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Mailbag: Choosing a “Healing” Spec
Published on November 1, 2007 by Phaelia 
Mailbag, Spells and Talents 
26 Comments
Many players often feel pressured to spec one way or another. While the people doing the pressuring may sometimes make valid observations, more often it seems that they are doing so because they have read that one build or another is considered “optimal.” A friendly visitor (name withheld by request) finds herself in this situation right now. She writes in:
I keep feeling pressure (whether intended or not) to respec full Resto. Would you Armory me and look at my talents? I’m thinking I lose more than I gain by going full Tree… I have two of the 21 point Balance talents and Swiftmend.
Can I be just as good a PVE healer at 26/0/35 or is Tree Form necessary?
You can absolutely be a great PvE healer with this build! After all, a good healer doesn’t rely upon her talent spec or her gear. You can get some great efficiency increases from some of the talents further down in the Restoration tree, but the basic concepts remain the same. The spec you’ve chosen is very similar to one of my favorite specs, and it’s the one that I used when I first started doing Heroic instances. At that point in my progression, my +Healing value was too low for Lifebloom and Rejuvenation to deliver the HPS necessary for Heroic trash that hits like a Hurtful Strike. By instead focusing talents on improving Healing Touch, you’ll be able to deliver faster, less expensive, and more powerful versions of our high HPS heal, Healing Touch, a spell which isn’t even accessible to the Tree of Life. Of course, at 1200 +Healing, you have the flexibility to go either way.
The Moonglow (9% mana reduction on Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth)/Lunar Guidance (+25% Intellect to +Healing) build actually simulates a weaker form of Tree of Life, with the following differences:
- It’s available all the time and can be used in situations where you need to remain mobile.
- You retain access to Abolish Poison, Remove Curse, and Healing Touch (in addition to being able to buff).
- Encourages you to stack Intellect rather than Spirit. When you’re just starting out, a little bit of Spirit will go less far than the same amount of Intellect. Spirit becomes more viable the higher its stacked.
Prior to the 2.3 change to spell damage, this sort of build would be one of the few ways to retain soloability and still do well as a healer. Of course, both a pure Restoration build and a build like this one will be getting stronger after 2.3, so don’t be shy about speccing more deeply Restoration if you decide that’s what you want! Overall I think you’ve done an excellent job selecting your talents. I would, however, encourage you to consider moving 5 more points into Tranquil Spirit for the 10% mana reduction on Healing Touch as you likely employ it a great deal. If you can learn to live without it and often team with great tanks, you might be able to rescue your points from Nature’s Focus (interrupt prevention) for just such a purpose.
The bottom line is, stick to your guns. If you feel comfortable healing in the spec you’ve chosen and don’t often find yourself wishing “oh, but if only I had XYZ” then no amount of coaxing by your guildmates should convince you to the contrary. From what I can see, you’ve got everything that’s really important to help you heal well, including Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness. And we can all Lifebloom stack, specced for it or not.
P.S. For those wondering why I eventually changed my spec from one based on Moonglow/Lunar Guidance, I had to for PvP. Unfortunately, there is less flexibility in such an environment.
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
The only reason a healing druid takes points in balance is lack of gear. When you have a native +healing of 1400 then you should really go tree. HT is a pretty bad spell in PvE simply because the cast time is too long. Sure, you can probably cast rank8 all day if you go all the way in to dreamstate, but that ties you up on a single target, and don’t even think about using it for raid healing because it is simply too slow. Tree does have its drawbacks, but the mana efficiency you gain (the +healing aura is really negligible btw) makes up for any losses you would have from not specing dreamstate or Moonglow. You can check my armory for the spec I prefer: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Laughing+Skull&n=Lemo
It’s a game, and you should never be coerced into a spec that you don’t like. It’s your job to make the MOST of your spec, but that’s what blogs like this are for.
