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Mailbag: A Deforested Restoration Build?
Published on February 9, 2009 by Phaelia 
Mailbag, Spells and Talents 
26 Comments
A curious reader writes in to inquire:
I am trying to avoid deep Resto and still be a great healer because I like to see my character’s humanoid shape more often than not. I was either going to go a bit down Balance to get Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate or a bit down Feral to get Nurturing Instinct. I wouldn’t think to go Feral, but 70% of Ggility gear could be a lot of a healing, right?
I was wondering if you’ve done the math on these and could suggest one path over the other.
Prior to the release of Wrath, it used to be somewhat viable to skip over Tree of Life as a Restoration Druid. In fact, one of my guilty pleasures in TBC was to run Heroics as a Night Elf in all my S2 PvP gear just because I looked so darn cool (though I kept using the form for difficult raid content). You see, while the 20% spell cost reduction was great, you could get a weaker, non-Lifebloom-affecting version from Moonglow, a talent that was formerly much deeper in the Balance tree. There were also a number of TBC encounters where staying in Tree of Life was more a liability than a benefit due to its 20% slow-movement and inability to decurse.
However, with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, we get all of the (raid-important) benefits of the form with none of its limitations. Blizzard has removed the movement speed reduction, added both Abolish Poison and Remove Curse to its arsenal of available spells, and even allowed us to cast our class buff, Mark of the Wild without leaving form (and in Patch 3.1, we’ll finally be able to cast Thorns). Moonglow has also been made much more accessible, a talent whose effects stack with the mana reduction afforded by Tree of Life. Without Tree of Life, you also lose access to Master Shapeshifter, a Tree of Life-specific talent that grants you an additional 4% healing in the form. And this doesn’t even consider cases where you are the only Restoration Druid in a raid where no Paladin has 3/3 Improved Devotion Aura, making you the only potential source of the 6% to healing aura. To summarize:
| Tree of Life in The Burning Crusade | |
| Pros | Cons |
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| Tree of Life in Wrath of the Lich King | |
| Pros | Cons |
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As you can see, there is no justification for not having and using Tree of Life as a Restoration Druid in Wrath. It is a spec-defining form that you sacrifice too much to avoid. As such, I cannot in good conscience recommend any spec that doesn’t include the ability (and in Wrath, there are specs that include both the form and Dreamstate). Honestly, if you’re hung up on having to look at rotten broccoli, can’t wait for the upcoming revamp to Druid forums, or simply don’t have much faith in Blizzard meeting your aesthetic standards, I suggest rolling a Priest doll to dress up. They certainly get the best looking armor and aren’t restricted to using a special form to reach their full healing potential. Of course, Druids are still way more fun than Priests, in my opinion, even if we do look ridiculous.
P.S. Nurturing Instinct is a terrible talent for any healing Druid as there are no items that have spell power and Agility on them. You would never want to purposefully wear Feral items to boost your healing if healing is your intended role.
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*hugs* .-= Softi´s last blog ..Dum di dum di dum =-.
I just wanted post a spec that I had been considering trying out sometime, based around playing the class using our non-instant cast heals: Regrowth, Healing Touch and Nourish. This spec goes deep enough into Balance to pick up Dreamstate, and goes down to Tree of Life in Resto without actually picking it up. While I would never try raiding with this spec, I wouldn’t mind giving a heroic a shot, just to see if I could do it.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGcubI0hZZfVhuVugih
As I understand it, Nurturing Instinct is meant to give Feral Druids some ability to cast emergency heals and/or reduce downtime while soloing. It is not viable as an actual healing talent for the simple reason Phaelia already highlighted – how much Agility do you really have when you’re wearing spell power and Spirit gear?
i can cast wild growth in humanoid form. i dont get the last pro, what?
@FB
I think Phae means you have to go down farther into the Resto tree than ToL to get WG… not necessarily that you have to be in Tree form to cast it. But then again, I only raid so I either go deep Balance with some Resto or deep Resto with a little Balance.
Always love your blog Phae!
P.S. Tree form definitely needs some fixing up… it is still ugly.
Cuspers last blog post..Boom…kin!
gotcha.
@Adrilanhkha: I’d be interested to hear what you think. I can’t imagine a build that spreads its attentions out among three different direct heals would be nearly as effective as one that focuses on augmenting our HoTs (which can always be used alongside and at the same time as direct heals).
@FB: I have clarified that “pro” to indicate that you must first talent for Tree of Life in order to unlock Wild Growth.
@Cusper: Thank you for the kind words.
@ Adrilankha:
Interesting spec. I would like to see how it would perform in a heroic, and what glyphs you would use.
