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Restoration Druid in Shadowlands - Healer Strengths, Best Covenants, Soulbinds and Legendaries
暗影国度
由
Jaydaa
发表于
2020/11/15,04:04
Shadowlands launches on November 23rd / 24th and all classes will be getting new toys to play with -- from Covenant abilities, to Conduits and returning Legendary effects! This article, written by Jaydaa, will provide details on the current state of Restoration Druid in Shadowlands, to help you to prepare for the upcoming expansion!
As we approach the Shadowlands launch, classes and systems are becoming more finalized and with the most recent rounds of testing we're able to get a more complete picture of healer toolkits during the expansion launch. As a follow-up to our
'State of Restoration Druid'
article from earlier this summer, we'll discuss all the major changes to Restoration Druid since the pre-patch as well as the numerous Shadowlands systems that were not available for testing in our original article, such as Soulbinds, Conduits, and Legendaries. Expect a Covenant deep-dive as we explore the Shadowlands Restoration Druid currently found on beta.
Introduction
As guardians of nature and protectors of balance, Restoration Druids wield nature's raw energy to restore life to the wounded and shapeshift to enhance their natural abilities. As masters of Healing Over Time spells (HoTs), we focus around
proactively
applying HoTs to our allies in preparation for incoming damage, then
reactively
responding to that damage with additional healing spells and cooldowns. Utilizing our vast array of HoTs, we can spread their healing across large numbers of spread out allies or concentrate the healing by stacking multiple HoTs on a small number of targets, allowing us to be quite versatile in a variety of content.
Overall the above class fantasy remains intact for Restoration Druids in Shadowlands as we received very few changes to our toolkit and healing style. Restoration Druids will play almost identically to the live pre-patch version minus the BFA systems (Azerite and Essences) but with the new Shadowlands systems (Covenants, Soulbinds, Conduits, and Legendaries) in their place. If you like Restoration Druids now in the pre-patch, then you're likely to enjoy them in Shadowlands. They don't really lose anything in the transition and really only gain in the process.
Remember, this is only my opinion on Restoration Druids so far in Shadowlands and primarily comes from a PvE point of view. As always, the information presented here is based on the 9.0.2 beta build as of this article's release date. Expect lots of changes to classes, covenants, soulbinds, conduits, legendaries, items, and encounters between now and launch and even a few post-launch.
About the Author
This article is written by
Jaydaa
a veteran healer and contributing writer to both World of Warcraft content and other Blizzard games content here on Wowhead. I've been raiding in WoW for almost 15 years at various levels of progression. I've contributed to the theorycrafting of multiple healing classes, notably Mistweaver Monks and Restoration Druids. Find me on
Twitter
or on the
Wowhead Discord
.
Check out all our Shadowlands Launch Opinion articles by our Class Writers and members of the community! Click on any of the colored specs below to see what articles we've released so far.
These guides were meant to give you a preview of what's to come in the expansion, but don't worry -- our full Shadowlands Class Guides will be updated soon!
Blood Death Knight
Arcane Mage
Assassination Rogue
Frost Death Knight
Fire Mage
Outlaw Rogue
Unholy Death Knight
Frost Mage
Subtlety Rogue
Havoc Demon Hunter
Brewmaster Monk
Elemental Shaman
Vengeance Demon Hunter
Mistweaver Monk
Enhancement Shaman
Balance Druid
Windwalker Monk
Restoration Shaman
Feral Druid
Holy Paladin
Affliction Warlock
Guardian Druid
Protection Paladin
Demonology Warlock
Restoration Druid
Retribution Paladin
Destruction Warlock
Beast Mastery Hunter
Discipline Priest
Arms Warrior
Marksmanship Hunter
Holy Priest
Fury Warrior
Survival Hunter
Shadow Priest
Protection Warrior
Restoration Druid
Since the previous article, Restoration Druids have received very few changes to our baseline toolkit and talent trees and all of those are currently available to play with on the live pre-patch. The most notable of the changes was a nerf to
光合作用
from 5% to 4% proc chance which had little effect on its efficacy as a M+ powerhouse talent. As such, we'll mostly be focusing on the new Leveling Perks Restoration Druids will receive as they reach the new level cap of 60 in Shadowlands.
