Restoration Druid Frequently Asked Questions — The War Within (11.0.5)

Restoration Druids continue to do good HPS in the game in all forms of PvE content. We can do one of the highest single-target healing in Mythic+ and deliver decent bursts in raids through our multiple cooldowns. The downsides remain to be a lack of a group-wide damage reduction cooldown and our over-reliance on cooldowns in general. Our damage is very good in Mythic+, but it requires quite a bit of effort to master. If you are looking strictly to outheal incoming damage in Mythic+ or in Raids, then Restoration Druid is one of the better specs to do it on.

A summary of all changes can be found on our intro page.

It is generally recommended to use Incarnation: Tree of Life in most situations.

You can use Incarnation: Tree of Life to line up with every other Flourish. You can overcome our damage issues with Nature's Vigil and Master Shapeshifter. The main role of a Restoration Druid in raids is a cooldown-oriented throughput healer with good survivability.

Yes, Restoration Druids are one of the better specializations for Mythic+. We provide very strong healing and damage throughput.

Night Elves are by far the best race for dungeon content due to the power of Shadowmeld. Night Elf passive racials are inconsequential in raid content.

As for raiding, you have to choose between a better burst from Trolls and better utility racials from Taurens and Highmountain Taurens. There is no formula that will help you make this decision, but the differences between all three races are pretty small. Finally, Zandalari Trolls offer nothing exceptional, but they are not too far behind that it would really make a difference in any content, even cutting edge.

There are no goals for stats, no set amounts to aim for, and no combinations of stat distributions that are good. It is a very common misconception to focus on stats or aim for the "right" ones. They do not exist. The only stat that will always be correct to pick is Intellect.

Haste increases the healing of all your HoTs linearly, which means there are no and cannot be any breakpoints. You will have a 10% reduction in Haste rating effectiveness after acquiring a 19800 Haste rating, which will make it slightly weaker overall. After the 26400 Haste rating, you will have a 20% reduction, at which point you might want to look into getting other stats instead. Keep in mind that diminishing returns only work for the Haste rating, not for effects that give you Haste percent increases like Bloodlust, Heroism, or Lycara's Teachings.

Grid2, VuhDo, Cell, or ElvUI all provide strong, customizable raid frames options. Standard Blizzard frames, unfortunately, do not offer options to show the same amount of information or ways to filter out useless information.

You can, but there are no good reasons to do it. Playstyle in any of the talent builds is essentially the same as the specs they mimic but with much lower damage. If you choose to still level as Restoration, make sure you drop any gear with Mastery on it and try to use any trinkets with damage procs or on-use effects.

Right now, you should just pick a higher item level of the two. Both combos will provide the same amount of stats with very minor differences in roughly a few secondary stats.