Whenever other columnists here write really good columns, I sit at my computer and swear a blue streak, for I am a jealous god. Sacco, damn him, turned out a great article on the basics of elemental shamans, and for a while I've been kicking around bits and pieces of 101-esque columns for all four druid specs. This was the last shove I needed to get that done. While I expect our new balance blogger (a.k.a. Murmurs, the person I will be forcing to do all my number-crunching in the future with bribes or, when necessary, threats) will address moonkin, I'll cover bears, cats, and today, trees.

A quick note on what I want to accomplish here: I'm addressing this to people with no prior knowledge of the spec who want the tools to become reasonably competent healers quickly. By necessity, that means we're going to gloss over a few finer points; this is a cheat sheet, not an encyclopedia. When I say (for example) that Improved Tranquility needs to be dragged out behind a barn and killed with an axe, I'm not going to spend paragraphs explaining why that is, or examining situations where you could actually get some use from it. If you think I've glossed over something truly important, please drop a comment and I'll direct readers to anything they really need to know.


1. What is restoration?

Restoration is the healing tree (pun!) available to the druid class.

2. Restoration's benefits:

• The best array of Heal over Time (HoT) spells in the game.
• Tremendous mobility while healing.
• A specialized form (Tree of Life) available as a 41-point talent, providing a 6% healing received buff to the raid and boosting the druid's healing efficiency and throughput.
• Arguably the most mana-efficient healer, with a choice over using Innervate for themselves or giving it to another player.
• Arguably the most annoying healer to kill in PvP (when specced and geared).
• Very little competition for gear if you stick with leather spellpower pieces.
• In the hands of a skilled player, the best and most effective healer for fights with heavy and frequent raid damage.

• Limited capacity to address burst damage, and less efficient than other healers at doing so.
• The Tree of Life form graphic has been variously described as "rotten broccoli," "Looks like the petunia I left out on the windowsill without watering," or "Dear God, what is that thing?"
• The druid is unable to cast damage or most crowd-control spells while in Tree of Life form.
• Fast raid healers are often adept at "sniping" heals before HoTs have a chance to tick, decreasing our effectiveness. Asking other healers to refrain from doing this results in phrases like "Screw you" being bandied about.
• Restoration has no cooldowns with any real impact on tank survivability, or abilities that reduce targets' damage.
• Effective druid healing is dependent on heavily reconfiguring your UI to show HoT targets and durations.
• Less "Wow!" factor with spells. If you're someone who enjoys seeing a 20,000 crit heal on a target, you're better off playing another class. The resto druid is about a lot of little numbers, rather than one big one.

4. Stats to look for (in descending order):

• Spellpower: Our best stat.
• Haste: Haste does two things -- it lowers the cast time on our spells, and (more importantly) lowers the global cooldown, increasing our ability to keep HoTs rolling on multiple targets.
• Spirit: The Tree of Life gains both mana regeneration and spellpower from spirit.
• Crit: Crit is not particularly useful for resto druids, although it is more valuable if you are a tank healer or are using 4-piece tier 9.
• Intellect: Intellect increases our total mana and crit (and also affects the scaling of mana regeneration from spirit), but we don't get as much from it as other healers.

• Mp5: Mp5 is not a bad stat for us, but we get less from it than we do from spirit. Odds are good you will wind up wearing several mp5 pieces, but a spellpower/spirit piece is usually superior to a spellpower/mp5 counterpart.
• Hit: We don't need it. You should only grab a caster piece with hit if your DPS don't want it.
• All other stats: Agility, strength, etc. are useless to a tree.

6. Typical PvE talent setup:

There are multiple restoration builds that can be customized to the job you do in raids (tank healing or raid healing) or adapted as necessary to specific fights, but the basics are usually the same. Due to the Gift of the Earthmother change implemented in patch 3.3, it is generally recommended that players spec into the balance tree for Celestial Focus if they are below the soft haste cap (856 haste). With 3/3 Celestial Focus, you need only 735 haste to reach the soft haste cap with raid buffs. If you are between 735 and 856 haste, you can drop one point in Celestial Focus for each 40 haste rating (approximate) you add to your gear, until you reach 856 and can drop the talent entirely.

If you are below 856 haste in full raid buffs: Use a Celestial Focus build. A more tank-healing oriented CF build is here.

If you can reach the soft haste cap (856) in full raid buffs: Use a non-CF build. A more tank-healing oriented build is here.

If you're mostly doing 5-mans: This is a good general-purpose build.

7. Talent overview:

The necessary talents for a restoration druid are all in the balance and restoration trees; feral does not have anything of interest. As with Sacco's article, italicized talents are considered optional or situational, and those with a strike-through should be avoided.

Restoration:

• Improved Mark of the Wild: Mandatory.
• Nature's Focus: Situationally helpful in PvE content, but mostly useful in PvP. However, 3 points in this are needed to reach the next tier of restoration talents, as Furor is worthless.
• Furor: A talent designed for balance and feral players.
• Naturalist: This is not usually taken in most PvE restoration builds, although it finds situational use (most notably on ToGC Anub'arak-25).
• Subtlety: Much less useful in Wrath due to tank threat improvements, but if you don't put points in Naturalist, you will need to spend at least 2 here.
• Natural Shapeshifter: Generally useless in PvE content where you won't shift at all while healing, but you will need 3 points here to reach Master Shapeshifter.
• Intensity: Mandatory.
• Omen of Clarity: Mandatory.
• Master Shapeshifter: While this talent is somewhat uninspiring (you're not getting 4% healing from two points -- you're getting 4% healing from the five points required from both Natural and Master Shapeshifter), it should be considered mandatory.
• Tranquil Spirit: Optional unless you are a tank healer with mana problems.
• Improved Rejuvenation: Mandatory.
• Nature's Swiftness: Mandatory. Nature's Swiftness is typically macro'd to Healing Touch to provide a large emergency heal.
  
• Gift of Nature: Mandatory.
• Improved Tranquility: Generally not worth your time. Should be dragged out behind a barn and killed with an axe.
• Empowered Touch: A mandatory talent for tank and 5-man healers. Less useful to raid healers, but it does make spot healing more efficient.
• Nature's Bounty: Mandatory.
• Living Spirit: A pre-3.3 build would have listed this talent as mandatory, but players with a Celestial Focus build are often forced to drop points from it.
• Swiftmend: Mandatory.
• Natural Perfection: Somewhat useful to dedicated tank healers in conjunction with Nature's Bounty, Empowered Touch, and Living Seed, but otherwise a PvP talent.
• Empowered Rejuvenation: Mandatory.
• Living Seed: Highly useful to tank and PvP healers, less so to raid healers.
• Revitalize: Once considered a firmly optional talent, Revitalize was yoked to Wild Growth (in addition to the original Rejuvenation bonus) in patch 3.1 and became significantly more useful. The people who benefit most from it are death knights, rogues, and cat druids, so if your raid doesn't have any (or you spend very little time raid-healing), don't bother.
• Tree of Life: The restoration spec's flagship talent. Mandatory.
• Improved Tree of Life: Mandatory. While the +armor bonus usually goes to waste in PvE, the additional scaling from spirit does not.
• Improved Barkskin: PvP only. Introduced in patch 3.1 when Blizzard was trying to shore up restoration's arena performance after a miserable season 5.
• Gift of the Earthmother: Mandatory.
• Wild Growth: Mandatory.

Balance:

• Starlight Wrath: Moonkin only.
• Genesis: Mandatory.
• Moonglow: Mandatory.
• Nature's Majesty: Not particularly helpful to raid healers, but necessary to get Nature's Splendor.
• Improved Moonfire: Moonkin only (and even balance players don't usually take this).
• Brambles: Technically a moonkin-only talent, but you will have to stick an extra point somewhere in balance to get Celestial Focus, and this is one of the better places to put it assuming you regularly cast Thorns on your tank/s.
• Nature's Grace: Generally useful to tank healers, less so for raid healers.
• Nature's Splendor: Mandatory.
• Nature's Reach: Moonkin only.
• Celestial Focus: Should generally be taken if you are below the soft haste cap. As gear improves, you can gradually drop points until you don't need the talent at all.

8. Leveling as restoration:

In a word; don't.

Shifting Perspectives ran a series on how to level as a druid this past year, in which I've made mention of this little dictum. However, it should be admitted that the Dungeon Finder has made leveling as a tank or healer significantly easier, and that option is available to you if you so choose. However, I discourage players from leveling as restoration for three reasons:

1. There is almost nothing in the restoration tree that will improve your ability to deal damage.

Even if you're making heavy use of the Dungeon Finder, you're still likely to quest or grind from time to time. Doing either on a healing spec is time-consuming and boring as hell.

