How To Improve As Restoration Druid — Shadowlands 9.0.5
On this page, you will find out how you can improve at playing Restoration Druid in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.5. We list the common mistakes that you should try to avoid and the small details that can greatly improve your performance.
Correctly Managing Mana
You should consider Mana as your most valuable resource. The preferred result is being as close to 0 Mana as possible in the end of the fight. Both not using 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 very fast.
Cutting down on casting Regrowth without
Clearcasting
buff, 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 delivering healing
(
Efflorescence and
Wild Growth). Try to conserve Mana for
periods of high 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 look into using
Tranquility early into the fight just to
conserve some Mana, assuming it will be up again for your assignment.
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 in higher average Health on your raiders,
which in turn can save people from some of the 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
that have tight windows to be killed or during burn phases. There can almost
never be too much damage.
Using Cooldowns Enough
Restoration Druids are a specialisation that relies heavily on the
performance of their cooldowns. One of the most common mistakes is having
low counts of Flourish and
Tranquility casts. You should
aim to fit as many of those as possible, within reason. 1 Tranquility cast and
2 Flourish casts in an 8-minute fight as opposed to 3 and 5 respectively is the
difference between being last and first on the meters.
Having High Uptime on Important Spells
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. It is one of the easiest areas anyone can improve
on, especially with the existence of multiple WeakAuras that will remind you
when those are not up. Make sure to check Wago.io
and import one to your liking.
Maximizing Damage Output
A mentality that is very common among all healers is that your damage output is irrelevant, and that you should only cast healing spells. While it is true that survivability of the group 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 towards killing the boss. If you are neglecting 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 a lot of free
globals from not being able to cast healing spells constantly. Even in
Mana-starved scenarios you can always either cast Wrath or
Shred. There is never a good reason to stand still and do nothing.
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 10% 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.
Changelog
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Druid Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been reviewed and approved by Torty, one of the main Restoration Druid theorycrafters. He is an author of the Twig It spreadsheet and DPS action priority list. He currently raids in Pure.
- New Druid Cheetah Travel Form Jump Animation on the 9.1 PTR
- The Infinite Pirate Dragon Boss Preview: Will It Be a Mount?
- Patch 9.0.5 Hotfixes: April 19th
- Burning Crusade Classic Beta Update: April 19th
- WoW Classic Patch 1.13.7 Patch Notes
- Great Tips for Getting the Slime Serpent Secret Mount
- Castle Nathria 9.0.5 DPS Log Rankings and Analysis, Week 6: Assassination's Slow and Steady Rise
- Pro Tip: Do Not Waste Your Polished Pet Charms on Pet Portals