A Switch to Resto Druid

Classes Druid
1

Hi guys. I main a holy paladin currently and have recently been thinking about boosting and switching to a resto druid. The main reason is because I love healing m+, and for the most part I’m a healer living the pug life. As I’ve slowly pushed higher I’ve started seeing more and more groups in LFG with descriptions like “rdruid preferred”, or “prefer rdruid/mw”.

Now I understand meta classes aren’t required to complete keys at my current level, but as we all know community perception plays a huge role when people form their groups. I figure playing a meta class will simply make my life easier.

With that being said I’ve only mained a resto shaman in the past who, like the paladin, is a reactionary healer. I want to get some insight from you resto druids out there, particularly those of you experienced with all the healing classes.

Is the playstyle easy to pickup and transition to? What are some things I should keep in mind or habits I need to pickup in order to be a good rdruid? Also, I use the addon clique with a combination of mouse over macros to heal on my pala. What addons would you guys recommend as a druid to keep track of hots/buffs & debuffs?

All insight is very much appreciated.

2

Rdruid is one of the easier healers to transition to. It’s pretty intuitive and straightforward, but with some depth, especially with talents. You can play reactively and do fine, but learning to be more proactive enables you to push higher - place HoTs before the damage hits. With your healer experience, you probably already have a good knowledge bank of what are hard-hitting, predictable damage spots. The HoT-based playstyle means druid especially excels at sustained damage like DoTs / debuffs / tank healing, but has some adaptability with mastery stacking and direct heals like Regrowth.

To really excel with druid, improve your skill with not just healing, but dps and utility. Simply hitting a single Sunfire can contribute helpful AoE damage, and learning to catweave (go into cat form and apply bleeds before returning to healing) can add a ton more. Your brez is immensely helpful in dungeons, as well as your ability to stealth past enemies. Soothe is a rare dispel, helpful on certain mobs, and Typhoon, Ursol’s Vortex, and Entangling Roots all offer helpful positioning control.

I personally use VuhDo as an all-around raid frame addon with built in Clique functionality. It shows most buffs and debuffs, and tracks heals, with a large amount of customizability in how they are displayed. But I’ve heard good things about ElvUI, Grid, and many other such raid frames. Also, if you’re not using WeakAuras, I highly recommend them.

10 Likes
3

I just wanted to thank you for your answer here and in many other places I’ve seen you before. I decided to put my Priest on hold and have been looking around trying to find my place with a different healer and every single time I’ve seen you give insight and advice it’s been well thought out and helpful. I appreciate you, poster!

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4

Thanks so much! There’s so much negativity on these forums, sometimes I think I should not bother. It’s good to know it is appreciated!

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5

Everything she said.

6

I just hit 120 on my Rdruid and have a Hpally 120. I would say Rduid has a higher skill floor and higher skill ceiling. I find, Atleast, hpally a little bit simpler in comparison. On my Rdruid I feel like I just have more options. But Hpally feels fluid and great. (Arena)

7

Questionably Epic is your best friend if you wanna learn how to Resto…
Or you can stay here in the forums and follow some random priest’s advice.

1 Like
8

I’ve healed BFA with a Hpriest, Hpally, and Rdruid, my main being a Rdruid for raids and a bit of Mythic.

I think as the first guy said, learning to heal on your druid is easy, easier than a pally (less spells to juggle) , IMO. The bigger challenge is learning to play a druid and take advantage of all the utility, although a pally can do that too. Being able to shift forms, cat weave, CC, do a bit of DPS etc.

I think the basics I’d recommend is WeakAuras. I’ve got one that puts a tiny icon on my mouse icon when things like Efflorescence, LifeBloom, and Cenarion Ward need to be cast. Keep Efflorescence under the tanks/melee, keep Lifebloom on the tank usually, and cast Cenarion Ward (Tier 1 talent) on cooldown.

I’ve got some mouseover macros (I don’t like relying on Clique) that do nifty stuff as well. When moused over a friendly

1 = LB
2 = Regrowth
3 = Rejuv

When moused over a hostile
1 = Moonfire
2 = Solar Wrath
3 = Solar Flare

This makes it really easy to DPS and heal at the same time.

Make sure you understand how Solar Flare works, it spreads the DoT to everyone nearby, so if you can only spare one GCD to help DPS, that’s the one.

Also make sure you read up on our Mastery, the more HoTs, the more healing they do.

2 Likes
9

This is the warlock above. It’s definitely helpful and I look to these forums for comments like this. Thanks for giving me the motivation to switch over myself! Any tips for handling damage spikes? I feel a little powerless as opposed to a Priest. I haven’t healed the BFA dungeons as much so I know I need to become accustomed to them in order to anticipate damage and mechanics.