That being said I really enjoy doing ‘what is best for the guild’ (why I’m a healer) and frequently this leads to some very odd choices. Generally my guild is extremely strong in healing, pro tanks, and our dps can be lackluster. Thus began a very interesting week in a 36/0/25 spec for improved faerie fire for our DPS. I was int stacking like crazy (hello Pendant of the Violet Eye) and had to relearn my downranking. Ultimately it was too worthless in pvp, too inflexible and too boring to keep up but it was a fun week with the rogues, warriors and hunters all screaming with joy at the free 3% hit.
You know…this is why yours is such a great blog, Phaelia. My druid is, I think, Level 3 and may never go higher (I think I had one in the lower 20s once…), but I get a TON of great stuff here. I just wanted to pop in and give some well-deserved props.
Phae, this is great advice for those who don’t want to spec into tree. You even helped me decide on my respec except for my 1 point in moonkin. ^_^ I think it’s great.
If you’re going that far into Balance, you really should accept it and go all the way down to Dreamstate. I’d suggest more of a http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tcrdVcsMhZZxEcb0qM so that you get Dreamstate and are more Healing Touch focussed. If you’re not spamming the HPM efficient lifeblooms as a tree then you really need to focus on making the most of your mana regen. Intensity + Dreamstate is essential (heh yes, that whole “optimal build” thing again) for someone delving into the Balance tree as a Healer.
However the biggest question is the reason why you’re delving into Balance if you want to be a healer. If you want to be a DPSer and still be capable of healing, then you probably want to focus more on the Balance side, like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tMrzifsxuVZZxVcx
As Phaelia said,it all comes down to what you want to get out of it.
@Lemo: I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of a Balance investment. There are many talents in the Balance tree that provide excellent synergy with healing in addition to providing great soloability (if that’s your thing). I do agree that such a spec is generally inferior to a more HoT-oriented build for raiding, but for Heroics, I’d rather have bigger, tougher Healing Touches. Obviously, your mileage may vary.
@Bigtoy: Interesting idea with the Improved Faerie Fire – that does sound kind of fun. =) Come 2.3, I’ll definitely be picking up Insect Swarm. That’s like 2% free mitigation for your tank! You can’t tell me that isn’t a strong “healing-oriented” ability. Not to mention being super useful in PvP.
@Kestrel: Pshaw! You should level that Druid at least to 30 before the next patch! It will be smooth sailing up to 58 after that, and the last 12 levels are Outland and incredibly fun. Thanks for the compliments. =D
@Auryann: Yeah, and you’re definitely proof that a non-traditional spec can work out. You’ve been doing awesome in raids!
I would say that your spec is determined by what it is that you do. I tried the big HT spec with some feral as well, but I found that I was runing out of mana in fights when it was a REALLY bad time to do so. = ) Since I respecced to tree and still some Feral- Im able to solo heal in heroics, tank lower heroics, tank any non heroic, and usually right near the top for healing efficiency and healing overall in boss fights via wow webstats. (Dont ask about me DPSing- its a lawlfest).
Hots are still the win in lots of pvp and boss fights for druids- but not the end all. Play the game and have some fun.
The one issue being in a more ‘hardcore’ dreamtouch spec (like 36/0/25) is that you lose swiftmend and your HoTs pack a lot less punch without Improved Rejuv/Regrowth. The most effective (HPS & HPM) usage of your mana is healing touch and various downranks and it is So Boring. You’re basically a paladin with Curse of Tongues and once every three minutes you can Nature’s Swiftness. No keeping rejuvs up for swiftmend, no timing lifeblooms with trinkets, it’s a straight healing touch slugfest. You can’t even play with the 5SR like a priest, and with the emphasis on int and mp5 not sure if you would even want to. The lack of tools to me made it rather boring to me.
What it IS is a hybrid healer/DPS much like a feral is a hybrid tank/DPS. In both cases the DPS is less than a pure DPS class but being able to switch between the two roles can be very valuable to the raid and the guild as a whole.
