Hello everyone. This is my first time posting to the forums.
My first character is almost to level 60 and I have been leveling solo as a feral druid. I chose to go feral because I figured it would be easier to stealth around and quickly get to quest targets without having to deal with things that a ranged caster like balanced would have to deal with.
However, I’m actually wanting to main as a restoration druid for endgame PVE content. I’m under the impression that certain specializations benefit from certain stat points more so than others. My main question is: how do people that, normally main healer, switch from gearing their solo gear to their main role gear?
I assume I just continue on with my current non optimized gear and slowly collect the gear with stats that I need? Seems a bit silly and was just wondering if there was something that I’m missing.
Thanks again for taking the time to read this.
For the early end game content (like heroic dungeons and lfr) you don’t need much optimization in your gear. The big one would be to make sure you have an appropriate weapon. Caster weapons will have a huge amount of Int that your melee weapon doesn’t that will make a very big difference for you power-wise. (Also keep an eye out for healer or general trinkets if you’ve got feral specific ones, but it’s not nearly as important as the weapon.)
Secondary stat optimization is something you’ll start worrying more about as you move into the harder end game content. It’s not needed for the entry level stuff.
You can change your loot spec independent of your current spec which means you can run stuff as feral but get resto gear. If you right click your portrait, loot spec will be one of the options in the menu that pops up. Keep in mind that loot spec doesn’t affect secondary stats. So, changing your loot spec won’t make any difference for getting the “right” secondary stats on armor/rings/necks.
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As a side note: So far during Shadowlands, Resto Druid benefits fairly equally from all secondary stats, so in most cases once you start gearing, it really is a matter of just choosing the higher item level piece and rolling with it.
There are obvious caveats such as making sure your weapon has Intellect on it, and your trinket choices will still matter. But by and large, we have it pretty easy right now as far as gear choices go. 
You’re ok for the most part. Heals benefit from Haste and Crit and feral builds crit too (though it tends to be crit mastery). Though you won’t have to even worry about that much for most content - yes crit would help build more combo points but even to a +15 it’s alot more mechanics than anything else that is the difference between timing a run and not timing it.
Thank you guys for the information! I had no idea about the loot specialization. So I’ll definitely be taking advantage of that! I’m also hoping to find my first guild to do group content on a regular basis so I’m glad I found this out before joining lol
On my resto druid I ran normal dungeons, then heroic as soon as I could. With that being said I was able to buy gear off of the AH to get from normal to heroic more quickly. Once you feel comfortable with a dungeon you can jump into mythic (Just regular mythic) until you get a little more gear and learn the mythic mechanics. After that it’s M+!! All the while I would suggest LFR as soon as your ilvl allows as there is a chance for free gear there.
Lastly, if you look at the Great Vault in Oribos you should always strive to get atleast one choice every week.