Restoration Druid Frequently Asked Questions — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

Restoration Druids remain the best healing in Mythic+ and one of the better specs in raid healing environment. Combination of strong passive tank healing, a wide variety of raid healing cooldowns, and an ability to do burst DPS makes the spec desirably in pretty much all forms of content.

A summary of all changes can be found on our intro page.

A 10% nerf to Mastery: Harmony is almost inconsequential in raid content, amounting to about 1.5% healing reduction with Spring Blossoms talented. We still have access to Incarnation: Tree of Life, Flourish, Innervate, and Tranquility. Combining any of these results in substantial burst healing, which is one of the most desirable qualities a healer can provide in raid environment. Lack of raid-wide damage reduction cooldown is a negative on some encounters, but they are usually rare or can be played around with higher burst healing Druids provide.

Mastery nerf affects Mythic+ content a lot more. Substantial Sunfire nerf reduces our passive AoE damage by quite a bit, although Moonfire buff negates the effects of it on single target. Furthermore, 5-target cap on Swipe reduces our AoE damage even more. However, we gained Stampeding Roar, more frequent access to burst healing via stronger Soul of the Forest, and better burst damage using Heart of the Wild. Overall, Restoration Druids are the best healing spec in Mythic+ environment.

For Alliance, Night Elves are slightly be better, due to the power of Shadowmeld in dungeon content. Both Night Elf and Worgen passive racials are inconsequential in raid content.

As for Horde, you have to choose between a better throughput from Trolls and better utility racials from Taurens and Highmountain Taurens. There is no formula that will help you make this decision, but the differences between all three races are pretty small.

There are no goals for stats, no set amounts to aim for, no combinations of stat distributions that are good. It is a very common misconception to focus on stats, or aim for the "right" ones. They do not exist. The only stat that will always be correct to pick is Intellect.

Haste increases the healing of all your HoTs linearly, which means there are no, and can not be, any breakpoints.

Grid2, VuhDo or ElvUI all provide strong, customisable raid frames options. Standard Blizzard frames, unfortunately, do not offer options to show the same amount information or ways to filter out useless information.

You can, but there are no good reasons to do it. Playstyle in any of the affinities is essentially the same as the specs they mimic, but with much lower damage. If you choose to still level as Restoration, make sure you drop any and all gear with Mastery on it and try to use any trinkets with damage procs or on-use effects.

• They work if Rejuvenation is your only HoT on the target.
• They work if Germination is your only HoT on the target.
• The extra healing does not work if you have both Rejuvenation and Germination on the target.

Trait will provide extra 1 second to both Rejuvenation and Germination at all times.

Pick whichever option provides you the most Intellect. Seabreeze provides slightly less Haste than an equal item level weapon would provide otherwise. The difference in stats means that Seabreeze is about 5 item levels worse than another weapon.