Restoration Druid Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands 9.2
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Restoration Druid in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Restoration Druid talents.
Talent Choices for Restoration Druid
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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Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area
(such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and
Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change
talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.
Talent Cheat Sheets for Restoration Druid
While optimizing talents on a contextual basis is the highly recommended method of setting up your build, the talent builds listed below work great for specific purposes.
There are multiple talents that require a change to your rotation in order to use them optimally. You can find more information on how your rotation will look after selecting your talents on our rotation page below.
Raid Healing
This is the best generic raid healing build for Shadowlands.
- Level 15:
Abundance
- Level 25:
Tiger Dash /
Wild Charge
- Level 30:
Balance Affinity /
Feral Affinity
- Level 35:
Heart of the Wild
- Level 40:
Soul of the Forest (with
Restoration Druid 4-Piece) or
Incarnation: Tree of Life (without
Restoration Druid 4-Piece)
- Level 45:
Spring Blossoms
- Level 50:
Flourish
The build suggested above does not account for specific fights in the current raid tier. If you wish to have a boss-by-boss breakdown of talent choices, you should check out our dedicated page below.
Dungeon Healing
This is our recommended build for dungeons.
- Level 15:
Cenarion Ward
- Level 25:
Wild Charge
- Level 30:
Feral Affinity
- Level 35:
Heart of the Wild
- Level 40:
Soul of the Forest
- Level 45:
Spring Blossoms
- Level 50:
Flourish
If you want more detailed advice specific to Mythic+, check out our page below.
Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Nourish is an active ability that heals your target for a moderate amount. Receives triple bonus from
Mastery: Harmony.
Cenarion Ward is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown. It places a buff on an ally, lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward activates a 8-second HoT on them, consuming Cenarion Ward in the process.
Abundance causes each instance of
Rejuvenation that you have active to reduce the Mana cost of
Regrowth by 6% and increase its critical effect chance by 6%.
Nourish is generally a terrible choice. The healing is not much
better than
Regrowth to make it a viable choice over other talents that
provide direct healing benefit.
Cenarion Ward is mostly a dungeon talent. It is a strong, efficient
heal that synergises with your
Mastery: Harmony and
Verdant Infusion
Legendary.
Abundance is a default raid talent. It provides stronger spot-healing
and is an efficient filler for raid healing. You will generally cast a lot of
Regrowths after each
Flourish. Abundance will improve your burst
healing and reduce Mana consumption.
Tier 2 (Level 25) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Renewal is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown. It heals you for 30% of your maximum health, it is usable in all shapeshift forms, and it is off the global cooldown.
Tiger Dash replaces
Dash with a 45-second cooldown, 200% movement speed sprint that decays over 5 seconds when activated.
Wild Charge is an active ability that is off the global cooldown and which differs based on the shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
- No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
Travel Form: you leap forward.
Moonkin Form: you leap backwards.
Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilising them for 4 seconds.
Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5 seconds.
In this tier, you will have to choose between two movement talents. Taking
Renewal for survivability is generally unnecessary until you reach
higher Mythic+ levels or for raid encounters with nearly no movement.
Wild Charge has a much shorter cooldown and travels the distance
required a bit faster than
Tiger Dash. The downsides are: a
requirement to have a friendly person in range and a need to use a macro.
Tiger Dash's biggest downside is the fact that it replaces
Dash. The movement speed increase is very strong, it is very easy to
use. Although cooldown is a bit too long, Tiger Dash should be a fine choice,
especially for dungeons and solo content.
Tier 3 (Level 30) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Balance Affinity grants you the
Astral Influence passive ability, which increases the range of all your abilities by 5 yards. Additionally, you gain access to the Balance-spec abilities
Moonkin Form,
Starsurge, and
Starfire.
Feral Affinity grants you the
Feline Swiftness passive ability, which increases your movement speed by 15%. Additionally, you gain access to the Feral-spec abilities
Rake,
Rip,
Ferocious Bite,
Swipe, and your energy regeneration is increased by 35%.
Guardian Affinity grants you the
Thick Hide passive ability, which reduces all your damage taken by 6%. Additionally, you gain access to the Guardian-spec abilities
Thrash,
Ironfur, and
Frenzied Regeneration.
The passive damage reduction you gain from Guardian Affinity
can be valuable during progression content, but Restoration Druids, especially
Night Fae ones, are already one of the tankiest specialisations in the
game, making Guardian Affinity generally unnecessary.
Balance Affinity could be used for fights where the
raid is spread out, due to the passive increase in the range of your abilities.
A 5-yard increase is not much and will only see niche use on fights where both
your survivability is not important and players are spread far enough for 5
yards to make a difference.
Feral Affinity offers the ability to deal substantial damage
without Mana cost. This can be useful on progression content, to help your raid
beat enrage timers, while leaving you with healthy amount of Mana for healing
phases. For a few encounters, a passive movement speed increase can be considered
as the sole reason to pick this talent. This talent can do substantially more
damage in dungeon content than
Balance Affinity with the
Draught of Deep Focus Legendary.
Tier 4 (Level 35) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Mighty Bash is an active ability with a 60-second cooldown, which stuns the target for 4 seconds. It is usable in all shapeshift forms.
Mass Entanglement is an active ability with a 30-second cooldown, which roots the target and all enemies within 15 yards of them in place for 30 seconds. Damage done to rooted targets may break the effect. Mass Entanglement is usable in all shapeshift forms.
Heart of the Wild is an active ability with a 5-minute cooldown. It substantially increases your chosen Affinity's abilities.
It is generally obvious which talent you should be picking on this tier,
since they have different purposes entirely. If you specifically need one of the
Mighty Bash or
Mass Entanglement, then you pick them. In all
other cases you should default to
Heart of the Wild, because free damage
increase is strong in all types of content.
