Hello guys. It’s Librarian Husky here today, going to World of Warcraft here. Today’s focus will be the restoration druid for Shadowlands, and I’ll try to keep things as simple as possible.
Race Pick
Race pick is pretty straightforward. You want to pick Tauren for horde, as War Stomp aoe stun has many defensive and offensive uses. For Alliance, night elf is hands down the best race for a druid. Shadowmeld utility is unlimited; you can dodge spells, stop maledict channels, drop combat, and drink. Moving on, talents, your default pick, should look like this.
Variations
However, there are some variations, and we can go through them individually. We have guardian affinity vs. feral Affinity. This will allow different playstyles, depending on what composition, covenant, and legendary you intend to pick. Feral Affinity, while providing some extra damage and mobility, will allow for more aggressive gameplay and will usually fit very well with casters or classes that lack stuns and, at the same time, can peal for you.
- Playing this talent can punish certain situations if you don’t get pealed or find yourself in the wrong position.
- Some melee specs will be able to delete you in 2-3 seconds even if you are 100% hp with Barkskin activated. You should do your best to avoid getting stunned if you lack a trinket.
- Guardian Affinity will give you extra survivability in all situations and allow you to play a more passive and defensive game.
Meaning that you do not have to compromise your position to land CC. Being very tanky, your number 1 priority is to keep the hots rolling on your teammate and stay away from the fight.
Fight
Of course, this is not the rule, as, in certain comps, you may have to push in for cc, but generally speaking, you need to understand that resto druids have the best single-target healing in the game, and you can out mana all other healers. Then we have Mighty Bash vs. mass entanglement vs. Heart of the Wild. Heart of the Wild should only be used with feral affinity and night fae covenant. We will cover this later in the video. Mass entanglement should be used if you don’t need the extra stun and are struggling to stay alive vs. melee specs. This talent works very well with deep roots PvP talent.
- Everything else should stay the same. Some players also pick renewal, but I find Wild Charge a lot better for survival and positioning.
A good example is if you’re playing with a rogue or a demon hunter; roots can help your team kite better in those situations. Mighty Bash, the extra stun can prove invaluable when playing with classes that don’t have excessive stuns and, in general, should be your default pick. Mark of the Wild can be very effective against certain schools of magic. Focused growth is also a good option if you can keep the stacks up and there is a low chance of life bloom being dispelled.
Master Shapeshifter
Master Shapeshifter is mainly used with a feral affinity for more damage, but I also find it useful vs. Windwalker monks when playing with guardian affinity. Deep Roots and High Winds are worth mentioning.
- However, these talents are highly situational. For stat priority, you should aim for 21% haste. This will lower your gcd to 1.2 seconds, provide extra ticks for your heal-over-time effects, and have excellent synergy with verdant infusion legendary.
- After haste, you should aim for as much versatility as possible.
For items where you can’t get haste and versatility, try and get mastery and versatility. The critical strike is not essential and should be avoided. As mentioned earlier, instead of covering covenants and legendaries separately, I will try and talk about some builds mainly centered around some of the best legendaries. The most defensive and standard build is necro lord, plague deviser Maribeth with legendary and guardian affinity verdant infusion.
Feral affinity
This can also be played with a feral affinity for the situations we mentioned in the talent section, but generally, this is the safest and least try-hard way to play the game. A more aggressive and dot-oriented build is necro lord, bone smith hermit, or emeni for even more damage, with deep draught legendary, feral affinity, and master shapeshifter.
- This build does insane damage due to how bleeds, dots, adaptive swarm, and master shapeshifter damage modifiers stack.
- The downside of this build is that you can easily fall behind in healing because you cannot extend your scenario ward and soul of the forest rejuvenation.
- A third and more explosive build would be night fae, meaning convokes, celestial spirits legendary, feral affinity, and Heart of the Wild for even more damage.
Build
This build is more setup oriented with a lot of bursts. Your burst is centered around stunning and convoking the spirits as feral druids. The downside of this build is that it can be predictable, and without verdant infusion, your healing output will be severely limited. I want to mention the verdant infusion.
- Because of how verdant infusion works, 15 seconds later, you can extend the same scenario to ward the existing soul of the forest rejuvenation and then add your second soul of the forest rejuvenation.
- By the time the scenario ward expires, you should have the scenario ward off cooldown shortly after its expiration.
- This is a perfect scenario where you are not getting crowd-controlled, and nobody is purging your heal over time effects.
Your main priority is continually extending the soul of the forest rejuvenation and scenario ward as much as possible, as those are your highest sources of healing. Rejuvenation into scenario ward into shifted into the soul of the forest rejuvenation.
Efficient & powerful way to heal
Still, it should give you a general idea of a very efficient and powerful way to heal. Many of you already know this, but I still see druids that do not abuse verdant infusion as they should. Also, these are some general guidelines, and nothing is set in stone. I encourage you to constantly test new things and see what’s best for you.
Thank you for reading this guide. My name is Librarian Husky – I am your faithful companion in the world of Warcraft. Please check our World Of Warcraft Guides main mage for more valuable articles.