Rotation

So, we’ve learned a little bit about our spells, but perhaps more importantly we must learn when to cast what. This can sometimes be encounter specific so think of these as general strategies that can work well in a wide variety of situations.


Raid Healing Rotation and Strategy

To raid heal as a Resto Druid you will learn to anticipate damage. This can be a very rewarding play style as you’ll find your numbers going steadily up as you learn how best to heal each boss. It can be easy as a new player to react to damage going out by casting Rejuvenations on damaged players which is acceptable but not optimal. Make sure you read the ramps section further down the page after you’ve finished this brief summary. Most of your HPS will come from combining your buttons.

  • Keep Efflorescence on a stack of at least three allies who are likely to take damage. You can often line up both the tank and melee group to guarantee full value. Aim for 100% uptime.
  • Keep Lifebloom on yourself for Photosynthesis value. Aim for 100% uptime. Losing uptime here is a significant healing loss.
  • Cast Wild Growth on cooldown if there are six or more allies that have taken damage. You shouldn’t cast Wild Growth before the damage hits as the first few ticks of the HoT are the largest and shouldn’t be wasted. Wild Growth is very efficient, and should be cast as often as possible. Pair it with Swiftmend as often as you can for Soul of the Forest value.
  • Cast Rejuvenation on any allies that are about to take damage, or that have taken significant damage. You’ll get into the habit of chain-casting a bunch of Rejuvs before major raid damage goes out – with the Luxuriant Soil talent you can begin doing this quite far before raid damage hits. We’ll discuss this further below in the “ramps” section.
  • Cast Grove Guardians throughout the fight. Your timing here isn’t too important and you’re fine to just send one or more whenever the raid is taking a decent amount of damage. Your key goals are to avoid overlapping your charges. Grove Guardians are not on the global cooldown which means you can and should cast them at the same time as another spell.
  • Use Regrowth and Swiftmend to keep low HP people from dying. Prioritize targets with already existing HoTs for a larger emergency heal. If you are running Abundance you will cast Regrowth a lot after you hit Flourish or whenever you have a ton of Rejuvenations out.

Always remember: Your job is to keep people alive, and you should throw everything into making sure that’s the case. Even when they stand in fire, or volcanoes, or ooze explosions.

 


What to do with downtime

Especially early in fights, you’ll have many opportunities where there just isn’t any / much damage going out. Keep Efflorescence down and cast Swiftmend -> Wild Growth whenever the raid is lightly injured. After that, you have a bit of a choice:

  • If significant raid damage is coming up soon, start casting Rejuvenation.
  • Cast Wrath as a filler. Moonfire & Sunfire aren’t great value for their mana cost. Note that most of your damage will come from Nature’s Vigil so your downtime DPS casts aren’t particularly important.

 


“Special Techniques”

You might combine your abilities differently depending on the fight, but here are some examples to help get you started.

The Convoke Flourish Ramp

Note that Rejuv and Regrowth numbers here are variable and are likely to greatly exceed those displayed above.

Resto druid is a ramp based healer which means we’ll be casting a ton of spells in a sequence when damage is coming up. We do this so when big damage does hit we’re already prepared and have HoTs on the majority of the raid. It also lets us maximize the value of casts like Flourish and offers much higher Mastery value than individual HoTs would. Your typical ramp sequence will look something like this:

The Essentials

  1. Begin casting Rejuv ~15 seconds before you’re expecting damage. Don’t worry about getting a precise number out since that’ll depend on how much haste you have. As many as you can is fine. You can either Rejuv targets twice for increased mastery value or spread them out for better coverage. There isn’t much of a difference unless you’re wearing Amalgam’s Seventh Spine which encourages spreading. If your Incarnation: Tree of Life is assigned here, then pop it before you start casting Rejuv so that you can benefit from the huge mana savings.
  2. As damage is about to hit, cast Swiftmend -> Wild Growth -> Convoke the Spirits -> Flourish.
  3. Chain cast Regrowth after your Flourish. We have a lot of Rejuvenations out so the Regrowth casts are cheaper and have a high crit rate. After Abundance nerfs

To break it down a little bit, we’re putting out as many HoTs as we can in order to extend them. We’ll hit Swiftmend before Wild Growth in for Soul of the Forest, and so that a Wild Growth is included in Flourish.

The Flourish cooldown doesn’t line up perfectly with the Convoke cooldown so you’ll often delay it 30 seconds to combine them. This does depend on the fight though so stay a little flexible.

 

Further Ramp Improvements

Cast Swiftmend twice in between Convoke the Spirit casts so that you have two stacks of Reforestation going into your ramp. This will require you to have slightly better preparation since you need to be on top of your Reforestation stacks. The reward though is a massive increase to your healing. The Reforestation choice can be a little fight dependent.

You can also begin your Ramp sequence with Innervate. This will save you a ton of mana.

