Feral is a fantastic spec, perhaps one of the BEST specs for leveling. As a cat you can farm with almost zero downtime, and you also have the capability to fill multiple roles in groups, as a solid tank or DPS, or even as a healer in a pinch. Once you get to 70, though, you may find it more difficult to continue along the feral path. Let’s face it, there are a LOT of different DPS classes out there, so your best bet as feral is to concentrate on tanking. Tanking is a lot of work, though, and is not for everyone.
You may find yourself, therefore, considering a switch to a resto spec. There is ALWAYS a spot for a good healer. Tree druids are a boon to any raiding group, and are often extremely sought after. So what are some of the positives about switching to a resto spec?
- It is MUCH easier to find a spot in groups or raids as a healer than as DPS
- You’ll find yourself competing against less group/raid members for drops
- You may find your guild VERY helpful in getting you geared up and up to speed
- Healing is a VERY different style of gameplay, and you may find it quite rewarding
- Often you will be the determining factor in whether your group lives or dies
Now for the drawbacks:
- You lose a good deal of versatility switching from the feral spec
- Your soloability will go WAY down, unless you’re into respeccing often
- You may find yourself spending more time staring at your UI than what’s going on around you
- There aren’t really “HPS” contests as there are with “DPS”
- Prepare to be blamed for wipes. A lot.
- Prepare to be blamed for deaths. A lot.
- Prepare to be actually responsible for wipes. Depending on your skill level, potentially a lot!
That should help you make your decision. Playing a healer is a very different strategy from what you may be used to. You also have a great deal of responsibility. If the tank goes down, chances are you’re in real trouble, and your job is to make sure the tank DOESN’T go down. The rewards, though, are plentiful. Because so much depends on you, the SUCCESS of the group rests a great deal on your leafy shoulders as well! If you’re reading this, I imaging you’ve already decided. So then, what should you do to get going?
Respec
Obvious, I know. You have to decide, first of all, if you want to be a pure HOT-based tree healer, or if you want to go with an oldschool Dreamstate spec, which focuses more on improving your healing touch as much as possible. For me, it’s all about the tree. While the Dreamstate spec has it’s charms, I believe a pure Tree spec is the best way to go. So how should you spend your points?
Well, for starters I would recommend just throwing all 61 points into restoration. Go ahead and play around in there, and take anything that interests you. You can get close to filling the whole tree, just make sure you get tree form! Other than that, go nuts. (I would recommend against taking Imp Tranq or Omen of Clarity…neither have much use IMO.)
Once you start playing as a resto druid in earnest, you’ll soon find which talents in the Resto tree you can do without. I seldom use Healing Touch, for instance, so I bled the points out of talents that affected that to throw a few in the balance tree, to help with soloing. In time, you’ll know what you need to keep and what you can do without. I won’t advocate any cookie cutter spec, do what you like.
Gear
Now you have to look at your gear. If you’ve planned on taking this route for awhile, you may have picked up some off-spec healing gear over time. I had a few pieces stashed away when I made the switch, but nothing good. When I took the plunge, I stood at a paltry 400 or so +heal. A quick trip to the AH to fill my set with “of the physician” “of the heirophant” and “of healing” gear quickly got me into the 7-800 range. Nothing special, but doable to start dungeon crawling.
IF and this is a big if, you can get in a Kara run as the third healer, you could quickly balloon your gear level to the 1000+ range. I highly recommend AGAINST this, as one of the things you need to do is learn to HEAL! You aren’t going to learn much being the third “fill” healer in a Kara group. I would start by taking a look at WoWHead or other sites to analyze where some of the good healing drops are. There are also some very nice resources in the blogging world from 4Haelz (Pre Heroic Gear, Heroic Gear, and Kara Gear) and A Tale of Two Druids (Check the sidebar on the left for her lists) both have EXCELLENT lists of available gear.
I started out basically going for the instances that dropped Moonglade pieces, but you can go any route you choose. You could also pick up Leatherworking if you don’t already have it for the Windhawk Set, a VERY nice set of leather healing gear that will take you through Kara and beyond. (I am basically fully Kara geared, and STILL wear this set in SSC.)
