First and Foremost this is a work in progress. I am updating this as I can. I know this covers a fair amount of information in a standard Resto druid sticky, but I included it for my own sake. Comments and suggestions, as well as tips and tricks learned via your own ventures are more than welcome!

Restoration Druid 10 vs 25 Guide

This will be covering a few major keypoints for Restoration druids in 10 and 25 man raid situations, mostly focusing on Firelands content. I will be publishing more encounter specifics as I do them on my alt druid in 10's. The below post is just a start, so keep with me. This is all from MY perspective so things may differ dependent on healer setup, how well your other healers play, and gear.

This guide is based off of my two restoration druids. Affinity my main (385 ilevel as of this posting), and Affiniti my secondary druid (371 ilevel without shard of woe as of this posting). This is all based off of experience with boss encounters on both levels, while focusing primarily on the heroic versions of the encounters. I will also cover BEST PRACTICES regardless of the raid setting (10 vs 25, normal vs heroic).

Regen requirements

This seems to be the question I am asked frequently. How should you gear/reforge, and is it different in a 10man vs 25man situation? The short answer is no it isn’t. The 2005 (or 2032 with Shard of Woe) haste breakpoint is just as important, if not more in 10 mans as your BULK raid healing is with WG with very very minimal rejuv coverage (I will discuss this more later).

The interesting bit about 10man healing versus 25man I find is regen is even less valuable in a 10man setting. In 10man wild growth hits 60% of your raid (6/10 targets), so your raid healing will consist moreso of Wild Growth and Efflorescence. Spirit regen is only viable in one of two situations. 1) You do NOT have a Shard of Woe, and, 2) You are healing 25man.

Now regen is more valuable in 25 man raids because your filler heal is generally rejuvenation (Beth’tilac, high damage portions of Rhyolith, Alyzrazor Downphase, Domo slashes). In a 10man setting a lot of your filler healing is either tank healing (primarily nourish) or you are nourishing the raid, or just not healing for regen. 25 man still values regen slightly higher, however in near BiS gear I am finding myself reforging fully out of spirit in 99% of the cases. With this in mind, in both 10 and 25 settings I would suggest you play with your regen. Reforge off a few pieces at a time over the course of a few nights/weeks and see what you are comfortable with. You are dropping regen for throughput (mastery) so it should even out. Because 10mans you are rejuving less you ideally can reforge off spirit even without a shard of woe to an extent; however I would suggest using your own judgment while factoring in your own playstyle and the role you fill within your raid.

Outside of the regen subject, your gearing and enchanting should be identical for both raid settings. We have a very limited loot table to work with and we simply don’t have better items to acquire. Shard of Woe should be considered mandatory if you are able to acquire one.

Healing Style, Priorities, and the Likes
This portion is a little less straightforward and relies primarily on the role you fit within your raiding roster. Let’s assume for the time being that you will be filling the most common role of raid healing, with a mix of tank healing in both settings.

Harmony Uptime: Harmony uptime is EXTREMELY important regardless of the role in which you fill. Harmony is easier to maintain the more tank healing you do, however it is a huge throughput gain to maintain this as close to 100% as humanly possible. Bear in mind I am assuming that on average half the time (or more) you are refreshing harmony with Swiftmend. In 25man raids I find myself refreshing Harmony with a regrowth (clearcasted or otherwise) to quickly get back to raid healing during high raid damage. On the same encounter on 10man I find myself doing a larger portion of direct tank healing, or the damage being far less urgent to quickly top off, allowing my Wild Growth to do the work while I nourish on the raid and/or tank. Fights like Beth’tilac (p2 primarily) you are doing a lot less tank healing and a lot more filler rejuvs so the same setup of a regrowth to refresh harmony outside of swiftmend still applies.

Lifebloom Uptime: This is just as important as Harmony uptime. This is essentially your passive tank healing, as well as a heavy portion of your regen (assuming 2pc t12). Lifebloom should be as close to 100% as possible in the form of a 3 stack on a tank. In a 10man situation this may be even more vital as it very well could be your only source of Replenishment. There are periods where I may let LB fall in a 25man setting (if you are eating slashes on domo for example) in favor of more direct raid healing, but should very rarely be considered an option to do so especially in a 10 man raid.

