Need Help with Resto Druid

Wyrmrest Accord
1

So, I recently started getting back into PVP with my husband. I’ve been building up this Rdruid from scratch, have gotten a lot of gear (not fully kitted out with all Champions yet), readjusted my talents several times and put in a lot of time and effort in rated BGs to learn and get better. But I seem to have hit a standstill. My progress hit a ceiling and I can’t seem to get much higher than that.

My overall healing per BG is usually 200m+ or 300m+. On rare occasions I can get 400m+. My highest EVER was 703m. (I’m still not sure how I achieved that.) In the meantime, regularly I see other healers getting up to 800m, or even 1 or 2 billion.

I put my all into the fights. I hit everyone I can with all the HoTs I can, spam regrowth and big AoE heals when multiple people are low. I absolutely adore Tranquility and the tree form is bomb. But even when I feel like I’ve had a good run, my numbers still remain around the same. There are times when I’m giving it my all, and I only see little upward ticks of my target’s health bar, as they get chewed down and ground into paste by the opposing enemy.

When I am not needed for immediate heals, I switch to cat form to apply bleeds and stuns for a little bit of extra DPS. It’s not a big part of the overall damage, but I do my best to help control a fight, slow flag carriers, fight off people from my own flag carriers with Typhoons, stuns and Vortex. I don’t use Frenzied Regen basically at all, because I don’t have time to spend in bear form: fights are usually so rushed and heated that if I spent a few seconds letting that build me back up, several others would die. I run out of mana a lot, but that’s normal for Rdruid – I just steal a moment to drink, if I’m able to break contact, and return.

Throughout the fight, I’m usually doing my best to evade other attackers. Tons of CC, and me with my one trinket, I can only get out of one every once in a while. I pop around a lot of shapeshifting, I try stuns, I try Ursoc’s Vortex, use my travel form leap to get space, throw Cyclones when I can, pop out entangling roots. But there are times when I’ve been CCed so hard I just get absolutely melted, and then people complain about me not healing, when there’s literally nothing I could do anyway to get out of that situation. It’s aggravating. I’ve ended up in massive arguments (most of which I try to ignore, because that’s not helpful AT ALL while in an active BG) rather frequently about people accusing me of not even trying, or just AFKing a fight, which is frustrating because I’m always throwing my heart into it to keep our fighters up and moving.

I’m wondering if there’s any way I can better increase the healing cap I have been limited to. I’ve switched my profile toon so all my stats, armor, talent selection etc. can be viewed. Any ideas, tips, or advice anyone has from a place of more experience would be appreciated. Because from a druid standpoint: this tree’s growth has been stunted :upside_down_face:

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The only interesting interaction I found is that cats can cast trents without breaking cat form. Symbiosis in the Wildstalker talents may provide more passive healing but I haven’t had the company to test different PvP builds.

Disorienting Roar may help peel melee off you, shift into bear form for more stamina and use Stampeding Roar to aquire distance.

Casters usually hate the Vortex over the roar. Talent swapping based on the match up is where PvP gets more complicated, which it sounds like you’re there.

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Maybe. I’m not even sure what I’d swap out. I’m seeing only some minor talent changes recommended overall, which I do have 1 or 2 I wouldn’t mind getting rid of. But as for having different talent tree builds per BG, I’m not sure where I’d start. It seems so dangerous to give away even one of my CC abilities for like a 3% increase to armor, for example.

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Hmm, maybe try watching streams of any high ladder restro Druid in the bracket you’re pushing. Do you use macros? Twitch reflexes and ping can become an obstacle.

There’s a reason why people call MMOs spread sheet and min / maxing simulators. The time to micro manage is now, worry about every little detail that could reduce the action(s) needed to solve the problem of how to puncture an artery.

Death is the best crowd control.

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I don’t use many macros at all, mostly because I don’t have a lot of things not working the GCD at once – although now that you mention it, maybe I’ll slap Cenarion Ward and Ironbark into the same button. Both of those are an ‘oh crap’ button anyway, having them both might spare me some time… ty for mentioning.

Updating for both you (thank you so much for coming by to offer some help) and anyone else who might wander past this post looking for aid. Using the info below, I’ve been able to start boosting my average heal per game if I play it right.

I looked into talents, tweaked some around. Removed one or two that increased damage in my cat form, focused in lifebloom/rejuvenation talents along with Cenarion Ward, went into fluid shifting, took Starsurge for it’s insta-cast proc (I got a few killing blows with that already!) and traded some minimally-helpful talents for others that might do better.

I was shown this link earlier, which if you don’t feel like clicking it, has a nice bit of advice from another healer. I’ll quote it below.

Bigmoran:

Resto Druid is KINDA like Mistweaver in some abstract way. A big part of MW Healing is making the most out of your Chi Harmony windows and Resto Druid has a SOMEWHAT similar mechanic through Mastery.

Lifebloom is your #1 priority, period. You cannot let it fall on the person taking damage. You should refresh it regularly, even before it falls off.

Your standard gameplay loop is to apply Lifebloom on two targets → Rejuvenation kill target → Regrowth self (to have the HoT on everyone). You do this all game, pressing your treants as needed.

Then when damage is high, you’ll burst heal with Cenarion Ward → Swiftmend → Soul of the Forest Rejuvenation. You do this every time Cenward is up and you try to line it up with Swiftmend every time.

Don’t worry about Efflorescence. It is very low priority.

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I tried resto druid healing once. An undead hippie gave me some advice that Nature’s Swiftness works well with the PvP Talent Ancient of Lore.

It’s been a real game changer.

Edit: Forgot the macro.
#showtooltip Ancient of Lore
/stopcasting
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/cast Ancient of Lore

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