Season of Discovery Restoration Druid Healer Talents and Runes

Restoration Druid has a few viable and competitive talent builds both offering high amounts of damage and healing. With the introduction (and change) of Tree of Life and Survival Instincts, we will continue to recommend a fully focused healing build.

In previous phases, it was common for Restoration Druids to spec into DPS talents and only offheal occassionally. As we have gained access to more runes and a higher overall level, DPS focused builds have fallen out of the meta and you will instead have the most impact by focusing on full healing builds. While leveling and running dungeons you may want to opt for more damage, but in general aim to at least have this healing focused build as one of your talent trees.

If you are still interested in playing a DPS focused build, you can simply spec Balance instead, but rune Wild Growth and Improved Barkskin instead of Sunfire and Gale Winds (which can still be good in fights with a lot of adds to kill). This will enable high area healing and good DPS in a single package. Remember to move the point in Moonkin Form to Improved Starfire, as you will want to use Wild Growth on cooldown and doing so will take you out of Moonkin Form.

• Gloves — Wild Growth
• Pants — Lifebloom
• Chest — Fury of Stormrage
• Waist — Nourish
• Feet — Survival Instincts
• Head — Improved Barkskin
• Wrist — Efflorescence
• Cloak — Tree of Life

As far as Ring specializations go, there aren't any that will provide you a boost to your healing output. For that reason you can realistically use any for now, Nature Specialization can provide you a bonus to dealing damage while Defense Specialization can boost your tankiness.

Regardless, as we are focusing on the pure healer version of Restoration here, we will be suggesting a healing-focused rune setup with Nourish, which is a fast option to Healing Touch that benefits from the same talents and is especially strong on targets with at least one of your healing over time effects active, making it a great spot healing follow up to Wild Growth.

Living Seed is a bit more competitive in Phase 4, but Fury of Stormrage helps you to manage your mana very well by giving you extra free casts. When mana isn't a concern and you don't find yourself needing the benefits it provides, Living Seed can be a viable choice.

Survival Instincts was changed in the most recent patch, not giving you a very powerful on-use cooldown to boost your healing output. You will want to time your uses well and make sure that you get as many as possible.

Improved Barkskin converts your Barkskin into an external cooldown and Efflorescence converts your Swiftmend into a powerful area heal, provided allies stay within its radius for the duration.

Tree of Life adds another massive cooldown to Resto Druid. Similar to Survival Instincts, you will want to make sure that you are getting as many uses as possible during a fight while still using it for the most intensive moments.

For a full list of Druid Runes and where to find them, please visit our dedicated Druid Rune page: