Patch 3.02 for Restoration Druids, part 3: New glyphs
by Allison Robert 
Oct 14th 2008 at 6:30PM
Glyphs you'll want to look for:- Glyph of Swiftmend. Hands down, 100%, the best Restoration Druid glyph out there, in my humble opinion. Its usefulness absolutely cannot be overstated. It removes the need to spend the mana and a cast time or global cooldown re-applying Regrowth or (more likely) Rejuvenation, and essentially turns both of these HoT's into an emergency heal without having to sacrifice the HoT afterwards. It's absolutely invaluable for 5-man healing. It may turn out to be less so for raids given the new abilities given to other healers, but instant compensation for burst damage on a tank while your HoT continues to roll is just amazing. I love this glyph and have never replaced it in the beta.
- Glyph of Healing Touch. This essentially turns Healing Touch into a flash heal. I played around with a bit for a 5-man healing but wasn't too impressed, and at level 80 you'll get a real flash heal, Nourish. In all honesty, this is probably a much better glyph for PvP-oriented feral druids, who will generally have Naturalist. Between Naturalist and this glyph, Healing Touch becomes a 1-second cast, which will be extremely useful for PvP.
- Glyph of Rejuvenation. More of an "Oh S%$T" reactive ability than anything else, but, like the Rebirth glyph, potentially more useful on progression content while the raid's still learning how to avoid damage. For 5-mans or while farming raid content, it's not likely to see as much use -- or, I should say, if it is seeing a lot of use, you've probably got a healing issue on your hands and you need to address the underlying cause of it rather than depend on this glyph.
- Glyph of Innervate. If you typically give Innervate to other people in your raid, the bite's not going to be so bad with this. With that said, you'll want to get a good handle on how the new mana regen mechanics work out for you before you slap this into a glyph slot.
- Glyph of Lifebloom. Insanely useful, especially if you take this in conjunction with Gift of the Earthmother, which will reduce the global cooldown on your Lifebloom casts by 20%. With that talent, this glyph, Nature's Splendor from the balance tree, enough +haste, and minimal latency it's theoretically possible to roll full Lifebloom stacks on 9+ people (not that you would want to be doing only that, just sayin'). If your healing attention in raids tends to be divided between tanks with a few spot heals on the raid as mine typically is, this allows you some extra breathing room.
- Glyph of Rebirth. Situationally useful, but much more so if your guild's hard at work on progression content, where a timely battle rez may very well swing a fight.
- Glyph of Regrowth. If you get the Living Seed talent, then you will want this Glyph to make Regrowth as efficient as possible. I have some doubts about the wisdom of turning Regrowth into a main-line healing spell, but the 21-second duration on Regrowth is probably enough in and of itself to make sure that this glyph doesn't get wasted. 20% more healing from Regrowth plus a Living Seed on a tank is very powerful. I like this glyph a lot for 5-man healing and I think it could be very useful for tank healing in raids.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
darian Oct 14th 2008 6:47PM
FYI, Glyph of Swiftmend and Glyph of Regrowth require mats from Northrend to make, meaning that you will not be able to acquire them in 3.0.
Moomboom Oct 14th 2008 6:58PM
Most of the glyphs listed require Northrend materials or skill level to craft. The only options really available for Restos until expansion will be the glyphs for Healing Touch, Rebirth, and Rejuv (not counting minor glyphs.)
cheef Oct 14th 2008 7:30PM
Ya, you didn't really even dip into the talents in the Balance tree, like, say, the one that extends the duration of LB and other hots (along with dots).
Overall... 3/10 ... 1 pt for each post.
vine Oct 14th 2008 7:40PM
Actually she did, you just have a branch too far up you to read it...
Great writeup btw. Thanks.
ash Oct 14th 2008 7:44PM
Wow, thats a pretty thorough guide
cheef Oct 14th 2008 7:48PM
/facepalm
A brief mention of Nature's Splendor and zero mention of genesis do not qulaify as a discussion about the dip into balance that will prove useful at lvl 70 without nourish and the current state of living seed (which sucks royal balls). I've tested it on beta at 70 and at 80. Living seed is borderline useless.
I stand by my original comments.
Matindo Oct 14th 2008 9:31PM
She clearly stated she was going to discuss only the resto tree in her post and that balance would be dealt with later today in a shifting perspectives post. This was at the start of the post so no tl;dr excuse you are just a hater.
I loved the article as im a raiding resto druid its great to see all the things we are gonna be able to do, plus being capped and downloading the patch means im not gonna be playing a while so reading about it makes up for it, right? right? :'(
craig Oct 15th 2008 2:14AM
this is a guide for restoration druids, not balance, so go troll somewhere else
Ecyh Oct 14th 2008 7:51PM
Thank you for a very thorough review. I am curious to know how Droods r shaping up in PVP as healers. There r so many mixed reviews out there. Your input would be greatly appreciated. :D
Myndon Oct 14th 2008 10:17PM
I would be curious to know how far in progression you've gone with your resto druid Allison. I have used Regrowth as my main healing spell in BT and a little bit into Sunwell for months, and I have never had mana issues. Recount tells me that ~75% on average of my healing is with the spell, and the rest is mostly lifebloom with a bit of rejuv and swiftmend.
