Wrath of the Lich King made a number of fundamental changes to the game, many of which went through so many iterations that it can be difficult to get the facts. You can find a summary of these changes as related to the Restoration Druid in this extensive FAQ!
One of these Druids is not like the Other …
Published on August 15, 2007 by Phaelia 
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Phaelia has and probably always will be my main character. I first created her in the open beta (albeit with blue-green hair and a different hairstyle) and recreated her on the first day of release. From level 10, she’s been specced Restoration. Because my husband was levelling a Retribution-specced Paladin at the time, it was no issue for me to remain healing-specced for the journey to level 60. Sure, I used Cat Form when jumping from high places, but Bear Form didn’t even have a cute dance yet so it saw little use. Of course, before the release of the Burning Crusade, itemization and scaling issues made the two Druid offspecs much less viable than the classes they were intended to emulate. Many, many Druids found themselves respeccing into Restoration at the end game, especially if they had any desire to raid.
Burning Crusade brought a host of very positive changes for the Druid class, not the least of which was an overall improvement of itemization for our Feral tree (Moonkin still rely primarily upon cloth drops, unfortunately). New abilities such as Mangle made us more competitive with Warriors and Rogues (too competitive, unfortunately, as Bear damage was nerfed due to Warrior complaints). With these changes, many Druids who were previously pigeonholed into Restoration found themselves free to spec how they pleased. Feral tanks were suddenly very much in demand, while Restoration Druids had trouble finding a place in 5-mans due to out of combat Ressurection woes. Moonkin still struggle because of weak (some would argue nonexistent) crowd control, but overall, the relative damage output of the spec became more competitive with that of Mages.
The end result of all of these changes is that, once the vast majority, the population of Restoration Druids has shrunk dramatically. Many former Trees respecced to Bear and Cat as they had long yearned to do while others found they’d enjoyed levelling Balance-specced and remained laser chickens. Restoration Druids are a rare breed now, and — with the viability of the Dreamstate spec — it’s even more rare to find a Tree-specced Druid. Perhaps this is the reason that so many guild recruitment posts list Restoration Druids as a High Priority these days. Because while our mana efficiency may not compare to that of Shamans or Paladins, the power of stacked heals over time cannot be denied.
According to statistics compiled by The Build Mine, of 76371 Druids analyzed, Druids by spec broke down as follows:
- Feral Combat: 58.74% (31+), 57.48% (41+)
- Restoration: 26.74% (31+), 23.48% (41+)
- Balance: 14.47% (31+), 12.27% (41+)
Those numbers are pretty significant when considering that Restoration Druids probably made up 75% or more of all Druids before the Burning Crusade. So if speccing Feral is so much more rewarding today, why stay Restoration? I can’t answer for everyone, but I see several reasons to remain Restoration-specced:
- A good healer can help compensate for poor tanking or crowd control.
Throw enough heals at a problem (in an intelligent, efficient manner), and you can make up for a lot of typical group deficiencies.
- Everyone can DPS, but not everyone can heal.
Every class has at least one talent tree dedicated to DPS. Even those classes that were considered “main healers” at the outset of the game have the option to spec into something other than healing. Someone who specs for healing has made the conscious choice to sacrifice soloability to provide better support to her comrades. Many enjoy the feeling they get from making such a sacrifice (self-martyrdom).
- Restoration is currently the most viable spec for competitive PvP.
This is unfortunate given the general propensity of Feral-specced Druids to want to Maul faces. A host of issues stemming from Blizzard’s philosophy that “hybrids should perform at X% of the capacity of the classes they emulate” make Restoration our most viable option and even then, Paladins often outperform Druids with less effort.
- Role competition is more interesting.
Unlike the competition among DPS classes (where there basically exists an infinite amount of damage that can be dealt), there exists only a finite amount of healing that can be performed. This means that reaction time plays a larger role in the performance of healers than it often does for DPS classes. Any healer can put up large amounts of healing, but much of that might be ineffective healing of a target already at full life. Of course, this is less and less a measure of a good healer due to Druids’ increased reliance upon heals over time (which tick away ineffectually should the recipient be topped off by another).
- Multiple healers can back each other up.
Unlike tanking where generally 1-2 players are responsible for the entirety of the role, a raid often includes 3 or more healers who help back each other up, lightening the responsibility borne by any individual. This scenario often leads to camraderie among healers (although I’m sure the same could be said for DPSers or tanks and offtanks).
- Less loot competition.
This is particularly true of 5-man instances where it’s rare to have more than one healer present. As the size of the group increases, however, the percentage of healers also increases (from 20% to 30% or more), but luckily healers come in all shapes and sizes (cloth, leather, mail, and plate) and are often encouraged to focus on different stats so even then, loot competition is often less dramatic than that faced by DPS classes.
- Healing items often tend toward a more feminine appearance.
This was especially true before the additions of the Malorne and Nordrassil armor sets which homogenized the appearance of our specs (when in caster form). To many this might seem a superficial concern, but as a female player, I admit a certain preference toward more feminine attire. Healing robes such as Primal Mooncloth and the Masquerade Gown flatter my avatar and make her more enjoyable to look at and, in turn, play.
These are just a few of the reasons that I am and will probably always be “Resto4Life.” For those of you who also find yourself specced to heal, what are the reasons? And for those of you who are not, what made you choose your spec instead?
