Restoration Druid Level 58 Boost Guide

The purpose of this guide is to help you decide on whether you want to boost a Restoration Druid to Level 58, and to give a quick rundown on talents, important spells, and stats so that you can start playing right away!

Restoration Druids are the most Mana efficient healer TBC Classic, with their defining characteristic being their Tree of Life form, which looks cool and reduces the Mana cost of most of their heals by 20%, as well as granting a healing taken buff to everyone around them, which scales with their Spirit.

They also bring the Improved Mark of the Wild buff, which is a must-have on a min-maxed raid setup, and are very strong PvP healers due to their abundance of instant-cast heals and disruptive spells, such as the new Cyclone.

Strengths

• Excellent movement as you can do most of your healing while moving;
• Strong single target healing on a handful of targets with rolling Lifeblooms;
• Useful raid and group buffs, especially if you lack someone with Improved Mark of the Wild.

Weaknesses

• No dedicated area of effect healing spell outside Tranquility;
• Utility brought tends either be weak or able to be brought by more meta classes;
• Burst healing is low when relying on heals over time and Mana sustain is bad when not doing so.

NightElf is the only race available. They have some defensive benefits with Quickness, as well as Shadowmeld, which is of limited usefulness for Restoration Druids due to their cat form stealth.

Tauren is the only option and is, fortunately, an excellent race. War Stomp is very reliable and can usually be used for an emergency Regrowth in most types of content. The 5% increased health from Endurance is great, especially when under pressure.

While it would usually not be mentioned, Cultivation deserves a special mention here because Druids are the best gatherers in TBC Classic, now that they can interact with most objects without needing to leave form. This includes the new flight form variant, making Tauren Druids very good for gathering duties!

Finally, Tauren have a larger hitbox — especially male Tauren — which grants them slightly increased range, but also allows them to be hit by enemy attacks and abilities more easily. Beware of being hit by other Tauren through pillars and the bridge on Blade's Edge Arena due to this!

The talent build listed below is a jack-of-all-trades with which you can heal efficiently while staying alive in dungeons, raids, arenas, and battlegrounds.

The most important new TBC Classic talent is Tree of Life, which improves the Mana efficiency of Restoration Druids immensely, as well as providing a unique buff to their party.

Most of the tree was also made stronger, often by combining several talents into one that has multiple useful benefits, such as Subtlety.

While the tree above is already great for leveling, if you want a purely leveling-oriented build, check out our Restoration leveling guide below.

The list below compares the relative value of 1 point of the stat, or rating in the case of Spell Haste Rating, for example.

1. Spell Healing;
2. Spirit;
3. Mp5;
4. Intellect;
5. Spell Haste;
6. Spell Critical Strike;
7. Stamina.

This is the stat priority that will generally result in higher healing throughput. Although Stamina does not give damage it does help you stay alive, especially against unavoidable damage; make sure to not neglect it!

Druids are somewhat unique in that their heals over time do not benefit from Spell Haste and Spell Critical Strike, making them mostly be about stacking Spell Healing and regeneration stats, especially Spirit to power up Tree of Life.

1. Be in Tree of Life whenever possible for the healing increase and Mana reduction, but be prepared to drop it in order to cast Healing Touch and Tranquility if emergency healing is required.
2. Keep a triple stack of Lifebloom active on players taking significant, steady damage such as the tank of the party.
3. Keep Rejuvenation and Regrowth active on players taking damage. Consume low-duration heal-over-time effects with Swiftmend for extra burst healing if the target is taking heavy damage.
4. Heal large amounts of single-target damage with Healing Touch, using Nature's Swiftness if the target is about to die.

Tailoring is the best profession early on due to the sheer power of the Primal Mooncloth and Whitemend Wisdom sets, which provide massive Spell Healing and Mana regeneration, perfect for the Restoration Druid healing style!

You can also get strong Balance gear from Tailoring (Spellstrike Infusion and Wrath of Spellfire) in case you ever want to swap to lazerchicken, and Tailoring is a solid gold maker with its periodic cloth transmutes.

Leatherworking is a great alternative to Tailoring, providing the Windhawk Armor set which doubles as healing and DPS gear, but lacks a lot of Mana regeneration stats. Leatherworking also provides the Primal Intent set if you ever decide to reroll Feral. You will also get Drums of Battle, which are an important consumable only brought by Leatherworkers.

Enchanting also has significant personal benefits due to exclusive ring enchants which will increase your throughput for all of TBC.

Finally, Alchemy is an excellent gold maker with its transmute recipes and the new elixir, potion, and transmute masteries making it a strong support profession for your alts.

While not all abilities in your spellbook have the same degree of importance, they all have their uses, which we will try to quickly explain in the following sections.

• Tree of Life is your main shapeshift form, which reduces the Mana cost of most heals by 20%, as well as granting a healing taken buff to everyone around you, which scales with your Spirit.
• Rejuvenation is a heal over time effect you can cast on yourself or allies to heal them every few seconds for a while.
• Regrowth is a heal with a shorter cast time that does a burst of healing and puts a healing over time effect on the target.
• Healing Touch is a powerful heal with a longer cast, but you cause you to leave Tree Form, which will require a global cooldown and Mana to get back into later. Use this to spam heal when faced with massive, bursty damage.
• Tranquility is a powerful healing cooldown that, while channeled, heals party members every 2 seconds for 10 seconds on a 5-minute cooldown. It also drops Tree Form when cast.

While in Cat Form, you will have two resources to deal with: combo points and Energy. Energy automatically regenerates over time and is used for abilities such as Claw, which generate combo points.

Combo points can be accumulated up to 5 and are spent on finisher abilities that use all combo points at once for an especially powerful effect (such as Rip).