Tier 5 (Level 40) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Soul of the Forest causes
Swiftmend to grant you a buff that increases the healing of your next
Regrowth or
Rejuvenation by 200%, or of your next
Wild Growth by 75%.
Incarnation: Tree of Life is an active ability with a 3-minute cooldown. It lasts for 30 seconds and increases all healing done by 15% as well as increasing your armor by 120% and making you immune to Polymorph effects. Moreover, it improves some of your spells.
Wild Growth affects 2 additional targets.
Regrowth is instant cast.
Rejuvenation has its healing increased by 50%, and its Mana cost reduced by 30%.
Entangling Roots is instant cast.
Cultivation causes
Rejuvenation to place a 6-second HoT on targets that are below 60% health when Rejuvenation heals them.
Cultivation essentially offers a passive increase to your
Rejuvenation healing, increasing your Mastery synergies. Unfortunately,
this talent is significantly weaker than either of the other options.
Incarnation: Tree of Life is a very strong cooldown. Both the flat
healing increase and the buff to
Rejuvenation apply to spells you
cast before activating Tree of Life and last through entire duration of the
Tree. Tree of Life has a very good synergy with
Flourish since it
lines up with every second one.
Soul of the Forest is a potent option for all types of PvE
content. The buff is best used on either
Regrowth or
Wild Growth,
depending on which type of healing you need. For maximum throughput it is advised
to use it strictly with Wild Growth.
Soul of the Forest is always going to be the best dungeon talent.
After acquiring the
Restoration Druid 4-Piece it becomes the go-to talent in
raiding too. Until then you should be using
Incarnation: Tree of Life.
Cultivation
does not provide enough throughput the other two options give you.
Tier 6 (Level 45) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Inner Peace reduces the cooldown of
Tranquility by 60 seconds. While channeling Tranquility, you take 20% reduced damage and are immune to knockbacks.
Spring Blossoms places a 6-second HoT on targets who are healed by your
Efflorescence.
Overgrowth instantly applies Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, Wild Growth, and Regrowth's heal over time effect to an ally. It has a 60-second cooldown.
Inner Peace can be a strong talent for raiding if an encounter forces
your raid to remain spread throughout the entire fight or for encounters with
knockbacks that can prevent you from channeling
Tranquility otherwise. If neither
of these two are true, you will be using
Spring Blossoms instead.
Overgrowth provides too low healing for its cooldown. You will find
better results from
Spring Blossoms even in dungeons. It is unlikely to
find use in dungeons or raids.
Spring Blossoms requires a few players in the group to be
stacked, because it makes your
Efflorescence prioritise targets that
do not have Spring Blossoms HoT on them and ignore the injured player rule. It
is the most optimal if you can keep Efflorescence under 9 people or more
consistently throughout the fight, although it is still strong if there are only
2-3 players standing in Efflorescence. The HoT effect is extended by
Flourish,
but does not speed up or scale with Haste, with the exception of
Photosynthesis.
Tier 7 (Level 50) Talents for Restoration Druids
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Photosynthesis makes all your HoTs heal 20% more — by giving them 20% Haste — while
Lifebloom is on yourself. Alternatively, while Lifebloom is on another ally, each of your periodic heals on them has a 4% chance to cause a final bloom.
Germination allows you to apply two
Rejuvenations to the same target. When Rejuvenation is already applied on a target, a second cast of Rejuvenation applies a second version of the HoT. From this point on, as long as both HoTs are active on the target, Rejuvenation will always refresh the HoT with the shortest remaining duration.
Flourish is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown. It extends the duration of all your HoTs within 60 yards by 8 seconds and speeds up their tick rate by 100%.
For raiding, the best talent in this tier is Flourish. The power
of this cooldown is too strong to pass up on. Furthermore, it has good synergy
with every single Covenant ability. Flourish is also a preferred choice for Mythic+
due to
Decrypted Urh Cypher being a very popular buff to get. The cooldown
reduction allows you to use Flourish much more frequently.
Photosynthesis is, unfortunately, too weak for AoE healing in
raids. While it provides a steady healing increase, it does so by removing
Lifebloom as a source of tank healing. Lifebloom will mostly overheal
while being on yourself, thus reducing the added throughput substantially.
Photosynthesis is a good talent for Mythic+, but becomes a lot weaker than
Flourish
if your group gets a lot of
Decrypted Urh Cypher buffs on the
Encrypted
affix.
Germination is unfortunately a very lackluster pick in both dungeons
and raids. The 2 extra seconds of
Rejuvenation duration do not add nearly
as much throughput as
Flourish.
PvP Talents (War Mode)
In Shadowlands, you have the option to go into "War Mode". Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:
- PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
- 10-30% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
- 10-30% more experience gained while leveling.
- Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.
With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open world PvP, and the possibility to be killed while leveling or doing World Quests exists.
Restoration Druid War Mode Talents
In this section we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Restoration Druid-specific PvE talents.
Restoration Druid PvP Talents
Thorns is a good choice, that offers a direct damage increase. It is usable in any form and can provide significant damage on big pulls.
Master Shapeshifter offers a very strong damage increase in
Cat Form and
Moonkin Form.
Disentanglement,
Entangling Bark,
Deep Roots,
Focused Growth,
Early Spring have limited effect on PvE content
in terms of increasing your damage in the open world, or healing in a small
group setting.
Changelog
- 06 Mar. 2022: Updated Mythic+ talent recommendations.
- 18 Feb. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5.
- 08 Aug. 2021: Slightly changed talent recommendations and their analysis.
- 14 Jul. 2021: Adjusted Affinity talent recommendation for Mythic+.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 23 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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