@Bigtoy I’m a 33/0/28 balance-resto hybrid spec and there is nothing boring about it. I do lose out on Swiftmend, however in my last raid I was 3rd on the healing charts. Also, this spec allows to me to have more mana and regenerate that mana. It’s a greater improvement to the many mana pots and innervates from when I was tree. I don’t think I’ll ever go back if I can beat out pure healing classes.
Aury
I should be more careful with my sweeping declarations. I found hardcore dreamtouch very dull, though a fellow guildie thinks rolling lifeblooms is so incredibly tedious that he questions my sanity. To each their own.
@Auryann, third out of how many healers? The only times I’m not first on my raids is when I’m busying melee and nukings the buggers!
My spec is almost full resto with a few points in Balance to add a little nuking power for soloing. ( http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Akia )
@Anon, As a tree druid, I’m very much against HT builds simply because of the long cast time on them. In 3 seconds, you could stack more +healing power on a single person than you could get in a non-crit HT. Not to mention HT healing you’re more guaranteed to be in ‘casting’ state 100% of the time.
Phaelia is right though in most of her analysis. You can be a very competent healer with the guild you currently have. However, tree form adds a great deal of efficiency. I wouldn’t be able to last some of these raids (hot stacking) if it wasn’t for tree form. But like others have said, don’t respec if you don’t want to.
@Lemo, I wouldn’t discount the +healing to tree of life’s aura. I can get an extra +50 per tick on my Lifebloom simply by going into tree form. If your spirit is high enough, that aura is quite powerful.
@Akia, Tree aura does help I guess, in the right situations. In Hyjal you receive a bonus to your spirit of +100% from Jaina Proudmoore. I’ve worn lots of +spirit gear while in her aura, gone tree, then swapped in to reg gear. If I do that and blow trinkets I can get ticks for around 1100 on four different targets. I think that is one of the few situations where it makes a huge difference.
@all, Dreamstate vs Tree is a common point of argument and does spawn threads at least once a week over at the official druid forums. Play how you want to play, but having been both specs for many months I feel that tree is better.
LB fix ftw.
I guess it’s really how you want to play, but I didn’t like tree. I went from rawr! I’m a bear to tree. I had been previously, but its not my cup of tea. It was out of 7, but I still proud to be at 3 when I’m used to being 5/6. I feel good that I came above a holy priest and pally. Wouldn’t that make your branches feel all nice and warm? Plus I still keep lifebloom rolling and rejuv.
My two cents on this..
First, my guild’s main healer is resto/feral (0/30/31 or something like that). Sure she’s got great gear, but also knows the business very well. This means it’s not all about talents but talent
Now, as it’s been pointed out by many experienced druids, one should not rely too much on healing touch. It goes great if you’re the only healer of a 5-man party, but in a raid your heals arrive just too late to be effective, landing after flash of light or flash heal, thus wasting time and mana. The most efficient healing resource a druid has is HoTs, so even if you improve healing touch through the balance tree, both rejuvenation and lifebloom play a vital role. I’m not saying one must have empowered rejuvenation in order to heal; just don’t forget that even if you spend all talents improving healing touch, you’ll always use lifebloom A LOT. If you choose a hybrid build you’ll always lose something as a healer, and “moonglow” doesn’t change that.
In my opinion, improved rejuvenation helps a lot, improved regrowth often saves lives when you just gotta spread some heals in your raid as quickly as possible, and swiftmend is incredibly handy. I think swiftmend is one of the best druid talents, not just from restoration, and every resto druid should have it. That’s why most hybrid builds are at least */*/31.
Because of this I’m a great defender of Tree of Life. Paladins and priests have quick and efficient direct heals, while we have HoTs. The best way to improve that is Tree of Life, there’s nothing we can do about it. If you find a pally able to heal 15 hp with just 1mp please call me, because I wanna know
And mobility isn’t that big deal, since you can heal while running. Other healers can’t do it (their instant spells aren’t that good, if they have any).