10

On a group? An individual? Gonna assume you mean an individual. Ironbark can be used very often (every minute, or 45 seconds with Stonebark), and an individual with a sudden spike of damage is exactly what Swiftmend is for. Regrowth obviously is your spammable. But the real secret is mastery. Mastery increases the healing for every HoT on the target, so it can easily ramp to huge healing, especially if you’ve been proactive. You should usually have an Efflorescence down on the melee / as much of the group as you can; you can even pre-place it before a pull. Rejuv can be used pretty liberally, and you can double stack it with Germination. Say you have 10% mastery - if you Swiftmend a target who is on your Efflo and already has a Rejuv, that Swiftmend will be increased by 20%; 30% if you talented for Cultivation or Spring Blossoms, and 40% if they also have a Regrowth or Wild Growth, plus all of those HoTs will be ticking for 40% more. The same process works on group healing. Efflo, Wild Growth, you’ve probably got Lifebloom and Rejuv on the tank already - all of your healing is ramped by 20-40% on the group and easily over 50% on that tank. Trust your Mastery.

11

Thank you all for your input! I’ve made and boosted the druid. Currently 116 and going strong. I’m predominately leveling through dungeons so I can practice healing with hots/catweaving. Looking forward to getting to 120 and progressing through m+. I’ll post again when I successfully heal my first +10 haha. Cheers guys!

12

My whole life as a Resto Druid consists of like 5 total skills, no macros, and I only use bartender and DBM.

Lifebloom on the tank
Rejuv people that fall to 85%
Regrowth if someone goes below 60%
Wild growth during intense periods
Swiftmend if someone gets big chunked

Of course natures cure, Ironbark, tranq, innervate, vortex, roots, rebirth and some other skills should be easily accessible but I literally click skills and have timed 25+ 10-15s in the last week.

High end M+ players that catweave have members in their group who use defensives, stay out of bad, and interrupt EVERYTHING important. You won’t find that frequently in pugs but you will here and there. I just sun/moon fire and solar wrath for mini deeps. Works up through 10-12s on average weeks and I don’t struggle with decent groups.

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13

Update: I hit 120 2 weeks ago and just obtained my +10 across all dungeons achievement on the druid! yay :D. Rdruids are quite the class I must say. What really makes me sad is that my 400 i lvl druid’s swiftmend crits for more than my 412 holy paladin’s holyshock :disappointed_relieved:

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14

Well, you’re comparing a 30 seconds CD with an 8 seconds one, which can be further reduced by haste.

15

To people asking about burst healing. Yes, Druids have swiftmend and ironbark. But Druids are not good at burst healing unless they know the damage is coming so they can prehot.
You can prehot expected damage, but not unexpected damage. This translates to this very important piece of information you need to know as a rdruid in mythic plus…
Pugging will be frustrating.
Yes, rdruids are the kings of high keys. But that’s because they play with very coordinated individuals who keep mobs very controlled and predictable. Their dps won’t get hit by volcanic or burst with aoe at the start of a skittish pull or let a raging cast go off etc… A lot of pug groups will have people who play less than optimally so it can be frustrating when you’re not playing a class that can burst heal frequently and efficiently.
That being said, all classes have their weaker areas and rdruid is still a really strong healer with great utility. I more or less wanted to give y’all the heads up so the frustration didn’t push you away from an amazing spec. Cheers.

5 Likes
16

Great post, Plagiarist.
One more thing though. New resto druids should consider joining the Dreamgrove discord. The fine folks over there are always willing to help you with your questions.
I don’t know if I can link it here, but it should be fairly easy to find.
Peace.

17

Plagiarst! You are the man! Thanks for that. We pug, my tank and I. It can take 5 minutes to kill some bosses, dps are bad in 2s often. That is where you will spam instants 10 or 20 times to keep the tank up. You have no time for Eff or Rejuvs, never mind the other players, because you tank is taking a beating…and our instants are terrible.

18

Truer words have never been said. I was saying the same thing to my guildmates when they asked me how I was liking healing on the druid compared to my paladin. When damage is predictable I find healing to be easier on the druid, but when people randomly fail mechanics, or if dps misses an important kick, things can snowball out of control very fast.

While pushing lower keys (8-12ish range) I found that taking prosperity for the extra charge of swiftmend to be very helpful for that reason. Once I got into higher keys and playing with people who knew the dungeons well healing actually got easier.

With that said I have a second update: I took advantage of this relatively easy affix week and managed to push my druid’s io score to 1700! I was able to time a 17 WM as well as a 17 Temple, and that was with 403 iLvl :smiley: . Healing Galvazzt and the sister’s triad on a 17 tyrannical was very encouraging. I just need a 15 Shrine to obtain my all 15’s meta achievement (yay).

I’m having a blast with this class, hopefully blizzard doesn’t rain on my parade with a nerf hammer lol.

Cheers guys!

19

I was pushing 17-18s on my MW before my team kept pushing me on to rdruid. I’m glad I made the switch. I think them ain thing is find a group of people you like running with. It makes m+ just so much more fun than pugging. My druid might be hitting 1700 io tonight as well hopefully. I think key with rdrood later on is believing in the mastery and not topping everyone off and wasting time. pulling like 20k+ dps on big pulls also feels really nice lol

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20

Rdruid is way easier than hpal in m+ in a sense that its far less punishing.

Hpal swings between windows of absolutely garbage output and godmode bursts. If you are caught without a CD you are screwed.

Druids on the other hand can still push big output withput CDs (on m+). The most punishing aspect of druid gameplay is probably the slow ramp up of single target heals.

For raid healing, it gets a bit more punishing because healing cd usage (minibursts) become so important, we cant pull decent output just by mana burning.