My ideas:
-Pull 1 point from improved tranq-bomb and put it in swiftmend.
You’re going to be casting regrowth, you might as well swiftmend it.
-I would move the Nature’s Reach talents to Improved Moonfire (let that DoT tick for some more damage while you’re busy healing)
-Glyphs
-Glyph of regrowth
Bigger heal, who doesn’t want that? Now the question is if you swiftmend the 20% bigger hot, will swiftmend hit for 20% more?
-Glyph of Moonfire
I’m not sure how much time you’ll spend healing, but you might as well have that DoT tick for as much as possible
-3rd choice, up in the air
-glyph of innervate: if you need mana
-glyph of swiftmend: if want to keep that regrowth hot ticking on the tank for another swiftmend opportunity without recasting regrowth. I know this build is supposed to be against ticking hots, but under the guise of a swiftmend opportunity, I would be happy with letting that regrowth hot tick. Also, a ticking hot makes nourish worthy of actually being cast.
-glyph of starfire: if you want to focus on a little more dps.
Sorry if that was a little drawn out, I hope it made a little bit of sense.
Even in my dreamstate spec that I’ve healed heroics with I still pick up tree of life and 2/3 imp. tree of life. It’s just too good to pass up. I have done a restokin spec as well (31/0/40) which omits tree of life and could heal heroics just fine with that too, but it’s more of a pvp build.
The only suggestion I can give is to just do a full resto spec with treeform, then model edit the tree to something you can bear looking at. Good luck.
WTB dryad form to heal in. I want to be a pretty blue dryad like the ones that run around Star’s Rest in Dragonblight. With awesome, customizable hair please. There’s male Centaur forms aplenty for male druids. Make them look like the Centaur boss in Maraudon! He was very tree-ish.
Sadly there’s nothing to add… ToL is as stupid-looking as necessary.
And indeed, we should have it changed to centaur/dryad form, like Cenarius!
This post strikes deep. I’ve only recently spec’d Resto after a long druid history of thinking I would *never* do it, and much to my surprise, I’ve found that I love druid-healing.
But I just don’t like the look of my tree.
Druid forms need work for sure. Bear looks better than tree but it’s still boring after a while. I can pop bear and sit next to our main tank, and you can’t tell who’s who.
You can certainly heal fairly decently in Restokin or Dreamstate spec, even into today’s raids, depending on your group. But you’ll heal for x% less than full Resto. The only way I can see this actually being an advantage is when you find your raid needs (for instance) 2 healers for some fights and 3 for others. But that’s a rare case and even that advantage probably evaporates with 3.1 and dual spec.
I’m actually of the belief that you should do whatever you want in the game, if you’re having fun with it. It’s kind of fun to see people do things the hard way. But be realistic that a) you are making things harder, b) you won’t be able to do as much, and c) most raids won’t want to take on that handicap.
Alameins last blog post..Switching to Balance: Stacking Hit
The desire to heal with caster form and not ToL is probably connected to improving damage ability without respeccing all the time. As a resto druid, you really just have to accept the fact that your overpowered healing comes with a cost. It’s not as serious a cost as it used to be, since spell power does give us a good chunk of bonus damage, but a tree druid will simply never do the dps that a moonkin or a mangle-cat ever will. That’s the trade-off. If you don’t want to accept that trade-off, then don’t heal.
There are certain tradeoffs in the game no matter what you choose to do, unfortunately for us, great healing means looking like an old hippie who spent too much time at Burning Man with no sunscreen. Oh well!
OneDruids last blog post..Growl and the hit cap
Tree Form still looks stupid. If male night elf casting animations weren’t so doofusy looking this would bother me more.
Quote : “Still stupid looking”
Oh Phae,
Not only do you know us so well, you’re the quintessential essence of the tree.
I laughed so loud irl. Once again thanks for the druidic light you shine on every day.
Arra
I leveled from 70-80 as restore, as I was too lazy to keep swapping back and forth from feral. Honestly? I never had a problem questing: spell damage changes meant that good healing gear was good damage gear.
I pug a lot now at 80, and raid heal, and frankly I can’t imagine healing a heroic without wild growth to keep the silly dps’ers topped off. Raid healing is actually easier and hey maybe you could get away with some hybrid build if you had enough really solid healers along, but as I stated before, I’m lazy…healing as a tree with WG is just so easy. But I remember when we had to spec for innervate so there’s that…
Like Arranum, “Still stupid looking” made me laugh out loud
(And a big hug to the sniffling tree in the picture – beauty is in the eye of the beholder and after a long run where the shimmering green tree spells have kept you alive you think all trees are beautiful!)