Druid Class Changes
Shadowlands Leveling Perks
强化愈合
(Rank 2)
- (Level 52): Regrowth's initial heal has a 40% increased chance for a critical effect if the target is already affected by Regrowth.
The flat extra critical strike chance for Regrowth is back but this time with the caveat that the target must already have a Regrowth HoT active. Exceptional for continuous single target healing the same target (ie. M+ and PvP), but lackluster in raid where those situations are found less frequently. Has the side-effect of muddling the decision to take
滋养
as both the talent and
愈合
will now share the same design space in our toolkit.
自然智慧
(Rank 2)
- Restoration (Level 52): If you cast Innervate on somebody else, you gain its effect at 50% effectiveness.
Interesting perk that solidifies that the best use of
激活
for overall value to the raid is using it on another healer. More utility for your fellow healers, but not mandatory to be used in that way. However, you're likely to see most Restoration Druids still use the Innervate on themselves, especially with it now being off the GCD. If Blizzard wants this idea of using
激活
more altruistically, then they're going to either need to make both users have 100% effectiveness or the 50% effectiveness going to the other healer.
纠缠根须
(Rank 2)
- (Level 54): Entangling Roots can withstand 20% more damage before breaking.
Entangling roots already breaks relatively easily with one or two casts/attacks, so an additional 20% is laughably weak as a way to make this crowd control more durable, especially when you consider the PvP talent
根深蒂固
at 400%.
石木树皮
(Rank 2)
- Restoration (Level 56): Ironbark increases healing from your heal over time effects by 20%.
Baking in the
石木树皮
HoT increase from the previous Stonebark talent baseline into the ability is a nice quality of life change even if it's at the cost of the 30s increased cooldown. Overall happy with this change.
NEW
自然迅捷
- Restoration (Level 58): Your next Regrowth, Rebirth, or Entangling Roots is instant, free, castable in all forms, and heals for an additional 100%.
A nice quality of life ability returning for Restoration Druids that gives us back our instant
复生
. Again it's nothing huge, but is nice to have this in our toolkit. I'd ideally like to see this expanded to the new
滋养
and perhaps some additional perks for using it with
复生
and
纠缠根须
like a
再度觉醒
and
根深蒂固
effect respectively.
Don't expect massive throughput gains with these Shadowlands Leveling Perks.
强化愈合
(Rank 2) and
石木树皮
(Rank 2) will likely be the most impactful but even then the gains aren't huge. You'll see much more value out of
强化愈合
(Rank 2) in Mythic+ and PvP where you're using significantly more
愈合
on the same ally. In raids
强化愈合
(Rank 2) does help us better respond to single target burst damage, an area of former weakness for Restoration Druids; however this perk doesn't make us a powerhouse in this area either just better than before.
With the additional throughput for
愈合
via
强化愈合
(Rank 2), our new level 15 talent
滋养
is losing a lot of a traction in terms of viability. Both spells occupy the space of a single target large healing ability with almost identical mana costs. However,
滋养
relies on significant amounts of mastery in order to reach the same throughput as
愈合
especially when you factor in the leveling perk. Now consider that you're also losing the throughput or efficiency of
塞纳里奥结界
or
丰饶
by not picking those talents and the problem with
滋养
start to emerge. There's not currently a healing ecosystem where these two abilities exist together with both seeing a fair amount of usage. Ideally, I'd like the
滋养
talent to augment
愈合
rather than trying to create a new spell that directly competes with
愈合
. Overall I think that's a healthier way to make this talent viable as
愈合
becomes more powerful in Shadowlands.
Covenant Abilities
Restoration Druid Covenant abilities have seen a lot of changes since their inception; however, there hasn't been a lot of shake up recently as to which covenant has been the top choice for us. Most of these covenant ability changes are attributed to trying to balance the covenants for the other Druid specs. Ideally we'll see more spec specific covenant ability tuning to address this lack of options going forward, but if not done before launch then we'll probably see a strong lack of diversity in covenant choice for Restoration Druids. The most recent build changes seem to be focused on tuning covenant abilities, soulbinds, and conduits, so potentially expect the relative strength of covenants to change prior to launch.
