How To Improve As Restoration Druid — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Mismanaging 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.

2. Low Cooldown usage

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.

3. Bad 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.

4. Thinking Damage Does Not Matter

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 raid'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 Solar 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.

5. Changelog