Season of Discovery (SoD) Druid Healer Build Guide & Best Runes

Druid healers have got some extremely interesting options opened up to them that should make them valuable assets in group content. Not only will they offer solid group heals and a crucial buff in Mark of the Wild, but can also provide decent damage output during downtime.

Build Summary

With the upcoming Blackfathom Deeps being converted into a raid, healers are going to be at a premium, and Druid healers are looking to be extremely powerful and versatile.

First, you’ll have a suite of healing spells available to you by lv 25, including the two extra buttons you’ll be getting from runes in both Wild Growth and Lifebloom. Healing Touch (Rank 4), Regrowth (Rank 3), and Rejuvenation (Rank 4) are going to be able to be trained. Lower ranks of those 3 spells will serve the important function of costing less mana, not wasting resources by overhealing your target, and in the case of Healing Touch will have a shorter cast-time. It should be noted that downranking to ranks that were attained pre-level 20 for any and all spells will negatively impact the ratio at which spellpower affects your healing/damage spells. This will be less of an issue early on as spellpower is fairly difficult to come by.

Druids should be rather exceptional at group-healing at the lv 25 cap not only due to their instant-cast Rejuvenation spell allowing them to blanket a group, but also with access to the excellent AoE healing of the Wild Growth rune. Lifebloom is best spent on a tank or other player that’s going to be taking consistent damage. Stacking it 3 times will cost quite a few GCD, so should be done pre-pull and kept up during the fight as needed. When it expires it does offer a burst of healing, as well as half the mana spent to cast it refunded, which can be useful if the player it’s on is getting chunked and you’re otherwise busy healing another player.

That said, healing is not the only thing you can offer to a group. You’ll have utility spells such as Remove Curse, Cure Poison, Faerie Fire as an important debuff, Rebirth as the only true battle rez available, and Hibernate as CC against beasts/dragonkin. On top of that with the new Fury of the Stormrage rune, your damage output will not be anything to scoff at as it makes your Wrath free to cast and with the bonus of potentially making your Healing Touch instant-cast.

Runes

Chest

Living Seed

Living Seed offers a small amount of extra throughput, but sadly at lv 25 won’t offer the sort of consistency or value that you’ll be looking for as a healer. It has two downfalls in that it requires you to critical strike with a healing spell to be planted, and then for that player to be attacked within the 15 seconds it’s active to see that value. Without much critical strike available by lv 25, and without the control of who gets this buff it’s not terribly powerful.

The one benefit is it requires no thought or GCD’s and thus could be an option if the encounter just doesn’t let you make use of the Fury of the Stormrage rune.

Fury of the Stormrage

For the healing purists out there this might be a bit of a surprise, but this rune offers an absolute insane amount of value. This rune means we can spam Wrath as a filler whenever there’s any downtime and it’ll actually be mana positive with the points in Reflection allowing some mana regeneration to happen during cast times. But our healing duties can still be maintained with the 12% chance for an instant Healing Touch allowing us to keep on top of any players getting chunked while cosplaying as a DPS.

This will likely be the standard choice in most situations unless you really need every extra ounce of throughput and won’t have time to throw in some Wrath casts. With runes being hot swappable outside of combat it should be easy enough to swap off when necessary.

Gloves

Wild Growth

An extremely powerful AoE healing spell and really the only viable option for the slot as a healer. With a lot of the healing from this spell being frontloaded, it’s especially good at dealing with large group-wide damage to quickly get people out of the danger zone for your Rejuvenation and any other healer’s spot healing to take effect.

Legs

Lifebloom

Another instant-cast HoT for us to use. This ability can be stacked up 3 times, and has a rather short uptime before needing to be refreshed – so keep on top of it! Spending 3 GCD’s to restack it can be quite awkward, and it’s likely not recommended to let it fall off unless you’re busy keeping the raid alive or the player it’s on has been chunked and could make use of the burst heal from it falling off. It will refund you half the mana spent on the spell once it falls off, which does make it feel a bit better if you fail to keep up with it or intentionally let it fall off.

Talent Build

The talent build for a healing Druid is going to be a bit awkward with a cap of lv 25. There are honestly few options that will actually improve your healing throughput or offer you anything that powerful. Improved Wrath has been chosen to make the most of your Fury of the Stormrage glyph, but nothing else in the balance tree is going to offer much for a healing Druid in group content.

In the Restoration tree Improved Mark of the Wild is probably the largest increase to what we offer a group, and is an easy pick up to progress it further into the tree. With Healing Touch not being our highest priority healing spell, and the instant casts you’ll get from Fury of the Stormrage procs, the second tier of points are better spent in Nature’s Focus. Then to finish it off our 2 remaining points go into Reflection to give us some mana regeneration. If you’re Horde you won’t have access to a Paladin’s Blessing of Wisdom, which will make this crucial. This also has the benefit of making Wrath mana positive when combined with the Fury of the Stormrage glyph.

Key Spells and Abilities

Rejuvenation

What’s more iconic to Resto Druids than this spell? It has great value with being an instant cast Heal-Over-Time spell, and can also serve as pseudo-AoE healing in that you can blanket a raid with it and watch all the pretty numbers start popping over everyone’s head. Do keep in mind that you will want to manage your mana though, as this spell can definitely eat up your resources if you just spam it without a care in the world.

You’ll have access to Rank 4 of Rejuvenation but downranking and using Rank 3 is going to be useful in many situations. While Rank 4 is technically more mana efficient, if you’re going to be overhealing then any efficiency gained will be wasted.

Regrowth

This spell can heal a big chunk of damage and leaves a HoT behind for a full 21 seconds on the target to heal further damage they may take. It’s an expensive spell and should be used sparingly. This is a good spell to cast when someone’s HP is getting low with it being only a 2 second cast and the HoT it leaves behind continuing to tick for any further expected damage to be healed.

Throw a quick Rejuvenation on your target after casting Regrowth to make efficient use of your GCD’s and to get heals really rolling on someone if they’re taking some hard hitting damage.

Healing Touch

The mana efficiency on this spell is actually quite good as base values get just about twice as much healing as per mana point spent. It also offers a large burst of raw healing for those really dicey moments when someone gets real low. That said it does come with several drawbacks.

First, its long cast time, especially at higher ranks, makes it so you need to choose good timing when to use it. Thankfully, this drawback is hedged somewhat by the interaction with the Fury of the Stormrage glyph giving us instant-cast procs for this spell. But that brings us to the second drawback – while mana efficient it’s still a costly spell and you shouldn’t think that just because you have an instant-cast proc available that you’re required to use it. Finally, the last drawback is that it’s a huge chunk of healing all at once. While this is an advantage as well, it can make it prone to overhealing if you’re not careful.

Wrath

If there’s any downtime you can really let loose and just smash this key to your heart’s content with the Fury of the Stormrage glyph making this spell cost no mana! This will offer Resto Druids the utility of bringing some damage to encounters, as well as being strong group healers. A few pieces of gear available will also give you bonuses to spell damage as well as healing, allowing you to double dip on the stat boost.

Rebirth

This one has to be mentioned for the sheer unique utility it brings to groups. A true battle-rez in all its glory, and the only one available! While costly to yourself (And your bag space with it requiring a physical reagent) nothing can really replace the ability to bring a dead ally back into the fight.

Faerie Fire

An armor shred debuff with a rather long timer. Of course, other druids could be keeping this up as well, and it’ll depend on your group composition and the needs of the encounter. That said it’ll be essential to keep this up for extra group-wide damage output and threat output from your tank. If no one else is taking care of it, you can definitely spend a GCD to offer this utility for your group!

Noteworthy Items

Spellpower Goggles Xtreme

The only means to acquire this item is through Engineering (Schematic: Spellpower Goggles Xtreme). While a bit limiting by taking up one of your primary profession slots and not being the most pleasant to level up – this item is extremely powerful in a slot that has almost no options at lv 25. This will impact both your healing and damage spells, which you’ll be throwing plenty of both. Flat increases to healing spells also benefits our max rank HoTs by a hefty amount (It’s not additive per tick, but the benefit ratio for spells changes based on rank, cast time, channel time, or type).

Truefaith Gloves

These can be acquired through Tailoring (Pattern: Truefaith Gloves). Thankfully you don’t need to be a tailor to make use of these, so you can buy them off the AH or have them made for you. They’re accessible and offer another great boon to the strength of your healing spells.

Deep Fathom Ring

You’ll find this ring within the Wailing Caverns from Mutanus the Devourer. There’s not a whole lot of good options for the ring slot, but this ring has everything you want for stats. Do keep in mind it is unique, though, so you can only equip one.

Feline Mantle

Another slot that doesn’t have a plethora of options by lv 25, but this piece is not too hard to obtain being from Shadowfang Keep’s Wolf Master Nandos. A strong amount of int with a dash of spirit makes it a solid option. The agility is useless, but it’s only a small amount of waste.

Living Root

Some defensive stats combined with a solid amount of spirit make this a good option for a healer. With 10% of our mana regen still happening while we cast, this can add up over the course of a fight. This item drops from Verdan the Everliving in the Wailing Caverns.

Race Choice

Night Elf

This is the only choice if you’re going Alliance while pursuing the path of a Druid. The racials offered by this are mostly just small bonuses that won’t affect much.

• Nature Resistance offers a small bonus to… well… nature resistance! Will this come in handy at some point? Probably. Is it anything to be enthused about? Probably not.
• Quickness only gives a 1% dodge chance, which isn’t anything particularly impressive. Perhaps you’ll dodge that 1 in 100 melee swing while kiting the boss to give your last standing ally the chance to take down that last sliver of boss health?
• Shadowmeld is a stealth tool that can only be used while standing still and out of combat. Personally, I find it a great tool to go AFK in the middle of nowhere to dodge mob aggro while I’m making popcorn.
• Wisp Spirit is something that offers a tangible benefit, even if it may not be useful in-combat. Who doesn’t want their corpse-walk to be 50% faster?

Tauren

Again, this is the only choice, but this time if you happen to be of the Horde persuasion instead. The racials here are decently better than the Night Elf alternative, but not by a wide margin for a caster.

• Nature Resistance appears again, offering a small resistance bonus to the titular element. As gamers we resist the temptation of nature all the time, so hopefully this buff stacks!
• Endurance offers a 5% bonus to max health. Now we’re getting somewhere! While not make or break, this is definitely something that could come in handy. Healers being harder to kill is always a benefit that should be taken when it can be.
• Cultivation gives a flat +15 points to the Herbalism skill. If you’re really into taking that cow roleplay seriously and want to chew some cud, this skill will offer the benefit of allowing you to graze on some higher level flowers/herbs a bit earlier.
• War Stomp is an AoE stun in a small circle around your character. This could be quite useful if you happen to get healing aggro to give you and your tank some breathing room to get things back on track. Might also be useful in large pulls for some free short-lived CC.