Got a couple recommendations to try out Resto. I’m new to healing, and I was hoping to do less hard casting since I’m not much of a caster.
I’m hoping to find a healer with a simple core game plan but also still be able to move around a good bit since I’m not great and planning my movement around casts.
Any thoughts from people here? Am I way off base?
No
Resto is awful right now.
The healer I recommend for beginners Mistweaver Monk.
3-5 button healing rotation, self-explanatory abilities.
For rdruid it is a night and day difference if you do not have the correct Weak Auras and or Big Debuffs.
To simply even keep track and visually see your HoTs.
They also have pre-empt pre raid windows before pulls to prehot, pre set up reforestation.
It is just not a beginner friendly healer.
Wow, that bad? That’s a shame, I was really hoping HoTs healing would be the way to go.
Its not absolutely dreadful but it is pretty bad compared to the last few expansions, and its a premeptive healer; meaning for best results you already need to know the fights fully so you can prepare all your heal over time spells before any damage comes in, which is hard to do when youre just starting out. We also dont have any great cooldowns so when things go wrong we struggle to recover, which means youre very dependant on the group.
For recommendations id go resto shaman; they meta right now, have a relatively simple plays style, are reactive so you can just pop big cooldowns as/after damage comes out and have a good set of utility so you rarely have to just sot and watch mechanics get failed by your group with no way to help.
Holy priest is also fine a reactive healer with little ramp for cooldowns; just with less utility.
Mw depends on the content you want to do, it has a pretty low skill floor with an easy to use caster builds and some good emergency healing but gets more involved when you start getting into the damage=healing builds later on.
Holy pally, pres, disc and resto druid all have some gimmick that makes healing less intuitive so i think theyre good healer alts after youve got comfortable with the otvets.
I mean at a low level of content you can play anything, but just restoration druid you will hit a wall. Then feel useless, it also on paper isn’t the most indemand healer.
Popular healers are Priests, Shamans, Paladins right now.
Also Mistweavers have HoTs 
and a pet to heal with. I just believe they are easy, soothing mist → Envelop → Vivify, great mana pool, great mobility, two insta oh crap moments being revival and cocoon.
I’ve never played mistweaver but for a new healer I would recommend holy priest or resto shaman. Both have very straightforward healing rotations.
Don’t shaman and priest hard cast most of the time? That’s part of the reason why I wanted to look at resto druid. I don’t have the brain for casters, but if that’s a better option, I guess I can try it again.
Each healer heals different for example a paladin is a melee healer so you will be attacking boss while building holy power to heal. Druid Heals by Healing over time (Hots) hot everyone up before the damage comes. Priest heals by hard casting and instant spells. I would choose a healer based on your play style not whats S tier at the moment.
Exactly, this is why I came here to get an impression of Resto Druid. I know proactive HoTs requires a different head space than reactive healing, but it doesn’t rely on traditional casting as much from what I’ve seen, and that’s always been a pain point for me with other classes.
If druid is really truly unforgiving for newer folks, I’ll try something else for sure. I’m afraid to spin up Resto Shammy because it is doing well right now and I’m unsure if people recommend it only because of that.
I main resto druid my favorite healer i love to hot up with rej and lifebloom hard cast wild growth, you have a battle res, druid = movement. I love HOT as a healer so i love druid. I also think resto druid is straightforward rotation.
So while resto has mostly instant casts all they really do is act as a buffer for the mastery, in all content but raids you will be spending most of your time hardcasting regrowth or wildgrowth into those hots covered people.
So its more mobile then say a holy priest or a full caster mist weaver but when things go bad you will be hardcasting. In raids youll be mostly casting rejuv and reserving regrowth for when theyre instant cast from incarn and procs so it might be what youre looking for there. Raids are also very on rails so the pre-emptive thing isnt as much a problem compared to pvp or mythic plus.
Probably worth giving them a shot, you might like druids! Outside of PvE content, I think you’ll find they’re really good because they’re a mix of multiple classes…you also get great tools for world content - stealth, travel forms (which are good for gathering professions), and the ability to charm woodland creatures. 
You should still experiment a bit with other healers too though, because they can feel quite a bit different… Resto can feel a bit “slow” compared to some of the others, but it still has a couple cool buttons. Let us know what you pick
Just roll druid and see for yourself how you like it or not.
