Druid Raiding Guide

Greetings,



I want to share some of my experience as a dedicated Restoration Druid PvE player back in vanilla to help some of the beginners to get a good start in raiding, or even provide more experienced players with some useful information.



I will cover the following topics:



1. Talents

2. How to heal effectively

3. Pre-Raid Gear

4. Useful Addons

5. Enchants

6. Consumables



1. Talents



Restoration Talents are not very complicated to handle, since there are not many possible variations. Basically, there are two possible builds for a Restoration Druid:



1. 5/0/46



this is the basic build for all beginners. Since there are no really useful talents in the higher feral or balance trees, just cover all the useful restoration talents and put the remaining 5 points into Nature's Grasp. Although it's nearly useless for raids, it's pretty handy for solo play.

This would be the preferable build for 5man/10man instances, with a better possibility to defuse emergency situations with Swiftmend, and Subtlety will increase your chances of survival significantly.



2. 24/0/27



this is the build for advanced raiders with some better gear, since crit becomes very valuable with it. It takes away Swiftmend and Subtlety, but gives 9% less mana cost and 0,5s cast time reduce after a spell crit. Subtlety should really not be necessary in 20/40man raids anymore and Swiftmend is worth losing for increased mana efficiency and faster casting speeds from time to time. Nature's Focus and Improved Rejuvenation are no vital talents for raiding, since Healing Touch will be your main spell and you should not take damage very often that disrupts your casts. The Talents I chose to put into Balance before Nature's Grace & Moonglow are not necessarily to be copied (except for Improved Thorns maybe).



2. How to heal effectively



As mentioned before, your main spell to heal with will be Healing Touch. Healing Touch and Rejuvenation are the spells that profit the most from Bonus Heal, but Rejuvenation is just not reliable enough to use it effectively. Since the most healing in Vanilla is done with direct heals, most of it would be wasted on a full HP bar after one or two ticks. It is not forbidden to use, but only on targets that take continuous damage or have to be kept at 100% HP (Most of the time, this would be the Main Tank).

For anything else, use Healing Touch. NEVER use Regrowth (except for Vaelastrasz in BWL maybe) since it is a very expensive spell which will result mostly in useless overheal.

Of course, using Rank 10 (or 11 if learned) of HT (=Healing Touch) will only be possible if a target has lost a big enough amount of health to not result in a huge amount of overheal. This will only happen in some exceptional cases or in combination with Nature's Swiftness.

For that reason, we make use of downranking (using a spell with a lower rank). Downranking decreases the healed amount, but also the mana cost and the cast time. This makes you not only heal faster, but also increases the efficiency of your healing, because the overheal is reduced and the healing done per mana point spent increases with an increasing amount of bonus heal on your gear.

For example: Rank 10 HT heals an average amount of 2060 for 720 mana, resulting in the amount of 2,9 HPM (Healing per Mana). Calculating Rank 4 (220 Healing/110 Mana) results 2,0 HPM. Now we add 500 Bonus Healing and calculate again: HT Rank 10 (2560 Healing/720 Mana) = 3,6 HPM; HT Rank 4 (720 Healing/110 Mana) =6,5 HPM. Of course, this is a very simplified example because there are penalties for spells with lesser cast time or lower ranks, but the base concept should be clear.



So, what spells should you use now?



For big/emergency heals use Nature's Swiftness+HT Rank 10/11.

For MT Heal use Rejuvenation.

For >1000HP heals use HT Rank 4.

For <1000HP heals use HT Rank 3

Of course this depends on your bonus healing. With AQ40 gear, Rank 3 becomes more interesting because it heals about 1k with a cast time of only 2s. Just try it out yourself which heal fits best for which amount of health loss.



So why Rank 3/4?



Blizzard added some downranking penalties to prevent you from stacking bonus heal and healing with too low ranks, which would result in a very fast heal with almost no mana cost but considerably high value.

There are two penalties to be considered:



1. The Cast Time Penalty: Every Heal with a cast time below 3,5s has its Bonus Heal multiplied with the cast time divided by 3,5 (Bonus Heal*(Cast Time/3,5). So for a spell with 3s cast time this would result in a penalty of ~0,86. This penalty is calculated before talent reduce, so Improved Healing Touch does not affect this penalty.



2. The Level 20 penalty. Every spell learned below level 20 suffers from a penalty that is calculated by the following formula: 1 - ((20 - lvl) * 0,0375) (lvl = Level that the spell is acquired). So for rank 1, the penalty would be 1-((20-1)*0,0375) = 0,2875. Like the Cast Time Penalty, this does not affect the base heal, but the bonus healing added to the basic spell.



As you can see, healing with a spell lower than rank 3 would result in a large penalty and decrease the efficiency rather than increasing it.



Obviously, Rank 4 is the most effective heal with good HPM and HPS values. With better gear and increasing bonus heal, the effectiveness of Rank 4 compared to Rank 3/10 will increase more and more. Still, Rank 3 will be more interesting with increasing gear, because the cast time of Rank 4 is just too slow to have a chance against paladins/shamans or priests.



