How to make resto druid a little viable for PvP?

Classes Druid
1

Hello,
I used to play Mistweaver in DF but this expansion I decided to completely devote myself to resto druid. I know that it’s an underperforming class right now but maybe some veterans and fanatics could give me a few pieces of advice?

  1. Utility
    My biggest problem when I play druid is understanding when to use my CC and damage skills. While with mistweaver you have an instant sap, instant AoE stun and interrupt, druid has a single target MELEE stun, roots that I never know when to use, cyclone with super duper small range, and knock back that works only 50% of the time.

What skills do you use and on whom in arenas? Do you deal damage in cat form? Do you use bear form at all? Do you use Skull Bash (or what’s it called)?

  1. CC protection
    I tried couple arena matches and I am never focused but I am CC’ed. It was almost the same with Mistweaver but at least they have interruption immunity while the druid has… nothing? Maybe tranquility talents but it heals so little on arena I don’t know if it’s viable at all there. Do you just position yourself in a super smart way all the time?

  2. Instant saves
    So everybody knows that resto druid lacks instant saves. On Mistweaver I could just use cocoon and it’s pretty much invulnerability. With resto druid my best options are swiftmend and… instant regrowth? I heard nourish could help. I haven’t tried it yet. I really like invigorate too but it’s obviously not an instant save. Treants are supposed to swiftmend when you summon them but I never see that happens. So what are your secret save techniques?

  3. PvP talents
    I am not sure which PvP talents are the must have bombs for resto druid. I hear that resin is very important? I like the talent that gives 100% movement in travel form but the others seem meh to me.

  4. Mana
    My understanding that resto druid really suffer from getting OOM fast. Do you take the talent that restores mana from starsurge/cat form? Do you take that skill which lets cast spells for free for 8 seconds (I hate it btw)?

It’ s funny because when I played Mistweaver facing Resto Druids on arenas I could almost never outheal them and I thought it was the strongest healer in the game after preservation evokers. When I play resto druid I can barely outheal… warlocks! Maybe it’s the skill issue after all?

2

Don’t overthink this too much. If you want somebody to stand still, root them. If you want somebody to not play the game for 5 seconds (and to not receive healing/spells), clone them. You unfortunately won’t know when to do these unless you play the game long enough to recognise what other players are doing and then respond accordingly.

Regarding bash, most druids usually couple this with a charge or a dash and yes cyclone does have a small range but that’s the trade off for having arguably the most powerful spammable CC in the game. You’ll learn to use this utility only after you learn how fights play out.

Also don’t forget small things like stampeding roar for example, utility isn’t always CC.

This is where positioning comes in to play and why often people wrongly criticise druids for sitting at 40 yards ‘doing nothing’. Again, unless you get more overall PvP experience, knowing when to go in and when to stay out is a big part of Restodruid gameplay. I’m by no means an expert on this myself and am still learning this.

Swiftmend NS and Overgrowth are your only get out of jail cards. Part of playing a druid is anticipating where damage is going and pre-hotting. Unfortunately as the game becomes more and more faster pace, this becomes more difficult but it is what it is.

Stop this heresy immediately. Don’t take nourish, it’s bad and costs too much mana. Invigorate is trolling too unfortunately (by the fact that if you invigorate it removes your hots after a few seconds…you’re effectively self purging yourself if you cannot reapply them which will also cost you 3-4 globals all up).

Unless things change, don’t take those talents.

The tranquility and lifebloom talent are mandatory with the third one being a choice depending on what you’re fighting. I typically just set and forget with reactive resin but will sometimes swap it out for other talents if the enemy team has no purges.

Mana management is probably the most critical for Rdruids over any other healer and unfortunately because Rdruids have access to meld drink, we’ll probably always have poor mana regen. The better you get at not overlapping your existing HoTs, CCing better and going for drinks, the better your mana management will be.

Play more, watch streams etc and you will improve. Best of luck out there

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3

Thank you, that was very helpful!
Do you prefer convoke the spirits or tree of life? Do you use starsurge?

4

Convoker is easily interrupted and has a problem where it can be completely useless in its spell firing, while tree basically makes everyone immortal for its duration while allowing you to save insane amounts of mana during enemy cooldowns.

Starsurge can be used to provide pressure and activate heart of the wild if you are playing that talent. However this is only really played when u are playing full rot comps and can sit back at 40 yards doing things, or low mmr shuffle games.

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