Have you ever tried Regrowth spam as a strategy for raid and tank healing? It may not be efficient in raw numbers, but it's been a while since mana efficiency has been important for resto druids. I use my own Innervate and one or two pvp mana pots for Illidan.
With that said, Living Seed and the regrowth glyph become much more attractive with talented regrowth critting at or slightly higher than 50%.
Archonious Oct 28th 2008 10:55AM
I think I am going to go for a 14/0/47 spec at 70 for PvE. With the 50% crit on regrowth from Improved regrowth, Natures grace is just way to hard to pass up. If I'm getting crits 70% of the time or more, regrowth essentially will become a flash heal with a ridiculous amount of HoT due to Natures splendor, Genesis, Glyph of Regrowth, and the tier 5 raid set. The only thing I'm wondering is what is more worth it at 70: 3% crit from natural perfection or 15% of spirt bonus healing from improved tree of life.
But either way I think this spec will become WAY more popular when people realize it's potential. Seriously, were potentially talking about a near always criting Flash Heal (yes, slightly smaller than HT, but) with 33 seconds of HoT that's buffed by 45% extra of healing at an extremely low mana cost due to ToL and Moonglow WITH an extra "bloom" of 30% of the amount healed with it?. How has nobody else talked about this spec yet, am I really the first one who thought of it?
Seriously, this will be so useful in 5 mans, 33 seconds is more than enough time to cast a 1.5 second spell on EVERYONE, and keep it up on everyone if you need to, while keeping up rejuvys and lifeblooms on main tank. This build will become every more effective at 80 when you have 5/5 GotEM and Wild growth for party heals. Seems like it will be unstoppable.
Gael Oct 14th 2008 10:20PM
Quote from Ghostcrawler - If you played WoW at the 2.0 version before Burning Crusade shipped, you'll remember that this can be a crazy time. You have new abilities through talents, but not new core abilities, and not enough talent points to get everything.
Since a normal res will be a core ability, will it actually be in 3.0.2? I've only played on the WotLK beta and not the 3.0.2 one. Thanks in advance.
timmy! Oct 15th 2008 12:48PM
Excellent article! Fills in some holes I had about the resto tree.
Zali Oct 16th 2008 1:50PM
Best.
Post.
Ever.
OK. Overstating, I know. But still, the general lack of Resto-Druid posts at wowinsider.com makes this one jump to the top of the usefulness chart in my e-book. I'm looking foward to RAID season to start up again after the expansion hits so I can try out some of these new directions in healing that the Trees are taking.
The Glyphs discussion was also very useful.
Keep up the good work.
Neone Oct 16th 2008 7:10PM
Based on last nights sunwell raids.
Wild Growth is our new key spell. My job for most of the raid was keeping the raid topped off. And Wild Growth worked perfectly.
I have glyph of healing touch... and with my haste it casts before the GCD is up. I'll probably remove it, it doesn't heal for enough, and makes NS useless.
Of course, I never needed NS for a entire Sunwell raid.... nobody was taking any spike damage with all the AE healing.
Ionae Oct 17th 2008 11:52PM
Thank you - I can't tell you how useful I am finding this article, and well as many of the comments. Instead of the dread that has been filling me the past few days of being killed with amazing speed at battlegrounds, I am being inspired... it will be ok :P
Áphrodite Oct 18th 2008 10:59AM
Cool blog, uhh so wheres the links to specs :) (suprise suprise blizzard didnt upgrade armory so we cant stalk other druids to see what they are speccing) (PvP resto oh what will we do without feral charge?!)
Á.
Arnemetia Oct 18th 2008 1:09PM
My PVE resto build was specifically wonderful for long 10 min. boss fights, that was my job in big raids. Now, however, I can't even last 5 min. without being OOM. Even nerfed, ZA and BT (so far that's all I've been too since the patch) were extremely frustrating. I'll admit I hate research, so maybe this is a duh thing and I just missed it somewhere on some forum ... is it worth replacing all my +spirit gems with +mp5? Or has Blizz nerfed it so bad I just cannot function without a shadow priest now? I'll continue to tweak my points and rotation to come up with something more workable, but this tree is NOT happy so far. I'll need to find a new job. :(
hywell Nov 3rd 2008 6:38AM
Arnemetia im finding exactly the same problems pre 3.02 my regen and overall healing was always near the top of raid stats now im struggling to last half the time of other classes, ive tried boomkin with my healing gear and it seems blizzard doesnt want us to heal anymore this seems a much more usefull raid spec now for druids, gutted :(