 

Tank and Single Target healing strategies

The value of single target healing changes a lot from patch to patch. Right now it isn’t all too important but we’ll cover it just in case. There are a few notable encounters that deal challenging tank damage like Experiments and Sarkareth.

  • Keep 2 Rejuvenation buffs up at all times.
  • Generally don’t move your Lifebloom to them unless there is no raid damage going out. It’s more important to keep it on yourself for the improved tick rate.
  • Respond to extra damage by first casting Cenarion Ward if taken. It’s very mana efficient and applies another stack of our Mastery.
  • Respond to bursts of damage by casting Regrowth, or Swiftmend if a 1.5 second cast is too slow.
  • Use Regrowth if the damage is spiky. If it’s not, trust your HoT’s to do their job. You shouldn’t expect to have the tank at 100% HP for an entire fight.
  • (Extra) Use Ironbark if the incoming damage is too much to handle, or if you’re expecting incoming damage to be huge.

 

Let’s get our talents up to scratch.

15 responses to “Rotation”

  1. Midsummerr says:

    I was wondering if you could add swiftmend to the cursor weak aura? I’d like to know as soon as its off cooldown and i think it will be even more important with upcoming patch when we have new 4 set bonus.

  2. Stich says:

    I found during raids, emergency Healing is needed.. eff is down, wg, rejuv on low hp, LB tank + Convoke+Tranq finished with Flourish will bring back the entire raid grp to 100% Hp, this has been a win win and GG for getttin some of the proggression bosses down…

  3. Tahlius says:

    Hey,
    thanks for all your content, I am really enjoying reading through all your amazing tips and tricks.

    As you also cover “special techniques” here is one I think is by far our strongest hps output.
    10 seconds before raid dmg hits you activate Tree of Life and start blanketing the raid. Just before the dmg income you cast Wild Growth and refresh Efflorescence and follow with Convoke. This should get a Reju and Wild Growth hot on almost all players (considering a 20 man raid). To maximize output you can then cast Flourish to get a massive hps output for the next 10-15 seconds.

    Another thing to think about is the Tranq – convoke combo, especially with the new night fae legendary as it will give you a high chance to Flourish the Tranq hots.
    If it somehow doesnt Flourish you can still cast it yourself. With the new legendary you will then only have a minute downtime until your convoke is rdy again, which you could then use combined with your tree.

    Imo there are so many amazing ways we can utilize convoke and the new legendary now. I love playing Resto in 9.1

  4. Kristi Griggs says:

    Hi. Has this section been updated for Shadowlands? I’m particularly curious about the “special techniques.”
    Thank you!

    • Voulk says:

      Hi! It’s been given a brief update today, and I have a larger update that should go out in the next few days – in particular to refine the special techniques section.

  5. Lifender says:

    Hello, do you think it’s worth it in raid to cast a flourish after a convoc if it has been cast during it ?

  6. Recyclone says:

    I find you can replicate an innervate bomb with Memory of Lucid Dreams. It won’t be as powerful if you’re running lively spirit, but it can produce similar results. I tend to use early in a fight to maximize my lucid dreams usage.

  7. Christophe Gervolino says:

    Hi, i would like to know if you have a tree of life form tip. Because wowanalyzer would like 5% heal with it and i am at 2%.

    • Voulk says:

      Make sure you’re filling your Tree of Life GCD’s with the right spells. Your priority in tree is Efflorescence > Wild Growth > Rejuv. Fit three Wild Growths into every tree and avoid Regrowth as much as possible.

  8. Huntingtiger says:

    I use a version of the innervate bomb with Incarnation: Tree. I pop tree then innervate and load up a ton of hots with WG, Regrowth, and rejuv. If damage is heavy I’ll Flourish afterwards for some truly inspiring healing.
    Also for Tranq + I usually tranq WG and lay a few more rejuvs before Flourish. Again some amazing results.

  9. Hornlig says:

    Uldir opened normal and heroic opened last night and because our guild had a full roster signed up for heroic we ended up with 27 people. I’m quite new to raid healing as druid but i found myself using Tranq followed up with Flourish (so the stacks from tranq ticks faster and get extended) on the MOTHER encounter. It should be noted that i was sent through the gates first. However since Tranq hits the other sides this felt like a solid option for topping people off and sending more through faster.

  10. Proph says:

    Hello,
    Thanks for your guide. I’m reading through it and had a question about talents. I like to use 2120132 (Prosperity and Soul of the Forest) to get the synergy between the two talents. All the guide makers seem to be on the same page and I’m not sure if it’s a group thought thing or if it’s a situational thing or if the two talents are really that bad. Is there any reason you can’t use those two talents? Can you help me understand why not if there is?

    Thanks and thank you for your work 🙂

  11. Snuffey says:

    One thing if found out on the innervate bomb is that you prob want to refresh your efflorencence aswell since that also is a very mana heavy spell, doesnt really increase your hps if your a good healer and have high uptime but its just as costly as WG 🙂

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