Powershifting is the act of using Furor and Wolfshead Helm to gain a lot of Energy each time you shapeshift into cat form. Because you can shapeshift from cat into cat for the cost of Mana, you can continually repeat this when at 0 Energy to gain free Energy, allowing you to use your abilities continuously!

These abilities use Energy and generate combo points:

• Claw uses Energy to generate a combo point and deal extra damage. It is a weak ability, but due to its lack of positional requirements and caveats, also one of the most used abilities.
• Rake is similar to Claw but deals less upfront damage while bleeding your target to deal some extra damage over time. Because the bleed cannot crit, this is generally weaker than Claw.
• Shred is your strongest attack once you have its support talents, but can only be used from behind the target, which prevents it from being used much while soloing.
• Ravage can only be used while stealthed and behind the target and deals a lot of damage to the target, as well as generating a combo point. This is the favored way to open until Pounce is unlocked.
• Pounce is also only usable from stealth but stuns the target and deals bleed damage instead of doing direct damage. This is the favored way to open on most targets due to the lack of positional requirements and the stun can help mitigate damage taken.

These abilities use combo points for a powerful attack:

• Rip is a powerful bleed that consumes combo points and Energy to put a damage over time effect on your target. Against targets that will live through its full duration, this is one of your main damage dealers.
• Ferocious Bite is similar to Rip but deals its damage instantly. However, it generally does lower damage than the bleed over its full duration, especially when heavily reduced by target armor.

These are other utility abilities that are only usable while in Cat Form.

• Prowl allows you to go into stealth. This drastically lowers the range at which enemies can see and attack you, and gives you access to some abilities that can only be used while in stealth. You can only go into stealth while not in combat, and being attacked or using any ability while stealthed will bring you out of it.
• Tiger's Fury consumes some Energy to give you a 6-second buff that increases your damage done. This is not particularly strong and is mostly used for extra burst on the opening, as it is one of the few abilities that does not bring you out of stealth when used.
• Dash increases your movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds on a 3-minute cooldown. A useful mobility cooldown.
• Cower lowers your threat against your current target.
• Feline Grace is a passive that makes you take less fall damage.

While in Bear Form or Dire Bear Form you will use Rage instead of Mana or Energy. When you deal auto-attack damage or take damage you will generate Rage, which can then be spent on attacks.

• Bear Form and Dire Bear Form turn you into a bear, drastically increasing your armor and health. This is the form you will want to assume when under heavy pressure, as well as while tanking.
• Growl taunts the target to attack you. This is a critical tanking ability, which can save the lives of your teammates.
• Challenging Roar growls every nearby target to attack you for 6 seconds. While it has a large cooldown, this is invaluable for AoE tanking in emergencies.
• Maul a strong attack that empowers your next auto attack but makes it cost Rage instead of granting Rage, so should only be used when you have excess Rage.
• Swipe swipes in front of you, dealing damage to all targets. This is meant to be used against 3 or more targets.
• Demoralizing Roar decreases the attack power of all enemies around you.
• Bash stuns your target for a few seconds.
• Frenzied Regeneration is a cooldown that converts Rage into health, healing you over a few seconds.
• Feral Charge charges your target, rooting them for 4 seconds and interrupting any spell cast.
• Enrage generates Rage but also lowers your armor for a short time.

These are other abilities that all Druids possess and which are part of your utility package. We will list the most important ones at the top, but you can read about all of them if you want to learn more about being a Druid.

Every ability below will take you out of form when used, making them very dangerous to use while actively tanking anything in bear form!

• Mark of the Wild is a unique Druid buff that increases your target's stats, armor, and resistances while active for 30 minutes. Keep this up on everyone in your group.
• Thorns buffs the target for 10 minutes, causing enemies who attack the target to take a small amount of Nature damage for each attack. You should always have this active on the tanks.
• Omen of Clarity is a 10-minute buff that causes your melee attacks to have a chance to make your next ability free. If you can stand in melee, this is a good way to convert downtime into free healing!
• Barkskin is a defensive cooldown that reduces your physical damage taken by 20% for 15 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown. This is usable while stunned.
• Innervate greatly increases the target's Mana regeneration for a short time, making it especially good when used on targets with high Spirit.
• Rebirth allows you to resurrect a group member while in combat.
• Remove Curse removes a curse from your target.
• Abolish Poison removes a poison from your target every 2 seconds, for 8 seconds.
• Hibernate is a crowd control ability that puts a beast to sleep for 30 seconds. This is usable on enemy Druids while they are in animal forms.
• Entangling Roots is a crowd control ability that roots the target in place for up to 27 seconds depending on the rank.
• Nature's Grasp is a low-level talent in the Restoration tree that puts a 45-second buff on you. While active, the next target to damage you will have Entangling Roots cast on them. This is a great ability to use when trying to run away!
• Starfire is a slightly lower casted ability that will deal a higher burst of Arcane damage. This is the ability you will be using the most, and the largest part of your DPS in any fight.
• Moonfire is an instant cast, damage over time effect.
• Insect Swarm is an instant cast, damage over time effect. It deals less damage than Moonfire, but reduces the chance to hit of its target by 2%.
• Wrath is a casted ability that will deal some Nature damage. Use this if cast pushback is a problem.
• Hurricane deals damage to targets in an area for every second while you channel. This ability has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Faerie Fire creates a magic debuff on its target, lowering their armor and making them unable to turn invisible or stealth while active. It will also increase the physical hit chance of attacks against the target by 3% when the Druid has Improved Faerie Fire.
• Soothe Animal reduces the range at which a beast will attack you.
• Track Humanoids allows you to track nearby humanoids, including players, on your mini-map.