesn’t give much room for doing that.

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X. Setting Up: Race and Professions

I’m including this section for those that haven’t chosen yet. Let’s talk race first, and then important.

If you are a horde, your only option is troll. Berserking is a useful cooldown to have for throughput, and tauren provide you nothing but a bigger hitbox. If you’re alliance, the choice is really yours. Darkflight doesn’t really do much when we already have two speed boosts, and the 1% crit from Viciousness isn’t desirable. Night elves don’t strictly provide any increase in ability, but their racials can be nice to have. Wisp Spirit can help get back quicker after a wipe to get yourself set up, and Shadowmeld can sometimes save you in combat if you get healing agro or even help you avoid having to run back at all if you can be the last person alive.

Our professions offer us many equally good (or equally bad) options.

Herbalism and Engineering both give cooldowns. Lifeblood from Herbalism isn’t really a big deal - the haste is never actually enough to get from one breakpoint to another. Engineering gives us Synapse Springs, which you’ll barely ever notice. The utility from Nitro Boosts is mostly lost on us with the two speed boost we naturally have, and Goblin Glider has minimal effect due to our already reduced fall damage and ability to activate Swift Flight Form mid-air.

Tailoring gives us Lightweave Embroidery, which is about as unnoticeably weak as the Engineering profession perk without the control of it being a cooldown.

Mining and Skinning both give us 480 of a stat we don’t even want (stamina and crit, respectively).

Leatherworking, Alchemy, Inscription, and Enchanting all provide us with a passive 320 int. Jewelcrafting does as well, because the options are using your two Serpent's Eye for Brilliant Serpent's Eye (a 320 int increase), or two gems that give 480 of a secondary stat each (a 320 mastery/haste/spirit increase, which is garbage).

Blacksmithing gives us an extra prismatic socket on our bracers and our gloves, which we can use for an extra 640 mastery/haste/spirit.

With these in mind, I recommend Blacksmith plus any of the five professions that provide a static int buff - which one you pick is up to you.

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XI. Setting Up: Your UI

UI is always a personal matter, and everyone’s is different. But, there are really two things you need to have as part of your UI regardless of personal preference in addition to standards like Deadly Boss Mods or Big Wigs: raid frames (health bars) and a way to track cooldown, procs, etc.

As far as raid frames go, there are a few popular options: Grid, Healbot, and Vuhdo. If you use ElvUI (which I do), it has its own built-in raid frames suite, which I never use. I and most of the healers I know use Vuhdo. It takes more effort and time to get it set up just the way you want (you’ll make lots of adjustments over weeks), but it’s the most customizable and powerful of the three. On the bright side, there are many videos out there for setting up Vuhdo.

Whichever route you take, you need to make sure your raid frames are set up to show you the following: health amounts, incoming heals, your HoTs and their durations, absorbs, who needs to be dispelled, major buffs/debuffs, and who you can Swiftmend (if you never raid with other resto druids you can skip this).

As far as tracking cooldowns, procs, and other important information, you simply cannot beat Weak Auras. Other addons can do part of the things Weak Auras can do, but nothing has the customization and versatility of WA. I use WA to track all of my cooldowns, my procs, the power and progress of my mushroom, and many other useful things between fight mechanic alerts and class mechanics across all of my characters.

Here are the Weak Auras I use specifically for my druid (copy and paste into Import); if you don’t like them all, go through and delete/disable them individually:

Procs and general alerts: http://pastebin.com/7VjYucXX

Cooldown timers: http://pastebin.com/DcG2FY0c

CDs available alerts: http://pastebin.com/z249TYzz

Where you place things in your UI is your business, but you want to have your information where you’re not having to look way away from your character to heal and keep things going. Most healers I know, myself included, position their raid frames below their character with other stuff near the center of the screen. If you want to see what my entire UI looks like when set up, take a quick peak this video of our Paragons kill.

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XII. Setting Up: Macros

Macros are highly convenient for us to better use our spells. Rather than explaining macros all over again, look to this post where I’ve already explained how to set up macros on your own.

There are a few macros I consider important, the first of which is mouseover macros. Mouseover macros make your spells work so that you literally move your mouse over their character, name plate, or raid frame (should be using your raid frame) and push the button and it works on them. This removes the “two-step” process of clicking the person and then pushing the button for your heal, making you faster and more efficient. You can also do this with addons such as Clique. Vuhdo even has options built in. I personally just prefer to do it through macros, because I can do a little bit more fancy stuff with macros.

these are mouseover macros I like to use:

Almost all of the mouseover macros work like this, just replace the spell name with the spell you want to use:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Wild Growth; Wild Growth

I have one of these for Lifebloom, Nourish, Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, Healing Touch, Regrowth, Wild Growth, Nature’s Cure, and Ironbark. I also use this one for my res, which will use Rebirth when you’re in combat or Revive out of combat (so you don’t need both bound):

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, combat] Rebirth; [combat] Rebirth;[@mouseover, exists, nocombat] Revive; [nocombat] Revive

I use the same thing for Symbiosis, only I include a /cancelaura Deterrence for when it’s on a hunter because it silences you. See the Symbiosis section for an explanation.

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Symbiosis; Symbiosis

I use one to automatically Innervate myself. This is kind of important, because you never want to accidentally use it on someone else.

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Innervate

This macro is very important for your emergency usage – it stops whatever you’re casting, pops Nature’s Swiftness and bombs them with an instant, super-charged Healing Touch.

#showtooltip Nature's Swiftness
/stopcasting
 /cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [@mouseover, exists] Healing Touch; Healing Touch

The last macro I find useful simply puts Wild Mushroom and Wild Mushroom: Bloomon one button to place the mushroom or blow it if you hold shift when you hit the button.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod: shift] Wild Mushroom: Bloom; Wild Mushroom

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Edited June 6, 2014 by Kazistrasz

Kazistrasz · March 31, 2014

XIII. Healing: Mana Usage

One of the biggest things healers contend with is their mana pool. We spend more than we regenerate, so the longer the fight goes and the more we have to heal, the closer we get to hitting 0. So, how do you last through a nine-minute fight with heavy damage?

