How to play – Mythic+

Healing as a Resto Druid in Mythic+ is somewhat similar as healing a raid except you have to take on the bulk of the spot healing yourself and the damage patterns are often burstier. You’ll need to run each dungeon a few times to get a good feeling for the damage patterns since, like raid, pre-hotting is incredibly important. Make sure you’ve read through the essentials chapters of the Resto Druid guide before you get started here since a basic grasp of your abilities is assumed. Note that talents and stats have their own guide pages. You’ll be expected to contribute decent damage through a key and this is covered in detail on the next page.

Dungeon Healing Priorities

Maintenance Healing

Including most general pulls without notably dangerous mobs. 

• Lifebloom is one of your most important spells. During low damage pulls you can just keep one on the tank by default. As damage ramps up you can put one on yourself for handling group damage and put the other on an at-risk DPS. Uptime is extremely important since due to Photosynthesis (and Verdancy).
• Put Efflorescence down. Try and cover as many people as you can but make sure you hit the tank with it. There’s a real priority on being GCD efficient since the fewer you spend healing the more you can spend on damage. Efflorescence heals over a very long period of time and the Spring Blossoms HoTs give you some mastery value for if the group takes damage unexpectedly.
• Cast Adaptive Swarm on cooldown. There is a weak aura that’ll pick a target for you and it’s included in the UI section of the guide. These do a lot of maintenance healing and a decent amount of damage. It’s also really good setup for when you need to ramp up your healing.
• Use Regrowth and Wild Growth to keep people healthy. Let your HoTs do most of the work. If they’re sitting on 80% health in Efflo then they’re fine. As with Efflo, Wild Growth is very GCD efficient. Remember that with Lifebloom out you’ll get more than one Regrowth HoT per cast via Rampant Growth.
• You’ll be able to focus a lot on damage on these packs.

We’ll discuss what to do as damage ramps up in the examples below but expect to use some of your big cooldowns for it. Flourish is your most powerful cooldown, Convoke is ok – particularly if you’re caught without prep, and Tranquility is the weakest but also doesn’t require much prep.

You’ll notice here that you cast a lot of your spells in advance, before or as the damage hits. Getting used to this healing pattern is a key part of learning to play Druid well. Over time you’ll also practice healing in fewer, more efficient GCDs so that you have more time to DPS. You’ll generally alternate between the maintenance healing above and layering in more GCDs as required but it’s this strong base that allows us to do so much healing.

Healing different types of heavy damage

Sustained Damage – Kha’jin (Halls of Infusion)

Kha’jin is characterized by heavy sustained damage on the party. Your HPS here will be very high, though it can be somewhat easier to heal than burstier bosses.

• Prioritize very good fundamentals. Lifebloom uptime on two targets, Efflorescence down, Swarm used on cooldown, and casting Wild Growth often. Remember that you can refresh Lifebloom when it has less than ~3.8 seconds left (4.5 without Circle of Life and Death) and still get the “bloom” portion.
• Use Rejuv as necessary. Note here that Rejuv GCDs are less important than the Regrowth that’ll add three HoTs but it’s a fine filler cast after those if people need more healing.
• Use your defensive buttons and encourage DPS to press defensives.
• Assume you will get 2-3 Flourish casts per fight, depending on key level. You’re often better to maximize usages here than saving it for when you’re in trouble. Use Convoke the Spirits the same way. If you’re going to commit Tranquility make sure you don’t do it when Frost Cyclone or Glacial Surge are coming up.

Burst Damage – Asaad (Vortex Pinnacle)

Asaad damage comes in waves – you’ll have little to do until Skyfall Nova spawn and then the party will take heavy damage over 10-15 seconds until it dies. Asaad has quite a predictable healing pattern – he’ll cast one Skyfall Nova, then have a brief intermission and for the rest of the fight you’ll get two Skyfall Novas, an intermission and it repeats.

• Unlike Kha’jin, there is a lower priority here on casting stuff like Wild Growth on cooldown. Instead you want to make sure your biggest buttons are up when the most dangerous damage hits (Skyfall Nova).
• (Maintenance) Do keep Efflorescence down and Lifebloom up. Also continue to cast Adaptive Swarm on cooldown. These are good value per GCD spent and keeping them down means you can set up for Skyfall Nova much more quickly. Swarm also adds decent damage.
• When Skyfall Nova is about to spawn (good timers from Little Wigs helps here), cast Swiftmend -> Wild Growth and then follow with Regrowth. If you’re low on healing cooldowns it’s also ok to set up Rejuv HoTs ahead of time. Make sure you are only casting these 5-10 seconds before it spawns though. There is little value in trying to keep them up the entire fight.
• After your intermission you’ll get a Skyfall Nova followed by another 25 seconds later. Then you’ll get about a 45s break between the next. This means you can roughly Flourish every 3rd. If you supplement the Novas in between with Tranquility and Convoke the Spirits you’ll have coverage for almost all.

Affixes