Shadowlands Compilation: Resto Druid

Last Updated: 13 August

This page will exist as a compendium of all Resto Druid changes in the upcoming Shadowlands expansion. We don’t know anywhere near enough to comment on viability or strength yet but I’ll add commentary where relevant. This page will be updated as we learn more. Overall the Resto Druid changes are big positives so far and our new talent tree in particular is looking great. 

Returning Spells

• Cyclone
• Stampeding Roar
• Nature’s Swiftness (tooltip missing, makes your next Regrowth instant and increases its healing by 100%).
• Nourish (talent, previously PVP only, replaces Prosperity)
• Heart of the Wild (talent) – Replaces Typhoon. 
• Overgrowth (talent, previously PVP only, replaces Stonebark). Its cooldown has been increased to 1 minute.

Resto Druid is already stacked with Mythic+ utility. Now we have more. With mastery unchanged our dungeon outlook remains as good as it has been in Legion and BFA at this early juncture. If Feral Affinity remains the strongest DPS option on the row then we’ll trade Typhoon for Maim, Cyclone and Mighty Bash which is a large upgrade. Nature’s Swiftness could be expanded to include Nourish but will be quite a large heal either way. 

Overgrowth really needs a mana cost decrease to see any competitive raid use. It might find niche M+ play as-is. 

Spell Changes

• Swiftmend replaced with Swiftmend Classic™. It’s cheaper and has a shorter cooldown (15s), but it consumes a HoT on the target. 
• Multiple spell mana costs have changed. Some spells are also slightly stronger / weaker than on live. This is discussed further below.
• Ironbark cooldown increased to 90s (from 60) but at level 56 gains Stonebarks effect of increasing HoT healing on the target while active. 
• If Innervate is cast on an ally you now get the effect at 50% effectiveness for its duration. 
• Regrowth initial heal has a 40% increased crit chance at level 54 if the target already has a Regrowth HoT. 
• The Photosynthesis proc chance has been reduced from 5% per HoT tick to 4%. This is a reasonable nerf to our single target healing in Mythic+ but not one that is likely to disrupt our current strong position in dungeons.

The Swiftmend change gives Soul of the Forest a large increase in power and it should compete well on that tier so long as New-Swiftmend is worth casting. Baking Stonebark into Ironbark is a great move since it effectively removes a dud talent. The cooldown increase is no doubt to curb our dungeon strengths. 

The Innervate change is great for raid utility, though I would have preferred a 100/100 split or a 100/50 split in favor of the casting druid instead. 

Current Talent Tree

You can also play around with the wowhead talent calculator here. Germination likely still needs a little work to be viable.

Spell Comparisons

Consider these informational only for now. They will likely change throughout alpha and we still have Covenant “trees” to come which will likely modify spec abilities like the Artifact weapons did in Legion. We’ll go into much more depth when they get a few more builds along. 

Mastery: 9%, Haste: 8%. These are based on the stats we had at the beginning of BFA which is likely to follow in Shadowlands. Crit / Spell Aura not included since they are consistent across spells with the exception of the second Regrowth cast which is minimally affected. 

Covenants

Covenants are basically four mini-factions of which you’ll pick one to align yourself with. There will be a process to switch covenants but they’ve indicated it won’t be an ultra quick process. Signing up to a covenant gives you one “signature ability” which is the same for every class, and a special “spec ability” which differs depending on what you’re playing. These are going to be tuned up until the day the expansion goes live (and probably for weeks after that) so we can only speculate about which might be best. They should also eventually have skill trees attached to them that give a variety of passive abilities. We don’t know much about these yet but they could factor into our decision.

Kyrian (Bastion)

Signature Ability: Summon Steward. You get your own personal butler that can give you a potion that heals and removes Curse, Diseases, Poisons and Bleeds. In BFA this would have been occasionally useful in Mythic+ but probably not enough so that you’d take it over the other three alternatives. The heal does have three charges but we’re still not particularly excited about it.

Druid Ability: Kindred Spirits. As Resto we get to form a bond with an ally that lasts for an hour. Every minute we can empower the bond for 10 seconds. The bond replicates 50% of all healing we do onto the target. Think of it as an on-use Beacon of Light. 

Necrolords (Maldraxxus)

Signature Ability: Fleshcraft. A channeled 4 second cast that creates an absorb for 20% of your maximum HP. If you channel near a corpse it absorbs between 20% and 50% instead (scaling with the strength of the mob). It also has a long two minute cooldown. This is solid for surviving one shots but Adaptive Swarm is poor and we’re often not contending with many hits of that size in the first tier anyway. 

Druid Ability: Adaptive Swarm. A large HoT or DoT that heals over 12 seconds and increases our other HoTs by 20%. Bounces between allies and enemies on expiration. If you can have multiple of these out at once then it’s reasonably good and a great design. Given it is random and only heals one target at a time we will probably want this to be very good numerically to justify the pick. It currently isn’t.

Night Fae (Ardenweald)

Signature Ability: Soulshape. A movement speed buff with a blink attached? Yes. Please. You can also collect different forms to turn into including a moth, wolfhawk, unicorn and much more. We already have a lot of mobility baseline, but this has been invaluable in raid testing to reposition quickly around the room – particularly when you’re moving away from the group where Wild Charge is less effective. 

Druid Ability: Convoke the Spirits. Channel a flurry of Druid abilities over a 4 second cast. The tooltip mentions that it’ll prefer restoration abilities but it remains to be seen what kind of percentage we’re looking at here. This is currently incredible. Swiftmends cast by the ability proc Soul of the Forest and it even has a small chance of casting a free Flourish. 

Venthyr (Revendreth)

Signature Ability: Door of Shadows. This is a blink with a 1.5s cast time and a 1 minute cooldown. Blinks are generally given quite high value and they should only feel “mandatory” with very specific dungeon / raid boss design. I don’t think we’ll ever end up in a situation where you are only invited to a key or raid if you are Venthyr – at least with what we currently know.

Druid Ability: Ravenous Frenzy. For 20 seconds, spells you cast increase your damage, healing and haste by 2%. If you stop casting for 1.5s you’ll take a huge self-hit and be stunned. This is like a mini Ever Rising Tide. With starter haste levels you’re looking at an average of ~16% haste and healing for the 20 second duration on a three minute cooldown. This is likely to start the expansion poor and then become a monster by the time it ends. Lines up very well with Tree, though it doesn’t function well with Tranq.

Legendaries

Legendaries have been split into their own article for deeper analysis. You can find it here. In general we have a well-rounded set of legendaries with only a few needing some tuning pre-release. 

Conduits & Soulbinds

Analysis on Conduits and Soulbinds is coming soon!