Don’t try to use every single global cooldown. Sometimes you get to stand around and just regen your mana, and that is a wonderful time. The Always Be Casting rule of a DPS caster does not apply to healers.

Avoid overhealing. If they’re at 95%, don’t drop a Rejuvenation on them. When you overheal, that much of the mana you spent on the spell is just going down the drain. There’s a certain amount of overhealing we will always do. Other healers like to heal people we already have HoTs on. It’s okay if most of your ticks get in before overhealing, but try to focus on minimizing it.

Another big area where we can save on mana is not trying to heal too fast. Either we’re spending more mana on bigger heals or faster heals. This goes back to my philosophy: if you’re not in danger of dying, I’m perfectly happy taking longer to get you healed up.

One of the most important things to do is watch for your Omen of Clarity procs. Keeping Lifebloom up at all times will give us Clearcasting, making our next Regrowth or Healing Touch free. Most of the time, I use Clearcasting procs to Regrowth a tank for the Living Seed. You can use Healing Touch, but if you have the two-piece bonus from Siege of Orgrimmar, those stacks will be consumed before the Clearcasting, causing you to still spend mana.

Keep track of our Lucidity procs from the Courageous Primal Diamond. Four seconds of free healing is amazing. If you can fit one or two expensive Healing Touch, Regrowth, or Wild Growth casts in this window, you’ll get a lot more healing without taxing your mana. Just like Clearcasting, your Healing Touch will prefer to consume Sage Mender over benefiting from this debuff and still cost mana if you don’t have all 5 stacks.

When you have your two piece bonus for our tier 16 set, you build stacks of Sage Mender when you heal with Rejuvenation. This is absolutely worth tracking, as it ends up being very fast, very cheap (or free) heals with Healing Touch. If you get to 5 stacks, you can go ahead and hit someone with free heal instead of a HoT to get them up.

The only other thing that really impacts our mana is how we make use of our Wild Mushroom. It’s free to place, and costs very little to blow up for a ton of healing if it’s fully charged. You can save yourself a lot of mana on healing by letting this go often.

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XIV. Healing: Cooldowns

As a healer, you have to fully understand your cooldowns and when to use them (no, you can’t just use them when they come up like a DPS). You need to know the fight and when damage is coming, then coordinate with your other healers or raid leader for who is using which cooldown when. Let’s look at our big raid cooldowns. They are all throughput cooldowns, meaning they actually heal instead of reducing damage taken.

From talents, we get either Heart of the Wild or Nature’s Vigil and possibly Incarnation if you choose to go that route. These are long-lasting buffs to our healing done, so you want to use them to buff your healing through longer periods of sustained, raid damage and heal through them like normal.

We also have Tranquility, which is best used for periods of very heavy raid damage. It’s not going to last forever like our talent cooldowns, but the initial channel and HoT after can put out a lot of healing. For times when you really need all of the healing immediately, we can use Soul of the Forest on it to create immense healing output.

If you’re a troll, you also get Berserking, which can be used for a short period of faster healing. Use it when the damage isn’t bad enough to merit Tranquility or long enough to merit one of our talented cooldowns.

When it comes to single target, we only have two cooldowns: Ironbark and Nature’s Swiftness. Most of the time, these are unplanned.

Ironbark you generally use on a tank (or sometimes another raid member) when they’re taking a lot of damage. Normally you wait for the tank to call for it, but if the tanks aren’t calling for it, you should absolutely be using it to reduce damage on raid members.

Nature’s Swiftness makes our next single-target heal instant cast and much more powerful. Use the macro I posted earlier in the guide to always use it on Healing Touch. This should be saved for your most emergency situations where even milliseconds count in keeping someone alive.

After these we have our own personal cooldowns for keeping ourselves alive. Many new healers often forget about themselves (part of why Ysera’s Gift is such a good talent), which causes problems when they die. Our options are Barkskin and Might of Ursoc, and possibly Symbiosis (see next section).

Barkskin simply reduces our damage taken by 20% for 12 seconds on a 45 second cooldown, making it one of the better defensives for non-tank classes. Use it as often as you possibly can (you should develop a reflex to automatically hit Barkskin when you’re taking damage).

Might of Ursoc is only active in Bear Form (which it automatically puts you in), meaning you can’t heal while benefitting from it. In addition to the normal perks of being a bear, you gain 30% health for 20 seconds. This is a great quick save if you need a little extra health right before a big hit of damage.

Lastly, the option people suck at using the most: Healthstones. If you have a warlock, you need to be getting and using healthstones. Eat it to heal 20% of your health every 2 minutes. Yum.

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XV. Healing: Symbiosis

So, Symbiosis is one of the more interesting spells in the game. It’s a one-hour buff you put on another, non-druid raid member that gives you a slightly altered form of one of their class skills and gives them a slightly altered version of one of our class skills, based on their spec. I’m not going to give you the entire tables for this, because it’s too much space. I’m just going to highlight a few key points. For the entire thing, read Maliander’s comment on the Wowhead page.

I’ll be honest and say that I am very selfish with this. I almost always put my wants before everyone else’s when it comes to who I give my Symbiosis to. My default is to put it on our hunter for Deterrence, which will let me deflect almost any mechanic from any boss in the game. This can actually be a complete life saver and has let me avoid a wipe several times. The only downside is that, while active, you cannot cast any spells. So, my Symbiosis macro includes a /cancelaura Deterrence so I can deflect what I need to deflect and resume healing. If you don’t have a hunter in your raid, mage is the next best alternative for Ice Block, though it not only prevents you from casting but also prevents you from moving.

If you don’t have a hunter or mage in your group, death knights and monks make solid alternatives. Icebound Fortitude provides a solid cooldown and can negate a stun (handy if the room is covered with statues on Spoils). Fortifying Brew is a very powerful defensive that not only reduces our damage taken but gives us more health (read: a bigger buffer) to take big damage with. It’s like combining both of our baseline defensive cooldowns into one.

Occasionally, I’ll give Symbiosis to our priest for Leap of Faith to help save people that get caught in a bad position for whatever reason. My other most common use is on a shaman for Spiritwalker's Grace. We’re already incredibly mobile, so the only time I actually use this is when I will need to move while casting Tranquility (plus our bear likes her Lightning Shield anyway).

After this, tanks usually like to beg us for Symbiosis as they get some form of defensive cooldown from it. If your raid is short on interrupts, you can put it on a DPS shaman to give them Solar Beam. If your raid stacks for Heroic Malkorok’s Blood Rage, you can give it to a DPS warrior for Stampeding Shout if you don’t have another druid.

Beyond this, nothing else makes a big deal, really. The healing a Shadow Priest does with their Tranquility is actually garbage, and there are no longer any diseases to dispel that merit getting Cleanse from a Paladin.

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XVI. Healing: Dispelling

There isn’t much to put here, but it’s important. Dispels are your friend, and you need to make sure you know what you can dispel in a fight. We have both an offensive and defensive dispel through Soothe and Nature's Cure. With Soothe, we’re only able to remove enrage effects. The only fights in Siege of Orgrimmar where this comes into play are Spoils and Thok.

Nature's Cure will strip any magic, curse, or poison debuffs from your target. In Siege of Orgrimmar, there are only magic debuffs to worry about, but they’re almost always important to remove quickly. If you miss (that is, if another healer’s dispel gets in before yours), you will activate the GCD and spend the mana, but the spell will not go on cooldown, letting you dispel someone else. It can be a good idea to coordinate with your other healers to watch specific raid groups for dispels to avoid everyone dispelling the same target, wasting mana, and being slow to get everyone dispelled.

Dispels are especially important, because the mana your dispel costs is generally much less mana than you will spend healing through the effects of the debuff (especially if it is a spreading debuff like on Protectors). It is better to spend a little mana and not have to heal damage than spend a lot of mana and have that much extra damage to heal through.

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XVII. Healing: Tank Healing

Druids are not an especially well-suited class for healing tanks when compared to the other classes. However, we can’t always control our raid comps, and sometimes we get stuck with jobs we’re not good at. Sometimes a fight is just more intensive for tank damage (looking at you, Paragons) than raid damage. Here is how I approach keeping our tanks alive.

In normal situations, keep Lifebloom on one of them, keep Rejuvenation going, and use Omen of Clarity procs to drop a Regrowth on whichever tank needs the free heal and/or Living Seed more. If they dip, hit them with a Swiftmend if available or Healing Touch.

If they start taking much heavier damage, they’re often going to be using their own cooldowns or asking for external cooldowns like our Ironbark. Continue using the normal HoTs and Swiftmend, and but use more Healing Touch as needed, and Regrowth if they start getting low. You can also use Genesisif needed, but try to only do this with a full-length Rejuvenation. In an emergency, remember to pop Nature’s Swiftness and Healing Touch on them. If your tank is standing in your Efflorescence and you don’t need for the raid at present, you can always use Wild Mushroom: Bloomin a pinch as well.

If there’s almost nothing going on but tank damage, make sure your Wild Mushroom is under them and primed. If damage isn’t bad at this point I’ll Lifebloom whichever is taking less damage, and I will frequently use Soul of the Forest on it to get a lot of Omen of Clarity procs to Regrowth the other tank to save on mana. When damage gets heavier, I switch Lifebloom to the tank taking the biggest beating and use Soul of the Forest on Rejuvenation usually, which I can follow with Genesis when it gets a lot worse. It’s also advisable to drop a Wild Growth on the tank during this, especially if it can also benefit your raid members.

Aside from this, I usually do not have to spend much attention on our tanks. They do a fantastic job keeping themselves alive (nowadays tanks are just as responsible for keeping themselves alive as we are for healing them), and the gaps are filled by Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, occasional Regrowth, and our paladin’s Beacon of Light.

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XVIII. Healing: Raid Healing

Raid healing is what we’re the best at, and most of our attention should be here. We’ll handle this progressively from very little damage to balls-to-the-wall damage.

At all times make sure your Lifebloom is rolling on a tank. Make sure you know the fight as best you can. When an ability is coming up that will cause a steep increase in damage taken or a big chunk of damage, make sure you have HoTs in place ahead of time

When there isn’t very much damage going out, we can mostly just stand around and look pretty. Keep Wild Mushroom down and advise your raid members to stand in the Efflorescence to get heals. Between that and Ysera’s Gift, a lot of the healing will automatically be taken care of (assuming other healers don’t absorb it all). Use a Clearcasting to Regrowth someone if they take an occasional solid hit of damage instead of your tank or toss them a Healing Touch with 4 or 5 stacks of Sage Mender if you have them available.

When damage is a little bit more consistent but not severe (this is where you spend most of your time), you don’t change a whole lot. As always, keep Efflorescence going in a good place and try to get as many people in it as you can (assuming there isn’t an anti-stacking mechanic). Once someone takes enough damage to warrant it, or when someone is taking a continuous amount of damage, put Rejuvenation on them. If multiple people lose a big enough chunk of their health or are taking continuous damage, throw out a Wild Growth. When general raid damage picks up enough, start trying to uricese Wild Growth with Soul of the Forest as much as you can. Spot heal with Swiftmend and Healing Touch with Sage Mender when possible. Make sure you keep Mastery: Harmony going with a direct heal at least once every 20 seconds, even if it’s a throwaway Nourish. Should anyone spike hard for any reason and you need them back up quickly, try to use Healing Touch if you have time (which you’ll learn to judge eventually) or Regrowth if you really need them up quickly.

Once raid damage moves on from simply maintaining status quo, you’re getting to the point where you’re going to have to actually use most of your globals to heal and there’s some actual pressure on you. Keep Rejuvenation on everyone taking damage and make sure you’re using Wild Growth with Soul of the Forest as much as you can. Default to Swiftmend when you don’t have 4 or 5 Sage Mender stacks to Healing Touch for spot healing, using Healing Touch with 3 or less stacks when direct heals are needed after that. If needed, you can also hit Genesiswith Rejuvenation on several people to get more throughput. Wild Mushroom: Bloomcan be an option here if everyone starts whittling down far enough. Once again, if anyone

Any more than this and we’re into bringing out some of the big guns (cooldowns). Normally you’ll know this part of a fight is coming to have a cooldown planned out for it, but sometimes (especially when seeing a phase for the first time) you don’t anticipate how much healing is necessary. Keep in mind that unanticipated damage is hardest for us to heal through.

If raid damage is only a little more intense than you can handle with normal raid healing, consider it being a good time to use one of our general output cooldowns (90 talent or Berserking if you’re a troll). Using Wild Mushroom: Bloom with Nature’s Vigil or Heart of the Wild can cause a monster amount of healing in the middle of a heavy damage spike and can top off a 10-man raid from half health.

At times of heavy damage, it is your right and privilege as a healer to call out and ask for your raid to help you out by using their own personal defensive cooldowns and eating a healthstone if they don’t want to die. If they’re planned for a specific time later in the fight, you can usually find another way to compensate if you really need them to make it through right now.

Your other option for this level of heavy raid damage is Tranquility. When it’s really, really bad, hit Soul of the Forest first. Consider following the channel immediately with Wild Mushroom: Bloom. If you reach this point and it’s still not enough, you’re just trying to avoid a wipe. Your only options are to go into absolute triage mode and start thinking about whether or not you can actually keep all 10 or 25 players alive and whether or not someone’s life is negotiable. Considerations of mana efficiency have to go. Use Nature’s Swiftness and any other available cooldowns as best you can. You probably only have enough spare time to keep Rejuvenation up on one person so you can Swiftmend to apply Soul of the Forest to Wild Growth. Keeping Lifebloom up no longer matters. Regrowth becomes your top cast because it’s going to be the only thing fast enough to actually save someone. By the time you’re here, you’re only hoping to keep as many people alive as you can until it ends hopefully very soon. If it doesn’t, it’s a wipe and you’ve done all you can.

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XIX. Healing: Healing OoM

Sometimes you’re going to run out of mana no matter how good you are at preserving it. Maybe DPS is really low and the fight has dragged on forever, or maybe people took a lot of unnecessary damage that has drained you to heal it. At some point or another, your needle is going to hit ‘E’ while the boss is alive.

This is going to be another scenario where you may not necessarily be able to heal everyone. Your first step is check your other healers’ mana and communicate that you’re out. If they’ve got mana to go on, odds are good they can handle you backing off until Innervate, a Hymn of Hope, or a Mana Tide Totem come back off cooldown. If they’re out too, you’re probably going to lose people.

Your second step is to ascertain who actually needs healing. If it’s mostly just a tank, you’re okay. If it’s everyone, you’re in a bind. Get Wild Mushroom in a good location (remember it’s free to place and move). If you’re able to back off because your other healers have mana, just keep Lifebloom up for free Regrowth with Clearcasting and cast nothing else except Wild Mushroom: Bloom if applicable.

If you still need to heal, apply Lifebloom to two stacks as you can afford it to the target that’s going to take the second most damage. Get Rejuvenation on the top damage target. Use Swiftmend on them when you can afford it and they have taken enough damage to need the heal, then use your Soul of the Forest to get the third stack of Lifebloom on your other target. Pray for lots of Omen of Clarity procs to get free Regrowth out on anyone that needs it. Wild Mushroom: Bloomshould be used as soon as there is enough defecit to use with however much of a charge you have absorbed on it. Try to only cast these spells while simply waiting around to regen. If you get enough mana built up, you can start incorporating Wild Growth or Rejuvenation on another target depending on how many people are taking damage. Pray and hope you can last until Innervate comes up or one of the priests or shamans gets their Hymn of Hope or Mana Tide Totem.

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XX. Healing: Other Utility

This section is simply for the other useful things we can do for our raid group that doesn’t belong in the above sections. We’ll begin with crowd controls and then cover general raid utilities.

Our only generic, hard crowd control is Cyclone, which makes the target completely immune for a short time but unable to do anything. Be careful using it not to immune something that needs to die quickly. We can also use Entangling Roots to immobilize an enemy until it gets hit. Beware that rooted enemies will hit nearby raid members if their agro target is out of reach. In addition to these, we have our third and fifth tier talents (levels 45 and 75) as we mentioned in the Talents section. For beasts and dragonkin only (of which there are none we can use this on in the current tier), there’s Hibernate.

We provide the stats buff through Mark of the Wild. We share this buff with paladins (when not using Blessing of Might), monks, and beast mastery hunters using a shale spider pet (which they shouldn’t if we’re also in the raid). We provide a combat resurrection through Rebirth, but we should try to hope for someone else to be the primary res monkey since we need all three glyph slots over top of a 100% res. Our last bit of raid utility is providing the Weakened Armor debuff with Faerie Fire. If you have hunter with a tallstrider or raptor pet, a warrior, another druid, or rogue (much as the rogue might complain), they should be put in charge of this debuff. Quite frankly, it’s easier for them to track it and apply it than it is for us when we’re healing. If you do get stuck with Faerie Fire duty, consider these Weak Auras to help keep track of when to use it on whom.

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XXI. Gearing: What You Want

Best in slot lists are kind of pointless for healers, so I’m only going to discuss going from when you ding 90 to gearing up while you raid. Weapons and trinkets matter as far as best in slot is concerned (to a degree), but the rest is less important. Unlike DPS, we aren’t trying to get 100% maximum output 100% of the time (we should, in fact, rarely be having to go with 100% output). Also, because a best in slot list is actually a specific list of gear that when set up a particular way yields the maximum possible output, we cannot actually have a true best in slot list as our spirit needs can often change from fight to fight and person to person.

When you first hit 90, whether via traditional leveling or boosting straight to, your top priority is going to be item level and sockets. More int and more base stats is good, but full Siege of Orgrimmar gear gives you 18 or 19 sockets (depending on a staff or one-hand and off-hand), which is up to around 5000 in raw stats you don’t have when you ding.

Just like our DPS friends, the three most important pieces of gear in terms of output for us will be our weapon and our trinkets. Until we’re at the point where we can start being picky about itemization on our gear, our number one priority should be improving our weapon (more spell power is more healing) and getting some version (even LFR) of Prismatic Prison of Pride or Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth.

I say some version of these trinkets, because the differences between different levels of them is small. The difference in passive stat increase between a fully-upgraded 580 Prismatic Prison of Pride and an unupgraded 528 Prismatic Prison of Pride is only 3%. Similarly, the chance to Cleave between a fully-upgraded 580 Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth and an un-upgraded 528 Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth is only 1.56%. It’s a lot between 528 and 580, but going from 536 LFR to 548 flex to 561 normal to 574 heroic is very minimal at each step.

Another option for us as a trinket is Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity. Some resto druids recommend it, because it allows you use less spirit on your gear and pick up more haste/mastery. Personally, I'm against it even in a 10-man. My Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth is at least 3% of my healing on every fight, up to 6% or more for fights we're always stacked for. Even on fights where we're spread out, we're usually stacked or slightly spread during the healing-intensive parts of fights where I'm getting that 6% or more when I actually need it. If you do choose to use the Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity, consult the following chart for its average spirit across a fight (assuming good RPPM).

After our weapons and trinket are in place, I advocate trying to get our tier set bonuses, both two- and four-piece. Many druids don’t emphasize the two-piece as much, but as much as we trigger it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t go for that much extra healing that costs us no mana. Generally speaking, better item level, is better, but I would drop one piece up to 13 item levels to keep a set bonus. That is, if it meant not breaking a set bonus, I would wear a 536 tier piece over a 548 off-piece, a 548 tier piece over a 561 off-piece, or a 561 tier piece over a 574 off-piece. As soon as it’s two pieces I can upgrade, I’m jumping ship unless it’s just going up 6 item levels for warforged.

Once we’re at the point of being able to be picky about the itemization on our pieces and fighting over sidegrades, you want to prioritize any piece of loot with both haste and mastery for secondary stats (so, a piece like Boots of Perilous Infusion). After that, you want whichever piece of gear for the slot with either spirit and haste or spirit and mastery that has the least amount of spirit. Your bottom priority is any piece of gear with crit on it, especially crit and spirit.

The only best-in-slot consideration I’ll really give is for weapons and tier. Technically speaking, you want Amber Parasite Wraps for your off-piece as it has the biggest increase for non-spirit of our tier slots and gives us an extra yellow socket over a red socket. Where weapon is concerned, our best in slot is technically Kardris' Scepter with Revelations of Y'Shaarj (or Purehearted Cricket Cage until you kill Garrosh), but again item level is everything. Even a Gaze of Arrogance is better to use if it’s better item level than either our main-hand or off-hand. Assuming equal item level, a main-hand and off-hand provides more stats than a staff, but a staff is easier to get as you only need to roll one item instead of two.

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XXII. Thanks and Credits

Firstly, thank you for reading this far. If you liked it and found it helpful, please SHARE THIS around the web with every resto druid you know and everyone you know that knows a resto druid. I want this part of the Icy Veins forums to become the same kind of knowledge base that we have down in the warlock section.

Secondly, I wouldn’t have wanted to get into a resto druid alt back in Cataclysm in the first place nor began learning part of my approach without the influence of my friend, Trixxiey, who raided in a top-end guild named <Insomniax> during WotLK with many US top 100 and several US top 50 kills/achievements.

Thirdly, I learned a lot of the way I approach healing and my philosophy from a random post on the subject on the official forums at the beginning of Cataclysm. I don’t remember the name of the thread or the poster anymore, despite trying to find them, but if my philosophy looks similar to a big post you made back then, it’s probably you (and point me to that post if you can).

Fourthly, Krazyito helped with lots of the formatting with the forums, reminding me to put extra emphasis on frequently using Barkskin, putting Symbiosis on death knights and monks for defensive cooldowns (I never have any around to use it on), and phrasing of some sections through our conversations (realizing a better wording in places).

Lastly, it’s Zagam’s guides and his work down in the lock section helped inspire this project. It’s also his fault that I switched my main to my resto druid. Blame him. I do.

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XXIII. Feedback and Questions

Is there something you think I missed that needs to be included or something you’d like me to clarify further? Reply in this thread or send me a private message here on Icy Veins.

Do you have any questions in general about resto druid or want a second opinion on something? Feel free to send me a private message here on the forums or add me in game (Kazistrasz#1988, just include that you’re from Icy Veins). I’m always happy to lend a helping hand.

If you want to see what I write in action, catch my stream from 8pm to 12am EST (UTC-5) Monday through Thursday. I don’t generally have it on to watch chat, though, so you’ll want to add my battle tag if you want to communicate me.

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Edited June 6, 2014 by Kazistrasz

Moozedude · April 1, 2014

Beautiful. I'm leveling a resto druid now, and this gives me info to use as he grows.

question: I noticed symbiosis on a holy paladin gives them rebirth. failing other uses, depending on fight and difficulty and progression and availability of other brez, would this be considered a good use?

Kazistrasz · April 1, 2014

Thanks. I appreciate it. Spread it to all your friends that play a resto druid or friends that know friends that play resto druids :D

If you are the only brez in your group and you absolutely need to have another available, I would consider it.

