Druid Guide Part 1: Spells
This is part 1 of my Druid Resto Mega Guide 3.0! Since this guide is written for the beginner and the raider alike, we are starting quite basic! I am starting with spells, you need to know your tools before you go healing!
Types of spells
Lets get to know your druid a bit better. Which healing spells does a druid have and what do they do? The most important spell-types for a druid are Healing over Time (HoT) spells. A druid has 5 types of HoT spells:
- Lifebloom, an instant 7 second healing over time spell with a bloom (direct heal) at the end, if refreshed before the end the duration it will not bloom but stack up to three times multiplying the heal per second by 3. The lifebloom spell was introduced with the introduction of The Burning Crusade and was the number one druid spell. It was mostly used on (multiple) tanks to “cushion” high spikes of healing. When Wrath of the Lich King went live, the HoT part of lifebloom was nerfed slighty to make druids aware of other spells. While lifebloom remains a tank healing spell other spells are needed to keep your targets alive. I have used lifebloom more often on raid healing where the raid takes sustained damage.
In patch 3.1 Blizzard is changed this spell a bit. The mana cost of the spell is doubled, when you let it bloom you get 50% of the base mana back. Also the bloom is multiplied by the number of stacks. This means it becomes more expensive to keep the a lifebloom stack on a tank (same healing, more mana) and it is rewarding to let it bloom to get the mana return. Lifebloom will remain one of the most important spells for a druid, you just can’t keep it stacked on multiple tanks anymore due to the higher mana cost. But single casting it on the raid is rewarding (not refreshing it) it gives you a good and cheap spell! The Bloom can crit, and it does often. - Regrowth, a direct heal with a 21 second healing over time spell (2 second cast, 7 ticks, 1 per 3 seconds). The regrowth spell is a very powerful spell because it instantly heals your target plus it gives you 7 ticks of healing. It is quite mana efficient and used with the Glyph of Regrowth it is even better.
- Rejuvenation, an instant 15 second healing over time spell (5 ticks, 1 per 3 seconds, first tick after 3 seconds), this heal is a raid heal. It is perfect to spam around on your raid and of course have one up on the tank(s).
- Wild Growth, an instant 7 second healing over time spell healing 5 targets with 15 yards of the target it cast on. So you can cast it on a Boss and heal 5 melee’s chopping away at that boss, it will not heal the boss. Since patch 3.1 we see more and more raid damage so a decent aoe heal is very welcome. You can spam it every 6 seconds. It is a smart heal which means it will heal the players with the lowest health within 15 yards of the target it is cast on.
- Tranquility, an instant 8 second heal for party members (4 ticks), druid needs to channel. This heal is a panic button and is only used in certain situations like saving your party in heroics, but be wary it can generate a huge amount of threat.
Next to these spells a druid has three direct heals:
- Swiftmend, instantly consumes an active regrowth or rejuvenation spell and instantly heals the target instead of over time. This is a save button for any target you have your HoTs on, it heals for a very decent amount. The Glyph of Swiftmend is mandatory. A swiftmend can crit for quite a good amount of healing, so be sure to put it in sight!
- Healing Touch, heals the target for a large amount (3 second cast), the biggest heal a druid has. Most druids only use it in conjunction with Nature’s Swiftness to turn it into a big save heal. But it can be turned into a flash type heal with the Glyph of Healing Touch and become a 1 second cast heal;
- Nourish, heals the target and healing is increased by 20% if you have one or more HoT’s on the target (1,5 second cast). Nourish becomes even more powerful with the T7 4 set bonus and/or the Glyph of Nourish (these two stack!), it will buff the bonus of 20% by respectively 5% or 6% per HoT present on the target. In patch 3.2 Nourish will get more +healing from the talent Empowered Touch (+20%), which will make Nourish a more favourable spell then a glyphed Healing Touch because its healing amount will surpass Healing Touch.
A druid has a nice set of healing spells to choose from, healing with a druid means you heal over time mostly and use your direct heals like Regrowth, Nourish, Swiftmend and Healing Touch to counter higher or spikes in damage.
Next time I will talk about Glyphs! But if you want to read on now, you can always try my old Druid guide!
NB: There is no “one” way to heal, and my healing strategies might not align with yours. Thats ok though, otherwise it would become a dull world of warcraft!
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Nice. I’m looking forward to the rest. Editorial suggestions. Feel free to ignore.
Lifebloom History: Most people who care about the history are probably already aware of it. Perhaps the history should be a footnote? Starting the guide with a lot of text that doesn’t help the novice reader may discourage further reading.
Tranquility: I suggest changing “Group” to “Party”, since I’d say a raid is also a group.
Nourish: Have you run the math on the Empowered Touch change? I haven’t, but since ET is a 40% bonus to HT, and only a 20% bonus to Nourish, I don’t see how it will let Nourish pass HT (although it might pass Glyphed HT …).
@Erdluf, thank you
- I will think about the lifebloom history, you’ve got a good point there;
- Tranquility, check!
- Nourish: That 20% wasn’t to be found anywere before. From what I have seen it will surpass a Glyphed Healing Touch, bringing crits to 10K+.
Your Druid Resto Mega Guide was the first blog I ever read.
From there I went on to find all the other blogs that fill up my days. Thank you.
Very nice! Have you considered adding buffs and dispells to the list? They’re often an important part of healing. Things like Nature’s Swiftness, Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, Thorns, GotW.
@ Flawless, thank you ! I hope to make the experience even better with the new guide!
@ Bellwether: I have put it on my list of stuff to do (its growing, fast). This first part was solely about the healing spells. The addition of the buffs is a good one.
@ All readers: please make post if you feel I have missed something or anything you disagree with. If not via a comment, sent me an email via the contactform (see contact tab at the top of the site). More contributors will only make this guide better!
If I can help you out with anything, as well, feel free to let me know
I am glad you are back
very nice guide!
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My druid hit 80 some days ago, and switching to tree (leveling feral) gave me a hard time understanding all the HoT’s and their dependencies.
I realy like that you wrote a short word about the history of Lifebloom because it is easier to understand why the way of using this spell changed (but a footnote would be nice too, of course
What I miss is at least a short note for pvp-situations, even if you are not a pvp’er I bet ‘young’ druids like me would appreciate some kind of advise in this direction.
Thanks for your effort, greetings from germany.
It might be worth going through talent tree options within the resto tree next as opposed to glyphs. You can look up Aysel on Armory (yes she needs a new helm… still), look for the resto druid one, I am set up to buff the raid as much as possible and to pretty much never cast a spell with cast time. I am to pretty much spam rejuv, LB, and WG all of the time depending on needs of the raid. You can easily make a better tank healing druid with better glyphs and talent selections, I am quite aware of this. I just thought mentioning it would be worthwhile to newbies.
Ace website. You have brought in a new regular reader. Please keep up the good writings and I look forward to more of your engrossing writings.
Hello and thank you very much I literaly just made a druid and i’m gona go resto! So I hopped on the web and started looking for sites that might help me understand what im getting into, I found a few and they made me not want to play my druid and to go priest or pally, but then I found yours! and I cant wait till I can start healing in dungeons
I will be back often to learn more! well back to the game have a good day and Blessed be
Oh and I just wanted to add somthing that I hope is helpfull! I havent tried it on druid yet but I believe HoTs will do very nicely in BGs because on my draenie warrior Gift of the Narru (a excelent Hot) has saved me, the other ppl kept attacking me but as soon as they did damage to me i was healed for it from that spells “ticks”
I hope this was helpfull to the guide and to any1 who reads this comment