General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices for
Restoration Druids in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents and
glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Restoration Druid guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are
now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance
(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).
You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between
encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.
Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and
how they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents offer a choice between 3 means of increasing your movement
abilities.
Feline Swiftness is a passive ability that increases your movement
speed by 15% at all times.
Displacer Beast is an active ability that teleports you 20 yards
forward, activates 
Cat Form, and grants you a 50% increase in movement
speed for 4 seconds.
Wild Charge is an active ability that differs based on the
shapeshift form you are in, as follows:
- No shapeshift form: you fly to an ally's location.
Bear Form: you charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4
seconds.- Cat Form: you leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds.
Travel Form: you leap forward 20 yards.
Aquatic Form: your swim speed is increased by 150% for 5
seconds.
The choice here will come down to either Feline Swiftness or
Wild Charge. If the benefits of Wild Charge will be needed during the
encounter (flying to an ally's position or leaping forward in
Travel Form), then Wild Charge will be a great choice. Otherwise,
Feline Swiftness will probably be the go-to choice.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents offer a choice between 3 healing spells.
Ysera's Gift is a passive spell that heals you for 5% of your maximum
health every 5 seconds. If you are at maximum health, then it heals the most
injured party or raid member within 100 yards.
Renewal is a self-heal for 30% of your maximum health with a
2-minute cooldown.
Cenarion Ward is a buff that you can place on a friendly player,
lasting up to 30 seconds. When the player takes damage, Cenarion Ward
activates a 6-second HoT on the player, consuming Cenarion Ward in the
process.
The best choice in this tier is Ysera's Gift, providing a very solid
amount of healing. It also requires no management whatsoever, which is a nice
bonus.
Cenarion Ward is a useful buff to keep up on targets that take
constant damage, or on someone who is dangerously low on health.
Renewal provides an excellent self-healing cooldown, but we believe
that the fact Ysera's Gift and Cenarion Ward can be used to heal other raid
members is enough to make Renewal unappealing.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Faerie Swarm is a spell that replaces 
Faerie Fire,
upgrading the latter spell to also slow the target's movement speed by 50% for
15 seconds.
Mass Entanglement roots all enemies in an area around the target
for up to 20 seconds.
Typhoon is a spell that affects enemies in a cone in front of you,
knocking them back and dazing them for 6 seconds.
The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case,
it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 offers a choice between 3 performance-enhancing talents.
Soul of the Forest passively grants you 100% increased haste for the
first spell cast after casting 
Swiftmend.
Incarnation: Tree of Life grants you the Tree of Life healing
cooldown. It lasts for 30 seconds (with a 3-minute cooldown), it increases all
healing done by 15%, and it improves some of your spells.
Force of Nature is an active ability that summons a treant which
casts Swiftmend on your current target and heals it with
Healing Touch for 15 seconds. Force of Nature has a maximum of 3 charges,
and a new a charge is added every 20 seconds. Otherwise, it has no
cooldown.
We believe that Incarnation: Tree of Life is the best choice in most
situations, since it gives you a lot of control and it has the potential
for burst healing. That said, Soul of the Forest can also be a good
choice.
Soul of the Forest provides a nice amount of additional throughput
during an encounter, but it may require you to delay using Swiftmend
(in order to line it up with 
Wild Growth), which will diminish the
talent's benefit. While Soul of Forest primarily boosts your raid healing
(through Wild Growth), it can also be used with 
Rejuvenation for solid
tank healing. Finally, it can be paired with 
Tranquility, which greatly
hastens that spell's channel time.
If you do decide to use Soul of the Forest, this is the soft haste cap you will need to be at.
Force of Nature is the most underwhelming talent.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents offer a choice between 3 crowd control spells.
Disorienting Roar is an AoE disorient that lasts for 3 seconds and
affects all enemies in a 10 yard radius.
Ursol's Vortex is a targeted AoE slow. When enemies first try to
leave the slowing area, they are pulled back in.
Mighty Bash is a single target 5-second stun.
The choice between these talents is entirely situational and, in any case,
it is unlikely to play any part in your performance.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents offer a choice between 3 talents that affect your
gameplay.
Heart of the Wild increases your Stamina, Agility, and Intellect by
6% at all times. Additionally, with a 6-minute cooldown, it allows you to
viably perform roles outside of your specialisation, for 45 seconds.
- allows you to DPS in Cat Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, and Hit Chance;
- allows you to DPS as a caster, by increasing your Spell Damage and Hit
Chance, and reducing the mana cost of all your damaging spells by 100%;
Restoration Druids also gain a 25% increase in healing while Heart of the
Wild is active.
- allows you to tank in Bear Form, by increasing your Agility,
Expertise, Hit Chance, and armor, making you immune to critical hits and
granting you the
Vengeance ability.