My druid has been feral forever, maybe it’s about time I tried out a more leafy form…
Tessys last blog post..Another Guild Blogger
I’m considering something like http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xGbuicohZZf0IubuxVzA0o for non raid days. With ~2100 spellpower I should be able to heal heroics fine as well as make doing dalies much faster. Really the only thing I’m missing out on is GotEM and WG. They are great talents, but killing mobs in a timely manner is good too!
We should be able to get ‘haircuts’ in the hunter pet shop and herbalist trainer to change our skins.
Long time reader, first time poster.
Like the others I lol’d at the ’still stupid looking’ comment. I also really wish there was some kind of glyph where we could activate our aura, but stay in caster form (I recently switched to a male tauren after being a female tauren for 2 years.. the animations are much better!).
:waddles away quickly:
Just update the look and it’s all good. There is no way a “Tree of Life” would be all brown and dead. I look more like a “Tree of Life” in my set gear.
@Tarqon: I think it’s pretty neat that you can’t get both 3/3 Dreamstate and 3/3 IToL. I’d personally pick IToL over DS, but I’ve generally geared more for regen than I think is typical. Of course, with the recent and upcoming changes to some of our end-of-tree talents, Dreamstate builds may become less popular again. Then again, the mana regen nerf would tend to make it MORE attractive, so who knows!
@Sydera: YES! There are actually some green and brown dryads just south of Fort Wildervar that would be 100% perfect, especially if they somehow took on my face and hairstyle. Who needs branches when you can have hooves? As for the men, I think they created a revamped form of the centaur model in the same zone (the Blacksouled Keeper). Of course, this could work for Elves, but I’m not what they’d do for Taurens.
@Hokuto: Great catch with Cenarius. Total justification.
@Greysmoke: I was initially horrified, went through a phase of “well I guess I’m kind of cute”, but now I feel ridiculous looking next to the high quality models of everyone else around me. I look like a high school mascot.
@Alamein: I’m a big fan of playing how you enjoy, too. Maybe with dual specs we can have a “pretty Elf healer” build and a “stupid but efficient Tree healer” build…
@Riverrun: It kind of stinks that we have to use such a dinky-looking form to match the output of other healers (we certainly aren’t any stronger than they are), but then again Holy Form is something Priests have wanted for a long time. Of course, they might change their tunes if the form looked similarly elementary.
@Onedruid: Nice description.
@Shopshopshop: HA! I can’t recall the last male Night Elf I’ve seen in game. I wonder if that’s ever something that’s looked at…
@Arraunum: Thank you for the kind words. I’m glad I was able to brighten your day with Druidic Light (is that like Priest light but green?).
@Tunguska: Wild Growth is pretty amazing for 5-mans, especially for those encounters where you have to move a lot. It makes places like Heroic Nexus trivial (but still fun).
@Tessy: I’d say it’s definitely time to get back to your “roots”!
@Xoria: I love, love, love the idea of going to the Herbalist trainer to get my hair cut.
Also, that looks like a very balanced build to use until dual specs are implemented.
@Corgi: Thank you so much for reading and posting. And some way to retain our base form while in ToL would be welcome, especially given what a target it makes us in battlegrounds. Of course, that seems very counter to Blizzard’s design (which seems to be to advertise “KILLMEKILLMENOWI’MAHEALER.”
@Fobbers: Awwww. I’m glad you like it, at least.
@Conifer: When the form was first announced, I was hoping to look more like an ancient (of course, they’re pretty masculine looking). When the form was actually released, I assumed they couldn’t use an ancient model because of height restrictions. Of course, Hunters can now train GARGANTUAN pets like Devilsaurs and Rhinos, so there’s no reason we couldn’t at least be taller/more majestic. Then again, we’d just be an even BIGGER target in PvP so maybe that wouldn’t be a good thing.
I can honestly relate to the form looking silly thing…
I mean… In warcraft (strategic game) the trees looked so impressive, and In WOW they look so… fragile…
They were just too lazy to come up with a separate model from the already in game treants (just like they did with balance druid summon talent).
Which BTW, I really hoped for something less fragile and more intimidating there as well, but…
Oh well…
Blizz never were that good in handling druid forms models…
I’ve been hoping around all three specs on my way to 80. Started with feral, respecced resto at 30, then boomkin at 40, resto at 45, feral at 47 boomkin at 50, resto at 63, feral at 66, and I leveled feral the rest of the way. I now am starting to collect gear for a resto spec at 80 for an offspec, or when dual speccs come out. I personally love the tree form look. Especially when your casting, the face of the tree goes normal to mad looking over and over xD But I agree, make it a dryad or centaur look
:waddles away quickly: