Restoration Druid Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (11.0.5)

While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.

Multiple talents require a change to your rotation to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.

Your main idea when building a talent tree should be to spend as many points at the bottom of the tree as possible since they are the strongest ones. With that in mind, try to pick the bare minimum in the first two sections. We will try to break down the order in which you should pick talents and priorities within each tier.

You have to spend 8 points in this section, which generally leaves you with little choice.

1. Lifebloom, Nature's Swiftness, Flash of Clarity and Ysera's Gift are always chosen, no matter what content you are doing.
2. Grove Tending is a powerful talent for this tier. You will generally pick this one as well.
3. For raiding you will pick Abundance, for dungeons - Cenarion Ward. Then for both you will pick Wildwood Roots.
4. Next you will pick Nature's Swiftness-improving talents, Improved Regrowth, or Tranquil Mind. Neither is particularly exciting, so you can use your discretion here. Keep in mind that Mythic+ spec will use double Lifebloom, which will give you more Clearcasting procs.

Similar to the first tier of talents, you are left with 12 points to spend here, making selections generally obvious depending on content.

1. You will, first of all, always pick the following 3 talents: Efflorescence, Ironbark, Soul of the Forest.
2. For raiding, your next obvious choices will be Inner Peace / Dreamstate, Improved Wild Growth, Cultivation.
3. For Mythic+ and raids we pick Stonebark / Improved Ironbark + Regenerative Heartwood. Mythic+ skips an extra target for Wild Growth. Mainly, we pick Regenerative Heartwood in raids to use Ironbark in ramps. The buff to Wild Growth from Unstoppable Growth is not as good as an extra target being unkillable for your ramp.
4. Both raid and Mythic+ specs will pick Grove Guardians.
5. Wild Synthesis is required for raiding, but it can be a flex point for Mythic+.
6. Renewing Surge is an incredibly strong choice for Mythic+ (especially for Wildstalker). It can be good for raiding too, but you will need to drop one of the throughput options in this tier to pick it. Only do that if you absolutely need cooldown reduction to fit Reforestation for your ramps.
7. Raiding spec will have one point left. You spend it on Rampant Growth if you are pathing towards Spring Blossoms, or on Verdancy if you are going for Power of the Archdruid later.
8. Mythic+ specs will need three points to advance further. Verdancy is a pretty good choice here. You can spend the remaining points on Harmonious Blooming and Rampant Growth.

Raiding Druids have a lot of mandatory points in this section: Flourish, Master Shapeshifter, Germination, Convoke the Spirits / Incarnation: Tree of Life, Cenarius' Guidance, Reforestation, Prosperity. This is 7 talent points out of 10 available.

You have 3 remaining talent points. First of all, to make it to Reforestation and Germination, you need to pick Thriving Vegetation. This leaves us with 1 talent point. You can put it in either Spring Blossoms or Nurturing Dormancy. If you can utilise Efflorescence well on a boss, then Spring Blossoms is an obvious choice. Otherwise, Power of the Archdruid is a slightly stronger talent than Nurturing Dormancy.

Mythic+ Druids have to make different choices. The only DPS talents left in this section are Convoke the Spirits and Call of the Elder Druid. We will always pick Convoke here for both more healing and damage. We will also always pick Cenarius' Guidance. Then it is a choice between Prosperity and Verdant Infusion. The better choice for most situations here is Prosperity. This leaves us with 7 talents.

Due to the small group nature of Mythic+, we will generally prefer Lifebloom-oriented builds over Rejuvenation. For the most healing, we will always pick Photosynthesis and Undergrowth. We will also want Spring Blossoms due to how strong it is. We are now left with 4 points.

Out of Master Shapeshifter and Liveliness, we will most often prefer Master Shapeshifter for Keeper of the Grove and Liveliness for Wildstalker. Master Shapeshifter buffs caster spells, which are utilised a lot more with Keeper. Liveliness, in turn, massively speeds up the tick rate of your DoTs. We are mainly interested in Rake and Rip. The more ticks on these two, the more Bloodseeker Vines procs. Liveliness will also increase the tick rate of Bloodseeker Vines, and they will buff your Rake and Rip.

Call of the Elder Druid and Dream of Cenarius really require a lot of time to be spent doing damage to be worth it. They will not contribute any healing during heaviest damage, which is a major downside. Dream of Cenarius will basically always be a bad talent, because it is a pure healing talent contributing little healing. We strongly recommend to never pick these 2 talents unless you are doing some solo content.

With the remaining 3 talents we will want to put one into Forest's Flow, one into Thriving Vegetation, and one into Germination.

There is no good way to make one spec that will work for all raid bosses or all dungeons at all levels. It is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each talent path and build something coherent with synergies, making sure that all extra spells you pick up are utilized properly.

2 points in Nurturing Instinct are too strong and important to ignore. Improved Nature's Cure should only be picked for dungeons or bosses with Curse or Poison debuffs.

All Druids will probably want Rake and Feline Swiftness for 15% movement speed, although for dungeon content, you can skip Feline Swiftness for other utility options.

The major decisions are on the left side of the first rows. Raiding druids will want to pick defensive options: Frenzied Regeneration, Improved Barkskin, Ironfur, and possibly Verdant Heart.

Mythic+ players will want to pick Starfire, Sunfire, Improved Sunfire, Rip, and optionally Killer Instinct.

Here, every Druid should be picking the following talents: Natural Recovery, Thick Hide, Ursol's Vortex / Mass Entanglement, Soothe, Stampeding Roar, Renewal, Rising Light, Falling Night.

For both raiding and dungeons you will always pick Improved Rejuvenation.

To go into the left-side defensive talents, you will have to pick Wild Charge / Tiger Dash and either Matted Fur or Ursine Vigor. Matted Fur is not that strong, but it is useful more often because you should not need to use Bear Form until the key levels are very high.

Skull Bash is a good pick for Mythic+ here, too, but you will have to pick between getting it or any one talent in the last third of the talent tree. It is most likely better to drop something in the bottom to get the interrupt.

In the last part of the tree, you will have to pick 2 talents in Lycara's Teachings and 2 talents in Lore of the Grove.

Raiding druids will always pick Innervate and Nature's Vigil.

If you want to pick defensive talents, then you will pick 2 in Instincts of the Claw, Oakskin, and Well-Honed Instincts. You can also skip defensive side talents and pick Forestwalk together with Heart of the Wild.

Mythic+ players will have to choose their utility in this part. 2 points in Instincts of the Claw and Oakskin are nice to have for more defense. Then, you will definitely want to path towards Heart of the Wild. Fluid Form is not a good talent here, as it only saves some Energy here and there but does not contribute much damage. You will probably save more time in a key using Stampeding Roar more often.

Another option is to completely skip Cat side talents and go into Nature's Vigil through Forestwalk.

You can go into "War Mode." Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10-30% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 10-30% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being killed while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of General PvP Talents and Restoration Druid-specific PvE talents.

1. Thorns is a good choice that offers a direct damage increase. It is usable in any form and can provide significant damage to big pulls.

Disentanglement, Entangling Bark, Deep Roots, Focused Growth, Early Spring have limited effect on PvE content in terms of increasing your damage in the open-world or healing in a small group setting.