Clearcast, Clearcast, Clearcast: This seems to be up for debate quite frequently as to whether using Healing Touch or a regrowth is better with your clearcast procs. There are a few situations where this will differ significantly, and I will go over this as well. During normal raid healing situations I find myself using Clearcast procs in the form of a quick Regrowth to get back to raid healing as quickly as possible, however during a 10man encounter I do find myself using a Clearcasted Healing Touch a lot more frequently on the tank simply because Wild Growth covers so much of your raid healing.
My philosophy with clearcasting regardless of the situation is: (A) Heavy Raid damage, Clearcast regrowth to quickly get back to raid healing (B) Low raid damage higher priority on Tank healing, Clearcast Healing Touch and continue as normal.

Tree of life is similar to raid healing (as of course you use this as a raid CD during heavy raid damage) where you want to use instant regrowths with your clearcasting procs. I will focus more on this in the next section.
I find that I run a slightly different priority with my Wild Growth usage than most resto druids in the regard that I will ALWAYS use my wild growth on cooldown as long as it hits 2 or more people. This results in slightly more overhealing with wild growth, but nets me more mana efficient healing in the end. 10 man I don’t do this nearly as much as a quick Nourish sends them on their way, but I still do this very frequently as it is just the quickest and easiest way to get healing out on those 2+ targets. The only time I wouldn’t use WG on those 2 targets is if a predictable amount of raid damage was about to go out and you would be utilizing WG on that.

Cooldowns, Mana Management, Mana Regen.

Tree of Life is a fantastic tool for the restoration druid especially in t12 because it can also be part of your mana regen cooldowns. On any given fight, one or more of my Tree’s I will slow roll lifeblooms and clearcast instant regrowths for mana efficient healing, as well as to utilize my t12 2pc regen portion. In this case Tree of Life ends up being BOTH a mana regen tool, and a raid cooldown tool. Fight’s like Beth’Tilac (10 and 25) I will open the encounter with a Tree using primarily Rejuvinations so I can innervate myself as quickly as possible (more later on this). The following Tree’s I will slow roll LB’s (1 lifebloom per person max outside of your tank) and regrowth on clearcast procs. Wild Growth and Swiftmend of course are still used on cooldowns. Depending on the encounter, I will follow tree with a tranquility right before the tree fades for a buffed Tranquility (this is significantly dependent on the fight).

Shard of Woe is an annoying trinket because it is still Best In Slot considering full heroic t12 gearing alternatives (or lackthereof as it may be). I would much prefer a static, Int based trinket, however we are stuck with what we have! This trinket is a MUST HAVE for ALL druids if you can acquire it. This gives you a lot more wiggle room with over using mana, reforging out of spirit, and the likes. It also is a fantastic tool when reforging to 2032 haste to get an extra rejuv tick (results to around 50% uptime when you use the trinket after nature’s grace). The haste use is less valuable for raid healing in 10’s simply due to the fact that your bulk raid healing casts are wild growth. The haste can still help with nourish spamming your tank though. Throughput wise this gives you a lot more reforging options, as well as the possibility of cutting down to 10/0/31 as your primary raiding spec. As I said earlier, use your own discretion while factoring in your healing style and healing roster when reforging and respeccing out of mana regen talents.

Innervate is, of course, our primary source of regen. On a fight where I know mana will be tight (beth, domo if you eat slashes) I will try and burn through my initial mana as quickly as possible so I can Innervate myself. I find by doing this, I will get an extra innervate out of the fight (on a fight like Beth this nets me an innervate at about 20% to 25% or so which allows me to just bomb rejuvs at the end of the encounter). I highly suggest coupling your innervate with power torrent if it is up. This nets you a significant amount of additional mana. On any given fight, my first innervate goes out the SECOND time I get Power Torrent (I pre hot on the pull of beth, which procs it on the pull), and when my mana is at roughly 80 to 85%. If you use an ICD timer, don’t wait for it to come back up if it isn’t within like 5-10 seconds of coming off ICD. Those seconds at the end of the encounter where you could have extra mana makes a huge difference.

Mana Regen (idling vs nourish): This is where things differ a lot for me personally in a 10 vs 25 setting. This may be biased on the fact that my primary druid has a shard of woe, and my secondary druid for the time being does not, however in principle the same applies. In a 25man situation I will generally nourish when “regenning” as it is a fairly mana neutral spell. There are periods where I simply won’t cast anything, but I find this to be more the case in a 10man setting than 25. In 10 mans my primary use of this “free time for regen” is casting NOTHING, or a handful of nourishes on the tank. I do find that 10 man has a lot more wiggle room for simply doing nothing as a method of regeneration, and due to lack of better things to heal – this is mostly to blame on the fact that Wild Growth hits 60% of your raid, so there isn’t much left to heal. This is another subject that relies (again) primarily on the healers you are healing with, and what you feel comfortable with doing. Simply “doing nothing” is definitely odd, especially on the back of “rejuv spam” in wrath (blood queen anyone?!). Just remember that the more mana you save during light damage phases the more mana you can burn through during heavy AOE.


Encounters
This portion of the guide will be fairly empty for the time being. I am just setting foot into heroics with an alt group on my secondary druid, so this will be updated as we go.

Beth’tilac:

This is fairly straightforward and wasn’t quite so bad on 10 man as people made it out to be. As far as difficulty wise it is a fitting 6th boss. It is technically harder than Baleroc, but it’s not that far ahead of it as far as healing difficulty. Cooldown wise I followed the same CD rotation as 25 heroic where I would Tree on the pull, tranq the second AOE, tree the third AOE, and then use tree/tranq near the end of the fight (as separate cooldowns). The hardest healing for p1 wasn’t the initial AOE, but was dealing with the spinner damage while popping after. Popping requires a lot more coordination simply due to it being a random side each time, rather than all 3 each time guaranteed as it is on 25 man (which enables you to have people there ahead of time). I found myself going catform sprint and popping 3-4 on my own from time to time to alleviate the damage. P2 was basically the same as far as healing priority, and as is the standard with 10man healing I am rejuving far less than I do on 25man. Most of my AOE healing was covered by wild growth, with some nourish to fill the void.

Overall the fight is very similar. I am moving a lot more with popping spiders and doing more utility in 10 vs 25, but overall healing is virtually the same. Fight was quite enjoyable on 10man, and only took about 8 pulls or so to kill it.


Lord Rhyolith: This fight is fairly straightforward. Damage is all predictable (unless your drivers suck and you take massive stacks) and you only have a few heavy aoe portions (mostly at the end of the fight). This fight runs virtually the same as 25 man except I use a lot less rejuvs during p1. I find myself using nourish with wild growth to top people off in an efficient manner in 10 mans whereas on 25 I would be rejuving a lot more. P2 is virtually the same. Spam your brains out for 45 or less seconds, collect loot.

Alyzrazor: This fight is literally the same on 10 man and 25 man. We 2 healed this our very first kill, so I burned through a lot more mana as I was dumping Healing Touches into my tank (had a death knight tank) even if it was mostly overheals as the “just in case” (I was attempting to play whack-a-mole and apparently I won). Regen all your mana in the down phase, pop TOL and rejuv/wg/efflo spam with a tranq near the end. When we pull the boss (outside of the RP on the very first pull) I pop tree, hit wild growth and swiftmend, followed by a tranq (the cooldowns are of course up in time for when you need them during the downphase).

Shannox: This fight is virtually the same on 10 vs 25, except there is less room for error with the dogs. Tank healing can get hectic if things don’t go well, so I find I use a lot more mana on 10 being the only one on that specific tank at the time (I was assigned the shannox tank and was floating on rageface targets). Virtually the same joke of a fight.

Baleroc: This is the only fight that I have respecced to make things run smoother. The spec I ran with for the kill was as follows: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft . Note I dropped Gift of the Earthmother as I don't let my LB bloom and I don't do any raid healing. This spec is built more around the fight in regards to tank healing, however living seed accounted for very very minimal healing.


This is an interesting fight as far as resto druids go. Healing a decimation blade without a whole bunch of stacks is near impossible, so we modified our 25 heroic strat to work around this more. On heroic 25 we use 6 healers (used 5 on our very first kill) where we have 2 groups of healers (3 and 3) and 2 tanks (1 fulltime tank, 1 tank with 1 stack to tank deci blades). 1 set starts on tanks, the other set starts on an assigned crystal (1 on melee, 1 on ranged, 1 floating between the two). We swap each crystal set, and don’t let anyone beef their stacks up over 2 sets of crystals. On 10man we ran 2 healers (druid and pally) and I started on the first 2 crystals to get my stacks up to about 150, at which point I switch to the tank and proceed to use the remainder of our 25 strat of swapping for each new crystal spawn (we used 1 tank and 2 healers on 10man).

This fight is a pretty crappy encounter for a druid without using a strat similar to this. If you get bad RNG and get a deci blade without a lot of stacks healing it becomes difficult, and sometimes impossible to do when utilizing only 1 tank. After a few wipes of swapping each crystal set and the tank dying to a decimation blade, we agreed to switch our strat to the druid beefing stacks on the first 2 crystal spawns. With this I was able to essentially keep lb’s and a rejuv on the tank, and nourish him to keep him alive outside of decimation blades.

The very first crystal spawn we used a shadow priest to tank the entire shard. Sac at 12 from the pally, dispersion at 18. I spammed regrowth on him to build stacks quickly while in TOL for instant cast. Due to this I popped my innervate as I started spamming him so I could get a use in again sooner rather than later. As soon as the first shard despawned I used my concentration potion. The second shard we used a DK and rogue splitting the stacks, which I healed primarily with healing touch, and a few regrowths near the end. At this point I swapped to the tank, where I was running sub 30% mana. Nourish with lifeblooms was enough to keep him alive outside of decimation blades, and a Healing touch coupled with a NS Healing touch for decimation blades in which the druid tank didn’t dodge hits. I used swiftmend to re-apply my tank healing buff quickly so I could continue healing him. Nourish is basically mana neutral at this gear level, so being able to heal the tank almost exclusively via nourish and hots allowed me to regen a significant amount of mana for the next shard set.

Each following shard set that I had to heal (assuming the other healer didn’t get tormented which he did on the kill) I healed the shard primarily through a few hots at the start, and then healing touch spam for the remainder. I generally placed 2 lifeblooms on the soaker and then bombed him with healing touch.

My mana overall would have been fine had the pally not gotten countdown followed by tormented being spread to him. When a healer received tormented, we had the non-tormented healer either swap to, or stay on, shards which just completely slaughtered my mana. Innervates+Conc pot+mana hymn at about 15% boss health I was nearly OOM. The fight died, but I was dry for the last 10%+.

In respect to heal priorities the fight itself doesn’t change a whole lot between 10 and 25. The strategy we used on 10 man could easily be applied to 25, and in most cases should be, but 25 allows you to heal it either way. 10 man felt a lot tighter on mana (albeit we are undergeared so dps was an issue). If the group didn’t consist primarily of alts with an average ilvl below 372 we probably could have 3 heal 1 tanked it without much issue, which alleviates a lot of the mana problems we have.

The annoying part of Baleroc on 10 heroic is it relies even heavier on RNG playing nicely with you. Countdown tying a healer and someone with tormented is really awful and really hard to work around, causing significant mana issues later on. Getting multiple decimation blades in a row is also another way to destroy my mana, and quite simply screw my mana over for the rest of the fight. Our RNG was awful so we somehow managed to heal through multiple decimation blades PLUS our paladin receiving tormented via countdown at least once over the course of the encounter.

Overall healing wise I find baleroc 10 to be one of the harder heroic fights to heal. The other encounters are far easier as far as healer setup and RNG components as they don’t involve essentially cutting a healer’s effectiveness in half for a set period of time. Going into this fight undergeared definitely was the largest challenge, but overall the fight was rather well tuned for 10 man. I feel druids are one of the weaker healers for this specific encounter on either 10 or 25, but we are equipped with just enough utility to get the job done.


Majordomo Staghelm: This fight I find to be rather amusing. Blood Legion’s very first kill, and a few repeat kills after that, we ate a lot of slashes netting in me doing somewhere in the ballpark of 30k hps at the end of the encounter (I of course wasn’t eating slashes). On 10man we 2 healed this fight and we took zero slashes in scorpion. Only time I honestly used mana was during orb phase when things got a bit hectic – but that’s more to blame by the fact that we had just been winging it and didn’t assign any fancy rotations or the likes to deal with the orbs. With the standard “don’t eat slashes” on 25man now though the fight is practically the same.

Ragnaros:
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKf8...el_video_title
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis


This fight is fairly similar to 25 now with the nerfs to damage and the add health values. I tranq during the transitions as needed and save tree so we have a cooldown for each seed set in p2 (We AM 1/3). The video details fairly well what the healing requirements are. I swap between nourish and rejuvs/wg on raid healing and nourish/ht on the tank. I have 4pc so I use swiftmend more for topping 2 people after traps rather than focusing on getting multiple people in the efflorescence. Overall in comparison to 3 healing Rag 25, 2 healing 10 gives a lot more room for slowly healing people during transitions. The only time healing becomes a bit tighter is during the second transition where you solo heal a tank and a few raid members – however tranquility picks this up nicely.

P4 healing is the hardest bit. I generally try and run into the breath first, run back out, and tranq as necessary. This allows others time to get in position without worrying about resetting before they die, and allows me to focus on healing over positioning myself properly (which I do once everything stabilizes). I pop tree when the superheated stacks start, and then I have my Tree and tranq back up for right around when we run to the 3rd or 4th breath to again help stabilize.

