Restoration Druid Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Dragonflight 10.0.7
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Restoration Druid, depending on the type of damage your group is receiving. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your healing output and your mana efficiency. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.0.7.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Restoration Druid rotation.
Foreword
Welcome to our Rotation page for Restoration Druids. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming, you can visit our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.
PvP
The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation tips, please visit our PvP page below.
Rotation / Playstyle for Restoration Druids
Your exact healing playstyle as a Restoration Druid will depend on what targets you have to heal, which is normally very closely related to the environment in which you are healing (raids or dungeons).
Tier Bonuses Effect on Rotations
Restoration Druid 2pc has absolutely no effect on your rotation at
all.
Restoration Druid 4pc will just have you keep more attention
to
Efflorescence uptime. Otherwise, both bonuses are passive and do
not change anything for both raids and Mythic+.
Raid Healing
When healing the raid, you should do the following. Remember that after
acquiring the Restoration Druid 4-Piece, you should be playing
Soul of the Forest, and as such, your spell priority will
change.
- Keep
Efflorescence under a group of players, usually melee.
- Keep
Lifebloom on an active tank.
- Use
Innervate during low to moderate damage moments and try to fit both
Efflorescence,
Swiftmend, and
Wild Growth in the duration.
- Use
Swiftmend and follow it with
Wild Growth.
- Make sure you use
Swiftmends in a way that lets you have
Incarnation: Tree of Life tier proc (from
Reforestation) with
Convoke the Spirits cast.
- Use
Clearcasting procs as soon as possible to avoid wasting them.
- Keep
Rejuvenation on an active tank and any players with debuffs. Be sure to cast fewer Rejuvenations to keep your Mana for
Flourish windows.
- Start casting
Rejuvenations about 10 seconds before you plan on using
Flourish. Follow it with
Wild Growth as soon as the damage event hits, then use Flourish.
- Use
Regrowth liberally to spot-heal.
- During downtime, use
Moonfire and
Sunfire on enemies to help with the damage. Be careful with casting both since they cost a lot of Mana, especially Sunfire.
- You should be filling your free global cooldowns with
Wrath or DPS abilities in your
Cat Form.
Doing damage in Cat Form can put you in difficult situations or even
outright wipe the raid when used without full knowledge of the fight. You are
still considered a ranged and a healer in any shapeshift form. Therefore you
will be targeted by all mechanics that do not specifically target players based
on distance.
Dungeon Healing
When healing in a dungeon, it is important to remember that Restoration Druids have a lot of powerful tools to contribute to damage and crowd control besides keeping the group alive. Since the group is smaller than a typical raid, you will be able to produce a much more significant portion of DPS, which is essential in timed Mythic+ content.
A Restoration Druid's priority should be keeping the group alive. That does not necessarily mean keeping everyone at 100% Health or aiming to do so at all times possible. On some packs and affixes, you can afford to heal your group between the pulls or let the HoTs tick fully without resorting to single-target healing spam. Judging the damage intake of the group is the most important aspect of your success as a healer in dungeons.
During light to medium damage, you should aim to keep Lifeblooms up.
Try to heal low damage using
Adaptive Swarm,
Soul of the Forest-powered
Wild Growths, and
Efflorescence. Spend the rest of the time doing damage. Managing to
cast fewer
Rejuvenations and
Regrowths without letting anyone
die will be your biggest DPS increase.
During heavy damage, you should aim to keep up as many Rejuvenations
as possible, always to consume the
Regrowth HoT to power
Wild Growth with
Soul of the Forest whenever 4 or more
players are not at full Health and, otherwise, cast Regrowth.
Efflorescence is a good spell to cast if you can ensure 3 players will
be healed by it. Placing it before the pull is the preferred strategy.
Ironbark anyone who might be in danger liberally, as its cooldown is
too short to sit on.
Tranquility can be used as a strong cooldown when
needed.
There is more specific information on spell usage in Mythic+ on our Restoration Druid Mythic+ page.
If you want to read an in-depth guide on how to deal damage in dungeons, read the page linked below.
Cooldown Usage for Restoration Druids
As a Restoration Druid, you have a few healing cooldowns by default. Additionally, you can gain others depending on your talent choices. Your non-talent cooldowns should be used as follows:
Tranquility should be used during heavy raid damage or when you are assigned to use it by your raid leader. It is recommended not to stack it with anything else. Casting
Wild Growth before Tranquility is recommended to increase the benefits from Mastery.
Innervate should be used as many times during the fight as possible. Refresh
Efflorescence, cast
Swiftmend with
Wild Growth, and spam
Rejuvenations during Innervate.
Ironbark should be used to reduce the damage a tank is taking during critical moments (such as when special boss abilities are about to be cast). In the absence of such situations, you should just use it on players who are taking damage. You may be assigned to use this at a specific time as part of a rotation with other healers and the tanks' cooldowns.
Nature's Swiftness should be used with
Regrowth. You can make a macro to use them together since Nature's Swiftness does not trigger a GCD. Use it as soon as someone drops low, and you think they will not live for a Regrowth cast to finish. Feel free to pop it often because the cooldown is relatively short.
Flourish should be used as close to on cooldown as possible. Make sure each Flourish extends
Wild Growth, as many
Rejuvenations as possible, preferably
Cenarion Ward.
Incarnation: Tree of Life is a very powerful cooldown. You should aim to use it to cover entire damage events. If those are too short, it is preferred to use Tree of Life a little before damage occurs to pre-HoT for less Mana. Tree of Life dramatically increases the efficiency of both
Rejuvenation and
Wild Growth. You should plan your Mana in a way that would allow you to cast during it continuously, even at the cost of significantly reduced output outside of Incarnation.
Optional Read: Mastering Your Restoration Druid
While playing correctly as a Restoration Druid does effectively rely on using the above spells as we recommend, there is more you need to understand to maximize your performance.
Adaptive Swarm
To be effective with Adaptive Swarm usage, you need to understand the
basic principles of its usage. The easiest way to do that is to install
Adaptive Swarm WeakAura. Your goal will
be to stack Swarm higher (4-5 stacks) so that splits also give more stacks, thus
increasing the total number of stacks long term, improving your heavily DoT and
HoT playstyle oriented significantly.
Procs and Mechanics
As a Restoration Druid, you have quite a few things that you must keep track of and react accordingly to. Other than using the appropriate spell for the type of damage being done, this is all there is to play to your maximum potential.
Mastery: Harmony
Your Mastery, Mastery: Harmony, increases your healing done to a
target for each HoT that you have on that target at the time. Each HoT's healing
is updated dynamically as soon as you apply another. With 10% Mastery, a single
Rejuvenation will do 10% extra healing. If you apply
Lifebloom
to the same target, both HoTs will be doing 20% (10% + 10%) extra healing as
long as they are both up. Once Rejuvenation fades, Lifebloom will continue
ticking for 10% extra healing since it will be the only HoT present on the
target. There are currently 12 HoTs that count towards our Mastery:
-
Rejuvenation;
-
Germination;
-
Wild Growth;
-
Regrowth's HoT portion;
-
Tranquility's HoT portion;
-
Lifebloom;
-
Cenarion Ward;
-
Cultivation;
-
Spring Blossoms;
-
Frenzied Regeneration;
-
Grove Tending;
-
Adaptive Swarm.
It is important to note that this list is exhaustive. No other trinket effect
or conduits interact, contribute, or otherwise benefit from Mastery. The
Frenzied Regeneration from
Well-Honed Instincts talent does not
work with Mastery either.
Clearcasting Procs
Each time your Lifebloom ticks, you have a 4% chance to get a proc
from
Omen of Clarity, making your next
Regrowth, cast
within 15 seconds, cost no Mana. You should use these Regrowths freely as soon
as you receive them to avoid the procs overwriting each other.
Detailed Cooldown Usage for Restoration Druids
In this section, we explain in depth how to use your cooldowns.
Tranquility
Tranquility is a channeled spell that heals all raid members for a
large amount of Health over 8 seconds and leaves a stacking HoT behind. It is a
potent spell. It is best used during times of hefty raid damage.
You should use Tranquility when you can channel it for its total
duration (or at least very close to its full duration). It is acceptable to use
either
Barkskin,
Ironbark, or both on yourself to ensure the
entire cast without interruptions. You should
Wild Growth before the
cast to maximize Mastery contribution.
Ironbark
Ironbark should be used on the tank when they are taking a large
amount of damage or on another player targeted by a powerful boss mechanic.
Innervate
Innervate is not strictly a throughput cooldown, but it is still a
crucial part of a Restoration Druid's kit. It has a 3-minute cooldown, and it
places a 10-second buff on a friendly healer (which includes yourself), during
which time all spells cast by the target cost no Mana.
Innervate is best used 10-15 seconds before you plan to use
Flourish. You want to refresh your
Efflorescence during it, so
you also want to time Innervate when Efflorescence has fewer than 10 seconds
left on its duration. You want to cast
Swiftmend,
Wild Growth,
and as many
Rejuvenations as your Haste allows. Timing it together with
any Haste procs or
Heroism/
Bloodlust is an excellent strategy.
Convoke the Spirits
Convoke the Spirits is an important part of the Druid's kit in raids.
You should aim to use it as often as possible during damage events. Make sure
you have some HoTs up before using it since you would waste
Flourish
procs otherwise. Preferably you want to pair Convoke with other cooldowns or
procs: such as Flourish or
Reforestation proc.
Another trick for Convoke is to use Nature's Swiftness right before
casting it. All
Regrowths from Convoke will be empowered, resulting in
a moderate burst increase. Make sure to use Regrowth after consuming Nature's
Swiftness and put it on cooldown. Otherwise, having it with the next Convoke
will be very hard.
Mana Management
Mana management is the most important aspect of playing a Restoration Druid. How you allocate it in a fight determines how well you will perform. Going out of Mana too early or not using your entire pool during a boss fight are the most common misplays.
- In cases where you are unfamiliar with a fight or healing team, you can start by matching your Mana bar percentage to the boss's Health percentage. Make adjustments in later pulls.
- You are supposed to utilize available cooldowns to their full potential.
Good
Flourish bursts, getting off
Tranquility as often as possible, and keeping high uptime on
Efflorescence and
Lifebloom are going to be the most defining elements of your raid throughput. These points lead to encounter knowledge, and familiarity with mechanics and timings will yield the most significant returns. Even experienced players take quite a few pulls to familiarise themselves with each boss fight.
- Learn to control Mana usage in maintenance mode. Low-cost spells do not
necessarily imply a good Mana investment. For example, it is almost always
better not to cast a few
Rejuvenations during soft damage but instead cast one
Wild Growth because it will do more healing per Mana or even let other healers handle the damage. Since Druids are not able to afford constant Rejuvenation spam, you have to resort to either not casting anything or doing damage using low Mana cost
Wrath.
Changelog
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 29 Dec. 2022: Minor fixes.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Small updates to Mythic+ rotation and tier set advice.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight 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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