Restoration Druid DPS Guide — The War Within Pre-Patch
On this page, you will learn how to DPS as a Restoration Druid in World of Warcraft — The War Within Pre-Patch. We cover rotation, talents, stat priority, gear advice, etc.
Introduction to DPS as Restoration Druid
One of the main reasons to do damage as a healer 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.
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.
Spells and Passives Summary
Caster Form
Moonfire is a strong single target DoT.
Sunfire is a strong AoE DoT.
Wrath is a weak single-target damage spell.
Starfire is a cleave spell that damages all targets around your main target.
Starsurge is a decent single target instant cast spell that increases the power of your
Eclipse. It has a 10-second cooldown.
Cat Form
Shred is a medium strength single target attack. It generates a Combo Point.
Rake is a solid single target DoT. It generates a Combo Point.
Swipe is a decent AoE attack. It generates a Combo Point if it hits at least one target. Also usable in
Bear Form for no cost and no cooldown, but it does less damage than the
Cat Form version.
Thrash is a strong AoE DoT. Awards a Combo Point.
Rip is a solid single target DoT. It uses up to 5 Combo Points.
Ferocious Bite is a strong single-target attack. It uses up to 5 Combo Points. It can use up to 25 extra Energy to deal up to 100% extra damage.
Maim is a single target stun that deals mediocre damage. The stun duration is equal to the amount of Combo Points used.
Prowl activates
Cat Form and puts you in Stealth. While stealthed,
Shred will deal 60% extra damage and have double the chance to critically strike;
Rake will stun the target and deal 60% extra damage.
Pandemic is a passive effect that makes it so that when refreshing your
periodic damage or healing effects, the remaining duration is added to the new
one, up to 130% of the base duration. Understanding this effect is very
important to maximizing your damage. For example, if you attempt to refresh
Moonfire (16-second base duration) at 10 seconds left, the new duration
will become 16 + (16 * 0.3) = 20.8 seconds. You will want to refresh your DoTs
in a so-called Pandemic window, defined as any time before the DoT
expiration and 30% of its maximum duration. For the Moonfire example, it will be
a time frame between 0 and 4.8 seconds. Casting Moonfire at this point will add
full 16 seconds, ensuring you lose no damage and your DoT is always on the
target dealing damage.
Rotation for Restoration Druid
One important thing to note is that you will receive 104% of your Intellect
as Attack Power at all times. While technically, your Cat Form and
Bear Form abilities scale only from Attack Power, this conversion makes
you scale very well from Intellect. It also means that
Rake and
Rip will deal full damage even when you are not in Cat or Bear forms.
Furthermore, you gain absolutely nothing from Agility, so trinkets and weapons
with this stat are useless.
Basic Rotation
While utilizing all of the DoTs, multiple Combo Point generators, and
different finishers might look daunting at first, you can do a large portion of
your DPS with rather simplistic rotations. Do not use Swipe on this
target count, it is a DPS loss to do so over multi-dotting.
1-3 Targets
- Use
Rip whenever you have 5 Combo Points, and the target has a long time to live. Otherwise, use
Ferocious Bite.
- Keep
Rake up.
- Keep
Moonfire up.
- Keep
Sunfire up.
- Keep
Thrash DoT up.
- Use
Shred to generate Combo Points on single target.
4+ Targets
- Use
Rip whenever you have 5 Combo Points, and the target has a long time to live. Otherwise, use
Ferocious Bite.
- Keep
Sunfire up on all enemies.
- Cast
Moonfire on all enemies.
- Use
Thrash for the DoT.
- Keep
Rake up on as many targets as you can.
- Use
Starfire, if you are able to cast it without interruptions.
Advanced Rotation for Feral Affinity
There is a lot of depth to doing damage as a Restoration Druid. Some universal tricks you can use are described below.
- Always try to open on the enemy with
Rake out of
Prowl unless stun diminishing returns are important on this particular enemy. Refrain from pandemic refreshing this Rake early. Let it drop, and immediately apply a new one. It is a DPS increase if you cast a new one within 2 seconds of letting it drop.
- Night Elf racial
Shadowmeld is considered Stealth, so you can use it in
Cat Form and instantly apply Rake for a 60% damage increase and a stun.
- You can use
Prowl outside of combat in caster form to shift into
Cat Form without triggering global cooldown.
- You can use these last two tricks together. Cast
Shadowmeld, immediately use Prowl, then cast
Rake to stun your target. Remember that you will only leave combat when fighting trash packs, as bosses always keep you in combat.
- When talented into
Master Shapeshifter, you can be more aggressive with
Cat Form, since it will do significantly more damage than caster form.
Single Target
- Use
Rip whenever you have 5 Combo Points, and the target has a long time to live.
- Use
Ferocious Bite at 50 Energy and 5 Combo Points, and if there are more than 12 seconds left on
Rip.
- Keep
Moonfire up.
- Keep
Rake up.
- Keep
Sunfire up.
- Keep
Thrash DoT up.
- Use
Shred to generate Combo Points.
You want to use as few global cooldowns as possible on shifting into
Cat Form. Try to refresh
Sunfire as late as possible and
immediately after refreshing
Moonfire, even if it is not in a Pandemic
window yet.
2-3 Targets
With Master Shapeshifter talented, you will potentially spend more
time in
Cat Form to apply more
Rips. Do not be afraid to drop
uptime on
Moonfire, if you have enough energy to stay in Cat.
- Use
Rip whenever you have 5 Combo Points, and the target has a long time to live.
- Keep
Sunfire up on all targets.
- Keep
Rake up on one target.
- Use
Thrash for the DoT.
- Keep
Moonfire up on as many targets as you can.
- Use
Shred to generate Combo Points.
Do not cast Sunfire until enemies are clumped up. Ideally, you want
to spend only 1 global cooldown to put Sunfire on everyone.
4+ Targets
- Use
Rip whenever you have 5 Combo Points.
- Keep
Sunfire up on all targets.
- Spread
Rake if you are talented into
Master Shapeshifter.
- Use
Thrash for the DoT.
- Use
Swipe to generate Combo Points if you are specced into it, and enemies do not have much time to live.
Starfire becomes a much better spell to cast than Cat Form
abilities against a high target count (6+, and lower with
Heart of the Wild). When that happens, you should drop all Cat spells
from this rotation and just stay in caster form during
Heart of the Wild.
Keep
Sunfire up and spam
Starfire.
Using Convoke the Spirits Effectively
Convoke the Spirits only does damage in
Cat Form. You will
also have to use Convoke for healing in certain spots. Do not try to hold on to
it for too long, as the cooldown is short enough for you to just pop it
whenever you have an opportunity to do so, unless a huge pull or a very hard
boss are going to require it for healing.
Stat Priority
Equipping the highest item level pieces without Mastery will give you the highest damage. If you have equal item-level pieces, you will want to prioritize them in the following ways. Technically, for pure DPS Critical Strike will be better DPS than Haste, but for practical purposes, where you have to occasionally heal, Haste will outpace it. You might want to not go far beyond stat diminishing breakpoints, if your priority is to deal damage. Losing secondaries from your gear when all stats are that close is in general pretty bad.
Single Target
- Intellect
- Haste
- Critical Strike
- Versatility
2+ Targets
- Intellect
- Haste
- Critical Strike
- Versatility
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 20 Mar. 2024: Updated for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 28 Apr. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.0.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 29 Dec. 2022: Changed spell priorities and Convoke the Spirits advice.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Adjusted DPS rotations.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 18 Feb. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 29 Oct. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated with Balance affinity rotations.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
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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.
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