Hey everyone. I am facing my fear LOL and going to try healing on my Druid. I have never healed on any toon but I think of all the healers I would enjoy a Druid or Disc Priest most. When I am looking at tall the guides out there for Resto they pretty much all say take Feral Affinity and DPS in Cat during healing downtime. I was just wondering why Feral over Balance since to me it would make more sense to go into Boomy and DPS from range? Thank you all for your info and any advice for a new healer will also be appreciated.
- Get used to the healing before trying to mix in too much DPS
- Feral affinity has better DPS assuming you can be in/are comfortable in melee range. This is largely due to the autoattack damage from what I have heard.
- The movement speed you get from Feral Affinity is generally more helpful than the increased range you get from Balance
- The difference between the two isn’t going to be make or break for most content- if trying to be in melee range and shapeshifting around is knocking you off of your heal game, just add ranged damage when you can. Do what works for you
- If you do try catweaving, make sure your main healing spells are in an accessible key bind- either on a different bar than the one that switches to the cat bar, or you can move them to the cat bar as well if you prefer them there. Always be able to start casting heals immediately. Casting a heal while in cat form will shift you out of it so plan your bars/keybinds accordingly
- Have fun!
- Make sure you can conveniently see both your party’s health bars and your character. It’s easy for new healers to tunnel vision health bars and forget to do mechanics (why the $%*& is this druid taking so much da…oh @#!$ that’s me).
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Feral tends to do more dps, has a movement speed buff, and is more mobile because no cast times.
However, the caveat here assumes that your group is able to avoid unnecessary damage. Resto druid dps is fairly dependent on how much healing you have to do. The movement speed buff should not be undervalued as it can provide the opportunity to avoid damage that you would not be able to dodge without the increase.
I personally prefer bear affinity because of extra DR and frenzied regen, but it is lower dps and mobility.
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Thank yall for your replies. I guess it makes sense but coming from never healing I just have the mindset that the Healer should not be up in the middle of the fight they should be back observing over the whole field of play if that makes sense. Having a healer in melee just kinda messes with how I feel a healer should play. Maybe I just need to try to purge that thought though and give it a go. It just made more sense to me to be out of melee range and doing Boomy dmg away from the main short range dmg from packs and bosses.
I would do boomkin affinity before you learn to catweave. Catweaving puts you in way more danger since a lot of mechanics are melee cleave. Your first priority should be keeping everyone alive, once you are more comfortable u can add in dps rotation. Once you can do that master maximizing dps while keeping everyone alive. Don’t try to jump to last step first.
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for now - balance affinity seems to have better raw numbers - and compliment heals a little better in M+. In fact - some of the high end restoration druids in shadowlands beta are using balance affinity quite a bit over feral right now (but don’t jump the gun…i’ll get into that in a min).
I still play feral affinity because i’ve played catweaving style for years - even before it was meta (as many have). It takes some getting used to - and i’d say it’s a little more complex than the balance affinity - but both work great. (This is personal opinion - i find it a lot easier to keep up with “dots” with balance affinity - whereas finding the time to sneak in and get your bleeds up is a trickier - depending on your affixes for the week).
at the end of the day - the passives often don’t get enough credit. movement speed plays a big part of my playstyle (both in pvp and pve) so i can notice a HUGE difference in the “feel” of the class when i switch an affinity…i personally still think movement speed trumps the spell range passive - but some people are opposite and can’t live without the range.
try them all out for a week and then stick to what feels most natural.
i will also say that the “feel” of catweaving is REALLY slow right now. they definitely tuned everything down a bit for pre-patch to prepare for shadowlands - so if it feels slow to play a kitty right now but it’s what you really want to do - just stick it out til the first season of m+ starts and then test everything out once again :).
good luck and hope i didn’t babble too much…i obviously have some very strong feelings for m+ theory & play lol
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Is it a big factor that boomkin affinity damage uses up mana whereas feral doesn’t?
Or at max level at high keys do you not have to worry too much about running out of mana
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If you’re worried about running out of mana, then you’re not going to be using Moonking form + spells as is 
But as a direct answer, no, it isn’t an issue. It’s just been that up to this point, catweaving netted better numbers. I’m not sure how it is now, but I know that Feral Affinity Rake and Rip both hit extremely hard and the energy regen was ridiculous (almost seemed better than Ferals regen from the little that I played Resto lol)
Nearly all healers are required to dps now. The game has changed and healers arent just healers anymore. Also feral affinity can really pump out some damage if needed. Any higher keys and resto druid really shines due to all the dps they can manage as feral. I just play resto all the time now even when solo because the dps isnt that much less than the dps specs. It also really shines in arena where you can serve as a second dps in 2s and also heal like a boss.
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Thank you all for the awesome replies. I did my 1st couple dungeons as Resto with Balance at least until I get a bit more comfy.
Feral does a lot more dps plus you get the move speed. Simple as that.
Resto really rewards you for understanding the damage flow of an encounter. All groups should focus on avoiding damage through positioning and interupts / other cc. Resto really really feels it when groups ignore mechanics though.