You should do everything you can to avoid being the one to die first, though. Using Symbiosis on other classes can help this, especially hunter. That Deterrence is essentially the ultimate "oh crap" button for us - our Siegecrafter kill would have been just another wipe if I hadn't had Deterrence.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Kazistrasz

LobbyBoy · April 1, 2014

Great, as always

Plantman · April 1, 2014

Good starting point for a guide.

One of the things that is missing, and is missing from most guides is the difference between raiding 10 and 25 man for a resto druid. There is a big diference. The type of gear you want is (mostly) the same, but spirit levels may be different, as are talents and glyphs.

Some examples:

As a 10 man raider I would never think about using the 6652 haste break point (even for 25s I think the choice is dubious). Rejuv is far and away my most used and hardest hittting spell. I would never gimp its potential mastery bonus in this manner. Both the EJ resto forum and the official healing forum discussed this break point ad naussuem at the tail end of ToT. The conclusion was that 6652 should only be used if your individual gear situation does not permit you to reforge/gem within a reaonable amount of the 3043 haste break point. Our mastery is just too powerful.

The Glyph of Wild Growth is very situational in 10 man. Back in T14 with the 4pc bonus it was pretty mandatory. Example: I would never use it on Thok in 10man because I want the spell off CD asap.

Also I found Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth to be not as good as Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity. The Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity allows me to reforge out of all spirit into mastery or haste as needed.

Maybe when my raid starts to work heroics Thok's Acid-Grooved Tooth might be better for stacked fights and I may need the more spirit then. But until we hit that point I will use Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity.

Also another option for the Chest is the Balance T16 piece, its juicey Vestment of the Shattered Vale.

Like I said, the guide is a good starting point. But please don't disparage other peoples work. Yes, the resto sticky on the forums is old and out of date, but there is no need to slam the author for work she did at the launch of the expac (and during beta for MoP).

Also the EJ resto guide is very good and very up to date (http://forums.elitistjerks.com/page/articles.html/_/world-of-warcraft/druid/resto-mists-of-pandaria-54-r67#PageTop). EJ went through a format change a while back and it is much better now. The discussion in that forum is very good, though it can be hard to sift through it to find information if you have not been following the discussion. Though, as with many of the EJ forums, the hard core theory crafters are done raiding for the expac and are not posting frequently anymore.

Kazistrasz · April 1, 2014

10 versus 25 does have some changes, but the way I approach either is the same. Even in 25mans, most top-end druids have been running with a roughly similar amount of spirit, because while you do have access to more hymns and mana tides (potentially), you're also adjusting the number of healers you're bringing on a fight-by-fight basis (or at least, you should be) which will keep the strain on your mana roughly the same. Spirit is a comfort thing, but I've found 12k-13k is about right for most druids in either raid size.

In regards to the haste breakpoint... if WG isn't a big chunk of your healing, there's a couple things that could be going on: First, you may be using Rejuv too much when a WG could pump out better healing across the group. Second, you may simply be using it at times when you don't need to and then not having it when you should be using it. Third, you may be using too many healers for the amount of incoming raid damage in normal to the point that you can't actually get any healing done. Yes, Rejuv is our top healing source, but you should be seeing healing coming from all your sources as well.

First, address the issue of how often we get sniped and how high our buffer has to be in Blizzard's current healing model. What good is that 3600 mastery doing you if you're getting sniped? I'd rather have the extra tick added to one of my other big healing sources and have everything else tick more frequently, decreasing the likelihood of my HoTs' targets being healed to full between ticks.

30 yard radius around is a pretty sizable area. Think about it a bubble around yourself in the middle of a raid (I usually try to keep myself as central as possible all the time anyway). For the glyph to not be worth using, you would have to frequently have 5 people out of that bubble. There's only a couple times in all of SoO that you should be spread out that much in a 10-man. If your raid is doing that, they need to re-examine their strategies before you start transitioning into heroics.

That also probably explains why you're not very happy with the trinket from Thok. When you're reasonably close together, which you should be the majority of the time (if you can't stack most of the time you can be loosely spread rather than middle-of-nowhere). If your raid is all over the place, the trinket can't work its amazing magic. The stats you gain from reforging a little out of spirit and the static int do not even come close to outweighing the potential effect of the Cleave when your raid positions itself intelligently.

There are a few reasons I don't recommend that chest as an off-piece, beginning with the fact that it is a tier piece and thus cannot be warforged. When you're truly concerned with getting the "proper" four pieces and off-piece, you're talking about 580 in the off-slot. Second, it's a piece of gear that should go to someone else before you. You shouldn't be getting a 5th tier piece until you already have your four-piece and everyone else on your token already has their tier piece for that slot.

I haven't said anything about Lissanna's work at the end of Cata going into MoP. But, Lissanna's recent raiding experience as a resto druid is pretty much nothing. Since the start of MoP, she's killed zero normal bosses on her druid. Even during Cata, most of her raiding (by her own admission) was as a Boomkin - and Dragon Soul was the only tier where she was really actively clearing through content. I'm not saying she's garbage, just that she doesn't have much in the way of playtime doing anything real in MoP from which to write a guide, and her guide reflects that (in my opinion).

The EJ guide just doesn't leave me overly impressed, to be honest. At least during ToT and now into SoO, their guides just haven't been the quality they used to be. It's not that a lot of their theorycrafters are done raiding (even guilds with 14/14H killed are still doing farm clears for BiS and getting their entire roster the mounts, which they could have only just finished doing if they have a pretty small bench), but that many of the great theorycrafters of old no longer play - many of them have simply moved on with their lives.

Beyond that, EJ's forums have always maintained a certain level of exclusivity, which limits the size of the community. We don't do that here. We welcome everyone, and that's who I'm here to help.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Kazistrasz

Restomak · April 1, 2014

Beautiful guide, and while I skipped over some chunks of it (gearing druid is not for me, a priest :P), I want to tip my hat to many of the things you've said.