Dream of Cenarius causes 
Wrath to deal 20% more damage, and heals
a nearby friendly target for 100% of the damage done by Wrath.
Nature's Vigil is a 90-second cooldown that increases all healing
and damage done by 12% for 30 seconds, and causes your heals to trigger an
additional heal on a nearby ally, equal to 25% of the amount healed by your
main heal. While Nature's Vigil is active, all single target healing spells
also damage a nearby enemy for 25% of the healing done, and all damaging
spells heal nearby allies for 25% of the damage done.
Heart of the Wild is the best choice in this tier for the vast majority
of situations. Dream of Cenarius and Nature's Vigil may be preferable
situationally.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
There are a large number of Major Glyphs that can affect your gameplay as
a Restoration Druid, although few of them offer obvious benefits. There is also
one very useful Minor Glyph.
The following 3 glyphs clearly improve your performance (this does not mean
that they should be taken in all scenarios, however):
Glyph of Efflorescence increases the healing done by Swiftmend by
20%, and causes Efflorescence healing zones to be triggered by
Wild Mushroom instead of Swiftmend. If using the glyph, Efflorescence
lasts as long as the Wild Mushroom is active. This is an excellent glyph,
allowing you to basically move your Efflorescence as you please (when coupled
with the Wild Mushroom changes that came with Patch 5.4).- Glyph of Healing Touch reduces the remaining cooldown of
Nature's Swiftness by 3 seconds each time you cast Healing Touch.
- Glyph of Rejuvenation reduces the cast time of
Nourish by
30% while Rejuvenation is active on 3 more targets. You won't often get
the benefit of this glyph (since Rejuvenation and Nourish typically denote
raid and tank healing, respectively). However, you might find it useful,
depending on the encounter.
Glyph of Regrowth deserves a special position. It increases the
critical strike chance of 
Regrowth by 40%, but removes its HoT
component. Despite the fact that you both gain and lose certain benefits, we
believe that this glyph is quite strong and should always be considered a
strong option.
The following 2 glyphs modify your abilities in ways that may end up being
advantageous:
- Glyph of Wild Growth causes Wild Growth to affect an
additional target, but it increases its cooldown by 2 seconds. The result of
using this glyph is that you gain higher healing throughput (assuming that
there are 6 players to be healed, so, predominantly in 25-man raids) from Wild
Growth casts, but your uptime with it will be lowered. This frees up a global
cooldown, allowing you to weave extra spells in. You will have to decide how
important healing a 6th target is to you in the encounter, compared to having
higher uptime of Wild Growth.
- Glyph of Blooming causes your
Lifebloom to heal for 50% more
when it blooms, but it reduces its duration by 5 seconds, and no longer allows
it to be refreshed by other single target heals. This will probably only be
useful in PvP, where Lifebloom can often be dispelled, but it may also be
useful in some rare PvE situations.
The following glyphs improve your utility during raids:
- Glyph of Rebirth is very useful if you ever intend to use your
Rebirth, since it allows the target of your Rebirth to come back to
life with full health, meaning that they do not risk instantly dying again to
environmental damage.
- Glyph of Innervate causes your
Innervate to give both you
and your target 60% of the normal effect of the spell, if it is cast on
a target other than yourself. This glyph is useful when you find yourself
regularly casting Innervate on other healers, but in order to do this you
have to be comfortable with your own mana regeneration.
- Glyph of Stampeding Roar increases the range of
Stampeding Roar by 30 yards. If using this ability is vital to
your raid's strategy, this glyph is excellent.
- Glyph of Stampede removes any form requirement from
Stampeding Roar. In the event that your assignment is to cast
Stampeding Roar during a time of heavy damage, this glyph may prove slightly
beneficial to you.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
Glyph of the Sprouting Mushroom allows you to place your
Wild Mushroom anywhere on the ground, instead of having to place it
underneath a target. This glyph is very good, since it gives your Wild
Mushrooms (and your Efflorescence healing zones, if you are using the
Glyph of Efflorescence) a lot of freedom.
10. Changelog↑top
- 23 Oct. 2013: Updated the description of Glyph of Healing Touch
following the change it received in Patch 5.4.
- 12 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Force of Nature
description.
- 29 Apr. 2013: Changed the talent category of Displacer Beast to
movement. Added more details about when and how
Soul of the Forest is useful.
- 07 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
- Updated Displacer Beast explanation to mention the movement speed buff
that it provides.
- Updated Soul of the Forest explanation to reflect that you now gain
75% spell haste, up from 50%.
- Updated Nature's Vigil explanation to reflect the new cooldown and the
fact that the damage and healing bonus is now 10% instead of 20%.
