Once your gear is accounted for and you’re all prepped and ready to go, it all comes down to how well you push your buttons! As a healer, you will have less of a “rotation” and more of a priority system designed to help you maximize your output while also sustaining your mana pool for the duration of the fight — and most important, keep your teammates alive! This guide will cover the best approach to healing as a Restoration Druid in just about any encounter.
Spell Priority
- Cast a direct heal at least every 10 seconds to maintain your Harmony buff. Direct heals are your targeted non-periodic heals:
- Cast Lifebloom on a tank (or another priority target) to apply 3 stacks. This is important not only for the healing it provides, but to proc your Revitalize and Malfurion’s Gift talents. You shouldn’t need to reapply this spell if you cast the direct heals as mentioned above (except for Swiftmend) due to your Empowered Touch talent.
- Cast Rejuvenation on priority targets who will be taking regular damage, such as tanks.
- Cast Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch for a powerful instant heal in emergencies.
- Cast Regrowth at least once per minute to proc Nature’s Grace. Otherwise use it sparingly as an emergency heal or to spend your Omen of Clarity procs.
- Cast Remove Corruption on teammates with debuffs.
- Cast Swiftmend to spawn an Efflorescence on teammates who are stacked. You can also use it for its instant single-target heal if necessary.
- Cast Wild Growth on cooldown if AoE healing is needed.
- Cast Rejuvenation on additional teammates who are taking damage.
- Cast Nourish on any target who is taking heavy damage.
- Cast Healing Touch as a filler to reduce the cooldown of Nature’s Swiftness.
Playing a Restoration Druid is a HoT, cooldown, and mana management mini-game all its own. Addons like WeakAuras can go a long way toward helping you keep track of all of your buffs and cooldowns, leaving you to focus on finding the right tool in your healing kit for the damage that is currently going out.
Tree of Life
Your Tree of Life spell is your main healing cooldown, increasing your armor and healing done by 15% and enhancing some of your abilities. This spell should be used as often as possible and ideally lined up with heavy raid damage. Here is your healing priority while this spell is active:
- Cast your direct heals to maintain Harmony and other buffs as usual.
- Cast Wild Growth on cooldown if there is raid healing to be done. Each cast will affect 2 additional targets.
- Cast Lifebloom on as many targets as possible since you will be able to have it on more than one target.
- Cast Regrowth with all of the Omen of Clarity procs you’ll be getting. They will be instant while your tree form lasts, but will still cost a lot of mana without the proc.
Other Cooldowns
Tranquility is your big raid healing cooldown for when things get messy. Make sure you will be able to fully channel this spell to get the most out of it.
Innervate is best cast on yourself since its effect is increased by an additional 15% on yourself. You can use Glyph of Innervate if you really want to share, but it isn’t optimal. Save this for when you’ve spent a good bit of your mana to ensure that it isn’t wasted. You can combine this with any cooldown that increases your mana pool, like the Priest’s Hymn of Hope or Intellect proc, to increase the amount of mana it returns.
Barkskin is a personal defensive ability that you can use when you yourself are taking damage. Its cooldown is only one minute, so you can and should use this liberally.
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