Cataclysm Classic Restoration Druid Leveling
On this page, you will find our level-by-level Restoration Druid leveling guide for WoW Cataclysm Classic.
Restoration Druid Level-by-Level Rotation, Talents, and Trainer Skills
Restoration is not recommended for solo leveling as it is much slower at killing enemies than the other specializations. If you want to level as Restoration, we suggest playing almost entirely in dungeons as a healer. If you are interested in the fastest solo leveling experience with a caster playstyle, check out our Balance Druid Leveling Guide.
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Leveling Talents
Your first talent point unlocks at Level 10.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast. Continue with Heart of the Wild for more Intellect.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast. Continue with Heart of the Wild for more Intellect, and Natural Shapeshifter.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast. Continue with Heart of the Wild for more Intellect, and Natural Shapeshifter on the way to the powerful Master Shapeshifter.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast. Continue with Heart of the Wild for more Intellect, and Natural Shapeshifter on the way to the powerful Master Shapeshifter. Follow up with points into Blessing of the Grove.
Start with Naturalist to make your main healing spells at low level faster to cast. Continue with Heart of the Wild for more Intellect, and Natural Shapeshifter on the way to the powerful Master Shapeshifter. Follow up with points into Blessing of the Grove and pick up Nature's Swiftness, which is the first active talent of the tree.
Revitalize grants a large increase in Mana sustain.
Revitalize grants a large increase in Mana sustain, and Improved Rejuvenation improves some of your most used spells.
Revitalize grants a large increase in Mana sustain, and Improved Rejuvenation improves some of your most used spells.
Revitalize grants a large increase in Mana sustain, and Improved Rejuvenation improves some of your most used spells. Empowered Touch allows you to refresh your Lifebloom automatically by casting single target heals, which is a great quality of life increase.
Revitalize grants a large increase in Mana sustain, and Improved Rejuvenation improves some of your most used spells. Empowered Touch allows you to refresh your Lifebloom automatically by casting single target heals, which is a great quality of life increase, and Malfurion's Gift makes it even easier to refresh by giving you free Regrowths.
Wild Growth will be one of your main healing sources.
Wild Growth will be one of your main healing sources, Efflorescence converts your Swiftmend into a powerful area heal.
Wild Growth will be one of your main healing sources, Efflorescence converts your Swiftmend into a powerful area heal. Pick up Nature's Cure along the way to gain a magic dispel.
Wild Growth will be one of your main healing sources, Efflorescence converts your Swiftmend into a powerful area heal. Pick up Nature's Cure along the way to gain a magic dispel, and Gift of the Earthmother to improve your overall healing.
Swift Rejuvenation makes your Rejuvenation casts much faster.
Swift Rejuvenation makes your Rejuvenation casts much faster. Follow up with one point into Nature's Bounty.
Swift Rejuvenation makes your Rejuvenation casts much faster. Follow up with one point into Nature's Bounty and finish the Restoration tree with Tree of Life, which is now a powerful healing cooldown that changes how your core spells work for its duration.
For the final talents, we will want to take Nature's Majesty on the Balance tree.
For the final talents, we will want to take Nature's Majesty and Nature's Grace on the Balance tree.
For the final talents, we will want to take Nature's Majesty and Nature's Grace on the Balance tree on way the to Moonglow, which is a powerful Mana saving talent.
For the final talents, we will want to take Nature's Majesty and Nature's Grace on the Balance tree on way the to Moonglow, which is a powerful Mana saving talent. The final two points are optional, you can place them into Genesis for slightly more healing from most of your kit or into Nature's Bounty for specific boosts to Regrowth and Nourish, instead.
Leveling Glyphs
Your leveling glyphs are mostly the same as your endgame glyphs. Glyphs can be a huge boost to your healing capabilities as some glyphs greatly improve the baseline power of your key abilities.
Prime Glyphs
- Glyph of Swiftmend — makes Swiftmend no longer consume one Regrowth or Rejuvenation healing over time effect from the target, which is both a quality of life and healing increase.
- Glyph of Rejuvenation — 10% healing increase to your Rejuvenation healing.
- Glyph of Lifebloom — another passive boost, this time granting 10% extra critical strike to Lifebloom healing.
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Rebirth — makes your Rebirth resurrect players at 100% health, making them much less likely to instantly die again.
- Glyph of Healing Touch — reduces the cooldown on Nature's Swiftness whenever you cast Healing Touch.
- Glyph of Thorns — you will be likely to fight many enemies at once while leveling in dungeons and world content, making Thorns surprisingly strong for extra damage.
- Glyph of Wild Growth — while this is a good end-game glyph that makes you more Mana efficient, it is not so good while leveling up as you will never be playing in groups of more than 5 players, and baseline Wild Growth already hits 5 targets, so this glyph would be a pure negative.
Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of Mark of the Wild — reduces the Mana cost of Mark of the Wild by 50% which makes it cheaper to cast when buffing someone recently resurrected.
- Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth — removes the reagent requirement from Rebirth, saving some gold over time.
- Glyph of Dash — reduces the cooldown of Dash by 20%, increasing your potential mobility in the process.
Leveling Rotation
Whenever Tree of Life is active, you will want to perform a simpler, yet extremely Mana efficient and still high-healing rotation:
- Use Wild Growth on cooldown, as it will hit 2 extra targets for a total of 8 during Tree of Life;
- Cast Lifebloom on as many different damaged players as possible to maximize Omen of Clarity proc chance from Malfurion's Gift, but remember to refresh your main triple stack whenever close to expiring;
- Use Regrowth (instant during Tree of Life) on damaged allies whenever Omen of Clarity procs, preferably also refreshing a Lifebloom in the process.
Outside of Tree of Life you will use a vaster array of spells:
- Keep a triple Lifebloom stack rolling on whatever target will be taking the most damage during the fight, usually the tank. You can refresh this stack with free Regrowths, Healing Touch, or Nourish if the target takes enough damage to warrant the extra healing;
- Use Regrowth to consume Omen of Clarity procs, preferably also refreshing Lifebloom in the process;
- Use Swiftmend on a (preferably injured) target with two or more other players around to activate an Efflorescence healing zone;
- Use Swiftmend on an injured target;
- Use Wild Growth on cooldown if multiple targets are damaged;
- Cast Rejuvenation to heal or prepare for incoming damage;
- Cast Healing Touch to heal heavy single-target damage;
- Cast Nourish to heal targets not in urgent need of healing.
Abilities to Skip While Leveling
While leveling, you will not need to use all of your spells. Many can be skipped to save gold and trained at a later date, when you have more gold available to you. We recommend to not train these spells below, and save your gold for gear, glyphs and mounts instead.
- Entangling Roots
- Starfire
- Rake
- Claw
- Ferocious Bite
- Demoralizing Roar
- Swipe
- Ravage
Continue Improving at Level 85
Congratulations on hitting Level 85 in Cataclysm! Now that your leveling process is over, you can learn more about maximum level Restoration gameplay by reading our detailed guide below.
More Cataclysm Druid Guides
More Cataclysm Spec Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Mytholxgy, who plays healer in Liquid. He is a Templar in the Paladin class discord. You can reach him on Twitter and watch him stream on Twitch.
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