As a healer who values healing philosophy and approach above pushing out the numbers, I loved what you had to say about healing philosophy. Every word of it rings true, and I'll be directing non-druids to that part of your guide; you said it better than I would.

I would also like to add that trust in your other healers comes into play quite a bit in the extreme scenarios that call for deciding who you'll be letting die. Many (though not all) guilds will have at least some sort of healing assignment in a few of the fights, and when it comes down to picking someone to let die, it helps to know on who your other healers will be focusing their heals.

Kazistrasz · April 1, 2014

That is a good point, and I'll have to go back and add that in the near future. But, I'm glad to hear that. Thanks!

Moonglen · April 3, 2014

Though as we both know one could cover the nuances of Tree healing for days on end, this is quite possibly one of the best, concise, and informative guides I have ever seen in my time playing WoW. Having healed heroic content for quite a while, I still found this guide rather informative, GREAT WORK! I look forward to maybe even collaborating or working in tandem in the future to produce such great community assets.

Kazistrasz · April 5, 2014

concise

That word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Literally only half of the guide can fit in one post. I didn't split it in the middle for sake of saving room on both halves, I literally couldn't fit one more section in the first post.

It's 9500 words before added code for formatting, and ran 16.5 single-spaced pages in Word at 11pt. Calibri

Arctodus · April 26, 2014

Awesome guide, complete and very helpfull.

I use these macros that are a little different.

For all my skills (LB, Rejuvenation...) i use this macro:

#showtooltip Lifebloom
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][@target,help,nodead][@player] Lifebloom

This macro works the same even if you have custom target configuration, if you have a mouseover target that is alive and is friendly you use the skill on that guy, if you have a normal target that is alive and is friendly and you don't have any mouseover target the skill will be used on that target and if you don't have any target (normal or mouseover) the skill will be used on yourself.

Then i like to use macros like this:

#showtooltip Rebirth
/cast [button:1] Rebirth
/cast [button:2] Revive
/cast [button:3] Mass Resurrection

These macros allows me to reduce the number of skills in my action bars, just using the proper mouseclick (button 1 is left mouse click, button 2 is right mouse click, button 3 is the middle button).

And the last one, i use the same macro for innervate, but i add one extra line to be able to use the skill on others like this:

#showtooltip Innervate
/cast [button:2] Innervate
/cast [@player] Innervate

If you target a player and use the right mouse button on the skill, it will be used on that player.

Thx for this marvelous guide.

Kazistrasz · April 26, 2014

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

Almost every healer I know uses slightly different mouseover macros. I use the ones I do out of simplicity and familiarity, as they're the way I learned them a long time ago. I do have others I'll occasionally use for things where I add more modifiers, but for the most part I go with the simple things I've always had work.

Your last two macros work if you click your spells in combat, which is something I cannot recommend for anyone. For something out of combat, I have no qualms if you want to click something (afterall, my noodles, guild bank, and ever-important cooking fire are not keybound), but during combat I can't recommend it.

Errinkel · June 1, 2014

This was very helpful, thank you! I was leveling a resto druid and got impatient yesterday morning and boosted him, and then was like "Oh crap, what do I do now?" So now at least I have some clue of what a good healer should be doing. Which likely won't help the poor people I am about to inflict myself on in LFR, but they shouldn't be standing in that fire anyway. :)

Hybrys · June 6, 2014

Hey Kaz, I really appreciate the detail you've gone into here. It's been very helpful while trying to get my druid setup for Proving Grounds.

I sent you my feedback privately. Not a big thing, but something I'd love to see in a guide like this.

Kazistrasz · June 6, 2014

Proving grounds sucks. I'm not sure I'm going to even put forth the effort to try it again. :\ I could do it if I wanted to spend more than an hour trying, but it's so freaking inconsistent from attempt to attempt. I don't like having to pop HOTW on wave 10 just to be able to drink since the NPCs won't kill the mobs on their own. Half the time they kill a wave, then the next attempt through that wave still has two things up when the next is pouring in.

But, I'm glad it's helping. I was finding I needed to stack a great deal more spirit than I'd anticipated originally. Also, feedback was appreciated. Thought I'd done part of it, and the other I added a bit to emphasize.

Important updates:

Prismatic Prison of Pride pre-amp haste tables updated for 4/4 upgrading (sorry for forgetting to do this for so long).

Dysmorphic Samophlange of Discontinuity average spirit table added and includes 4/4 upgrading.

Pinkis · June 6, 2014

Proving grounds for resto druid is quite easy. You just have to use nourish as your main castable heal, as it was intended for lower gear level characters as low mana cost small heal. After wipe'ing for 2 hrs on dps test with boomkin i did healing challenge with 1 or 2 fails.

P.S.: Referring to another thread - i was not using Lifebloom for the challenge ^.^

Kazistrasz · June 6, 2014

Throughput is less of a problem than some of the ridiculous inconsistencies I was seeing.

If wave 6 is a pushover the first two times I see it, it should be a pushover the third time. When they suddenly fail to kill the fifth wave on that third time through and causes wave 6 to be boatloads of damage, it's hard to prepare for that (and resto druids have to be prepared for healing beforehand).

Rydevil · July 12, 2014

I appreciate your guide.

Wanted to bring it to your attention that Vuhdo is no longer being supported as of the 25th of June. There is a post on WOWAce and Curse from the author of the addon that he is no longer playing WOW and is not going to be updating the addon. As of now it is out of date but still appears to be working, how long this will continue is a question. A number of posters have asked the author to release the addon to someone so it can be maintained, but there has been no response posted.

If Vuhdo die's a slow death of neglect - what would be your recommendation for a raid frame?

Again, the guide was in-depth and well constructed - which means it took you some time to create. Thanks for the effort.