Set some +healing goals for yourself. I started out by shooting for +1000, then +1200, then +1500 etc. You may be asking when you can start healing heroics, but I believe this has less to do with gear than with skill. Certainly you’d want at LEAST +1000 before you begin main healing heroic instances, but more important is your healing awareness and skill. That brings me to my next point.
Learn to Heal
First, I’ll touch on the technique of tree healing. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, as there are others who would do a better job. The key for a Tree healer is one spell: Lifebloom. It’s basically an instant cast heal over time that is more backloaded than frontloaded. It ticks for a lower amount of healing EVERY SECOND (this is important!) and then at the end of it’s cycle “blooms” for a larger amount. You can stack it up to three times to increase the amount healed.
The other important thing to note about Lifebloom is that you can refresh it ONCE before the timer runs out and it continues on as a full stack. What this means is that you will start many fights by stacking 3 Lifeblooms on the tank (often with a rejuvenation, our other main HOT) and then refresh it just before it blooms to keep it going. It is VERY mana efficient, and even at low +heal levels can tick for 300 or more EVERY SECOND. It is your lifeblood as a Tree healer. Learn to love it, and learn to time the refresh properly.
Now then, as I’ve said before, healing is a very different animal than running as DPS. You’ll spend a lot of time staring at the health bar of the MT, and staying aware of the health bars of other group/raid members. In a way it’s like Whacka Mole, when someone takes a hit you whack em with a heal. It can be VERY intense, though, especially if things start to get hairy. CC being broken, DPS pulling aggro, the tank losing his connection – a host of things can go wrong, and it’s often your responsibility to get things back on track.
This is why I recommend starting out on pre Kara instances in regular mode. Start to work on your healing chops, as a good deal of your job is reactionary in nature. You also need to learn to anticipate heals when possible. See a mob breaking for a DPS? Start up a Regrowth or drop a Lifebloom. Is the tank taking on 3 mobs or more? Make sure and keep your lifebloom stack up, along with rejuvenation and tossing a regrowth when necessary.
In the end, your job as a healer has a lot to do with experience. You learn on what pulls the tank will need extra healing. You learn when to use your bigger heals. You learn when you can just rely on your HOTs. You learn when you need to use Swiftmend (“consumes” one HOT into one big heal) or Nature’s Swiftness (makes your next heal instant cast) for quick, big heals. All of this comes with running instances again and again.
Also, I would say that in a way it is more beneficial to run with equally geared/leveled groups. It doesn’t help you so much to run regulars with a T5 geared tank, as he isn’t going to get in much trouble no matter what you do. It can also help you to run a lot of PUGs, because they can be VERY unpredictable, and that’s where you earn your stripes as a healer: dealing with adversity and unpredictability.
Conclusion
If it’s time to switch resto, you need to concentrate on three things. Pick your spec, work on your gear, and, most importantly IMO, get experience healing. When you get down to it, I’d much prefer a healer with sub-optimal gear but a LOT of skill over a fully Kara geared healer without a lot of small group experience. While gear is most definitely important, the largest element that contributes to your success as a healer is skill. There’s really only one way to get that, and that’s through healing. So get on out there and start rolling Lifeblooms!
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Just something I want to add, you will still be wanted as a tank in feral spec (as long as you have the gear) at 70, and tanks and healers are arguably equally hard to come by.
I also disagree, we always have HPS contests in Kara. I generally win.
But the rest is great, and I’m really glad you wrote this article! It’s really helpful to a starting out resto druid.
-Very- good article, Pummra! Quite useful for those who hardly ever heal and need some help starting their career as a tree!
I especially liked the “whack-a-mole” part. Gave me the laugh I needed this morning. ^^
Just a few little things i thought i’d add to your generally very good article:
1) I feel that resto druids should concentrate themselves more towards mana regeneration than +healing. Certainly it’s not a stat to ignore, but i think MP/5 is the key to good healing.
2) Custom UIs can make it a lot easier to heal. If you’re going to raid heal, the Grid mod is very useful for keeping track without taking up too much space. I also use the Pitbull mod which is pretty much an entire UI overhaul, but one thing that i love is that it graphically represents who has aggro, making split second healing needs easier to predict. It also clearly shows when a player is poisoned or cursed which is very useful.