Get used to people not being topped off. If you try to keep everyone at 100% all the time you won’t have time for anything else and will chew through mana like a mad person. My comfort range is usually a hot rolling and the persons hp being in the 80% or higher range.
Again know the damage flow of that fight… obviously there are moments where everyone must be topped off and then must also have hots rolling as the damage is going out. But most of the time you can get away with your group not being full hp and allowing your hots to do their job.
Disc is also a blast for similar issues. Once you know when damage is going to come out you can so easily prepare and set up to have glorious moments.
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That’s just not true at all.
Feral affinity is better because balance affinity is largely useless to resto druids as they already have access to moonfire and sunfire. (your main source of dps)
Choosing feral affinity adds rip, rake and swipe to that list, giving you 4 dots and an instant aoe.
Kitty weaving isn’t just tossing out hots and swapping to cat for all your damage.
Kitty weaving is quite literally weaving All of your spells. Hots, dots and bleeds together.
Or… just bind one common spell, such as rejuvenate, to the same key in both caster and cat form. No need to complicate your bars when a single spell will do.
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Yeah - ignore that advice from sama-whatever.
The general advice from good druid players is as Tical has said - try and have key abilities be the exact same button in all forms. E.g if you really want rejuv to be bound to “4” then make sure its on that key in all forms. A well set up druid plays much faster, with smooth efficient shifting.
You’re also less likely to make mistakes as your keybinds are changing the minimal amount possible.
It’s also a lot easier to multi-spec when you use this approach and have things as consistent as possible across all specs and forms.
Downside is that it’s more up-front effort setting it all up that way, and requires setting up all 4 specs to test what will work or needs tweaking.
It takes some getting used to. But once you do, its incredibly fun. I truly feel like a real hybrid.
Some things I do, some of which are a recap from other players here already mentioned. Healers are expected to do some damage now. Blizzard has made healer mana less of an issue overall giving us room to damage. Even my holy priest can usually swing 10% of the entire groups damage. Basically keep the mantra “Always be castin’ mon”. Don’t waste a GCD. Think a few GCDs ahead. Have a plan. If no one needs healing, cast some type of damage. Don’t OOM yourself, but unless you are spamming healings constantly, that shouldn’t be an issue for druids.
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I use roll over healing macros.
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My main healing spells (Rejuv, SM, Regrowth, LB, Wild Growth) are the same keybinds for every form I use.
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If I’m healing a PUG, I won’t start out catweaving until the first few pulls are done. I want to get a feel for the group and the tank. There are some set ups where I can’t even dream of catweaving. Other groups I only end up leaving cat form between pulls to top people off. The spectrum of players is that wide. On the bad groups, I’ll just weave sunfire, moonfire, and wraths if I can.
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As said, its about using everything. At a minimum, when the tank pulls, I’ll fire a moonfire and sunfire out. I’ll toss a few HOTs out and Efflorescence. Then I cat form. If its just 1-2 targets, I’ll do a basic single target DPS rotation for cat getting bleeds up and autoattacking. If it’s 3+, I’ll just swipe until I’m out of energy. Usually at that point I’ll drop form, cast a few HOTS or wild growth while my energy restores to 100. Renew Sunfire, Moonfire, and back to cat. If there is no damage to heal and my Sunfire is still ticking but I’m out of energy, I’ll bear form it and swipe a few times until energy is back and then go back to cat form.
But man, once you get it down…the most fun healing spec I’ve ever had since healing in Vanilla.
Now in Beta, it’s closer that Balance Affinity may be better, at least to start, but the ground mechanics in melee range are a little more punishing so standing off and casting DPS may be smart.
I apologize for the delayed response…<3
and to mimic what some others have said - mana is never an issue for me as a resto druid ever…I have experimented with Moonkin affinity before and I still didn’t have mana issues…the only thing I noticed tbh was the speed difference lol…for some reason that really affects the way I play…I think it’s a huge advantage in almost every scenario.
Yes the speed shouldn’t be underestimated. On guardian and balance I take resto affinity and I really miss that speed. 15% speed is being in place 15% earlier to do more damage or healing.
I mean druids don’t exactly have trouble keeping up, but it lets you dart around even faster, or get in place and drink a couple seconds earlier, dodge mechanics easier, etc. It’s hugely noticeable.
One thing to keep in mind going into the expansion is that if you are cat form while in resto spec you are considering “ranged” for raid mechanics. This means that you could put a mechanic that was intended for ranged into melee and could cause issues with your raids positioning/strategy. It was never an issue for me last xpac, but there could be some encounters in shadowlands that could be punishing if you aren’t aware of this.
thanks for sharing this. i didn’t have any issues catweaving in raids or boss encounters in BFA doing this, but i’ll keep an eye out for shadowlands content!
Meta is actually leaning towards balance. If you watch any of the really good resto druids on twitch they are almost all balance. Too many anti melee mechanics in shadowlands dungeons and m+ affixes.
Personally I hate boomkin as resto and refuse to play it. It just feels awkard to me.