Restoration Druid

Restoration Druid is a very good spec to deepen your understanding of mythic +. It is slightly hard to approach at first, and requires a good knowledge of the patterns, but it provides with a very high ceiling, rewarding playstyle.

I want to start by mentioning that the guides are made by myself, and I am not a class expert. Hopefully, this will help get you started and will include some information that was harder to find. I want to emphasize that these pages more than anything are here to act as a portal to the content creators and other useful links in the right column (or scroll to the bottom on mobile). They are the experts :) In the mean time, if you read something that you think is inaccurate in this website, please let me know, so that we can make sure no erroneous information is shared!

Starting Up

One of the main barriers of entry as a Resto Druid in m+ is to understand how important Adaptative Swarm is, and their maintenance cost in general. Making to sure to maintain your stacks at all times along with good Lifebloom, and Efflorescence usage will propel you to the 15+ keys with ease.

Maintain Adaptive Swarm Stacks

It is a rather complicated topic, the charges jump around, you need to make sure to "refresh" those that are about to loose their last charge to try and get everybody with it, lots of thinking etc

Or you can install this weak aura, or this one. Honestly this will make so much more effective at healing keys as a resto druid that there is absolutely no argument against using it.

Efflorescence

The other pure maintenance healing of Resto Druid is about maintaining Efflorescence under the fight. It will create a stack of mastery through Spring Blossoms which makes it the most worthy GCD with Adaptative Swarm.

Let's take a break here. You already have 2 HOTs running at all times on your group, so 2 stacks of mastery

Lifebloom

You have 2 of them, and since they are going to be doped up by your mastery, they will do big big healing. These two stacks should be your first thought when some one is taking some extra damage. A very good weak aura as a resto druid is the targeted weak aura. As soon as you see some incoming damage you can pop Lifebloom to be ahead of the damage (this is almost a mantra of resto druid, and what will make you good).

Handling big bursts of damage

Thanks to the great strength of Wild Growth, Resto Druid is usually pretty comfortable vs AOE bursts, although they do require some prep work. A very important aspect is to remember to always use your CDs first. it is tempting to try and just do a wild growth. However, this might put you behind at times, and if there is one thing you do NOT want as a Resto druid is to be behind. Follow this list of priority and you should be able to handle most cases. Boss guides may include more precise rotations for the hardest bosses:

• Flourish if available
• Incarnation
• WildGrowth, always boosted by Soul of the Forest

Flourish

Flourish potency depends on how much prep time you have. Here is how it looks:

• Apply your lifeblooms on you and the weakest member of the team (hunters, mages, priests, shamans are good targets)
• [Optional] Apply Rejuvenation on DPS and you
• [Optional] Regrowth on the lowest health player
• Swiftmend on the lowest health player (will consume the regrowth, or whatever it can consume)
• WildGrowth boosted by Soul of the Forest
• Flourish

If you do all of this and someone dies, it is most likely not your fault. Obviously this is a lot of prep, so you will need to know the patterns. Cut off steps depending on how much time you have to prepare. As you progress as a Resto Druid, you will know the fights better and will be able to execute this with proper timing most consistently.

Grove Guardians

Once you have your ramp out, you might need to do some clean-up. Or maybe you were out of position, a mechanic broke your concentration, no worries, you got your own little helper Groots to save you. Or maybe you are an actual pro and you are going back to DPS, just using the fact that grove guardians are off-GCD and castable and every shape. Yep.

Whatever the situation may be, Grove Guardians with Wild Synthesis is a great little AOE heal to follow up your ramp or react to medium damage. Since they also allow you to stay in your cat or owl form to do damage, and they are free GCD-wise, and they are turbo-boosted by your Tiers Set, you should just use and abuse this spell. They only mistake you could make is leaving it off cooldown.

With time you will learn when they are enough and when they are not, but you should consider stress testing them a bit to optimize your time using your utility and doing damage versus healing.

Another usage can be to use them all at the same time, making it another 1 min cooldown to handle burst AOE. This is a fair way to manage fights based on a 30 seconds timer, in alternance with Flourish. On a 20 seconds-timer fight, you might be better off using 1 Wild Growth and 1 Grove Guardian per sequence. The strength of Grove Guardians is in its flexibility!

Incarnation

Incarnation is on a long cooldown (~2 min), but it will provide you with a window of extreme throughput. Try to align it with big pulls or the worst part of a boss fight to trivialize it.

Single Target Burst/Bleed

As we have already mentioned, any damage on a teammate is an automatic Lifebloom, but you may need more at times.

Cenarion Ward

Your first button to press for incoming Single Target damage is Cenarion Ward. Do not hold it for too long, any damage directed at one person (including the tank) is worth using it. Your mental discipline as a resto Druid is to always be ahead of the damage. Speaking of which, Cenarion Ward needs to be triggered, which makes the Targeted Weak Auras, once more, a fantastic tool!

Ironbark

Ironbark is a fantastic external, and you should use it on cooldown or almost. Your tank has a hole in their defensive rotation? use it. A DPS is targeted by a tough mechanic: use it. Never hold it, that's how you will take the next step as a resto druid. You do not have many DR tools, so use the one you have!

Use your mastery

If you know that the damage will be particularly intense or lengthy, so that you have time to apply more, make use of your mastery. Meaning add Rejuvenation to add a stack. You should rarely need it, this is very overkill, but it can help support a tank in a massive pull or heal a Crushing Depths. Simply consider that it should NOT be your go-to solution, only if everything mentioned above is already on cooldown.

We have seen how to prepare for incoming ST damage: Lifebloom, Cenarion Ward, Ironbark. What about reaction? In patch 10.2, you get 2 new tools (well kinda 10.1.7 but you know)

Groove Guardians & Clearcasting

Same as in AOE, GroveGuardians can also help heal someone. They open with a Swiftmend (not proccing Soul of the Forest) on your target, which will help bring them up off the GCD. And their Nourish casts will bring great spot healing.

With your 4-set, Clearcasting procs make your Regrowth pretty high value for Spot healing

Nature's Swiftness

Nature's Swiftness will give you a double size Regrowth, castable in all forms, on a 1min cooldown (48 sec with Nature's Splendor). That's another great tool for spot healing.

What is really great with both Grove Guardians and Nature's Swiftness is that you do not even need to get out of your DPS form if they are sufficient. Experience will help you know when you can rely on them to cover the healing requirement.

Switftmend

Swiftmend can act as a quick life savior but it should probably be your absolute last line of defense tool. The reason is that Swiftmend is more than anything used to trigger Soul of the Forest and boost your WildGrowth. In emergency, using Soul of the Forest on Regrowth will be high value to save someone, but you want to make sure there is no AOE damage coming in the next 15 seconds.

Double Magic Dispel

Restoration Druid does not have specific tools for fighting off multiple magic dispels, but as we have seen before, you have many Single Target tools that you can stack for mastery and heal about anything. So you should mostly be fine. Just follow the usual Single Target Priority.

Utility

Druid and Utility are two faces of the same coin. You have a variety of spells (and keybinds) that can bring to any team composition. As a healer, you are expected to have a complete mastery over these tools, that's your most important task and you can save quite a bit of healing and stress by using it well.

Incapacitating Roar & Skull Bash

It is not easy to access Skull Bash in the tree and you will likely have to pass it. Consider taking it at lower level of keys (< 17+) in PUG groups. There is nothing worse than seeing a critical spell go through and not be able to do anything about it.

However, one tool you should always pick is Incapacitating Roar. Its very short cooldown makes it a strong tool to AOE CC packs of mobs, and it will be usable on every pack or even twice in a pack. There are not many spells that are shorter, so it is decent way to open the AOE CC rotation. It is not a hard stun, but it does stop the mobs so that works :) The only limitation is that it will never work on bosses.

Soothe

There are not that many mobs that get enraged, but those that do are usually deadly, and well, there are Raging weeks. In these moments, you will have a very convenient tool on hand, it is always better that you take care of it than a DPS to maximize your group potential. Get some nice nameplate mod to see them instantly and be ready to dispel them with Soothe!