Krazyito · July 12, 2014

Well, we're both hopeful that SOMEONE will pick up Vuhdo by the time WoD is released, or when there is an outcry for it. I personally couldn't recommend anything else.

If Vuhdo were to die, the only other real alternative would be HealBot, i have never used it, but from what I know its not as much customization and vuhdo. I personally would go to default blizzard frames (or ElvUI in my case).

If you can heal without click casting that vuhdo has, I would defiantly recommend ElvUI or Blizzard frames. They do the job well enough. Theres also Grid but it has never appealed to me.

Every other addon, I would recommend NOT using without looking at it fully. (there was another one I don't want to say the name of, that put buttons for your heals next to every name.. SO MUCH CLUTTER.)

Kazistrasz · July 13, 2014

Honestly, the use of mouseover macros removes the necessity of Clique or similar features. Speaking of, Clique can replace that functionality of Vuhdo. I've hated HealBot since its invention. I've tried it at various times, and I've never not uninstalled it after five minutes.

I like Vuhdo above everything else, but Grid is my #2, with the stock Blizzard Raid Frames being my #3 to be honest.

BRF isn't quite as customizable as Vuhdo, and there are a few things that you can't quite do with it. Unless you're doing serious progression come WoD, BRF will meet most of your needs. It can't show when you can Swiftmend off of another resto druid's HoTs. This isn't a big deal, though. In a 10-man, you shouldn't be using two resto druids. If I'm ever healing with another druid, it's for something trivial like a flex. In Mythic, it may be more common for guilds to use two, though I wouldn't advise it. The bigger thing is you can't make it show when a tank uses a CD. There are ways to get around this, even using Weak Auras (though you'd need individual WAs for each tank in your raid).

Grid can do a lot, but the problem is needing to download a plugin for EVERYTHING you want it to do. Want to see your HoTs on a target as icons and see their duration? Gotta go download the plugin for it. Wanna see when tanks use a CD? Gotta get the plugin. Turn frame a particular color for dispelling? Plugin. Plugin. Plugin. Plugin. Plugin. I think it's an enormous pain, but it's certainly not that much more of a time investment than setting up Vuhdo.

Krazy likes ElvUI's raid frames and has experimented with them. I don't like them, and I'm struggling to even devote three sentences to them. Try them out if nothing else is working for you, but I highly recommend just about everything else out there except HealBot first.

Like Krazy said, we're hopeful (for myself, I'd almost say confident) that someone else will take over development for Vuhdo. It's been a known thing for a while that it's no longer supported, but it's one of the most popular AddOns in all of WoW, especially among high-end healers who are generally willing to put in a lot of time to have highly customized raid frames that meet their every need.

To be honest, taking over Vuhdo wouldn't even demand much of someone. As it stands right now, the only things that would honestly need to be done for WoD would just be adding some extra debuffs to show by default for the encounters in WoD, and update to class changes (remove anything being pruned, add anything new and put in functionality for two Rejuvs on a target). As far away as WoD is right now, I'm not at all worried about losing Vuhdo.

Krazyito · July 13, 2014

I hate Clique. I tried using it "mouseovers only" function but it didn't work properly.. I like still using my scroll wheel and other buttons outside of the frames (camera scrolling for example) but it didn't keep it for some reason or disabled it outside of mouseovers.

Really it's vuhdo or bust. But I'll force myself to replace the few click buttons to something else on my Naga to avoid having to use Clique or healbot.

I don't like the way grid looks. Unsure if I can change it any. Vuhdo just has always done what I want.

Also I don't know why you don't give ElvUI frames much credit. It has really good debuff tracking and even tank CD tracking like vuhdo. If you're using Elv anyway, it's a hell of a lot better than default.

Before ToT Elv was asking affiniti why he wasn't using Elv frames (he was using vuhdo at the time) and he basically said it was the functionality of the frames. So to help promote his addon and give it more features, Elv re-wrote the entire frame system to match most of vuhdo features outside of the cosmetics to keep it "ElvUI".

Features including a new filtering system for buffs and debuff. A GPS arrow (albeit not as decent looking but it works), frame aesthetic customization (to some extent I think to keep it with the theme) and even different frames for different raid sizes.

Really even then you can still color the bars differently and make it almost exactly the same as vuhdo but no click functions. The one thing I sorely miss is the swiftmend icon. I didn't realize how much that icon reminded me swiftmend was up until I lost it. I tired to see if there was a work around, but I think it has to be manually coded and it it's not on a priority it looks like for Elv.

If the only reason you can give me is aesthetics, then I'd say you probably need to play with it more.

Hotfixmon · July 17, 2014

Krazy - first, fantastic guide. Thanks for doing this.

Regarding UIs and addons, would you consider making your own packing up your own interface setup and making it available?

Cheers,

HFM

Krazyito · July 17, 2014

Firstly, this is not my guide its Kazistrasz's

Secondly, I don't really post my UI as a "package" because: 1) I'm not famous enough =P, 2) Its basically a rendition of Affiniti UI with Vuhdo. On top of me being picky and having to clean out the non important parts of the UI to make it druid specific. (especially in the Weak Auras section)

Really the core addons of my UI are:

ElvUI
Vuhdo
Weak Auras
BLCD
VEM

And the only thing custom you would have to get is Vuhdo style and look and Weak Auras, which is mostly from Affiniti's pastebin and some that I made myself.

Honeslty, I would suggest getting the bare addons from any top player and configure it yourself in your own way instead of just straight installing their pack with their settings and keybinds etc.. It gives you a better feel for the addons and you will know how to fix something if it goes wrong, on top of making it your own.

Kazistrasz · July 17, 2014

Krazy - first, fantastic guide. Thanks for doing this.

Regarding UIs and addons, would you consider making your own packing up your own interface setup and making it available?

Cheers,

HFM

I'm hurt.

UIs, especially for healers, are personal things. You want to spend the time on your own to make it just the way you like it.

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