Druid Covenant Abilities
Kyrian:
志趣相投
- Essentially provides a 30% Beacon to your bonded target for 10s every minute as well as additional benefit depending on the role of the bonded player. The 2.5s cast time means you'll likely want to maintain the bond instead of constantly switching allies in combat. Once the bond is applied, empowering the bond is off the GCD making for easy non-intrusive gains. While largely a single target throughput gain, there is an interesting choices to be on who you bond with depending on if you want the additional self healing by bonding with a healer, the extra healing/damage by bonding with a damage dealer, or the extra defensive by bonding with a tank.
From a numbers perspective, bonding with a tank would be the obvious choice as you want the beacon healing to be largely effective; however, the damage redirect may only be situationally useful. Bonding with a dps provides additional healing, damage, or self-absorb shield as a reservoir based the damage of the bonded dps, which can be quite large especially when that dps is in cooldowns or AoE'ing a large number of targets; however, the beacon healing is likely to be less effective as dps generally take less damage than a tank. Notably, the reservoir built by the dps can be consumed by either damage, healing, or taking damage meaning any semi-passive effects (
阳炎术
/
百花齐放
/
伊瑟拉之赐
) or incoming damage can consume the reservoir making it difficult to funnel all of it into either one specific form. Bonding with a healer is kind of the worst case scenario as they only offer self-healing which is situational and the beacon healing is likely to be less effective as they generally take less damage than a tank.
The problems with the Kyrian covenant ability for Restoration Druids is largely its variability and essentially being locked to a single bonded partner for the encounter. Can the beacon healing be effective every minute? Will your tank even be tanking every minute? Does the incoming raid damage align with the dps's cooldowns or a massive AoE-fest? Yes there will be situations where the stars align and you can check all of those boxes and
志趣相投
will be the strongest option for Restoration Druids; however, more often than not those things will not align and you'll be at the mercy of encounter timings and misaligned cooldowns. Consistency is key for a healer and this one lacks it in a lot of ways.
The
诚挚忠心
conduit for
志趣相投
offers cooldown reduction for the bond empowerment which at initial glance seems good. However, lining up the empowerment with a dps's cooldowns is critical to building a large reservoir and for most damage dealers those are typically every 2 or 3 minutes on the dot. It may be more helpful to not use the conduit and line things up better with the dps's cooldowns. Again it's all about variability here and working with your partner will be the key to success with
志趣相投
.
召唤执事者
- The steward offers some quality of life options like free talent changes or a vendor to sell things, but it essentially boils down to
静谧之瓶
, a glorified healthstone for all intents and purposes. The healing will be nice and contribute albeit minimally to throughput, and the bleed and disease dispel for Restoration Druids could come in handy as you can't normally dispel those; however, the circumstances where the phial will be invaluable will be few and far between compared to other covenant abilities which are more universally valuable. There was some concern about Kleia's soulbind trait
晋升之瓶
making some of the bleeds in
纳斯利亚堡
irrelevant to handle but those are no longer classified as bleeds and therefore not removable.
Venthyr:
饕餮狂乱
- A 3 minute cooldown healing and haste steroid with a downside for going idle for more than 2s during its duration; you'll lose the effect, become stunned, and take damage based on the number of stacks. There's a bit of
nuance
to the idle time, but as long as you keep casting you'll be fine and they've nerfed the idle damage if you do happen to incur the wrath of this covenant ability. At early levels you're looking at somewhere between 8-10 stacks of the buff for 16-20% healing and 8-10% haste. The strength of this ability is its versatility; it can be used for improving single target or AoE healing, raid or mythic+, damage or healing. Synergizes well with
化身:生命之树
and every other
繁盛
. Can be combined with
激活
to mitigate the increased mana usage of this ability.
Where
饕餮狂乱
loses a lot of value for me is the 3 minute cooldown. As our longest cooldown covenant ability, its power will fluctuate largely around encounter duration and damage patterns. It suffers in a similar way as
宁静
where we try to maximize the number of uses while still being mindful of other healers cooldowns and covering the major incoming damage events; however, we can't modify the cooldown of
饕餮狂乱
like we can with
宁静
and
平常心
.
The
无穷饥渴
conduit for
饕餮狂乱
provides % critical strike chance scaling per stack stack to this cooldown ability. Overall the conduit is a pretty solid throughput increase albeit not exactly the most exciting.
