Restoration Druid PvP Guide for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Restoration Druid offers very high mobility, strong utility, and a high amount of instant casts which do very high healing, making it the current best healer in all forms of PvP content.

Strengths

• High damage potential during Heart of the Wild windows which line up well with kill attempts.
• Strong defensives thanks to Bear Form and Bear Form, as well as Symbiosis abilities.
• Extremely high mobility with plenty of instant casts heals as well as Travel Form and Cat Form.
• Powerful crowd control in the form of instant Soul of the Forest-powered Cyclone, Entangling Roots and Nature's Grasp.

Weaknesses

• Requires time to build up Lifebloom stacks on a player to really keep them healthy if it falls off.
• High Mana costs can make sustain difficult, especially when facing comps that can dispel your HoTs.
• When Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness are on cooldown, Resto Druid lacks an easy way to quickly top party members compared to other healers.

• Glyph of Cyclone — increases the range on Cyclone by 5 yards, which is very useful for crowd controlling enemy ranged players.
• Glyph of Efflorescence — causes Efflorescence to be placed based on Wild Mushroom instead of Swiftmend. This means you can have 100% uptime on Efflorescence and always have it down where players will be, rather than accidentally placing it far when you use Swiftmend on a random player.
• Glyph of Fae Silence — makes Faerie Fire silence enemies for 3 seconds, but also adds a 15-second cooldown. While it forces you to go into Bear Form to use, the ranged silence can be invaluable against caster compositions.

• Glyph of the Sprouting Mushroom — Wild Mushroom can now be placed anywhere on the ground instead of requiring a target. When combined with Glyph of Efflorescence, this gives you full control to use Efflorescence wherever you would like;
• Glyph of Grace — similar to Aquatic Form, this is a nice quality of life increase and can make you nearly invincible to falling damage;
• Glyph of Aquatic Form — increases your swim speed by 50% in Aquatic Form, which is mostly for outdoor world content purposes.

In PvP you will need to react and adapt to different situations, meaning you will not always follow the recommended rotation below. Aim to do whatever allows you to stick on your target the most while dealing as much damage as possible.

1. Cast Swiftmend for the Soul of the Forest instant cast, typically to be used on Cyclone at an appropriate time for pressure;
2. Maintain 3 stacks of Lifebloom at all times on the most vulnerable target of your team;
3. Consume Omen of Clarity procs as much as possible with Regrowth.
4. Keep Wild Mushroom active at all times to not only collect healing, but to also keep Efflorescence active;
5. Cast Wild Mushroom: Bloom against heavy damage goes on your team;
6. Cast Rejuvenation on as many players as possible to prepare against incoming damage.

Restoration Druid only has a few cooldowns that are important to understand as they will greatly impact your performance.

• Swiftmend — 15-second cooldown. By far your most important cooldown due to its Soul of the Forest interaction, enabling an instant cast afterwards. This allows you to start an instant CC chain, making Restoration Druids extremely powerful at setting up kills.
• Tranquility — 3-minute cooldown. Heals nearby allies for a large amount, but comes with a channel that must be maintained. You cannot move at any point during this channel or the healing will end.
• Nature's Swiftness — 3-minute cooldown. Causes your next Nature spell with a cast time less than 10 seconds to be instant cast. Mainly useful to get a quick CC spell, Healing Touch or Regrowth cast off. The healing is also increased by 50%.
• Barkskin — 1-minute cooldown. Reduces your damage taken and also prevents you from suffering spellcasting delays when being attacked. Ideally you will want to use this whenever you are under heavy pressure.

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game-changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Stampeding Roar — While not always useful, the extra movement speed it provides to your group can be very useful when kitting and getting out of dangerous situations.
• Dash — Provides you with a large movement speed increase, allowing you to get out of tricky situations much easier.
• Cyclone — Your primary form of crowd control. This will prevent a target from being able to do anything, but will also prevent your allies from dealing damage to them. Typically instantly cast with Soul of the Forest.
• Faerie Fire — Reduces the targets armor while also preventing them for turning invisible, and interrupts when used with Glyph of Fae Silence. Very useful when fighting stealth classes and casters.
• Nature's Grasp — Causes players who attack you to be afflicted by Entangling Roots, making it easy to get away from enemy players.
• Frenzied Regeneration — While it may have a long cooldown, it can be useful in emergency situations to give yourself extra health.

If you are looking to maximize the potential of your Restoration Druid in Mists of Pandaria PvP, these are the recommended professions:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you 2 additional sockets with Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves, giving you even more Haste or Mastery.
2. Jewelcrafting — Gives you three extra powerful gems, which can boost your Haste or Mastery even higher.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for an Druid in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Restoration Druid place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.