Rebirth

Obviously a Battle Rez as a healer is a great tool, and Rebirth is the original flavor. Make sure to have a good setup macro wise etc to be able to act fast. Vuhdo has a good option to make any click cast it on a dead teammate, but you may need some more macro setup with other frames addon/vanilla setup.

Ursol's Vortex & Typhoon

Ursol's Vortex is a tool that has a very high skill ceiling to use to perfection. You can make or break pulls with it. It is quite versatile, but here are some of the most common usages:

• Keep mobs in place while the tank is pulling
• Mass Interrupt in combination with Typhoon (it will also stack the mobs together!)
• Keep Fixate adds in place (brilliant during Spiteful weeks!)
• Keep Leaping add in place
• Help your tank kite.
• and many other inventive usages

You should try to find the best way to use it, this is your most unique peace of utility, and one of the strongest. Last warning though, be careful during Sanguine weeks, it can be a fast way to loose friends (although the comical potential is high, but people are so uptight)

Typhoon on the other hand is amazing during Sanguine weeks, and in general will help replace adds, push away fixated adds etc, pretty simple and convenient.

Learn how to use these two tools, they will separate you from your peers and make you an amazing member of the team!

Stampeding Roar

Stampeding Roar is a simple but incredibly efficient tool. It can be used for mechanics such as Clenching Tentacles to help the group move fast out of danger or it will simply make transitioning between packs faster, which is very important in a time trial mode such as Mythic +. Just make sure you use it almost on cooldown, it saves dozens of seconds over a run!

Mark of the Wild

The least gameplay impactful but also probably the most meta impactful piece of utility is Mark of the Wild. Its strength in a 5-man group is absurd. So much so that every group tries to have at least one druid. The fate of Resto Druid vs the meta is very linked to whether or not another Druid spec is OP (if you feel bad, do not complain to your prevoker friends). Because yes, if say Bear is OP, Mark of the Wild is checked, and that will lower the position of Resto Druid in the meta.

But that does not and should not matter to you. You have the best buff in the game, this is a strength, you want to play with players who understand that Mark of the Wild is a great addition to a group, and that you can bring it along with your now incredible mastery of healing. Win-win.

Anti-Snare Shapeshift

You will see a lot of mechanics in the dungeon guides marked as dispellable by Freedom and Tiger's Lust. Those are the only tools to remove the snares and roots on someone else. However, as a druid, you can do that at any time by shapeshifting. You probably know this already, but it never hurts to mention it :)

Damage

Catweaving

One of the numerous upcoming change is that Catweaving is not really looking to be the go-to this season. I will post updates if it makes a come-back down the road. The concept however is likely to stay the same. Get into cat form with a full bar of energy, cast Thrash, drop a few Rake until you are at 0 energy, cast Rip on the priority target if at 5 combo points, transform back.

Owlweaving

Owlweaving is certainly back with the buffs. Start by applying Moonfire and Sunfire of course, and then spam Starfire on AOE, Wrath on ST, drop Starsurge on cooldown on the priority target. Note that you will be able to instant cast Wrath in Tree form (so on the move)

Nature's Vigil or Heart of the Wild

Now that Flourish is a 60-seconds cooldown, it is at odds with NatureVigil cooldown. This being said, it might see play in sync with Incarnation. Otherwise, you might want to try HeartOfTheWild, which might make Owlweaving really strong on a long timer. I would start the seasons by macro-ing it into Incarnation to keep it simple.

What's next?

This was hopefully a nice and helpful introduction, but if you want to get further into healing with Restoration Shaman, you should look for more information, from more expert players. IV Resto Druid Guide and Wowhead Resto Druid Guide might include more than this present guide, and be more precise about the priority list.

When it comes to video content, Growl usually has good druid content, starting with his video guide for the spec:

At this point, you should have enough information to get pretty high. What's left will be gear and stat optimization, for which you should use the QE: Live tool.

And then it is really watching the very best play, review some logs, ask for for feedback in the class discord or in the streams chat, and get better, one step at a time. Good luck!