From a flat numbers perspective this one isn't bad but it's not fantastic either. Because burst damage is the most likely to kill player, it's quite effective to compact our healing into a burst cooldown; however, the numbers have to be there as well. It's not far off though. With
饕餮狂乱
scaling with haste via the number spells we cast equating to the number of stacks, expect this covenant ability to potentially make a resurgence in later seasons of content.
暗影之门
- As a Restoration Druid, our mobility is top notch. We rarely struggle with movement and position and in Shadowlands we even have
狂奔怒吼
as a newly added tool. We're even able to stealth via
潜行
and
新生
when a skip is called for in Mythic+. So to say
暗影之门
is a must-have is really a misnomer. Will the extra mobility be helpful in a lot of scenarios? Absolutely, but to say we don't have other options to accomplish the same goal would be disingenuous. Excellent signature ability but far from mandatory.
Necrolord:
激变蜂群
- Some fairly heavy handed nerfs to the HoT component over the course of beta reduced the healing of
激变蜂群
to nearly a third of its original strength causing a lot of concern for Restoration Druids about the viability of Necrolord. Not factoring in the 20% HoT healing increase, the current raw HPS of the HoT component is relatively close to that of a
回春术
but does have the benefit of being less than half the mana cost. A cheaper
回春术
-strength HoT doesn't exactly equate to covenant-ability levels of power; however, a lot of the innate power of
激变蜂群
lies in the 20%+ HoT healing increase as well as applying an additional stack of
精通:相生
.
Unfortunately this extra healing varies significantly based on how much other HoT healing is being applied to the target and the Restoration Druid's current levels of mastery. Because
激变蜂群
is not accredited with this extra 'hidden' healing in logs, it's very difficult to determine the exact contribution. For other Druid specs, they want to keep up their DoTs and bleeds up on a target 100% of the time so the contribution is much easier to calculate. For Restoration Druids, we don't necessarily want to do maximum single target healing all the time because unless the target is taking massive amounts of consistent damage a lot of the healing will equate to overhealing which is generally considered inefficient with regards to mana usage.
From a feel perspective, I genuinely still like this one. The cooldown is near perfect; short enough that I feel like I'm constantly interacting with the ability both via activation and healing targets with the HoT but also long enough that I don't feel like it's a maintenance buff that I'm constantly needing to keep up. You can have multiple copies up at once; however, currently
激变蜂群
cannot jump to an ally that already has
激变蜂群
on them. Whether this is intentional or a bug we're currently unsure. Previously, the stacks would just add together.
A notable synergy does exist with
激变蜂群
and the
翡翠灌注
's HoT extension. While initially
翡翠灌注
's HoT extension did not work with
激变蜂群
, the most recent beta builds have fixed this interaction leading to increased healing gains from
激变蜂群
and overall efficiency but does require you to commit your legendary choice to do so.
A previous concern for
激变蜂群
was other Druid specs taking it for single target but advising other players to insert '/cancelaura Adaptive Swarm' into their abilities to maintain a higher uptime on the DoT on the boss. Fortunately,
激变蜂群
is no longer cancelable so there's no concern of your
激变蜂群
being caught in this crossfire.
The
进化蜂群
conduit for
激变蜂群
provides an increase to the flat % HoT increase. As mentioned previously how good this conduit is will largely depend on how much additional HoT healing you're providing to the target of your
激变蜂群
, but is generally considered a strong conduit when you can make use of that single target healing.
With all of the particulars out of the way, where does that leave us exactly with
激变蜂群
? From a raw single target sustained healing throughput increase, it's pretty solid. When you're only healing a few players and your sole focus is healing then this is probably the strongest covenant ability; think Arena or high Mythic+. Where it dramatically falls behind is the general lack of versatility. All 3 of the other covenants can be used for damage and healing in both AoE and single target situations.
激变蜂群
is stuck as a sustained single target ability, and we already excel as sustained single target healers. Our weakness lies in responding quickly to random burst single target and AoE damage and Necrolord does not help us to shore up that weakness. You'll likely see a few Restoration Druids who specialize in a single type of content pick this covenant, but Restoration Druid that do a variety of content will likely choose something more versatile.
血肉铸造
- This extra self survivability will be nice and as an absorb will contribute minimally to overall throughput, but where this one loses me is the 4s channel. You can utilize the Emeni's soulbind trait
艾米妮的可行动躯体
to mitigate some of the downsides of the channel or even get a brief CC-immunity with Plague Deviser's
终极形态
soulbind trait, but the 4s channel will be a persistent nuisance. As a Restoration Druid, we have exceptional access to defensive abilities with on-demand
熊形态
, the low cooldown
树皮术
which can be further reduced by the
韧如树皮
conduit, or even
铁木树皮
if absolutely necessary. So how much value we'll get out of another defensive in PvE is debatable. Expect some niche cases where this excels, but is far from a must-have.
Night Fae:
万灵之召
- Probably the most altered covenant ability for Druids throughout the entirety of Shadowlands beta and there's a lot to love here with this more final version. Although the number of spells we channel has changed from 16 to 12, the spells we get are more deterministic and based on our current shapeshift. Specifically, 7-8 of the 12 spells will be from our current shapeshift. For unshapeshifted Restoration Druids this typically consists of 1-2
野性成长
s, 1-2
迅捷治愈
s, and the remaining 6-4 spells a mix of
回春术
and
愈合
. There's also a 15-20% chance per complete channel of one of the spells being a
繁盛
which can be quite strong albeit RNG. With no mana cost for all these spells and a moderate 2 minute cooldown, the overall strength of
万灵之召
becomes pretty apparent. Add to it that this 4s channel can be cast on the move in all forms and there's not many downsides.
Because
万灵之召
casts Restoration Druid specific spells, there's a few notable interactions we should address. First, the
迅捷治愈
s cast by
万灵之召
do not require a HoT on an ally to be cast nor do they consume the HoT as is the case with the baseline
迅捷治愈
. Second, these same
迅捷治愈
s can trigger
丛林之魂
if talented; however, because the spells are fairly random there's no guarantee on which subsequent heals get empowered but does improve the overall throughput. Finally, these same
迅捷治愈
s cannot trigger the HoT extension provided by
翡翠灌注
.
While this amounts to a fairly potent healing cooldown,
万灵之召
when channeled in one of our affinity shapeshifts this cooldown can equate to a fairly sizable burst damage ability especially when combined with
野性之心
. Notably, for
枭兽形态
with
平衡亲和
we always cast a
星辰坠落
which is ordinarily a powerful AoE ability we don't have access to outside of
莱卡拉的惊鸿一瞥
. It's due to this interaction and a case of utility that owlweaving is likely to overtake catweaving for Night Fae Restoration Druids in Mythic+ in Shadowlands.
How does the covenant specific conduit stack up?
元素汇流
offers a flat % healing and damage increase while channeling
万灵之召
for the 4s. The spells cast do not snapshot this increased healing for the remainder of their duration so only the healing done in the 4s window is increased. Despite that downside,
元素汇流
is still very much worth the potency slot.
When looking at the numbers,
万灵之召
is incredibly strong. Is it the strongest in all situations? No, but what it does offer is versatility, consistency, and efficiency. Whether you want the healing or the damage in either single target or AoE form,
万灵之召
will deliver and you'll generally know what you're getting out of each channel with some slight variations. There is no 'stars align' scenario that you need to rely on or a type of content it feels weak in. You'll have another answer for the most dangerous burst damage at no expense of mana and it's all in a flexible moderate cooldown.
灵魂变形
As someone who adored
野性位移
, it's nice to see this come back as an option albeit with a longer cooldown and a shorter blink. Blinks and teleports are universally valuable; however mobility isn't really a weakness Restoration Druids have struggled with so it won't be as valuable for us as it would be for a Death Knight. You likely won't be coming up with skips for such a limited 15 yard blink, but you may be able to skip over a few mechanics here and there. Comes with a cosmetic collecting minigame which is fantastic.
Covenant Choice
The full offerings of each covenant and their various related systems are finally on display. Outside of any last minute tuning, what we see now will likely be what we have to choose from for launch and probably the foreseeable future. For Restoration Druids, there aren't any absolutely abysmal choices on the table. If you want to choose a particular covenant then that option is open for you as a Restoration Druid. Most reasonable goals within the game can be accomplished regardless of covenant choice. If you're looking to push the absolute highest levels of PvE and PvP content then you're going to likely need to specialize depending on the content or specific need.
If Shadowlands were to go live tomorrow, as someone that focuses primarily on higher level PvE content I'd personally be hard-pressed to choose anything other than
Night Fae
.
万灵之召
offers not just strong numbers, but versatility, efficiency, and relative consistency in a moderate flexible cooldown that allows Restorations Druids to better respond to incoming burst damage. Add in the solid soulbinds for healers and
Night Fae
will be a powerhouse covenant for most Restoration Druids.
Soulbinds
With a covenant chosen, we can now look at our strongest covenant soulbind to see how we'll likely further customize our character with the soulbind system. Unfortunately we won't cover all 12 soulbinds here as that would be information overload, but we'll be more comprehensive in the Restoration Druid class guide update for Shadowlands which will be available just prior to expansion launch. Stay tuned.
For now we'll take a look at the Dreamweaver soulbind which when fully unlocked will likely be our strongest soulbind for healing as
Night Fae
in PvE. Early on in Shadowlands sub-Renown 9-13, Niya may be a more optimal choice.
Dreamweaver Soulbind
Notable Soulbind Traits:
灵茧守护者
- One of the premiere traits of Dreamweaver and while it may not contribute much to throughput a cheat death is
strong
utility. Unfortunately,
灵茧守护者
has a few more drawbacks than the normal
装死
, such as the complete immobilization while regenerating in the wildseed. However, if the gambit pays off and you're able to stay alive you'll be doing significantly more healing than if you were dead. At the very least this can save your allies a battle resurrection. Do not underestimate how good this trait can be.
灵茧之力
- The shields we can create via overhealing can be quite powerful especially in being able to lower the impact of burst AoE damage on your allies. As Restoration Druids we tend to overheal a fair amount just by the very nature of HoTs. If you're noticing a fair amount of overhealing in your breakdowns, then you'll get a lot of extra throughput out of this trait. However if you're severely underhealing or your overhealing is non-existent you'll likely get more mileage out of the potency conduit slot under
延缓之声
.
蝴蝶效应
- If you're always surrounded by allies or just want to help your allies contribute more damage then
蝴蝶效应
could be a viable choice. As long as you're able to activate the trait then you can think about it as a personal ~1.5% versatility trait that also minorly helps your allies. Not fantastic but every little bit of damage helps.
繁华原野
- A fantastic boost to throughput via casting
万灵之召
. Because you typically cast
万灵之召
to cover incoming burst this definitely helps to further improve that. Unfortunately we're only able to activate this trait every 2 minutes where it normally has a 1 minute ICD. So we lose some value compared to other classes with lower covenant ability cooldown but it's still great for when we use it. Be aware that it does make you a bit more immobile being stuck to a particular area for 15s.
Conduits
Potency Conduits improve the power of your spells and are spec or Covenant specific. We mentioned the covenant specific conduits earlier in the covenant section, so here we'll cover the Restoration Druid specific potency conduits. Ranks are based on ilvl with Rank 7 currently being the highest rank available in 9.0.2 speculated within Mythic
纳斯利亚堡
.
Restoration Druid Potency Soulbind Conduits
明晰闪愈
(Potency Conduit)
- Clearcast
愈合
s heal for an additional
20.0%
.
Rank
: 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32
At early haste levels you can reasonably expect 2-3
清晰预兆
procs per minute with 90%+ uptime on
生命绽放
so this isn't a bad increase but it's not great either. If you run
黑暗泰坦之训
, then you can potentially double the number of procs making this conduit a bit more exciting. You just really have to be on top of your
清晰预兆
procs in order to make the most of this conduit.
花开花谢
(Potency Conduit)
-
迅捷治愈
's healing is increased by
40%
of the consumed heal over time effect.
Rank
: 40%, 44%, 48%, 52%, 56%, 60%, 64%
How much healing you'll get out this varies a lot. Because the healing increase is based on the remaining duration of the specific HoT that you're consuming, you may get a much larger increase by consuming a fresh
野性成长
or very little if by consuming an expiring
愈合
. If you're frequently munching fresh powerful HoTs to
迅捷治愈
you'll get more mileage out of this conduit, but generally that behavior shouldn't be encouraged as it's very inefficient. If you absolutely need the extra healing now to save a life sure, but wasting a large portion of a HoT isn't great. There just tends to be better conduits for us.
准备万全
(Potency Conduit)
-
自然迅捷
's cooldown is reduced by
(--10)%
.
Rank
: -10, -11, -12, -13, -14, -15, -16
From a throughput standpoint this one is just poor. If
自然迅捷
gives you essentially two free
愈合
s in a single instant GCD then reducing the cooldown at rank 7 just gives you 32% worth of an additional
愈合
every minute. Yes that puts it rather simply, as greater access to the potentially lifesaving
自然迅捷
is good. However if the outcome of whether a player lives or dies is decided in a single GCD in PvE, there's probably something else going on that could have saved that ally. For the other uses, it tends to be more utility oriented and makes better sense as a finesse conduit rather than potency.
狂野生长
(Potency Conduit)
-
野性成长
's healing falls off
20%
less over time.
Rank
: 20%, 22%, 24%, 26%, 28%, 30%, 32%
野性成长
's healing decreases over the duration of the HoT but this conduits helps to curb that decrease. While the initial hit doesn't change, your subsequent ticks will be much higher meaning this isn't a straight flat % healing increase to
野性成长
but it's not terribly far off. As long as you're making good use of
野性成长
this will likely be your strongest conduit in most situations even after the recent nerf. Combine this with the fact that we're likely to be using the
丛林之魂
talent to boost our
野性成长
and this conduit will be even more impactful.
Because you're only able to slot in a maximum of 2 potency conduits, for most Restoration Druids this will consist of
狂野生长
and your covenant-specific conduit with maybe the exception of
诚挚忠心
for
Kyrian
who tend to want to line things up on the 1 minute cooldown. For them, you'll likely either forego the second conduit in favor another throughput soulbind trait or settle on
明晰闪愈
. We'll have more specific soulbind and conduit specific guides available closer to launch.
Legendaries
Legendaries return with Shadowlands with each specialization having 4 class-specific legendaries, 4 spec-specific legendaries, and a host of general legendaries available for all players to choose. Some are more passive in nature while others are more build defining. Ultimately tuning will decide which of these will be the strongest, so we'll mostly be looking at these from a mechanical standpoint in terms of how they change the playstyle of Restoration Druids.
General Druid Legendaries
生死循环
- The healing on this is actually fairly nice but does come with hefty efficiency issues. Most importantly the duration of the HoTs (and DoTs) are decreased. It'll require more casts to cover healing over the same period of time meaning increased mana usage. As an added side effect we'll most likely not quite have as big of a HoT blanket allies meaning
精通:相生
will contribute less to our overall healing. If you can afford the increased mana expenditures or they matter less, such as in Mythic+, then this can be quite good, For raiding I would generally avoid
生死循环
as it can be a healing loss due to the inefficiencies. From a damage perspective this is a solid sustained damage option as
阳炎术
and
月火术
are a large portion of our damage breakdown.
深度专注饮剂
- Increased healing on a single
回春术
is fairly abysmal in nearly all situations. Skip this for healing. The other parts are good for single target damage, but content where you want increased damage you typically want AoE damage as well. There's better offensive legendaries.
莱卡拉的惊鸿一瞥
- A free
野性成长
every 45s is pretty decent from a throughput standpoint but not the best of our options; the problem is requiring us to play around the 45s cooldown. Will there be incoming damage every 45s for this to be effective? For certain encounters maybe it'll line up perfectly with incoming damage events pushing this to the forefront of strong legendaries but there will be a lot of variation. Expect to be play around a weakaura a lot. The real value comes from giving us access to some fairly potent AoE spells (
原始之怒
and
星辰坠落
) that will be extremely valuable in high Mythic+ where healer damage can be the difference in failing a key.
德鲁伊长者之誓
- From a healing throughput standpoint, you're really not going to see a lot out of this one as
伊瑟拉之赐
just doesn't account for too much of our healing. You're either going to use this defensively for the increased damage reduction from
厚皮
and higher stamina while in
熊形态
or the damage from greater access to
野性之心
. The defensive capabilities are pretty nice but you're sacrificing the throughput of a better legendary for it. Offensively this isn't bad, but there tends to be better options.