2. Pre-80 dungeons are not designed around everyone being the correct spec for their role:

This is more true of pre-60 dungeons, but you are absolutely not required to be restoration in order to heal a normal 5-man. If you want to get experience as a healer, collect caster drops and quest rewards while you're leveling, and toss them on if you queue as a healer for the Dungeon Finder or are asked to heal. You should be fine unless your group is extremely stupid, woefully undergeared, or both. Glyping Healing Touch for these situations will give you access to a makeshift flash heal while leveling; you won't get Nourish until 80.

3. The gear to support the spec while leveling just isn't there. Ironically, this can be more true with the Dungeon Finder:

While I expect this problem will be fixed somewhat when Blizzard overhauls Azeroth for Cataclysm, at this point in time it is exceptionally difficult to assemble a leather caster set while leveling. The situation is further complicated by how need/greed works in the Dungeon Finder, which automatically prioritizes all cloth drops (which comprise the vast majority of caster and +spellpower gear while leveling) toward cloth classes. You will have to depend on the generosity and honesty of your groupmates to pass a cloth drop to you if you lose a greed roll, and if our inbox here at WoW.com is any indication, you shouldn't bank on it.

Now, one can reasonably point out that it is possible to build a caster set with quest rewards, but that lands us squarely back at reason #1; questing as a resto druid SUCKS. Green quest rewards from 1-60 are also not known for their amazing itemization. You are caught between questing on a terrible questing spec for usually-terrible gear, or healing in dungeons for better gear that you won't be able to roll need on unless you put a group together from your realm. In the meantime, melee DPS leather will be raining from the skies, product of a classic Azeroth where every third character was a rogue.

If you are a crazy person who insists on leveling resto and have access to heirloom pieces, purchase the following for your new baby druid:

• Preened Ironfeather Breastplate: Available for 40 Emblems of Heroism or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Preened Ironfeather Shoulders: Available for 40 Emblems of Heroism or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Swift Hand of Justice: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals.
• Discerning Eye of the Beast: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals.
• For a weapon, either the Devout Aurastone Hammer (50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals) or the Dignified Headmaster's Charge (65 Emblems of Heroism or 95 Champion's Seals). If you're dual-speccing balance and resto whlie leveling, take the Headmaster's Charge; if you're going pure resto, take the Hammer.

9. Basic restoration gameplay:

There is no "rotation" as such for healing classes; we try to choose the best and most efficient spells for each situation. Currently, overhealing at 80 is not considered a problem, because mana is rarely an issue if you are appropriately geared for a fight.

• If you are tank healing: Maintain Regrowth and Rejuvenation on the tank/s at all times. This is especially important in any situation where the heal team is moving, because other tank healers can't heal as effectively on the run. Depending on the fight and the tank's gear, you may wish to roll Lifebloom as well, allowing a stack to "bloom" to address damage as needed. With HoTs on the tank/s, use Nourish to keep them topped, re-applying HoTs as needed. If the tank's health is stable, spread a few HoTs around the raid as necessary.
• If you are raid healing: Resto druids generally "blanket" the raid in Rejuvenation, using Wild Growth on cooldown for fights with heavy raid damage, and Nourish or (more rarely) a glyphed Healing Touch as a spot heal. Regrowth can be used on raid members who are taking (or likely to take) heavier damage, e.g. Mark of the Fallen Champion targets on Deathbringer Saurfang, or people focused on Faction Champions. In essence, these people should be treated as a tank while they're taking damage.If you have the global cooldowns to spare, maintain Regrowth and/or Rejuvenation on the tank/s as much as possible.
• If you are 5-man healing: Follow the directions for tank-healing for your tank (although most decently-geared tanks in 5-mans and heroics these days don't usually need more than one HoT), with Rejuvenation/Wild Growth/Nourish on the party to address damage as necessary. If you're in party with a mage who gives you Focus Magic (you're unlikely to get it in raids), it's a nice courtesy to emphasize more Regrowth or Nourish-centric healing as, properly talented, you should have a high crit rate with them.

10. Gems:

Pre-3.3, you were best off gemming for straight spellpower, but right now the average resto druid isn't at the soft haste cap without a little extra help.

• If you have reached the soft haste cap (856 or 735 with 3/3 Celestial Focus): Gem for straight spellpower with the Runed Cardinal Ruby.
• If you have not reached the soft haste cap: Gem for a combination of spellpower and haste with the Reckless Ametrine or (if you're really hurting for haste) the Quick King's Amber.
• Meta gems: Either the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (if you have mana issues) or the Ember Skyflare Diamond (if you don't). As your gear improves, it's almost always going to be the latter.
• Should I gem for socket bonuses?: If it's convenient, go for it. If not, don't bother.
• Do not gem for: Intellect, Mp5, crit, or straight spirit. A Purified Dreadstone is OK when you need to meet the meta requirements for the Insightful Earthsiege.

