How To Improve As Restoration Druid — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

You should consider Mana your most valuable resource. The preferred result is being as close to 0 Mana as possible at the end of the fight. Not using the entire Mana pool and going out of Mana too early are huge throughput losses that might have resulted in deaths during progression.

Excessive use of inefficient spells will drain your Mana pool quickly. Cutting down on casting Regrowth without Clearcasting buff or at low Abundance counts, casting too many Rejuvenations during low damage periods, and wasting Innervate casts are the first things you should look into when trying to fix this problem. It is important to understand that expensive spells on cooldown are your most efficient ways of healing ( Efflorescence and Wild Growth). Try to conserve Mana for periods of serious damage instead of trying to top the meters at irrelevant, low-damage points of the fight. Not having enough Mana to burst a couple of last big raid hits can be a fatal mistake, even the difference between a kill and a wipe. You can use Tranquility early into the fight to conserve some Mana, assuming it will be up again for your assignment. The same goes for Convoke the Spirits / Incarnation: Tree of Life and Flourish.

On the other hand, ending the fight with 30% Mana or even more can be just as big of a loss and potentially as dangerous to your raid's survivability. You should carefully allocate all of the excesses to various difficult phases of a boss. More healing usually translates into higher average Health on your raiders, which can save people from some non-lethal misplays. In cases where, due to one reason or another, you are still unable to burn through all of the Mana, you should consider putting more Moonfires and Sunfires on enemies. This can be especially helpful on extra mobs with tight windows to kill or during burn phases. There can rarely be too much damage.

Since Soul of the Forest is a talent you will have in every spec, you should learn how to use it optimally. The best way to utilize it is by pairing it with Rejuvenation in raid or if damage is coming up in Mythic+. It's also fine to combine with Regrowth if the group needs immediate healing.

Restoration Druids are a specialization that relies heavily on the performance of their cooldowns. One of the most common mistakes is having low counts of Tranquility and Convoke the Spirits or Incarnation: Tree of Life casts. You should aim to fit as many of those as possible within reason. 1 Tranquility and 2 Convoke casts in an 8-minute fight as opposed to 3 and 7, respectively, is the difference between being last and first on the meters.

Efflorescence and Lifebloom are two extremely efficient spells that you should aim to keep up at all times, where they will be doing effective healing. Use the Cooldown Manager to track when they are missing.

A pervasive mentality among all healers is that your damage output is irrelevant and that you should only cast healing spells. While it is true that the group's survivability is your number one priority, the idea that "healer damage does not matter" is a misconception for a few reasons.

The first reason is that damage is damage. Whether it comes from the tank, a DPS, or a healer, all damage contributes equally toward killing the boss. If you neglect your damage, you are hindering your group's chances at a kill by lowering the overall damage output.

The second reason is that Restoration Druids naturally have many free globals from being unable to cast healing spells constantly. Even in Mana-starved scenarios, you can always cast Wrath. There is never a good reason to stand still and do nothing. It is especially important in raids when you are specced into Master Shapeshifter.

While not being as noticeable in raids, the difference between 0 damage healer in a Mythic+ dungeon and a healer that actively uses his damage abilities can be up to 6% of the total group DPS. It is important to remember that enemies only die when their Health reaches zero, not based on the amount of time your allies spend at 100% Health. In some situations, you can afford to heal your group between the pulls instead of during them.