Restoration Druid Healing Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.0.2
In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Restoration Druid in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.0.2.
Restoration Druid in Mythic+
Restoration Druid is one of the better healing specialisations for Mythic+. It has enough throughput to get through almost any healing situation, good crowd control, and the best tank cooldown in the game. The weakness is a pretty low damage output during heavy healing portions of dungeons.
If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.
Restoration Druid Mythic+ Rotation
While there is no specific rotation you should follow in Mythic+ content, it is important to know which spells are most efficient to cast or do the most healing so that you can make better informed decisions.
- Keep
Efflorescence down. This is by far the best spell both in terms of Mana efficiency and healing output per global spent.
- Keep
Lifebloom on an active tank by default. Swap it to yourself during group damage.
- Use
Cenarion Ward on cooldown, if you are using the talent. Use it on the tank since it is a poor method of catching up.
- Keep
Rejuvenation on an active tank and any players with debuffs. Avoid casting too many unnecessary Rejuvenations. A lot of small damage can be healed passively by your AoE healing or even self-healed by players themselves.
- Use
Swiftmend to activate
Soul of the Forest. Most of the time you will be using this to buff
Regrowth, but in any scenario where multiple people are taking damage you should use it on
Wild Growth.
- Use
Regrowth as an emergency heal.
During downtime from healing you should be actively looking to deal as much damage as you can. The rotation might be complicated to master fully, but you should still learn which spells to prioritise to time more keys.
For more information about the Restoration Druid spell priority in Raids, refer back to the Rotation page.
Restoration Druid Utility
Restoration Druid provides much more to the group than just healing. Due to the nature of dungeon content, you will be expected to do damage, crowd control, and heal all at the same time.
Typhoon knocks enemies in front of you away in the direction the cast was aimed. Use this to knock enemies away from the tank, yourself, or away from special mob-specific mechanics such as
Sanguine pools. Keep in mind that you only have access to it through
Balance Affinity.
Soothe dispels all enrage effects from the target. It removes various strong buffs from enemies in dungeons, including
Raging.
Entangling Roots can be used to root patrols. If you apply them to the leading mob in the group, the entire patrol will stop moving. It is useful in tight quarters or to skip certain packs altogether.
Hibernate puts enemy Beast or Dragonkin to sleep for up to 40 seconds. Any damage will awaken the target. Hibernate works in the same way as
Entangling Roots for stopping patrolling packs in dungeons without pulling them. It can also be used to interrupt casts of NPCs without removing DoTs from the target.
Ursol's Vortex conjures a ground zone for 10 seconds that will slow all enemies affected by 50%. It will also pull them to the center after the first time they attempt to leave the circle. It is an extremely powerful tool for kiting, especially during
Necrotic weeks. You can pair Ursol's Vortex with
Typhoon to group packs on top of each other for better AoE.
Cyclone can be used to make certain enemies immune to everything for 6 seconds. You can avoid mobs getting
Bolstering stacks, or delay them from dying and refreshing
Bursting. Make sure you use it with caution, because you will also make them immune to taking damage, which might slow your group down instead of helping.
Mythic+ Talents for for Restoration Druids
Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+, these talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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The most popular and easiest combination to play is Cenarion Ward,
Soul of the Forest,
Spring Blossoms, and
Photosynthesis. The
idea behind this build is to keep
Lifebloom on the tank most of the
time and swap it to yourself during heavy group damage.
Refer to Talent page for descriptions of all talents, their strengths and weaknesses.
Gear and Best in Slot for Restoration Druids for Dungeons
There is no obvious Best in Slot list possible due to the varying nature of damage intake in different dungeons, but you can get a general direction running mostly Haste and Mastery pieces in the slots with similar item level. Replace Mastery with Versatility and Crit as you feel necessary. Basically, run Mastery up until you need it to heal damage. Make sure you check Gear page for trinket and significant item recommendations.
Specific Affix Recommendations
While most affixes do not need any specific advice, there are some that can be abused by a Restoration Druid toolkit or pose a lot more threat than others. We will try to provide some examples and advice here.
Prideful
There are a couple strategies you can use for Manifestations of Pride. Firstly,
you can use Convoke the Spirits to heal through the damage
as it gets higher and you start falling behind on healing. You should consider
this if your group is holding DPS cooldowns for a pull after Manifestation to
abuse the damage increase with the buff. Otherwise, you are best advised to hold
onto your Convoke the Spirits cooldown. The second option for groups is to take the
buff straight into a boss. In this case, you really do not want to use Convoke
defensively, but rather save it for damage on the boss. Try healing through
damage either by using
Tranquility or even popping Intellect potion. Do
not be afraid to use all of your Mana here, since you get a huge Mana regeneration
buff afterwards.
Bursting
This affix usually provides the most problems to all healers. Make sure you
are keeping an eye on enemies dying and prepare accordingly with Rejuvenations
on entire group. If you notice some mobs dying later, start dispelling
Bursting
early to get another dispel later. Most often you should dispel the tank, since
they have higher total Health and are going to require more healing. You can consider
using
Cyclone to make sure one enemy will not die, but keep in mind that
it is a last resort option. The goal is to go through the dungeon as fast as possible,
making enemies immune does not help with that.
Spiteful
Spiteful will spawn Spiteful Shades from dead enemies,
which will fixate on players in your group. They have a decent amount of Health,
but lose 8% of it every second. They also hit very hard, often nearly
killing everyone they come in touch with. Make sure you use all forms of your
crowd control on them. The best ability for that is
Ursol's Vortex, since
it does not interfere with anything else. If you are not already specced into
Balance Affinity for a Spiteful week, it is probably a good
idea to do that just to stay in range and safely use
Typhoon on Spiteful
Shades without hitting mobs positioned for melee players by the tank.
Changelog
- 08 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2020: Page updated for Shadowlands patch 9.0.2.
- 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.
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