11. Glyphs:

The effectiveness of a particular glyph is dependent on the individual fight in question and your role within the raid.

• Glyph of Wild Growth: Mandatory for a raid healer in either 10 or 25-man content.
• Glyph of Swiftmend: Very popular with both tank and raid healers, allowing you to Swiftmend a HoT without having to spend mana and a global cooldown re-applying it.
  
• Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation: One some fights, Rapid Rejuv is extremely useful; on others, it's a pain in the ass. As a general rule, Rapid Rejuvenation becomes more and more problematic as: a). the number of people taking damage in the raid rises, and: b). the frequency of raid damage rises. The faster your Rejuvenation ticks, the fewer people you're able to keep it rolling on. That's a big problem on fights like Twin Valkyrs and Blood-Queen Lana'thel with unavoidable damage occurring to everyone in the raid. By contrast, on fights like Blood Princes or Saurfang where damage (in a competent raid) is confined to a few people at a time, Rapid Rejuv is extremely useful. Use your best judgment.
• Glyph of Nourish: Extremely useful for a dedicated tank healer, as one of the druid's weaknesses with respect to, say, paladins is relatively mediocre throughput on single targets.
• Glyph of Innervate: This is a helpful glyph if you are in the habit of giving Innervate away in raids, as it will return a little more than 3,000 mana to you as well.
• Glyph of Healing Touch: In progression content and/or hard modes where one's speed in landing a heal often matters more than the amount healed, this glyph, in addition to 5/5 Naturalist, has really grown on me (yes, I realize this Questions The Orthodoxy, which is likely to bring a howling pack of EJ aficionados down on my head). However, it's mostly of situational use, and most famously so on Anub'arak-25 in Trial of the Grand Crusader.
• Glyph of Lifebloom: Not recommended unless tank healing is really all you do.
• Glyph of Regrowth: Same deal as with Glyph of Lifebloom.
• Glyph of Rejuvenation: This is more a PvP-oriented glyph. It finds situational use in PvE, but not frequently enough to justify using it over something else.
• Glyph of Rebirth: Very situational, and usually not worth it.

Recommended glyphs for tank healers: Glyph of Swiftmend, Glyph of Nourish, Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation. Runners-up: Glyph of Regrowth, Glyph of Lifebloom. If you are having mana issues, substitute Glyph of Innervate for Rapid Rejuvenation.

Recommended glyphs for raid healers: Glyph of Swiftmend, Glyph of Wild Growth, and the third glyph is really a crapshoot depending on the fight. If you are having mana issues, Glyph of Innervate. If you are doing fights where raid damage is confined to a few people at a time, Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation. In the event that neither is true or you don't have the gold to keep switching up, glyph whatever works best for you personally.

Recommended glyphs for 5-man healers: Glyph of Swiftmend, Glyph of Nourish, Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation.

12. Endgame enchants:

Enchants for restoration druids are pretty straightforward:

• Helm: Arcanum of Blissful Mending (Wyrmrest Accord quartermaster). If you are a tank healer or using 4-piece tier 9, you may prefer the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (Kirin Tor quartermaster).
• Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Crag (Sons of Hodir quartermaster). If you are a tank healer or using 4-piece tier 9, you may prefer the Greater Inscription of the Storm. Scribes will of course use Inscription shoulder enchants in their place.
• Cloak: Enchant Cloak -- Haste. You can also do Wisdom, but it's rarely worth it.
• Chest: Enchant Chest -- Powerful Stats.
• Bracers: Enchant Bracer -- Superior Spellpower.
• Gloves: Enchant Gloves -- Exceptional Spellpower.
• Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle (granting you a prismatic socket).
• Legs: Brilliant Spellthread.
• Boots: For raids, it's tough to beat Tuskarr's Vitality. Although the stamina and run speed bonus don't increase your effectiveness as a healer, you will still spend an awful lot of time in raids getting out of fire or running to safe spots or what have you. Otherwise, you may want Enchant Boots -- Greater Spirit.
• Weapon: If you have a staff, you'll want Enchant Staff -- Greater Spellpower. If you have a one-hander, you'll want Enchant Weapon -- Mighty Spellpower.