Now you’ll think I’m all OH NOES, HYBRID BUILDS, RUN! but actually I’m not
Even though raids require organization, they’re about fun, and there should always be room for some flexibility. Hybrid builds let you change roles during a raid. If a boss needs more dps, you’re dps. If more healing is needed, you can heal. And more that decently. Patch 2.3 will even let you DPS a bit in healing gear if healing is good enough but you find your raid has lost too much firepower during the fight to finish off the boss.
Also efficiency (mainly what Tree of Life provides, even though the aura buff is nice) can be expendable if the setup is good enough. I’ve done Gruul quite a few times already (ahem, well, you know what I mean
) and trying Hydros now (we survive the whole encounter until the “enrage”, just need more dps), and I never run out of mana (sometimes I don’t even need innervate!). And I’m still wearing a gear that can be improved in Karazhan.
Finally, the only real problem is you’ll need top gear for both roles, and certainly some support from your guildies for that. Or, alternatively, a lot of PvP.
Remember this is about having fun. If you feel like you need a change to enjoy the most, go for it! Your friends and guild mates should not only understand but try to get the most of it
I forgot something.. One last thing
About the resto-balance vs full resto question… I’m pretty sure full restoration is totally superior to resto-balance. In my opinion healing alone doesn’t justify balance talents, and whoever thinks it does makes a huge mistake.
Healing Touch is slower and less efficient than paladins’ Flash of Light (higher HPS though), and that’s why they always win when we try to play their game. Druids should not heal a single target a lot, but moderately a lot of targets, easing other healers’ duty. When I first healed in raid (still wearing some greenies), I made the main healer (back then a paladin with 1700+ heal) say “these meters can’t be right”; I had beaten him by a considerable amount.
If I ever cast Healing Touch in raid (instances are a different story), it’s with Nature’s Swiftness. I think that says it all
I agree with Ermengol, the full resto spec with the lifebloom spam is our best healing spec/method, no competition. With it, you can reach 25% of total healing on some fight (VR, old school solarian, Shahraz and other 3 tank fights) and that’s with 8 healers in the raid.
But if doing the best for your guild is not your priority, dreamstate and other balance/resto spec can be wonderful. Sure you won’t top healing charts, but you’ll do fine and you’ll be able to solo more easily (especially in 2.3) when you’re out of the raid.
It all comes down to how you see yourself in the game and what you are thinking is worth sacrificing for the sake of progression.
Kapoue
Earthen Ring
I think the only thing that people have overlooked in this discussion is the actual fights themselves. Circumstance plays a great role in deciding which druid spec is actually going to be best (and by best, I mean able to heal the most as efficiently as possible).
If you are mostly in heroics, Karazhan, or maybe even the early 25-mans, I think either of the Balance hybrid specs are great. I myself was a Dreamstate druid for months and loved it. Solo viability was great, I had an extra point in Doomkin form so I could even change to dps in raids if healing was sufficient (though my bags were always full with multiple gear sets!).
If, however, you are in SSC/TK or Hyjal/BT, I would expect you to find a tree resto spec to be more effective in healing. In these later instances, the fights simply lend themselves better to rolling powerful lifeblooms, raid healing with HoTs, occasional Regrowths, but casting HT becomes a very rare experience. Of course, it’s still possible to heal as a hybrid spec, but I don’t think it’s the “best” under the definition I gave above. Paladins will heal 3 people before you heal 1. You could heal a tank with HT, sure, but you could heal 3 with the more powerful lifeblooms afforded by a tree spec (check out Empowered Rejuvenation, the talent deep in the resto tree – it is ungodly!!).
I do agree with the others that your gear will also have a big effect on which spec is best for you. But as you progress through Kara and the others, your healing will grow and changing to tree spec will augment your healing even more. Keep an eye on MP5 (eep another debate! I prefer MP5 > spirit but definitely have a mix) because going from a Dreamstate spec (if you choose to try that one) to a tree spec is a big change in mana management.
Feel free to check my armory. I am almost always first by far in healing in my guild (now Hyjal/BT level) and have found a deep resto spec to be the optimal configuration for healing at this level – and that after a lot of testing!
Good luck-
Adarel
Scarlet Crusade
I am a new comer to this site and I find it very useful, thank you to all that have contributed. As I read the many posts not only here but in other sites as well, I keep hearing other resto druids talking about how they are at the top of the healing meters. I am totaly jealous! I see the meters as a means of determining how much I contribute to the raid. Anyway, enough about that. My current build is 0/0/61. Out of 6 healers in Gruul/Maggie/SSC (maybe more in ssc), Pallies top the charts followed by priests (I can usualy beat on or two of the priests) then me (I am the only resto druid in the guild). My current gear consists of a couple T3 pieces, and other items from Kara. Currently my healing is 1400, mana regin while in combat with raid buffs is around 200/mp5. My rolling LB (after popping the shogun relic trinket) ticks for 200/tick.
My first attempt at healing a heroic (mech) was just ok. the tank died a couple of time…but we finished the run.
This may not be the right place for this but…
Any tips? I usually start off with LB-RJ-LB-LB then a swit mend in necessary. Rarely do I use a regrowth. Started trying to throw out some lower ranked HT after the first couple of hots, in order to handle some spikes in damage. In raids, I usualy get assigned to assist healing a tank along with healing the raid.
BUT I WANT TO TOP THE CHARTS!, if only once, just so I know I can do it. I also want to heal a heroic and feel compfortable. Just a side question (curious only, when healing a heroic, do you usualy have a few deaths?)
As you may have noticed, I have no other druid healer in my guild to compare experiences with…kind of on my own here…
Thanks for your patience, and any comments will be appreciated.
Shalura, Draenor – Marginal Heroes
About the heroics thing, yes, sometimes shit happens
In Underbog for example, against Musel’ek, if Claw is in the mood of charging you over and over you can get stunned in the middle of some critical, too long, spells and… well. Wipe.
By the way, Sepethrea in Mechanar is generally hard for other healers whenever they’re being followed by a fire elemental, whereas druids can just spam HoTs all over the party while running to a safe place where to cast some direct healing spells on the tank.
Regarding the raid healing, I think you should be the one to be assisted while healing the tank (or tanks! we can heal more than one!), and help with a bit of group healing, not the other way around
This is what we do best. If you’re not doing it already, ask for your healing leader to let you heal two tanks at a time.
As I’ve mentioned somewhere else, paladins usually “steal” our heals with their flashes of light, either healing sooner, or ignoring our HoTs. It is understandable, on the other hand: it’s so fast and efficient they can just spam it when needed without losing a few precious seconds checking who has what HoTs and for how long. When group healing is required, I use regrowth most of the time so my spells aren’t wasted in overhealing (the direct heal portion will make other healers see it’s been taken care of, in a quite intuitive way), and HoTs mainly preemptively when someone’s gonna take damage but isn’t hurt yet (lifebloom is great for this, although watch for your target’s aggro!).
Maybe you already have one, but it’s a good idea to have an addon to see how many people are targetting your target. I use X-Perl, which also has a lot of fancy utilities such as showing other party members’ casting bars. This way if I see someone’s already being healed, I switch to another target. Some use other methods to cast spells such as directly clicking on raid members (for example assigning shift click rejuvenation, alt click lifebloom, click regrowth), but I’ve never felt comfortable with this so I don’t know how this would work there.
I don’t know if this helps, but this is what I do
Thanks Ermengol, I need to get back to the heroics and try some different things. I also asked our raid leader to let me be a main healer tonight in out SSC run rather than being a back up/raid healer. We will see how that goes.
I like the idea of using regrowth to help prevent heal overs. I will down rank some and see how that goes tonight. As well as installing X-perl.
Thanks for your input and ideas!
