7. Talent overview:

The necessary talents for a restoration druid are all in the balance and restoration trees; feral does not have anything of interest. As with Sacco's article, italicized talents are considered optional or situational, and those with a strike-through should be avoided.

Restoration:

• Improved Mark of the Wild: Mandatory.
• Nature's Focus: Situationally helpful in PvE content, but mostly useful in PvP. However, 3 points in this are needed to reach the next tier of restoration talents, as Furor is worthless.
• Furor: A talent designed for balance and feral players.
• Naturalist: This is not usually taken in most PvE restoration builds, although it finds situational use (most notably on ToGC Anub'arak-25).
• Subtlety: Much less useful in Wrath due to tank threat improvements, but if you don't put points in Naturalist, you will need to spend at least 2 here.
• Natural Shapeshifter: Generally useless in PvE content where you won't shift at all while healing, but you will need 3 points here to reach Master Shapeshifter.
• Intensity: Mandatory.
• Omen of Clarity: Mandatory.
• Master Shapeshifter: While this talent is somewhat uninspiring (you're not getting 4% healing from two points -- you're getting 4% healing from the five points required from both Natural and Master Shapeshifter), it should be considered mandatory.
• Tranquil Spirit: Optional unless you are a tank healer with mana problems.
• Improved Rejuvenation: Mandatory.
• Nature's Swiftness: Mandatory. Nature's Swiftness is typically macro'd to Healing Touch to provide a large emergency heal.
  
• Gift of Nature: Mandatory.
• Improved Tranquility: Generally not worth your time. Should be dragged out behind a barn and killed with an axe.
• Empowered Touch: A mandatory talent for tank and 5-man healers. Less useful to raid healers, but it does make spot healing more efficient.
• Nature's Bounty: Mandatory.
• Living Spirit: A pre-3.3 build would have listed this talent as mandatory, but players with a Celestial Focus build are often forced to drop points from it.
• Swiftmend: Mandatory.
• Natural Perfection: Somewhat useful to dedicated tank healers in conjunction with Nature's Bounty, Empowered Touch, and Living Seed, but otherwise a PvP talent.
• Empowered Rejuvenation: Mandatory.
• Living Seed: Highly useful to tank and PvP healers, less so to raid healers.
• Revitalize: Once considered a firmly optional talent, Revitalize was yoked to Wild Growth (in addition to the original Rejuvenation bonus) in patch 3.1 and became significantly more useful. The people who benefit most from it are death knights, rogues, and cat druids, so if your raid doesn't have any (or you spend very little time raid-healing), don't bother.
• Tree of Life: The restoration spec's flagship talent. Mandatory.
• Improved Tree of Life: Mandatory. While the +armor bonus usually goes to waste in PvE, the additional scaling from spirit does not.
• Improved Barkskin: PvP only. Introduced in patch 3.1 when Blizzard was trying to shore up restoration's arena performance after a miserable season 5.
• Gift of the Earthmother: Mandatory.
• Wild Growth: Mandatory.

Balance:

• Starlight Wrath: Moonkin only.
• Genesis: Mandatory.
• Moonglow: Mandatory.
• Nature's Majesty: Not particularly helpful to raid healers, but necessary to get Nature's Splendor.
• Improved Moonfire: Moonkin only (and even balance players don't usually take this).
• Brambles: Technically a moonkin-only talent, but you will have to stick an extra point somewhere in balance to get Celestial Focus, and this is one of the better places to put it assuming you regularly cast Thorns on your tank/s.
• Nature's Grace: Generally useful to tank healers, less so for raid healers.
• Nature's Splendor: Mandatory.
• Nature's Reach: Moonkin only.
• Celestial Focus: Should generally be taken if you are below the soft haste cap. As gear improves, you can gradually drop points until you don't need the talent at all.

8. Leveling as restoration:

In a word; don't.

Shifting Perspectives ran a series on how to level as a druid this past year, in which I've made mention of this little dictum. However, it should be admitted that the Dungeon Finder has made leveling as a tank or healer significantly easier, and that option is available to you if you so choose. However, I discourage players from leveling as restoration for three reasons:

1. There is almost nothing in the restoration tree that will improve your ability to deal damage.

Even if you're making heavy use of the Dungeon Finder, you're still likely to quest or grind from time to time. Doing either on a healing spec is time-consuming and boring as hell.

2. Pre-80 dungeons are not designed around everyone being the correct spec for their role:

This is more true of pre-60 dungeons, but you are absolutely not required to be restoration in order to heal a normal 5-man. If you want to get experience as a healer, collect caster drops and quest rewards while you're leveling, and toss them on if you queue as a healer for the Dungeon Finder or are asked to heal. You should be fine unless your group is extremely stupid, woefully undergeared, or both. Glyping Healing Touch for these situations will give you access to a makeshift flash heal while leveling; you won't get Nourish until 80.

3. The gear to support the spec while leveling just isn't there. Ironically, this can be more true with the Dungeon Finder:

While I expect this problem will be fixed somewhat when Blizzard overhauls Azeroth for Cataclysm, at this point in time it is exceptionally difficult to assemble a leather caster set while leveling. The situation is further complicated by how need/greed works in the Dungeon Finder, which automatically prioritizes all cloth drops (which comprise the vast majority of caster and +spellpower gear while leveling) toward cloth classes. You will have to depend on the generosity and honesty of your groupmates to pass a cloth drop to you if you lose a greed roll, and if our inbox here at WoW.com is any indication, you shouldn't bank on it.

Now, one can reasonably point out that it is possible to build a caster set with quest rewards, but that lands us squarely back at reason #1; questing as a resto druid SUCKS. Green quest rewards from 1-60 are also not known for their amazing itemization. You are caught between questing on a terrible questing spec for usually-terrible gear, or healing in dungeons for better gear that you won't be able to roll need on unless you put a group together from your realm. In the meantime, melee DPS leather will be raining from the skies, product of a classic Azeroth where every third character was a rogue.

If you are a crazy person who insists on leveling resto and have access to heirloom pieces, purchase the following for your new baby druid:

• Preened Ironfeather Breastplate: Available for 40 Emblems of Heroism or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Preened Ironfeather Shoulders: Available for 40 Emblems of Heroism or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Swift Hand of Justice: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals.
• Discerning Eye of the Beast: 50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals.
• For a weapon, either the Devout Aurastone Hammer (50 Emblems of Heroism or 75 Champion's Seals) or the Dignified Headmaster's Charge (65 Emblems of Heroism or 95 Champion's Seals). If you're dual-speccing balance and resto whlie leveling, take the Headmaster's Charge; if you're going pure resto, take the Hammer.

Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives