I love the fantasy of resto Druid and the gameplay looks really cool. I tried it once in shadowlands and I was berated on the first pull. Should I start with another healer first and work my way up to Druid?
I taught myself restoration druid in a season through trial and error. Restoration by no means is it easy, but it isn’t as hard as discipline priest. The main thing with rdruid is making sure you have your major cds up when u know u need them but also making sure ur hots are always on people.
rdruid atm is at a rough spot with m+ and maybe raiding idrk it’s pretty good in PVp rn
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Resto is fun. Resto seems ok for normal/heroic raids, I can’t speak about Mythic. M+ I dont have resto exp in this season. As Rigatoni mentions, be mindful of your cooldowns and be sure you are aware of the damage coming in from the mobs, but that is good adivce really for any healer.
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Resto in it’s current state involves LOTS of pre-casting of HoTs. Relentless relentless pre-casting. This is because our Mastery increases healing on a target based on the number of HoTs that they have on them. This bonus stacks, so if you have 20% mastery, and you have 5 HoTs on a target, that’s 100% extra healing on that target, so it has the potential to be much more potent than any other stat, but requires a lot of work when it comes to pre-casting.
In 5-man content it’s possible to essentially saturate the entire group with HoTs basically all the time. In smaller Normal and Heroic raid groups it’s also possible to have very good HoT uptime. In larger raid groups it becomes much more difficult as it’s simply not possible to keep HoTs on everyone, so you have to take the additional step of always trying to identify a subset of people who are taking more damage and focusing your healing on them while essentially ignoring others. Clustering your HoTs on a subset of the raid that takes the most damage will be more potent than trying to spread a single rejuvenation on everyone, for example.
We also have some of the best tank healing in the game, simply due to the fact that the tanks are almost always taking damage and thus they are always a prime target to keep HoTs stacked on.
I would say that depending on what you like about this game, and how good you are at predicting who will take damage, playing resto in it’s current state could be anything from fun to pure torture. Healing in general is also in a pretty bad spot right now. I’m not trying to discourage you, but I wouldn’t roll a healer right now unless you have a true passion for the role.
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I still feel like a noob. There’s so much happening on the screen especially during raids and mythic +. After your post I think I will start with a reactive healer like holy paladin.
I love resto Druid, it’s the only healer I really have an interest in playing from a class fantasy standpoint. But, while resto Druid CAN put out some strong heals it is also x100 the effort and harder to play than any other healer by far. Every other healer is reactive/passive and just plays easier.
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I love resto but generally struggle getting into keys higher than +11. I’ve spent hours waiting for invites.
It depends on what you want from the game. If you want a fun but challenging class/spec or easy mode? I love being a resto druid, but, it took me from late shadow lands season 2 until about mid TWW season 1 to feel competent without butterflies(I’m an older player so you may get to that point more quickly). RDruids need to know when damage is coming before it happens. We have limited reactive heals so we have to get our hots rolling we’ll before damage hits. Other healers can be more reactive, so they are easier. Imho having played a priest, paladin, and resto druid; I have the most fun on my druid.
Try resto druid out. SL was ages ago.
If you are really nervous, maybe watch a beginner guide on how to heal with a healer druid.
Resto druid is doable. But keep in mind that you will do twice the effort for half the results. Others will achiev the same results while watching netflix because not playing resto druid is…easier.
Be prepared to learn the entire damage profile of all dungeons because as a resto druid you need to pre-cast your hots. God forbid an aoe damage happens without the hots prepared, if that happens…everyone dies.
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