Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to a lot of frequently asked questions in the Resto Druid community, updated for patch 8.2.5. Grab a coffee and we’ll get you up to date.
How strong are the new races? Is it worth swapping to Zandalari or Kul Tiran?
There isn’t a large difference between any of the druid races and you should only race change if you like the aesthetics. You’re not going to be happy with that answer alone, so let’s compare numbers.
Stat Line: 5% Vers, 20% Crit, 15% Haste, 9000 intellect
These are plucked from my personal stat line and weights so yours won’t look quite the same but it should illustrate how close they all are. The Zandalari Regeneratin’ racial isn’t included but it’s been hit by the nerf bat so many times on the PTR that there are only rare scenarios where you’d get any value from it. Berzerking is slightly under valued here since in reality you’ll pop it with Innervate, Tree Form or during a period of high damage.
What class changes did we get in 8.2? 8.2.5?
We didn’t receive any changes in either patch.
Which talents should I use?
More information on talents can be found here but those looking for a quick answer will have reasonable success with:
Raid
Spring Blossoms is your default. Swap to Inner Peace on fights that strongly discourage stacking. In Eternal Palace that’s really just Blackwater Behemoth.
What are the best Azerite Traits going into Eternal Palace?
Check out the Azerite Trait page to read through a full list of our traits and how they perform. You’ll be aiming to pick up:
For Eternal Palace: One Autumn Leaves, One Lively Spirit, One Rampant Growth, stat traits to fill. Loyal to the End is particularly strong.
For dungeons: One Grove Tending, then you can play with DPS traits and stat procs in your other slots as there are no dominant choices.
You can compare individual azerite pieces quickly and easily with QE Live. All the power of a spreadsheet, but in a quarter of the time. QE Live is always more accurate than tier lists or the recommendations above since all four rings on the piece are relevant as well as the item level.
How good are the Eternal Palace Raid Traits?
They’re a little more uneven than in BoD with Loyal to the End being incredible, Arcane Heart being poor and Undulating Tides offering fantastic damage but almost no healing throughput.
What trinkets should I use?
There is a full trinket tier list here. The Alchemist Stone is an easy to get high tier trinket. From the raid Azsharas Font of Power, Luminous Jellyweed and Deferred Sentence are all fantastic.
What raid frame is best? Do I need to update anything for the new raid?
Grid2, Vuhdo and ElvUI are the top 3 raid frames. The default blizzard raid frames aren’t recommended but if you must use them then pick up BigDebuffs so that you can see more than three buffs at once. Then throw the whole thing away and get one of the three I listed. QE has premade Grid2 profiles here. They are updated for 8.2. Make sure your Grid2 addon is up to date.
What are the current Resto Druid stat weights? Do you have a Pawn string for me? Did they change with the new raid?
Nothing has changed since Season One. There are actually no default Resto Druid stat weights and I’ll explain to you why since it can seem quite strange if you’re coming from another class.
- First of all, we have no dominant stat like some other specs might. All four secondary stats are strong for us.
- We tend to want more of the stat that we have the least of which is the opposite of what Pawn will try and do for you.
- Gear with higher ilvl offers more intellect and more total secondary stats.
This actually makes us very easy to gear, and if you aren’t running cutting edge content then you can do very well by just equipping your highest ilvl pieces regardless of secondary stats. If you are looking to really min-max then the best choice is:
- To run a log through WoWAnalyzer.
What’s the optimal way to DPS as resto now? Are we still Catweaving after the innervate nerf?
While Innervate provided a nice burst DPS tool, its loss is not enough to impact your choice. Catweaving is still miles ahead of Owlweaving and any other healer DPS variant.
Which weapon enchant should I be using?
You’ll be using Machinists Brilliance in almost all content. It’s strong in raid, strong while healing dungeons and strong while contributing DPS. The navigations are also very good if you’re looking for a cheap enchant for an alt. The Coastal Surge HoT doesn’t count toward our mastery and the enchant is a little unreliable so steer clear of it. You’ll also want a couple of ring enchants – Haste and Mastery are again solid in almost all situations. There are no neck or cape enchants this expansion.
How good is Seabreeze?
Seabreeze is a staff with a large haste proc but no flat secondary stats. It’s weaker than weapons of equal ilvl since the uptime on the proc is poor and we prefer some semblance of reliability as healers. If it’s your highest ilvl weapon then feel free to use it, but if not then take it to the scrapper. You can compare it to your other weapons in QE Live.
If you’re reading through the guide in order, Spells is your next stop.