Restoration Druid Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.2.5)

In Battleground Blitz, the primary role of Restoration Druid is to support your team with incredible healing output and help your team win team fights. There will be maps where you focus on healing, but you also have opportunities to capture nodes with Cyclone. If you are not healing or capturing nodes, you are quickly moving from node to node if your teammates need help. With spells like Ironbark and Incarnation: Tree of Life/ Ancient of Lore, you have multiple ways to help your team recover when you start to fall behind in healing.

Here is the talent build you will be using to maximize your damage output:

• Ancient of Lore
• Forest Guardian
• Early Spring
• High Winds

These are the 3 PvP talents you should be using in battleground blitz. Ancient of Lore is an incredible talent. This shapeshifts you into an Ancient of Lore, preventing all crowd control effects, reducing damage taken, and granting access to Blossom Burst and Mass Blooming. This replaces Incarnation: Tree of Life. Forest Guardian. When you Wrath, Starfire, Cyclone, and use any combo-point generating abilities, extend the duration of your active heal over time effects. This is great for increasing your overall healing output while staying aggressive. Finally, Early Spring makes Wild Growth instant and heal 6 allies. It will also heal all targets with Lifebloom on them. Because there are so many players in battleground blitz, there will also be many kicks to deal with. Making Wild Growth instant increases your overall healing output. However, if your primary goal is to control enemies, High Winds is an excellent talent to help with that. This increases the range of Cyclone, Typhoon, and Entangling Roots by 5 yards, making it much easier to lock down enemies.

For an in-depth guide to Restoration Druid talents, read here:

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Druid has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Cyclone
• Mighty Bash
• Typhoon
• Mass Entanglement
• Rake
• Entangling Roots
• Maim

You have several defensive abilities you can use to help keep you and your team alive.

• Bear Form is going to be your main defensive ability. With talents like Guardian Affinity to buff it, it becomes even more powerful. If an enemy team is focusing you, be sure to use Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Cenarion Ward and then sit in Bear Form. Use the ability Frenzied Regeneration to get even more health back.
• Cyclone is a good defensive if the enemy team does not have any interrupts remaining. This stops a player from doing anything and is especially impactful when an enemy is trying to use their burst cooldowns. If the enemy does have interrupts available, try juking them first.
• Ursol's Vortex is great when trying to get away from melee DPS. It is also important to remember that it can be used when in other forms. If you are taking heavy damage in Bear Form, you can use Ursol's Vortex and Dash away.
• Use Druid mobility as a defensive. We mentioned earlier that Restoration Druids have great mobility. They have spells like Travel Form and Dash to break snares and get away from enemies. Remembering that shifting between forms also breaks roots.

1. Intellect;
2. Versatility;
3. Mastery;
4. Haste;
5. Critical Strike.

The stat priority for Restoration Druid is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena. If you want an in-depth explanation and suggestions on gear, read our gearing section here:

If you get either Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks as a map, you will likely be defending the flag carrier, unless there is a Holy Paladin on your team. You want this role because of your strong single-target healing and cooldowns, such as Ironbark.

If you do find yourself healing offense you can still make crucial decisions by using Cyclone and Entangling Roots to control the enemy team. Cyclone should be used on the enemy healer if your team is using offensive cooldowns and trying to get a kill. If you are not, use Cyclone on the DPS you are not focusing to stop damage. If you are playing against melee, Entangling Roots can stop them in their tracks. You also have access to Hibernate and Soothe. Hibernate can be used on Druids that are in animal form or Hunter pets to stop their damage. You can use Soothe to dispel Fury Warrior enrage effects.

On resource race maps, your primary goal is to keep your team alive at whichever base is decided to be fought over. However, you also have the opportunity to capture nodes if there is only one person there. You can do this by doing the following:

• Enter Cat Form and Prowl.
• Use Rake/ Mighty Bash on the target to stun them.
• Immediately start casting Cyclone.
• Start capturing the node.

Ideally, you force the enemy player to use their Trinket. Enter Prowl again and wait until you can get a full stun/cyclone combination.Once you can, do the above rotation and you should be able to cap the node.

If you do not want to capture nodes or your team needs your help at another base, that is okay. You can focus on healing and keeping your team alive in team fights. There will normally be a large team fight at one of the nodes that you can be a part of. For an in-depth guide to Restoration Druid healing rotations, read here:

Similar to resource race maps, your goal is to keep your team alive in the big team fights. The goal on this map, unlike normal Rated Battlegrounds, is to team fight at one node and try to cap both bases. This results in long 7v7 team fights, and the winner will more than likely pull ahead quickly. Trade Tranquility when your team gets low, use Ironbark on a teammate that drops low, and dispel crowd control with Nature's Cure. Use Mighty Bash on a healer when your team wants to land a kill.

Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active, and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.

Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so do not grab the flag unless it is a dire situation and you have to. The most important part about this map is to win the initial team fight and quickly gain momentum by grabbing 3 orbs and standing in the middle of the map. When the enemy team starts to resurrect, leave middle and kite around the center. Here are some tips for this map:

• Players take more damage the longer they hold the orb. This means that, eventually, the Orb carriers will die. Ideally, your team will only hold 2-3 orbs at a time so that you do not easily wipe when you have high stacks.
• Make sure you die on the correct side of the map! You and your team will resurrect depending on where you died. If you die on purple side, you will resurrect on blue side and vise versa. Ensuring you and your team resurrect together is crucial, this will allow you to regroup faster and quickly wipe the enemy team that will be weak.
• There are leaves at every orb; if you are low on Mana, make sure you grab one!