3. Pre-Raid Gear



Head

Cassandra's Grace World Random Drop (AH)

Insightful Hood  DM North 21,46%

Sanctified Leather Helm  Argent Dawn Reward



Neck

Tooth of Gnarr UBRS 16,83%

Amulet of the Redeemed Strath 14,03&

Animated Chain Necklace  Strath 7,54%



Shoulders

Mantle of the Scarlet Crusade Strath 16,03%

Diabolic Mantle DM West 23,12%

Mantle of Lost Hope BRD 20,48%

Back

Amplifying Cloak  DM West 21,44%

Cloak of the Cosmos  DM West 14,35%

Hide of the Wild  Crafted Tribal LW Item



Chest

Robes of Insight World Random Drop (AH); its special is worth 8,3 mp5 if used on cd

Forest's Embrace Quest "A Better Ingredient"

Robes of the Exalted Strath 11,51%



Wrist

Sublime Wristguards  DM North 4,14%

Bleak Howler Armguards  LBRS 18,02%

Bracers of Prosperity  DM North 19,15%



Hands

Gloves of Restoration  DM East 14,05%

Hands of the Exalted Herald BRD 11,91%

Slaghide Gauntlets of Healing LBRS very low chance (+46 heal but no stats)



Waist

Eyestalk Cord DM West 20,08%

Sash of Mercy World Random Drop (AH)

Whipvine Cord DM East 16,53% (best by total stats, though i would prefer Sash of Mercy anytime)



Legs

Ghoul Skin Leggings Scholo 1,00%

Abyssal Cloth Pants of Restoration Local Random Drop (AH) (15stam, 6mp5, 1crit, +33heal)

Padre's Trousers DM West 18,79%



Feet

Boots of the Full Moon  DM North 18,75%

Faith Healer's Boots  UBRS 12,71%

Abyssal Cloth Slippers of Restoration  Local Random Drop (AH) (10sta, 4mp5, +24heal)



Ring

Ring of Demonic Guile  DM East 13,71%

Band of Mending Strath 17,19%

Fordring's Seal Quest "In Dreams"

Band of Piety Argent Dawn Reward

Rosewine Circle  LBRS 21,48%



Trinket

Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon  Darkmoon Faire Quest

Mindtap Talisman DM West 7,45%

Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas DM Book Quest



2-Hand

Staff of Metanoia  Scholo 8,67%

Guiding Stave of Wisdom  BRD 15,01%

Redemption  Strath 7,04%



1-Hand

Energetic Rod DM East 15,94%

Hammer of Revitalization  DM East 13,65%

The Hammer of Grace  BRD 21,29%



Off-Hand

Brightly Glowing Stone  DM North 20,21%

Tome of Divine Right  LBRS 20,81%

Lei of the Lifegiver Alterac Valley Exalted



Idol

Idol of Rejuvenation  LBRS 12,87% (affecting rejuvenation only)



4. Useful Addons



The most important addons for any healer are of course raid frames and decursive. There are some good raidframe addons, you can choose any that fits best to your playing style, for me it is important to have a range check and a hot display so I don't overwrite another druid's Rejuvenation. Recommended for raiding is also the display of incoming heals (Grid) which will increase the overall efficiency and increase the survival chance of the whole raid. You should always display the health deficit to produce a minimum of overheal. To show the duration of hots, use the HotCandy or DoTimer which works fine at least for your own hots.

Other useful raiding addons are for example OmniCC to display ability cooldowns, Bigwigs (or other Bossmods), SpellAlert or any Enemy Cast Bar (i.e. Nature's Enemy Cast Bar) addon.

I wont say anything specific about keybindings, of course you should have every ability on keybind, clicking is a waste of time and also a risk to fail because it distracts your attention.



5. Enchants



Head: Zul'Gurub Enchant

alternative: Arcanum of Focus

Shoulders: Zul'Gurub Exalted Enchant, later Sapphiron Enchant

alternative: Argent Dawn Reputation Reward

Back: Subtlety

Chest: Major Mana or Greater Stats

Bracer: Healing Power

Gloves: Healing Power

Legs: Zul'Gurub Enchant

alternative: Arcanum of Focus

Boots: Minor Speed

Weapon: Healing Power



I would always prefer Speed on Boots to the other enchants, the stat increase is just too small to keep up with walking speed increase for better movement.



6. Consumables



Consumables are very important for vanilla raiding, even if it can take a lot of time to farm them all. If you want to be a successful raider, you will have to work for it.



Buff Potions:

Flask of distilled Wisdom

Elixir of the Sages

Mageblood Potion

Elixir of Greater Intellect

Rumsey Rum Black Label



Buff Food:

Sagefish Delight



Temporary Weapon Buff:

Brilliant Mana Oil



Mana Potions:

Major Mana Potion

Night Dragon's Breath

Dark Rune



If you want to buff yourself to the max, farm/buy also

Crystal Force

Scroll of Intellect IV

Scroll of Stamina IV

Scroll of Spirit IV
 
If you have any questions feel free to ask