I agree with you that the most important thing a healer can have is experience. Druid healing is initially a bit disconcerting, and requires a level of reading a fight and predicting what will happen next that can take a bit of time to get used to. However, i think it’s the most interesting healing style to play in WoW.
@Bellwether Yes, tanks are certainly about as wanted as healers at 70. I would argue that tanking is harder than healing, though, and it takes a certain personality to WANT to tank and make a good tank. The same could be said for healing, but I would consider healing a bit easier than tanking. (If I ever went back to feral, it would be ALL FOR TANKING! I loved to tank!)
@Lin Thanks for reading! I don’t remember where I first heard the “whack a mole” concept, but I thought it described the healer’s role perfectly.
@Gerbil I certainly agree that UI mods can REALLY help a healer, but I chose not to get into that to start. Perhaps I’ll tackle the various options in a future post. I use Grid, personally.
As far as MP5, I would agree with you, pre 2.4. With the changes to mana regen, though, I don’t think it’s necessary to even worry about. Most druids will find that as they pick up gear for +heal they will naturally raise their MP5 in the process. One of the strengths of the tree healer is their mana efficiency, and I almost NEVER run out of mana. And I don’t focus on MP5 at all in my gear.
Over this past weekend I took my feral druid into the BGs to try and get some welfare epics. It is tough. Ferals have almost no ranged attack ability. About the only thing I could do was to be as annoying as possible. I pretty much ended up annoying only myself. So after a few battles I said to hell with it. I went to the bank and grabbed my healing gear. Now, as Pummra points out is typical for ferals, my healing kit is a bunch of odd and ends that I picked while questing. It is the definition of craptacular. My +healing is sub 200. I figured that my feral spec trying to heal was going to be awful too.
It wasn’t.
It went surprisingly well. So well that I swung by AH and picked up a Staff of Devine Infusion (only 35g). +healing jumped to 462.
I had healbot showing the entire BG raid. Just like whack-a-mole, anybody that lit up got whacked accordingly. I’d even hide in kitty-stealth and let the opposition start attacking. Then I’d pop out and start healing. Any of their healers that I saw got a cyclone. It was loads of fun.
So I think I’ll have to respec and try rolling as a tree. Hey, if I don’t like it, it will cost about 1 daily to switch back.
PS: I’d think Imp tranquility would be great for pugs that usually don’t go so well. You can heal the entire party and get zero aggro for your troubles. OTOH, if you have a good MT that can hold aggro then it is pretty much worthless.
@tkc Tranquility is one of those spells that SOUNDS great, but is actually quite situational. In five mans, it’s really only useful if all hell is breaking loose, and honestly that doesn’t come up all that often, unless you have a bad tank. You won’t use it much in raid situations, either, since it only works for YOUR party. It’s just one of those spells that’s not worth spending any talent points on!
I’m glad you enjoyed playing around with healing, it can be INTENSE and FUN!!
I really agree with Pummra about not worrying about mp5. Between the added improved mana regen talents (was that 2.3? I’ve forgotten already!) and the reworked relationship between Int and Spirit, I barely even have to use my innervate, much less start swigging potions. I think the last fight I swigged a mana potion in was a 19 minute Nightbane encounter where all but two DPS died to cleaves. Ugh!
I am so glad I found your blog…I recently made the switch from claws and teeth to leaves and bark…it has taken some getting used to believe me…but I am enjoying being a full-time healer…
I will be using your list of gear along with the other lists as well…thanks for the post!
Thanks for reading, Sean. You should find plenty on my blog to help you out as you progress! Healing can be VERY rewarding.
Late to the party, but loved your recommendations as I’m in the process of finishing up my bear gear and then making the switch to tree. Currently at about +800 healing and 300 or so mana regen. I’ve healed a lot in feral spec (up to BM) and I’m excited to see how a respec improves that aspect of play.
My question: why no points in Omen of Clarity? I love this to death as a feral drood. Free mana/energy/rage. What’s not to like?
@Smawt
Yes, OOC is phenomenal for a feral druid, but completely useless for a resto. Why? Because you NEVER melee. About the only times I engage in melee combat as a resto druid is when we have decided an attempt is a wipe and I’m trying to die. Therefore, it’s a waste of a talent point, since the only times it would proc is when I don’t care if it does. I’m glad you liked the post!
