Welcome to RestoDruid.info.

The purpose of this guide is to help players with new druid characters to get started, to understand the druid class a little better, and to choose gear, talents and strategies to improve their character.

It is predominantly aimed at beginner to intermediate druid players; you’ll find some general math here, but if you’re looking for some hardcore theorycrafting discussions, check out the links on the bottom right of the main page.

I really hope that you enjoy this guide and find it helpful. If you do, please spread the word! And don’t forget to let me know if you have your own resto druid guide, so that I can link to it also.

If you have any suggestions, bug reports, corrections, or comments, please let me know via the contact page. I’d love to hear from you.

About Keeva

I began playing World of Warcraft in 2004, and joined friends on Mannoroth (US), Alliance. I originally rolled a warrior but decided at level 12 that it wasn’t my style. I knew that I wanted to play something that would help my guild, which was short on healers. After revisiting the game guide and different classes, I decided that I liked the sound of being able to shapeshift, so I decided to give the druid class a bash.

I levelled up mostly in kitty, as a hybrid feral/resto spec wearing feral gear. I mostly played solo, so my very first instance was 10man Stratholme at level 48 and I was PETRIFIED of pulling things and wiping the group – so I stayed to the back the whole time. I loved “playing the auction house” and was proud that as soon as I hit 60, I was able to buy my epic mount – no small feat back then.

I worked hard to improve my character and was taken on a few MC/ZG/BWL/AQ raids, but it was late in the game for vanilla and many people’s enthusiasm for 40man raids was flagging. Being an Aussie, my timezone also made it hard to raid on a US server, so a few months after TBC was released, I found an Aussie raiding guild that sounded like a good fit for me, so I took a leap of faith and rerolled as a Tauren on Nagrand (US). I power-levelled to 20 (the minimum level to be able to apply to the guild) and then submitted my (already pre-written) application. I was accepted into their levelling/alt sister-guild and kept levelling as fast as I could.

I began raiding in the sister guild with a view to being accepted into the hardcore raiding guild side, Absolution. Not long after that, free transfers were opened to Caelestrasz, and the raiding guild decided they would be moving over. They weren’t entirely sure of my level of skill but took me with them. I remember my first raid in TK with them – the raid leader, Stomp, was scary, and was yelling at everyone over vent that if they stood in Kael’s fire, they’d be out of the raid. I was scared to mess up so whatever happened, I knew I couldn’t stand in fire. Unfortunately I didn’t realise what he meant by “fire”, and was waiting for flame-like fire to happen – so when the big orange, spinning circles came up around my character, I thought it was just my legendary staff “proccing”. I died, of course. When Stomp found out what had happened, he laughed so hard that he had to call a break. And thus whenever I died in stupid circumstances from then on, I would claim that “my weapon procced”.

I loved being the person in the raid to always help people out. You could turn to me if you ran out of arrows, or pet food. Ankhs, symbols, candles, weapon oil, flasks, mana potions, food, water, bandages – before Jeeves and pack mammoths came along, I was the go-to person.  I farmed materials for the bank. I was also the person to create and post raiding diagrams and strategy tips on our forums. I basically just loved helping our raids to run smoothly.

I was quickly made an officer, though I never wanted to take up the role of “healing officer” or similar, because although I felt that I was a strong healer, I didn’t have faith in my ability to direct people and assign targets. Some people looked down on me for not stepping up. I was always more comfortable being given directions rather than taking them.

Our guild jostled for first position through TBC; disbanded and reformed as Inexorable for Wrath, and again jostled for first place in the raiding leaderboards, powering through most of Ulduar but sadly disbanding at Yogg-Saron due to a lack of commitment seen by a lot of guilds in Wrath. We reformed again for Icecrown, flagged, got our second wind for heroics, but again enthusiasm dropped off. In my opinion, Sunwell raiding was the beginning of the end for true serious raiding, and it became too easy for people to transfer to other servers for a quick fix if their current team wasn’t going fast enough. Raiding in Cataclysm, though still “serious”, was not competitive. I’ve enjoyed the instances in Cataclysm but I will always look fondly on The Black Temple as the peak of my raiding days in terms of playing with dedicated and skilled raiders, and feeling as though everyone in the team is equally invested in the group’s success.

In 2011 I had some huge life changes. In May I discovered that I was pregnant, and two days later my Dad (battling lung cancer) was admitted to hospital and died two weeks later. In October, I made a 2500km road trip to live with my partner, and in January 2012 our baby was born.

Obviously, big life changes meant that I wasn’t able (or particularly interested) in playing; but I also found that since I wasn’t able to raid, I lost a lot of enthusiasm for the game. I always said that I played to raid, and if I couldn’t raid, there would be little point in playing – and having a baby makes raiding very difficult (if not impossible).  Even if I do find a pocket of time for myself, it might be in the middle of the day when none of my Australian friends are around. However, Blizzard’s new LFR system and the ability to play with cross-realm friends using RealID means that I will be able to do some raiding, and play with my friends overseas, even if it is only a boss here and there or the odd 5 man group. So, while I won’t be able to do “hardcore raiding” anymore, I can at least continue to do what I love – healing groups.

I won’t be raiding competitively anymore, so I won’t be writing about heroic raiding, but that’s okay – RestoDruid.info is geared more towards beginner and intermediate players anyway, and you don’t need to run heroic raids to know how to play well in 5mans, LFR and normal raids. Of course, always love to link to other guides and also more in-depth theorycrafting, for people who want to take their healing that much further.

See you all in Mists – happy healing!

~ Keeva
Caelestrasz (US)