Restoration Druid Legendaries
黑暗泰坦之训
- This legendary has undergone an absolute barrage of nerfs leaving it in its current middle-of-the-road incarnation. First, any legendary that reduces the power of the original spell feels awful. Asking 'will equipping this legendary will leave the original
生命绽放
target more vulnerable?' should not be a question for a 'Legendary' item in my opinion. If you're using the second
生命绽放
on yourself with
光合作用
talented then the answer is no, but without it then technically the answer is yes. Just make this a flat no-nonsense extra lifebloom without any downside and we'll call it fair.
That being said this legendary is still good it's just not the must-pick for all content that it once was.
生命绽放
is just a better HoT than
回春术
from raw throughput to mana efficiency, especially when you include the increased
清晰预兆
procs which can further boosted by the
明晰闪愈
potency conduit. Being able to have two of them is great. Where things look even better is combining this with
光合作用
and enabling both aspects of the talent at the same time or having the extra blooms on another target. Micromanaging all aspects of this extra
生命绽放
will be critical to making the most out of this legendary. Better in dungeons than raid.
母亲之树的回忆
- With the buff from 25% chance to 50% and from 2 to 3
回春术
s/
愈合
, this one leapt up the rankings a lot; however, a recent nerf brings this down to 40% chance which greatly lowers it's overall value. This legendary replicates the entirety of
愈合
including the initial healing making it an interesting choice between sustain or burst all for free. The biggest downside for this legendary is the RNG aspect. You can have scenarios of back-to-back procs or full minutes without a proc making this feel like feast or famine. Biggest change that could be made is just attaching deck system to this legendary reigning in some of those inconsistencies that are the bane of healers.
Prior to the recent nerf this would have been the go-to for raid and a strong contender in Mythic+; however, the nerf kind of just leaves this as good for both forms of content but not the best in either. If you're looking for a jack-of-all-trades healing legendary then this is your pick.
翡翠灌注
- When you could extend HoTs by 10s this legendary was the largest single target healing legendary simply due to being able to double extend
塞纳里奥结界
. In a recent build you're now able to extend
激变蜂群
and the extension has been increased to 8s which does make the
塞纳里奥结界
double extension possible albeit incredibly difficult to pull off. Even without the double extension, the buff does increase the legendary's overall throughput and efficiency, especially with the Necrolord covenant ability. For non-Necrolord Restoration Druids this really just isn't enough to push it to the top.
A few things to note when using this legendary, the HoT still needs to up in order to cast
迅捷治愈
but it will not be consumed. Additionally,
迅捷治愈
s cast by
万灵之召
do not interact with this legendary.
无尽春天的愿景
- Additional free
回春术
s are always good, but because that's what
母亲之树的回忆
essentially does these two legendaries end up in direct competition with each other. With the recent nerf to
母亲之树的回忆
,
无尽春天的愿景
has pulled ahead for raid but there's a few caveats. Specifically we need to be casting roughly 18-20
回春术
s per minute and reach the 20% haste breakpoint to get the additional partial tick. In that scenario,
无尽春天的愿景
will be the choice for raid and will continue to scale with each new haste breakpoint.
Barring any last minute tuning, for healing we're likely to pickup
无尽春天的愿景
for raiding (assuming we can reach the haste breakpoint) and
黑暗泰坦之训
for Mythic+. As an all-purpose healing legendary for both content types you may pickup
母亲之树的回忆
. For Restoration Druids
prioritizing damage and healing
in M+, you'll likely select
生死循环
.
Conclusions
So where does that likely leave Restoration Druids for Shadowlands? With very few changes from our BFA incarnation, we're going to remain in a very similar position in Shadowlands. The Shadowlands systems don't dramatically alter Restoration Druid but do give a few extra tools to play with and added customization to our spells. How well we compete with other healers will likely be more of a reflection of their changes and systems rather than our own. We'll still be powerhouse Mythic+ healers with a strong utility toolkit and competitive damage when we invest in it. For raids, we'll likely continue to shine in sustained incoming damage fights but struggle a bit in AoE burst damage scenarios, especially if an absorb heavy meta does come to fruition with the return of
灵魂护壳
that many healers dread. We'll still be viable though maybe not desirable even in that doomsday scenario, so don't worry too much.
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