Dominating Resto Druids Done Right – Part 1

I’m about to show my age.  A recent birthday has me feeling it.  So today’s pop reference is a line from the Michael Keaton movie “Mr. Mom.”  He’s dropping the kids off at school for the first time and doesn’t understand the traffic system.  “You’re doing wrong,” says one of his kids.  “You’re doing it wrong,” screams another parent.  “what do you mean I’m doing it wrong?  I’m using the Jack Butler method!”  “South to drop off MORON!,” screeches another mother.  Finally a friend of his wife taps on the window and says “Hi Jack, it’s Annette.  You’re doing it wrong.”  Great dramatic pause, terrific repetition, one of the really memorable scenes in the movie.  Later he even gets to play it off when he really does become ‘Mr. Mom’ telling someone else how it’s supposed to be done.

Well, here’s hoping that if you’ve chosen tree form for your druid that you are not doing it wrong.  and just to make sure you’re not let’s take an in-depth look at what a druid should do, and a little of what they should not.  And it all revolves around HoTs.

That’s what druids do better than any other class, right?  Even though you have a couple of things like Nourish and Healing Touch, the vast majority of the way a tree works is based on the magnificent HoTs you’ve got.  And the whole idea with those things is to do something no other healing class can really do.

If you’ve ever played another healing class, doing the druid thing is going to take some getting used to.  It takes nerves of steel and a lot of patience.  Even if you’ve never healed and somehow ended up in tree form, there are some things you need to know right now before you start messing up. So today we’re going to look at spec and glyphs, and next time out, style points.  You have to have the proper foundation right?

First, use your HoTs, love your HoTs and leave direct healing to everyone else.  Seriously, if Nourish or Healing Touch are more than 10% of your total healing go roll a Paladin and leave the real druids alone.  Druids who use direct heals too often are the shape-shifting equivalents of the huntard or death-not.  And no, Swiftmend doesn’t count as anything but an instant cast, OP, I WIN button – it’s not a direct heal.  (Well it is, but with no cast time it acts more like PoM – only a zillion times better).

So the first one of you I see with the Glyph of Healing Touch is persona non grata at DYS.  You can spec a tree into Healing touch but the problem is that you will have to waste 12 points buffing it, and then the glyph nerfs it all to heck in order to overcome the seriously lame cast time.  You can set up a whole lot more healing with your instant cast HoTs in the same time it takes to cast even a glyphed and specced HT.  And if you did your job properly, you will never have a situation where HT would even cross your mind anyway.

The same almost holds true with Nourish.  The only thing with Nourish is that once you get 4 piece T7.5 it actually becomes a very powerful heal.  That still doesn’t mean you should spam the thing.  As a matter of fact, hopefully by the time you get that kind of gear you’ve also gotten so good at healing that you rarely find a use for even a decent Nourish.  So let’s tell you how to heal like a champion and almost never use a direct healing spell.

The really sweet thing about druids is that they can do more healing than any other class in similar level gear, and still accomplish the feat with less than half as much over-healing.  It’s a seriously wicked combination.  Now, just as with other classes, timing on those heals needs to be good, and you need to select the proper heals for the proper times.  You also need to glyph and talent correctly, and we’re about to tell you how to do that.

Let’s start with spec.  This 14/0/57 build places almost all of your emphasis on more and more powerful HoTs; leaving HT for the saplings out there.  The really nice thing is that this build is also PvP ready. The build as given gives you the best and fastest HoTs you can get.

Another option for the true team player is to take points out of Nature’s Grace and fill up Replenish.  Since you’ll be rolling Rejuvenation a LOT, it stands a good chance of helping your raid.  But you’ll definitely want to be very confident in the prowess of your every little branch before you do that.  Since I am that sort of tree, that’s what I did – to get a build that looks exactly like this 12/0/59 .

Now onward to Glyphs.  Without question – Glyph of Lifebloom.  Allowing Lifebloom stacks to tick one more time gives you a chance to raise your healing power by more than 3,000 in that one second.  Next, Glyph of Rejuvenation makes your main HoT 50% more effective when it matters most.  And in the third slot it’s easy to guess that we would use Glyph of Regrowth; so sweet it will make your sap go all runny.  Now, not only do you get a great HoT out of Rejuv, but the direct heal portion gets a 25% buff if you time it right.  And you will, or we’ll chop you down and use you for firewood at our next party.

Now, if you PvP a LOT you might consider Glyph of Swiftmend.  But honestly since Swiftmend prioritizes Rejuvenation you can hit it and put the rejuv right back on in the blink of an eye.  And now the Rujuv has a refreshed timer, so it’s not a big loss.  Swiftmend is an awesome spell, but the glyph doesn’t make it so much better that you could really afford to lose one of the others – unless you are simply an arena junkie.

I would be remiss not to mention Glyph of Innervate as well.  With this glyph, if you use Innervate on yourself it makes your next 30 seconds spam casting heaven.  You can basically cast everything you’ve got on everybody in range and chuckle as your mana bar stays at 100%.  But, if you’re a good little tree, you can get a nice mana boost for 20 seconds if you use Innervate on the poor little Holy Priest who is sucking wind at the end of Phase 1 Malygos or halfway through Patchwerk.  Paladins seem to never run out of mana anyway, but this glyph does have some nice situational uses.  But just like Swiftmend, it may not be worth giving up one of the other glyphs for this one unless you have team members that have serious mana issues.  If that’s the case your only real solution might be to come join Dominate.

Minor glyphs for druids are fail in the case of resto, so choose your favorites of the worst.  I actually think Glyph of Aquatic form comes in handy.  It doesn’t help you do your job at all, but near epic land mount speed in the water has nifty uses.  It’s great for Strand of the Ancients.  Hop off the first platform, swim down the river to the waterfall at Mach 3 and be taking a nap at the docks before the boats even arrive. I also use Glyph of the Wild and Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth, but something could definitely be said for Glyph of Dash for the PvP friendly or seriously ADD.

That’s it for this segment.  Now you know if you’re doing it wrong.  And I’m giving you time to go trim away the deadwood before we get into how to go from being next in line for the furniture factory to the most popular stick in the shed.  Next time we show you how to waddle your way to Domination.