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I was actually resto for sometime, I’m still one of the better geared restos in our guild as well. However, there was a night when I was out farming with my mage friend and a guild group desperately needed a tank. We had been short on tanks and just picked up a new healer so the GM sent me some gold and asked if if I’d tank. I’ve been tanking ever since. I’m always willing to respec to help the raid out but I think tanking is what I love the most now.
~Aiuriun
Spinebreaker
Aiuriun,
I envy your experience with both tanking and healing. I actually have a nearly full set of Feral gear in my bank (although it’s a mixture of Cat and Bear) and used it when taking a friend through Stockades (the level 20 instance in Stormwind). I now know the ultimate power of Feral tanking from my experience holding aggro on not 2, not 3, not 4, but FIVE, Five, five Defias Prisoners … at the same time!
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I have not respecced once nor do I plan to. I have been full restoration from the beginning. Although i’ve been having issues lately with farming items and gold. I’ve been trying to farm for my swift flight form and i suck at it as a resto. hahaha. but that’s pretty much my only complaint that i can’t farm as well as other classes. But i love to heal and priests/pallies/shammies just don’t appeal to me. restodruid all the way.
Nirazdin
Baelgun
My other chars are a Rogue, a Priest, and a Paladin.
Out of all 3 healing classes I rolled, Druid is by far the most fun and interesting one to play, so I shelved the others and sticking with healing with the Druid. I’ll just make the priest shadow and the paladin tank.
Good news for you (and me), Niraz. With the release of Zul Aman, they’re going to be adding “free” spell damage to Healing gear. I’m guessing that the gear will look something like:
- Increases healing done by spells and effects by X.
- Increases damage done by spells and effects by X/2.
That way it’s clear who the gear is intended to be most advantageous to healers. Of course, such a change might mean that I can no longer justifiably sit and pout when my Arena partner is insta-gibbed…
@ Josh -
You’re doing what a friend of mine is doing in reverse. He’s using his Druid to tank and his Paladin to heal. Me, I have a Warlock that I use to farm; she was a tremendous help when I was saving for Epic Flight Form!
Thanks for the responses!
I was, and had always planned on being a feral druid. I’m an avid PvPer, and the feral druid style was just so dang fun. Stealthing around, doing crazy kitty burst on some clothie, bleeding a heavied armored target dry, popping out and CCing someone with a cyclone, feral charging to cancel a heal, bashing another healer, throwing faerie fire on the rogues to piss em off, and then throwing heals on myself and my team mates to keep us up, were all common occurances in literally every clash.
I made my transition to resto when I specced 1/29/31. This spec was probably the most fun spec I had ever tried, but I learned early that you have to have the right gear balance for it. In full feral gear I really didnt feel like I was losing out on too much PvP damage (or at least not as much as I expected!), and in full resto gear I could heal dang well (and my mana pool was HOT thanks to HotW). However, I couldn’t do either as well as the pure specced druids, and pvping in half resto + half feral gear was a difficult style to say the least. I still hold that if I ever got the 2 piece tier 5 feral (instant regrowth FTW) that the 1/29/31 spec would work fantastically even in all feral gear. After a month or two on this fun but VERY hard to play spec, and after tasting the sweet sweet thing that is swiftmend, I gave in and specced 8/11/42 for PvP.
At first I pretty much refused to play Fleethoof at all unless I was running BG or arena with my rogue friend Nightcross. What was the reason? I couldn’t kill anything (except a frost mage with moonfires and LOS hehe), and in general BG PVP people don’t protect their healers. They feel as though they deserve heals, but could care less if their healer dies as long as they get that one last HK. Slowly, however, I started taking this as a challenge. How many people could I single handedly keep up at once? Could a warrior and myself really kill 5-6 alliance who had no healer? How long could I survive with a warrior and mage on me? Would that moonkin and resto druid ever be able to kill me? (Answer: No! Mookin ran out of mana even after 2 inervates! Course I had to use mine too
) Healing became more exciting, and less of a chore.
The truth is, Healers win BGs. And to a lesser extecnt, healers win the arena. What team is going to cap the flag? The one with the better healers. What team will take the base? The one supported by the better healers. I’m not saying at all that DPSers and CCers are not important, I’m mearly saying that they are a dime a dozen. A good healer is a diamond in the rough, and a single good healer can literally turn the tides of a battle.
You can’t really say that about any other role.
-Fleethoof
Balnazzar
I just found that resto is really fun and challenging in PvP. For PvE I just choose resto cause we needed resto druids. (1 balance and rest feral at the time. 2-3 resto, 1 balance/feral (his feral gear is better than resto) rest feral (2))
And I love to kick mage ass as resto, fire I got FR, frost, I just shift out of their frost nova (to avoid shatter). Nothing better than humiliating mages
Though I respecc alot.
-Muda
Just going thru and totally loving your site, I just passed 1600 + heal and over 450 spirit & int. As far as resto spec I have been resto since day 1 and leveled 1-70 as resto. I’ve tried feral and loved the dps soloing in cat form but personally I find tanking to be way tooo stressfull and I don’t really like listening to long drawn out instructions before fights so with healing its pretty much 1) stand here and heal, 2) stand over there and heal, 3) bring the mob back to the tank rinse and repeat.