Restoration Druid Patch 9.2 Changes Analysis and Tier Set Thoughts

This page will go over how the changes in Patch 9.2, Eternity's End will affect Restoration Druids, specifically how the changes might impact its playstyle, best Legendary choices, Covenants, and the like. If you are simply interested in what the current changes are for Druids in Patch 9.2 in general, you can instead read our full list of changes to the entire Druid class on our dedicated page below. For an additional list of content coming with Patch 9.2, you can also check out our Patch 9.2 Overview page.

• All healing abilities increased by 10%.
• All damage abilities (excluding Sunfire) increased by 9.6%.
• Sunfire damage increased by ~11%.
• Germination (Talent) now has an additional effect — Rejuvenation duration increased by 2 seconds.
• Lifebloom healing over time increased by 12% and bloom heal increased by 20%.
• Nourish (Talent) healing increased by 15%.
• Overgrowth (Talent) Mana cost reduced by 60%.
• Inner Peace (Talent) now has an additional effect — While channeling Tranquility, you take 20% reduced damage and are immune to knockbacks.

Flat healing and damage buffs are obviously very strong. Coupled with recent Holy Paladin nerfs, this puts us near the top of healing throughput in raids together with Mistweaver Monks. For Mythic+ both the damage and healing buffs push us significantly further up in terms of power. We might not be able to compete with Restoration Shamans on overall damage, but we will easily do more on single-target. With Holy Paladin damage nerfs, Shamans will be the only real competition.

Talent changes do not really alter much in our preferred talent choices. All of Germination, Nourish, and Overgrowth are still bad in all forms of group PvE content.

The change to Inner Peace is the more interesting one. It might allow us to use Tranquility in better spots on select encounters. Prime examples from previous tiers would be Remnant of Ner'zhul (Sanctum of Domination) and Sire Denathrius (Castle Nathria). If we were to have access to knockback immunity, we would have been able to not only avoid dangerous parts of these fights, but also get one of our raid's cooldowns off, which is a better value than Spring Blossoms.

In the new Sepulcher of the First Ones raid, every specialization will be able to get a tier set with its own two- and four-piece bonuses. For Restoration Druid, these set bonuses currently are:

• Restoration Druid 2-Piece — Healing from Rejuvenation has a 25% chance to grant Renewing Bloom, healing the target over 8 seconds. Swiftmend can consume Renewing Bloom.
• Restoration Druid 4-Piece — Every 3 casts of Swiftmend grants you Incarnation: Tree of Life for 9 seconds.

The Restoration Druid 2-Piece bonus is decent for all forms of content. It is a passive healing increase on our filler spell. It will have a very high uptime and even remain on the target after Rejuvenation expires. Renewing Bloom interacting with Mastery: Harmony is just as useful as healing it provides. The ability to consume the HoT itself with Swiftmend is very good for the 4-piece bonus and just spot healing in general. Swiftmend will always prioritize HoTs in the following order: Renewing Bloom, Regrowth, Wild Growth, then Rejuvenation. Your Mastery weight will most certainly see a small increase. Overall healing increase from it is expected to be ~7-10% from all effects combined.

Restoration Druid 4-Piece is the more interesting and complicated set bonus. We will try to split analysis for Mythic+ and Raids:

• In Mythic+ it does not look to be very impactful. Incarnation: Tree of Life in general is a pretty poor cooldown in 5-man content due to some effects basically not working there. The gain is obviously better than nothing, but it is exclusively for healing with which Druids already have no issues.
• For Raiding Restoration Druids this set bonus provides very exciting possibilities. You will be able to use Soul of the Forest talent and get 8-target Wild Growths with 15% healing increase from Tree of Life. You can also choose to delay the Incarnation procs for your Convoke the Spirits, which makes them a lot stronger. With good play you should expect around an 8-10% throughput increase from this bonus. Overall, both set bonuses combine for one of the best sets we have ever had.

Although there have been no changes to Covenant abilities or Soulbinds for Restoration Druids at this time, it should be noted that as of Patch 9.1.5 players can switch between Covenants provided they have obtained the Renowned achievement on any character of their account.

The biggest change to your potential Covenant selection comes from the new ability to equip Covenant-specific legendary and a second Legendary of your choosing. This does not open any exciting possibilities, but it does restrict your Covenant choice for certain types of content where the Covenant Legendary is not good. These are the Covenant-specific Legendary Powers:

• Celestial Spirits modifies your Convoke the Spirits. The cooldown is reduced to 1 minute, number of casts to 9, and cast time to 3 seconds. On top of this it increases the chance Convoke will cast Flourish. Convoke will proc Flourish 85% of the time in every set of two Convokes.
• Unbridled Swarm — Adaptive Swarm has a 60% chance to split into two Swarms each time it jumps.
• Sinful Hysteria — Each time Ravenous Frenzy is applied its duration is increased by 0.1 seconds. Additionally, Ravenous Frenzy lingers and will not overcome you for 3 sec after it ends.
• Kindred Affinity — You and your Kindred Spirits each gain a bonus secondary stat based on their Covenant. This bonus is halved for your partner, however both bonuses are doubled while the bond is Empowered. Kyrian: Mastery increased by 210. Night Fae: Haste increased by 6%. Venthyr: Critical Strike chance increased by 6%. Necrolord: Versatility increased by 6%.

With both the Venthyr Legendary and Covenant ability being extremely poor in Mythic+, we can safely conclude that this Covenant will never see play. Night Fae provides smaller damage increases. While it offers very easy gameplay and incredible healing capabilities, this is just not something Restoration Druids lack in Mythic+ content. Unbridled Swarm offers a significant healing increase and a good damage increase on trash, with a smaller increase on single-target. The Kyrian Legendary provides a direct damage modifier to DPS players in your group while also adding a substantial amount of stats to you (as long as you do not bond with any Kyrian players). While the effects are significantly nerfed in Patch 9.2, it is still a strong Covenant choice, especially considering the stronger Soulbind option in Mikanikos compared to anything Necrolords can offer. It is not yet clear which of these 2 Covenants will be a better option in Mythic+, but they look extremely close.

As for the second Legendary, most Druids are using Circle of Life and Death with Feral Affinity. On higher Tyrannical keys there is an option to run Draught of Deep Focus. For more healing-oriented Druids there is always an option to play Verdant Infusion, which becomes even stronger with an extra HoT from our new tier.

To summarize the above: Kyrian with Circle of Life and Death or Necrolord with either Draught of Deep Focus or Circle of Life and Death for maximum damage. For maximum healing Necrolord with Verdant Infusion is by far the best option.

We will start with the second Legendary choice. The most likely choice for all Covenants (with the exception of Necrolord) will be Vision of Unending Growth.

Night Fae remains a strictly superior choice for raiding. Venthyr and Necrolord fall even further behind due to their inability to both utilize the tier set bonus as well as Night Fae and having poor raiding Legendaries. Kyrian could be something you might have considered on low-healing encounters, but after the nerfs it is a very bad Covenant choice for raiding. There is not much to say here beyond the fact that Convoke the Spirits benefits a lot more than any other Covenant spell from a potential ability to line up every cast with Incarnation: Tree of Life. Picking anything that is not Night Fae will reduce your throughput by an even larger amount in the Sepulcher of the First Ones raid than it did in Sanctum of Domination.