Shal
Hi Phae, really enjoy your site. Patch 2.4 hit today, and I am wondering if you would still recommend this build. I am a 42 druid with a balance/resto spec that may be kind of a mess. I mostly heal dungeons and solo quests, and plan on continuing that way for all the time it will take me to get to 70. I alos play on a PvP server where getting ganked is a way of life, so some offensive capability is a good thing.
My best +spell gear is +111 to heal and +96 spell damage. By switching out some pieces my +heal drops to +33, but my mana pool goes up by about 25% which I need to do for some pug’s.
I like the idea of this spec (with the 1 point moved to Moonkin), but I am too new to WoW and Druids to understand the implications of the reduced mana cost for regrowth (other than my mana will last longer now).
A second question would be if you still do recommend this build, what order should I take the talents in? All resto first then add balance? All balance first? Thanks for any input you can give me.
Oiy
@Oiysters:
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this build for levelling up, though I do describe something similar in Talent Spec: Levelling Restoration/Balance. This article outlines a spec that combines points from both (with a detailed breakdown level by level) and that lets you retain some soloability/questability but still learn how to heal on the way.
The HoT-style of healing isn’t something you’ll likely see as viable until much later in the game (when you have the Lifebloom, Tree of Life, and the +Healing to support it).
I hope this helps!
Hello. I haven’t played since November ‘07 when my comp died but I have new parts on the way now and have been researching some stuff to get ready to play, when I found this thread and thought I might have some info.
Variations on this 27/0/34 druid healspec can be quite effective. I’ve used a couple variations on it and will prolly tweak it again soon after I start back up.
There are 2 main variations on this hybrid, one I’ve seen called “mana-mend” and the other called “hybrid raid healspec” or some such thing. Both have the 27/0/34 but the focus is on different things. Both of these specs still deliver excellent HOT capabilities – though not as powerful as a tree, but still far superior to any other class. In addition, there is more versatility and survivability to make up for not being a tree. Casting a Cyclone to get yourself or someone else out of trouble can come in handy (get the avoid interrupt talent up to 100%). Hibernate, or a Nature’s Swiftness with a big heal can come in handy also. The key with both of these specs is to max the healing talents in tier 5 of the balance tree, and also get swiftment and Nature’s Swiftness in the resto tree.
Mana-mend is probably better for 5-man runs, anything where the druid is the only healer. It focuses on mana efficiency, with the 9% mana reduction talent in the balance tree and the 10% mana reduction in the resto tree. Healing Touch are considerably more efficient mana-wise this way, and without another healer along, there’s no risk of it turning into a giant overheal when someone sneaks a shorter-cast-time heal in under it.
Once you’re in larger runs where there’s another healer along, your big heals are not used often, as most other healers can cast quicker – even with your 3.5 second cast time reduced to 3 seconds with the talent, it’s still a comparatively slow cast, and other healers will sneak heals in under yours most of the time. So you’ll find yourself doing a lot of overhealing unless you stick with heal over time spells.
That’s when you’d want to respec to the raid hybrid, which relies much more on HOTs – specifically on Regrowth crits, which can happen quite regularly with the resto talent, and will deliver a 0.5 second quicker cast time on the next non-instant cast spell with the balance tree talent. The next spell would likely be another Regrowth – quicker cast from the crit bonus, and with another excellent chance to crit again. You will use your big heals so seldom that you might even consider giving up the cast time reduction altogether and putting the points elsewhere in resto.
That’s just my $0.02.
Just wanted to mention that with either of these hybrids, keeping the Lifeblooms and Rejuvs rolling is still a fundamental and very effective aspect.
@HippieHealz: I have used the mana-mend spec you describe and it was a lot of fun. And that was before I had a better understanding of good Balance points to select. I think I may switch back to a similar spec in WotLK, but it really depends on what is made available deeper in the Restoration tree. And you’re right about it being better for 5-mans. I originally selected it when I first started doing Heroics and suddenly found my HoTs inadequate to the task of keeping up with spike damage. I have grown accustomed to not relying on Healing Touch, though, so we’ll have to see. Thanks for sharing your own experience with these type of builds. =)