D’oh! I thought it worked on spells, as well. Many thanks!
Great post. When I first started reading, I was sure you were reading my mind. You’ve described exactly my situation. Unfortunately DPS druids aren’t very sought after, so that leaves you the choice of either resto or tank. Tanking is difficult and there is little tolerance for bad ones.
So I’m trying resto. I’ve read lots of good material on it. In debt discussion of HPM and MPS and theorycrafting. It’s interesting but what I really need at this point is more basic advice. Like which spell to use in which situation. I know about the lifebloom stacking, as that is always mentioned. But what about the rest of the spells. There are spells rotations suggestions for most other specs, but little on this. I suppose that is because, unlike a dps, you can’t simply rotate your spells on a loop. Still I’m sure there is a pattern and a logic to using which spell when. So any advice?
@ Ebene–
I’ll try to give you an example of how a five man run typically goes for me as the main healer. When the fight starts, I give the tank a few seconds to build up some aggro. Druids don’t have the “oh crap” aggro dumps that other healers do, so you have to manage your aggro closely. After a couple seconds, I drop a Lifebloom on the tank, followed by a Rejuv. IF I know it’s a fight that I feel the tank may take damage quickly, I’ll throw the Rejuv first in case I need to use Swiftmend. (Swiftmend is one of our best tools for big, instant healing.) After that, I continue to stack LB on the tank, and also stay aware of the rest of the party’s health.
The whole time, my main focus is on keeping LB and Rejuv rolling on the tank. I also use regrowth a LOT both on other people taking damage and if the tank is taking more damage than LB and Rejuv can keep up with.
My rotation:
Lifebloom MT
Rejuv MT
LB MT
LB MT
LB others/regrowth as needed
Honestly, there really isn’t much TO a spell rotation for Resto Druids, and this might explain why you haven’t seen much on it!
I’m thinkin of swiching to a Tank druid ,but i cant find a article about that!!!maybe i might post one on here for others to see…ill prolly be real short and sweet but i dont know if id share or not…
@Chief
Well, I don’t know about that, but I know a good site to peruse if you’re looking to tank as a druid is http://thebigbearbutt.com/.
Great Post and along with the “Fresh 70 Resto Druid: Cheat Sheet”, I learnt all I needed from this one site. Great Work.
Just wanted to add to those people who are scared of or don’t like add-ons to aid them here is a handy macro to help in 5-Man Healing.
Basically, use the “?” button in the macro menu and add the following to the macro text:
/cast [mod][target=player] Lifebloom
/cast [nomod][target=mouseover,help,nodead][help,nodead][target=focus] Lifebloom
This macro will not work properly on a “click” so make sure it is bound to a key on your tree form actionbar (I use key 1)
when your group is together you will need to click on your Tank type in chat /Focus – this will make the tank your main healing focus. Failure to choose a focus will make you the focus.
What this Macro then does is if your mouse is on a character on screen or on their group portrait, it will cast a Lifebloom on them when you press the key that it is bound to. If the mouse is on your portrait it will cast Lifebloom on you and if the mouse is not on anyone or is over a mob it will cast on your tank (or whoever you chose as your /focus). These rules are fixed and no matter who you may have as your target (be it a player, mob or boss) it will still follow the mouseover rule. (ie, if you’ve clicked on your groups rogue and the mouse is now pointing to the floor, your Lifebloom is going to cast on your Tank (your /focus) not the selected rogue)
I have all 3 main heals with this macro (just change the spell name to the approriate one) bound to keys 1-3.
Lastly as a failsafe/panic if you hold one of the modifier keys (ctrl, shift or alt) and press the button it will cast the spell on you regardless of the position of the mouse.
Hope this is explained well and helps you all like it does me!
With 3.1 coming out it opens an exciting venue of Dual-Speccing. Yes it’ll involve lots of gear but well worth it in my opinion. Beartrees WILL be possible witha simple Switch spec I am very excited about this aspect. The only reason I recently have come to think to make the switch is that my guild is overflowing with tanks. When before LK It was me, and my warrior friend. But seeing as there’s a lot of /hate aimed at both classes of druid and warrior tanks and the absolute lack of healers in my guild being only a Shaman and a Preist I think adding a tree to the mix would be plenty fun.