Outside of the video the only bit of information for healing this I can truly suggest is try and innervate as soon as humanly possible so you can squeeze one more out at the end. Other than that, watch the video ^_^


This is all I can honestly think of for the time being, but I will be updating this as I do more encounters on my alt druid and as I get questions asked. This guide is based on multiple questions on a regular basis, and there hasn’t been a sturdy guide on “in practice” healing. Take this as you wish.

Cooldown usage remains the same for both difficulties regardless of the kill time. We don't start dropping cooldowns until later around 20-21 stacks in p2, so my tree lines up to right around that time, with my tranquility being saved for near the end. Cooldowns are up on both of these regardless and doesn't effect much.


Tree form depends on the fight. If I feel mana will be a problem, I will roll lifeblooms with clearcast instant regrowths. Beth is a bit different as I tree on the pull. I use both trinkets on the pull, spam rejuvs, and innervate myself as quickly as possible -- this allows me to squeeze in one more innervate around the 10-15% marker on the boss where I am basically able to spam rejuvs nonstop at the end.

You said you get to about 150 stacks after the second crystal on Baleroc? Was that before the change?

I always seem to hit 100 (about 50 per Spriest soak) after the second crystal, and pick up an additional 20-30 during the encounter. I rotate nature's grace, shard and troll beserking haste buffs as needed for sub 1 second regrowths on both spriests when at +10 stacks.

10man stacks didn't get modified when they nerfed baleroc's hp and stack values on 25. 10 was unaffected.

You say rag10 is a joke for healing. Are you using an aoe strategy to kill seeds or killing them individually? We use a "solo your own" strat and I find that phase to be anything but a joke. The second son transition can be pretty healing intensive with all of the raid damage+ tank damage from scions. Superheated damage with the knockback dot plus tank damage in the p4 transition is pretty crazy as well.

If this is supposed to be a guide for healing, its rather insulting for people who are are struggling on fights that you call a joke.

edit: Nevermind. If you can't say anything nice and all that.

Wasn't intended to be insulting, was more in relation to 25 healing (2 healing 10 vs 3 healing 25 for example). I will edit it and make it less insulting for you though.


The strat we went with was a modified 25 strat where we would stack them up still, aoe initially, then split and finish them off 1 at a time. Overall healing isn't that bad here. P2 healing wise is probably the hardest portion of the fight, but in relative terms it isn't a whole lot that 2 healers cannot manage. Haven't pulled the nerfed version of this but 10 was significantly easier than 25 damage requirement wise pre-nerf, so will be interesting to see it post nerf.

Really interesting guide for someone who steps into resto raiding. However I would point your advice on baleroc, that seems to be the only fight that we're not mastering:

I've used the same trick (the shadowpriest thing), and as a poorly-geared druid (well for heroic difficulty at least), using regrowth to stack the buff could eventually make me waste too much mana. Plus I didnt' want to waste treeform. Some TC + tests bring me to the following :
- assuming your guild use BL/Herosim at that point
- use 3/3 nature's bounty, and set up 3 rejuv right before the crystal spawn
- use 3/3 nature's grace, and make it proc right when the crystal's spawn, as your first direct heal
- spam nourrish. As you said, it will be "mana neutral", it will be far sufficient to keep the priest alive, thanks to BL and dispersion, and it's 1 sec cast. So basically, it's just mana- free optimal stacking.

Except you have to waste 3 GCDs refreshing Rejuvenation to keep the Nature's Bounty buff alive at some point during the first shard. If your goal is to get as many buff stacks as possible during the first shard, this is not optimal. This may be preferred to Regrowth spamming for the first 12 seconds or so, but once NB falls off you should switch to Regrowth. If it's not a 1 sec cast, then using ToL at that point would be beneficial for buff stacking.

I have found that nourish spam to 9 stacks, and regrowth from 10-25 to be the best method. Queue swiftmend at 9 and 24 with the nourish/regrowth.

I also build on the second shard and use troll berserking and SoW at 15 stacks since lust and NG will be down.

Also, tree form is not necessary or helpful to building stacks. Regrowth is always GCD limited, regardless of instant cast or not.

Finally got around to killing rag (3 pulls tops each week ftl) will post a guide tomorrow with a video. Nerfs made the fight pretty easy damage wise in comparison to it's older version so may not be as detailed as my prior guides. Video inc!