As a resto Druid at heart I've kept my restoration spec till now (lvl 64). My restoration gear is very good consisting of mostly Naxx items. Therefore, during instances and for quest rewards I have been picking up feral pieces and balance pieces in anticpiation of a potential spec change.

During the leveling process primary healing instances as a restoration Druid has been fun and even challenging at times. However, I find that outside the instance, solo questing has been more painful than I could ever imagine. The time it takes to kill mobs is crazy.

My question is this.

Can an off-spec Druid (Balance/Resto or Feral/Resto) with the fewer points in resto still primary heal 5-mans? I need a spec change, at least till 70. But don't want to lose the ability to heal in instances.

Thoughts, comments appreciated.

In a word, yes. You don't even need to be particularly non-resto to quest/farm fairly successfully. You won't do so as efficientlyvas a pure dps class, but you won't be prohibitively slow either.

I was 0/20/31 at 60 headed to 0/30/31 at 70, and with my reasonably good feral gear picked up from AQ and while leveling (1200-1500ap self-buffed) I could do reasonably good dps. Once I hit 70 I switched to 27/0/34, and with the balance gear I picked up while leveling I'm sitting at ~600 +dmg, which is plenty respectable.

With the first spec I had a huge mana pool and still had all the core healing abilities like NS and swiftmend. With the second I have better efficiency, more +healing, and a few more points in Restoration so my heals are a bit larger. Honestly, I think it's a better raid spec than full resto, because I can hybrid up some dps when the situation calls for it and still farm the consumables I need while raiding. And I'm not missing anything I really need to be a solid healer (I can't find any use for ToL).

Certainly. I main healed 5-mans on occasion with a 0/41/10 level 60 spec all the way up to level 70. I will warn that you have to be very good at anticipating damage because you're lacking any instant or even fast heals. Starting at Sethekk Halls and higher I'd recommend against main healing.

Its certainly more optimal to bring a priest of any spec and, you know, go feral with your feral spec. ;-]

Since you have very good gear and likely run with good groups it shouldn't be a problem. People for whom either of those are not the case would have difficulty doing much more than a backup healing role. At least that's how it felt leveling mostly shadow, there were many times where mana was tight and would have been disasterous without nice gear, and there were times where being a healing spec could have saved us from silly blunders. It also was good practice that forced me to work on mana efficiency.

If you're willing to dump a few gold on pots, you can heal basically anything as a shadow priest. I'd imagine it's the same for a feral druid, especially if you put your other points in resto. (Which I guess you would, for Naturalist.)

I did have to hit pots fairly frequently, though.

Our guild was a little short on leveled healers, so I healed several of the 70 instances as a 67/68 shadow priest. Generally no problem, except for throughput difficulties once on the first Shadow Labs boss.

Two off-spec healers, one main healing and one doing his spec'd role, can work really well to make up for any deficiencies. ILotP or VE/VT can patch over whatever your primary healer might be lacking, and the secondary can always switch over in an emergency.

I was barely able to manage main healing Sethekk Halls as a level 64 full shadow priest. It was late and I was very tired but I seem to recall drinking virtually after every pull and my healing gear is pretty good to be honest (tier2/3). We did wipe a few times however and I definitely thought, "if I wasn't specced shadow that wouldn't have been a problem," after a couple of them. I used pots during the boss fights and we managed to clear it eventually but it's not something I'd consider a lot of fun (it was really stressful!).

64 is underleveled for Sethekk, so this experience isn't all that surprising. For my own experience, I leveled as Ret, and main healed every instance (except tanking a few!) along the way. I usually had a shadowpriest companion feeding me mana, but minus him it just meant a pot here and there.

Please don't read my reply as though I'm saying it would have been cake as holy/disc spec at lvl 64. I felt really out of my place with lvl 69 elites swinging at my head all the time and I aggroed through a wall once which was bad obviously.

I've had few problems main healing as Ret/Holy, using what is mostly L60 healing gear (upgraded 4~5 healing items out of 17). Highest instance I've done as a MH is Shadow Lab/Black Morass.

As a solo healer, my group completed Shadow Lab pretty easily. (The geared tank helped) Black Morass, we barely downed 2nd boss and wiped afterwards due to some mistakes I made. (Should've been able to get to 3rd boss otherwise - not sure if I'd be able to handle healing on him though; first time in that instance)


The main penalty for healing as an "off-spec" is lower endurance. Potting and minimizing overheal/maximizing regen (Illumination is ez-mode!) can compensate for that, at least in normal mode instances.

Another problem I faced was dealing with AOE damage, but that's a weakness of the class, not the spec. Reminding people that they can and should bandage (to compensate for a paladin solo healing) solves this part half the time.

This used to be true for paladins, but I disagree with it now. The lack of Light's Grace / Holy Shock in any non-Holy build drastically reduces your throughput (and thus ability to handle AE damage to the party, as you pointed out), so its incorrect to say that longevity is the only thing you get from a healing build.

I definitely feel the pinch in some instances if I need to heal with my shadow spec. Sometimes I'll use mana oil, use food, a cheap healing elixir, and the ever-present mana potion to compensate. With a heavy holy build, I'm about 20-25% more efficient on all my heals and I get inspiration on my crits on the tank, helping mitigate a bit more physical damage.

I found this out last night in Karazhan, when we were having healing problems for some reason, so I hearthed out and respecced, since I was just feeling way too constrained actually trying to heal in there as a shadow priest. I don't necessary think it was the smartest thing to put me on healing, but I really felt strongly that I needed to be the appropriate spec for it as a result, because after a few goes as shadow I just felt really overextended. That might be a bit over the level of what the OP was talking about though. I didn't have too many troubles healing as I was leveling up at all, as long as I used some of those mana potions that I found on my journeys.