I’ve been leveling one these last few days. I don’t get a ton of time to play much anymore, but I’d still like to challenge myself and set some goals like KSH. Healing is brand new to me, and druid is a class I’ve avoided playing for a long time, so I figured I’d ask some questions along the way since there are people who actually understand it well and can weigh in.
Our cooldowns are becoming harder to get in the tree and the talent tree is talent point starved.
So I have a bit of a different take on this to most people in the thread. Not that I don’t agree with them on pretty much everything that’s been said: Resto druid is in a very weak spot right now, it’s pre-emptive HoT healing with it’s Mastery is unintuitive and not the best for newer healers, etc. etc.
BUT i seem to be keying in on what’s drawing you to Resto Druid as it’s the same thing that has made me main Resto Druid for years and years, and that is the instant casting. If you saw a VoD of me running a Mythic+ key or in a Raid I am CONSTANTLY running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, I just despise standing still and casting. I was born free and damn it I’m gonna live free, running around feeling the rush of the air on my face as I throw my hand up in the air to apply a Rejuvenation onto my bud while I’m midway through a 360 jump because screw it, I’m a Resto Druid and i get to do that if I want while I’m healing.
So, I’d encourage you to stick with it, does Resto Druid have it’s shortcomings? Yes as does every other class/spec. And some other specs(cough cough Shaman) are just outright better, as there always has to be a hierarchy when multiple different specs exist. But unless you plan on doing the “Race to World’s First” raiding, which you’re a little late on that, or being like the top 100 Mythic plus teams in your region, then Resto Druid will get you KSH and beyond ezpz.
That being said I do feel it’s my duty to both warn you, and whine about it in case any dev’s are by chance reading this. That we are not quite as free to jump around and instant cast as we once were. The massive re-invisioning of the Resto Druid spec going into TWW by Blizz for some strange reason is hyper focused on Regrowth spamming, a lot of people joke around and say it’s the only spell we have that does any real healing, and that’s a bit of an exaggeration but only just a bit, we do tend to spam out Regrowths now, and a LOT of them. This however has been SOMEWHAT mitigated by a cool new talent we just got in 11.0.5 which reduces the cast time of Regrowth by I think 5% per Rejuvenation you have out. And I run the Germination talent(that lets you apply Rejuvenation to the same target twice) no matter what content I’m doing so I always have quite a few Rejuv’s out even in 5 man content and the Regrowth cast time gets pretty ridiculously low, something like 0.7 seconds. So you can REALLY pump them out machine gun style. Now that’s not exactly as good as jumping around throwing out instant casts but it’s probably the next best thing. And don’t even get me STARTED on Blizzard giving Wildgrowth a cast time…GIVE US BACK ISNSTANT WILDGROWTH BLIZZARD YOU FILTHY ANIMALS!!!
So yeah, again, in conclusion stick with the Druid life, you’ll be happy you did. All these people crying about the state of us but that means we’re bound to get buffed soon right? So get in on the ground floor while the getting is good. See you at the weekly Cenarion Circle meeting brother.
Rdruid is not a good class to pick up if you’re completely new to healing, tuning aside, it is not new player friendly.
Its a proactive healer meaning you have to prepare and spend like 10 seconds applying hots BEFORE damage even starts happening. If you dont, you either do low healing in raid, or somebody is probably going to die in your key if you dont have convoke.
I’d honestly just say pick rsham if you dont have much time to play, not because of tuning, but because Rsham is just brainless to play on top of being the meta healer and getting instant invites
Super appreciate the advice. It’s hard to follow up on some input since a lot of folks like to talk about how specs perform numerically.
It sounds like I may play my druid a bit more, but I’m starting to get the idea that Shaman is probably a good idea to try. Having solid group utility options without complex basic healing tools could be a good way to learn the role.
Big thanks!
I wish. Druid heals in m+ this expansion is “Apply a bunch of hots that don’t really move bars to buff your regrowths via talents and hardcast regrowth” . 
Resto feels ok but not great. I wish sunfire got a huge buff and the talent that increases rejuvenation on initial cast went up another 15-20%. Would feel ok then.