RESTO DRUID ADVANCED TIPS

SOUL OF THE FOREST

If you're a fan of gambling, well then let me introduce you to Soul of the Forest. If you play your cards right, this buff can have an enormous payoff, but if you get greedy, this buff can quickly just make you tilt.

So the reason Soul of the Forest is a gamble is because you need to not only gauge how much damage is happening, but also how much damage is about to happen in the next few seconds, plus a few other considerations.

If damage is slow and your teammate isn't at any immediate risk of dying, then using your Soul proc on Rejuvenation is a pretty safe play, especially during Incarnation, since Treeform already provides a 50% buff to Rejuve, which will stack with Soul of the Forest.

Even if damage is quite bursty, investing your Soul proc into Rejuvenation can still burst heal the target as long as you're playing with Thriving Vegetation, which acts as a mini burst heal.

But once you have your Soul Rejuve applied, you need to avoid using Rejuvenation on Rejuvenation and Rejuvenation on Rejuvenation. You can avoid the mistake of replacing it with a regular Rejuvenation, so do keep a note on which player has the Soul Rejuve for its entire duration.

The main risk you take here is that Rejuvenation can obviously be dispelled, so investing your proc into a Dispellable Hot can be a gamble if the enemy team has a Purge effect ready.

Now if the pace of damage is significantly higher and your target is low and at risk of dying soon, then Soul of the Forest should instead be used on Regrowth for its entire duration.

When you do this though, make sure that Life Bloom is on the target first if you have time, since Harmonious Blooming is going to increase the burst heal of Regrowth considerably.

The main risk you take in this situation is that Regrowth is obviously interruptible, so if the enemy team has any kicks ready, you can potentially get interrupted. Soul of the Forest also works on Wild Growth, but this isn't something you're going to ever do in Arena unless you happen to be playing against a Duelist.

That's why I'm going to be using this card here. You might think that these are your only options, either you use Soul of the Forest on Rejuvenation, Regrowth, or Wild Growth, but there is a third route you can take which isn't really using it at all.

This sounds backwards, we know, but just because you have your Soul of the Forest proc doesn't mean you have to instantly use it. If there's no immediate damage to heal, you can hold onto the proc and make your decision later.

The second route you can take is to start with Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation. It's a pretty simple, quick route, you'll just need to get rid of those twice.

After you have your Soul of the Forest proc, engage Rejuvenation. You'll get hurt, it's a good route to go, but it's not going to make you run out of mana quite as easily.

So you're only going to have to cast Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation into it. You've got all the resources you need, which are basically the same amount you'll need to get to your Duelist.

If you've got no mana left, then you can use Rejuvenation.

INCARNATION: TREE OF LIFE

Incarnation is the most important cooldown we have in Solo Shuffle, and using it at the right time is absolutely crucial for winning each round, especially ones that go on for a long time. Incarn is a multi-layered ability.

While active, it's going to increase your healing and armor, while also making you immune to Polymorph or Hex, but this is really only scratching the surface of the ability.

Tree Form is also going to empower a few different spells in your toolkit, increasing the healing done by Rejuvenation by 50% and reducing its mana cost considerably. It's also going to make Regrowth and Entangling Roots instant cast, and it'll even make Wrath instant too.

Assuming you're playing with Cenarius Guidance, Incarnation will automatically summon a Grove Guardian every 10 seconds, which is also going to give you the same healing buffs included in the Keeper of the Grove Hero Tree. Alright, now that we know what we need to do next, let's get started.

So for the most part, we're simply going to stick to our maintenance healing priority, make sure we keep Lifeblooms up on two targets, and also using Regrowth on a third target to spread its hot whenever we can.

But if there's one spell that gains extra value during Incarn, it's our Soul of the Forest Rejuvenations, which will be even stronger with the extra 50% healing bonus provided by Tree Form. The other spell we want to prioritize has a lot of healing, and it's the Soul of the Forest Rejuvenation.

So we're going to go ahead and get started. So the Soul of the Forest Rejuvenation, which is a healing ability that can be used to increase your damage during Incarn, isn't even a healing ability at all.

It's Entangling Roots. Having an instant cast, 45-yard ranged root effect means you can effortlessly peel enemy melee off your partners, and you should definitely aim to root enemy players multiple times during its uptime to help reduce incoming damage even further and allow your team an easier time to play aggressive.

Now we know how to use Incarnation, though. Let's answer the question of when to use Incarn, specifically in solo shuffling.

What's important to understand is that Incarn is a tempo cooldown. Its long duration and healing increases make it perfect for staying ahead of momentum during these situations and arena, and in solo shuffle, this almost always includes the start of each round.

In every solo shuffle game, there's the initial clash where both teams tee off on each other with every cooldown in the book, and this initial clash is absolutely devastating to deal with as a healer, especially since you're off every crowd-controlled DR and are easily susceptible to a long CC chain.

But this is exactly where Tree Form can save the day. The moment that initial clash begins, and especially when the first offensive cooldown is popped by the enemy team, you should instantly press Tree Form.

Yes, do not overthink it, just press Tree Form. For the next 30 seconds, not only will your healing be strong enough to deal with the increased damage, but you're going to potentially be able to tank it.

You're going to be able to tank any CC for this time, since your hots are stronger, and you're going to have an army of trends getting automatically summoned to pad any damage.

And with the increased armor provided by Tree Form, you're protected against any swaps at this time as well, and are less prone to interrupts thanks to the instant regrowths. But here's the best part.

Because of Cenarius Guidance, the real cooldown of Incarnation is not actually 3 minutes. So if you avoid sitting on 3 charges of Grove Guardians and are pressing them regularly throughout the game, the real cooldown of Tree Form is just over 2 minutes.

And do you know what else happens at the 2 minute mark of every solo shuffle? Not only will the enemy team have many of their major offensives back again, but now Dampening is going to be stacking pretty quickly.

Not to worry though, because as long as you used Tree Form early enough into the game, you're going to now have it back again at this exact moment, giving you the burst of the game. And you'll have the burst of energy needed to finish out the round.

ANCIENT OF LORE

Ancient of Lore is a newer addition to the Resto Druid healing kit, and we're here to break it down for you. Since this ability completely replaces Incarnation, let's go over some differences between both of these cooldowns.

For one, Ancient of Lore has a cast time in order to activate. Now luckily, it can be made instant with Nature's Swiftness.

Secondly, it grants full immunity to all crowd control for its entire 12 second duration, and even reduces damage taken by 20%, with the downside being that movement speed is severely limited.

Now, in any case, the CC means you can preemptively shift into Tree of Lore to completely shut down an enemy setup before it even begins. While Ancient of Lore is active, we can cast any Druid spell, but we also gain access to two new abilities that are not available in Tree of Life.

The first is Blossom Burst, which overrides the keybind of Ancient of Lore, and functions as a powerful single target instant heal with zero cooldown, which applies missing hots to the target for each press. For the most part, this is the button you're going to be spamming when Ancient of Lore is up.

The second spell you gain access to is Mass Blooming, which replaces Efflorescence and functions as an AoE heal, also applying one missing hot to every target it hits. You're generally going to be pressing this during Ancient of Lore, if and only if multiple people are taking damage.

Now, with all of that in mind, you might be wondering how and when to use Ancient of Lore in Arena. But the answer is pretty simple.

It should be used in the same way you would normally use Incarnation. Now, as far as timing is concerned, this means using it very early into every solo shuffle game, and your goal should be to enter Ancient of Lore the moment the initial clash starts.

Just like Tree form, Ancient of Lore can have its cooldown reduced by 5 seconds each time you use it. Just like Tree form, Ancient of Lore can have its cooldown reduced by 5 seconds each time you use it.

Just like Tree form, Ancient of Lore can have its cooldown reduced by 5 seconds each time you use it. Just like Tree form, Ancient of Lore can have its cooldown reduced by 5 seconds each time you use it.

What this means is that the true cooldown is not 90 seconds, but closer to a minute, assuming you're using your Trent on cooldown.

With all of that in mind, one thing to consider is that Ancient of Lore has a much shorter duration than Incarn, so you should be a little bit patient with it, waiting for the enemy team to pop cooldowns before pressing it, or using it to delay or deny an enemy team's cooldown. or using it to delay or deny an enemy team's cooldown.

Unlike Tree form, you aren't simply pressing it the moment someone takes a single point of damage, you really need to wait for the clash to start. And in many cases, you're going to often need to nature Swiftness to get into your first Ancient of Lore if there's an immediate CC threat, or if you are the kill target.

You don't want to be hard casting your biggest cooldown while you're under pressure. Then, whenever you're inside Ancient of Lore, your main priority is to spam out the Blossom Burst on whoever is taking damage, and using Mass Blooming at least one time to spread AoE hots if needed.

But, if your team is completely stabilized, you now have an opportunity to play more aggressive with Cyclone, as you have some protection with CC immunity.

IRONBARK TIPS

Ironbark is our only source of external damage reduction that can be used on friendly players and because of this, it really needs to be treated like a vital resource that absolutely cannot be wasted.

Ironbark not only provides 20% damage reduction, but it also increases the target's healing taken by your hots, which makes it ideal for high pressure situations.

Any damage reduction defensive cooldown is most effective as a direct counter to any enemy offensive cooldown that increases damage done, since effectively it's going to cancel the damage increase entirely on them.

But here's the problem with this, 20% damage reduction really isn't that great, especially when compared to other healer CDs which reduce damage taken by twice as much. So how do you play around this?

Well, here's the basic logic you really need to follow. The lower the damage reduction, the higher on HP Ironbark should be pressed.

Even if your partner is at a high damage reduction, the higher on HP Ironbark should be pressed. So if you're playing with a 100% HP when an enemy pops their offensive CD, trading Ironbark early is going to be the best possible play, since it slows down any massive front loaded damage spike.

Our number one enemy as a restar druid is burst damage. We're the best healer in the game when it comes to padding sustain damage with our hots, but healing over time, not really all that effective against massive damage spikes.

This is why Ironbark really needs to be used high on HP, because we need to make those spikes as high as possible. And once Ironbark is up, don't assume your job is done here.

You still need to perform all your maintenance, keeping lifebloom and rejuvenation up, and then using the increased healing taken to make your spot heal of Cenarion Ward into Swiftmend even stronger.

OVERGROWTH

Overgrowth is a wildly misunderstood cooldown and can easily be wasted if you don't know when exactly to use it. First up, some basics here.

Overgrowth will instantly apply all of your hots to the target, and will even do so for very low mana cost. Now this all sounds super convenient, but here is where it can be a huge trap.

Because of its convenience, inexperienced players will often use Overgrowth just to save some globals, even using it at the start of each game just to get hots out. But just because you can use Overgrowth to save some time in these cases, it really doesn't mean you should use it.

Instead, you need to save Overgrowth for times where you need to ramp your healing fast and you don't have enough time to manually apply each hot. A perfect time to do so is when coming out of a long CC.

If you eat a CC chain that's long enough, your hots can fall off your target in the process. And if you need to quickly recover here, Overgrowth is the perfect time to do so.

You can use the to now be in a position to stabilize HP, especially now since you have three hots you can use to Swiftman. If you have a Soul Proc up when you press Overgrowth, it's going to apply the buff to Rejuvenation only, so do be sure not to override Rejuve immediately after.

Now there is one additional interaction you definitely should be aware of relating to dealing with Purge effects in PvP. Overgrowth is a fantastic way to deal with Purge spam, specifically from Priests and Mages, where you're constantly getting your hots stripped off but need to burst heal with Swiftman.

But with that said, you need to be careful when using Overgrowth into Evokers due to Scouring Flame, which causes their Fire Breath to AOE Purge three hots when fully channeled. You want to avoid using Overgrowth before Tip the Scales has been used.

Otherwise, they can completely strip off all your hots across multiple targets. Instead, make sure to Overgrowth after Tip the Scales, which will quickly allow you to do so.

You can use Overgrowth to skillfully allow you to recover.

NATURE’S SWIFTNESS TIPS

Nature's Swiftness is the most iconic druid cooldown and is definitely an ability that people still mess up to this day. Here's why.

You see, even though NS by itself makes regrowth instant and increases its healing by 200%, we can definitely do much better. Here's a raw NS growth on a dummy.

Alright, not too bad. But here's a fully buffed NS regrowth that abuses a few other modifiers.

Woah, what a difference. To achieve a big NS, we're going to need to do a few things.

The most important of which is Soul of the Forest. Look at the difference a single Soul proc makes when using our instant regrowth, but uh, wait, we can do even better.

The next most important ingredient is Lifebloom for its triple mastery bonus. We'll also be trying to have it up every time we use our NS Regrowth.

Now, we are truly getting closer to a big heal. To make our heal even stronger, though, we're also going to want any other hotts already active on the target, and for extra credit, we'll want to use a Trent to get Dream Surge and some other healing modifiers.

And as you can see, we've gone from a puny raw NS regrowth to a GD. Aw, not good.

Not good, not good. a Giga Chad big heal with a few extra steps thrown in. Now, you won't always have time to take all these steps in advance, but your goal here whenever using NS is to always do it with at least a Soul of the Forest active and ideally a Lifebloom Merlin on the target.

It's going to almost always be worth it investing the two extra globals here since the healing multipliers are so huge. Okay, so now we know how to get the biggest NS, but how do we know when to use it?

The answer is pretty simple. Use it whenever someone's dropped critically low.

NS is, by definition, an emergency cooldown. It's the last resort safety net to make sure someone doesn't instantly die to damage.

Now, once again, in an ideal situation, you're going to want to try and always Swiftman first as an initial safety net to prevent a death, but when that really isn't enough, and someone is going to die in the next global or two, throw your NS out immediately.

This also means that sometimes you're going to have no choice but to throw out a raw NS. Ideally, you want to avoid that, but it will happen.

It won't feel good, but in the chaos of Arena, you might need to play a little bit sloppy.

TRANQUILITY

Welcome to our guide on Tranquility for Restoration Druid. As of Season 2 in The War Within, Tranquility has seen a massive change, as the old Tranquility Bubble PvP talent has been completely removed from the game, which dramatically changes how you use this ability.

For all of you old-school Druids out there, don't worry about this, because Tranquility is now reminiscent of its old form, being exclusively used as an AoE heal. So what's new with Tranquility, you might ask?

Well, aside from no longer providing immunity, it now heals for significantly more over a shorter channel time. This makes it exceptionally good as a pseudo-AoE lay-on-hands type spell when you've run out of healing or when your tree form isn't up and you need that extra push to recover from big damage.

But obviously, there is definitely a drawback here, the channel itself makes you a magnet for interrupts and CC. But not to worry, since Tranquility can heal through Line of Sight and up the ZL.

90% of the time, this is exactly how you're going to be using this ability. Moving out of LoS first, before channeling a huge life-saving heal when you've already exhausted every other option.

But what about the remaining 10%? Well, since Tranquility heals through LoS, that also means it heals through Smoke Bomb.

So even when you can't reach your teammate, you can still keep them topped with a well-timed Tranquility. Just do be aware of any interrupts, of course.

Now, there is some additional tech that I want to talk about. But I think that's worth discussing here, as Tranquility will also lower cooldowns by 20 seconds when playing with the Dream State talent.

This is exceptionally useful for gaining back charges of your Trance and to reset your Cenarion Ward-Swiftmen combo. So if you really want to min-max, try and have these abilities along with tree form already on cooldown before you press your Trank.

As doing so will give you insane value.

FOREST GUARDIAN

So as you probably realize by now, Resto Druid involves a lot of min-maxing, and the Forest Guardian PvP talent adds even more complexity. So let's break it down.

Forest Guardian has two distinct parts. The first part will increase the duration of all active hots when using offensive spells like Wrath, Starfire, Cyclone, and any cat form builders.

The second part is a 20% hot speed buff when using Star Surge and when spending any combo points. And while both of these effects are strong on their own, it's the second part that we really care about here.

Having your hots tick 20% faster is a big deal, especially when the effect can be activated by an instant cast ranged ability like Star Surge.

And for the most part, this is how we're going to aim to proc Forest Guardian, using our Star Surge on any nearby target, whether it's to assist your team with a kill or to snipe down a totem. But here's the thing.

In order to get value out of the effect, we obviously need to have hotspots. In the first place, and in a perfect world, we would be able to Star Surge every six seconds, but you know, Arena really isn't all that perfect, so we need to be a little bit more selective on when we're weaving in our casts.

Since Forest Guardian only lasts a few seconds, our goal is going to be to get our hots up first, including Lifebloom, a Soul of the Forest Rejuvenation, and then ideally a Cenarion Ward as well, and then optionally extending them with Swiftman before then using Star Surge.

In other words, we're going to be able to get our hots up first, and then optionally extending them if we can press Star Surge after any of the burst healing combos we covered earlier in the course, we now have an additional modifier to help us deal with heavy damage.

Now, outside of this, we do want to treat Star Surge as part of our maintenance, but only when we already have all of our hots active, because that's when we're going to get the most value. Plus, you already know that neglecting your hots is a recipe for disaster.

To make things easier though, we highly recommend using an assist macro, which will automatically fire Star Surge at your target's target. That way, you don't have to manually target an enemy player.

Now, at this point, you might be asking yourself, hey, what about the other part of the Forest Guardian? You know, the whole hot extension thing?

Well, let's use some logic here to explain this. The value of extending your hots, once again, assumes you already have hots up.

If anything, this talent reinforces something we've been teaching throughout this course, that keeping hots up is your number one priority, and Forest Guardian will reward you for sticking to that goal.

So, just to summarize, in order to get the most value out of this PvP talent, you're going to need to already have hots active.

For the most part, what we actually care about is the 20% hot buff we get after pressing Star Surge, which is a power that we can tap into to enhance our burst healing or to add on to our maintenance, assuming all of our hots are already active.

REGROWTH WALL HACKING? HOW TO ABUSE RAMPANT GROWTH

Did you know that you can wallhack as a Restro Druid? Cast a regrowth behind the pillar and apply it to everyone else.

But how? It's all thanks to Rampant Growth.

This talent will automatically apply the regrowth hot to anyone with Lifebloom, even if they're out of line of sight. So if you happen to have Lifebloom on your 2 DPS, so regrowth yourself and everyone will get the hot.

Now, you might be asking, what's the big deal here? Isn't regrowth a wimpy hot anyway?

And while it is true that regrowth healing over time isn't the best, remember that it does contribute to your mastery. So you're giving everyone on your team a huge healing multiplier and dispel protection.

And if you apply regrowth with Soul of the Forest, the hot portion is going to be buffed on all affected targets too. If you're using this trick routinely, you're even protecting yourself against swaps thanks to the protective growth talent from Keeper of the Grove.

You ever wonder why high-rated Druids play such low versatility? It's because they can get away with it with this talent, which is worth 16% verse.

Now we're going to warn you here, spamming regrowth can take a hit on your mana. But to be as mana efficient as possible, we should aim to get our triple regrowth out by using a clear casting proc.

If there isn't any major damage happening when you get your proc, just use it on yourself to once again spread regrowth to all 3 targets, even if you're already super high on HP. This is because by staying at 100% HP, you can get a high-level regrowth.

So if you're using this trick routinely, you're even protecting yourself against swaps. If there isn't any major damage happening when you get our triple regrowth, just use it on yourself to once again spread regrowth to all 3 targets, even if you're already super high on HP.

And if you're playing the Energy Redistribution Beacon, you're going to keep yourself high on HP to funnel your health.

EATING TRAPS WITH TREANTS AND MORE!

So you've probably heard people say that Grove Guardians make Resto Druid way too easy. An NPC that heals for you?

What an absolute joke. But what these forum posting enthusiasts don't understand is that Grove Guardians have some advanced tech that you can abuse as a Resto Druid.

The first is against Hunters. Since your trends can actually soak Freezing Traps for you, when you're playing against any Hunter cop, be sure to monitor the cooldown of Freezing Trap.

Whenever it's up, you should aim to position yourself right on top of the nearest trend. That way, when the Hunter attempts to Intim Trap you, there's a chance the trap lands on the trend instead.

Trends will also keep you in combat too, which means you can't be sapped by Rogues while they're up. Even though the old blind sap combo is harder to pull off these days, you're always immune to it whenever a trend is up.

Now, while all of this tech definitely sounds cool, there is one CC you really need to, avoid when your trends are up, and that is AoE Fears.

While it's good to stack on your trees against Hunters, the opposite is true against Priests and even Warriors when AoE Fears are up, or against Paladins who have Blinding Light ready. So if you see these classes run towards you, make sure to run absolutely away from your trees so they don't get CC'd too.

WHEN TO LIFEBLOOM YOURSELF

So you already know that keeping Lifebloom on the kill target is your number one priority, but that raises an obvious question that we have to ask here. What do we do with our second Lifebloom?

At the start of every game, you know that Lifeblooming both DPS is absolutely the play, especially since you don't know where the damage is going to be committed.

This double DPS Lifebloom is not only a safety net into early game CC, but if you happen to be playing Verdancy, it's also going to give you a ton of Verdancy procs with Efflorescence, since keeping Lifebloom on your partners means double the chance that it blooms, which means double the Verdancy healing.

But even when you aren't playing Verdancy, keeping Lifeblooms on both of your DPS is ideal for spread pressure, since it gives you better AoE healing and it makes it easier to spread regrowth across three targets by quickly ducking behind a pillar to cast.

Now if there isn't any AoE damage to heal, and the enemy team is dead set on hitting a single player, that is going to be the moment that you'll want to swap Lifebloom to yourself, since by doing so you increase the tick rate of all of your hots.

This is going to give you way more single target HPS, especially when Cenarion Ward is rolling. So when it comes to picking the best Lifebloom target, think about how the damage is being spread across your team.

If AoE damage is high, but blooms on both DPS, but the moment you see huge single target damage, be quick to swap a bloom to yourself.

RESTO DRUID DEFENSIVE PLAY

Welcome to our defensive play course for Restoration Druid. In this guide you're going to be learning how to flow chart your survivability, starting from what you can do before you get attacked to what you need to do in order to stay alive under pressure.

But first we need to answer a pretty big question here. Who are the biggest threats inside of Arena?

Well, for the most part it's going to be any highly mobile melee DPS, which includes all three rogue specs, Fury Warriors, Windwalker Monks, Feral Druids, and sometimes even Demon Hunters and Survival Hunters. Now while you can technically be killed with any class, these specs pose the biggest threats.

Now with that in mind though, let's go over part one of our flow chart, which is to use positioning and mobility to avoid threats. Now while this might sound incredibly obvious, I get it, the best way to avoid dying is to avoid putting yourself in a vulnerable position in the first place.

But if you're a DPS, you're going to have to be very careful about what you place. There's a reason we've told you not to immediately push in and play aggressive in solo shuffle, since more often than not, trying to play hyper aggressive is an open invitation to swaps.

Defensive play starts by being proactive, even in the starting room, by identifying threats before the gates open. And when they do, your goal is to position yourself in such a way to make it hard for any threat to reach you.

Most of the time this means staying relatively far away and periodically checking to see if anyone is going to be able to get in your way. Now, what do you do if you see someone running towards you though?

Well, by far, your number one priority is to try and shift into bear form before any stun connects. Bear form provides roughly 20% more physical damage reduction, 6% bonus versatility, and significantly more HP, making it even more effective than bark skin as a first line of defense.

Alternatively, if you're already in tree form prior to a swap, that can be fine since tree form also provides a significant boost to physical damage reduction. Now, in any case, if you're able to be in bear form during a stun, it will significantly increase your bulk.

But of course, enemy cooldowns are sometimes strong enough to cut through bear form anyway. And in the event that you're ever stunned while the enemy team is popping cooldowns, your immediate trade should be bark skin.

If you find yourself in human form while this is happening, you need to trade as soon as possible. The damage reduction is a mere 20% which means you get the most value by trading high on HP.

Alright, so now we need to know what to do once that stun is over. How do we recover from a swap?

Well, our goal is to stabilize our HP quickly, which makes renewal one of the best immediate answers. We can pair renewal with a health stone or battlemaster's trinket in order to be ultra safe if needed.

Note here that renewal is a spell which means it can't be used while silenced or locked out. Now, in the event in which we're still taking damage, the next part of our defensive flowchart is going to be to overgrowth ourselves since most of the time we're not going to have full hots before a stun.

The goal with this overgrowth is not just to offer some healing over time protection, but it will also give us hots to swift mend for a soul of the forest proc, which we can then use to nature swiftness regrowth ourselves if we're still taking damage.

And the best part about NS regrowth is that it can even be used while in bear form without a shift. And if we're still under pressure or if we weren't able to trade any of the cooldowns we previously mentioned, then our final line of defense is to use frenzied regeneration in bear form as we try and move to safety.

At this point, our flowchart is complete and it's about to go full circle here. Now, what you should remember, however, is that bear form is the strongest line of defense against an incoming swap.

And when you find yourself taking the heat, you can move from left to right on this flowchart as needed with whatever is available. So, that's it for this video.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to my channel.

I'll see you in the next one.

RESTO DRUID CROWD CONTROL

Welcome to our Crowd Control course for Restoration Druid. In this guide we're going to be focusing on a few different spells.

Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Bash and Roar, and finally Vortex and Mass Entanglement. Before we dive in, let's briefly cover some goals that are going to help teach you how and when to CC.

Overall, your Crowd Control needs to accomplish something for your team. It should never be used randomly and it should absolutely never be used without purpose.

Now to break this down, we have two CC goals. The first is to slow the game down, easing the pressure your team takes, which makes it easier for your HOTs to carry.

Your second goal is to use your CC to help your team set up kills. This can mean CCing the enemy healer, but in many cases it can also mean CCing an off-target.

Here's the basic idea. Cyclone is our most important and strongest CC by far, but you can't always cast it for free.

This means we're going to sometimes use our own CC to help our team. We'll also use other CC spells as accessories in order to make Cyclone easier and safer to land.

With that in mind, the main way we'll use our Crowd Control is to slow the game down, which makes it easier to heal. So let's start with Cyclone.

Because it's mostly undispellable, it works great for simply reducing the passive damage output from enemy players. The best and most efficient way to use Cyclone defensively is on the DPS your team is not attacking.

This is going to give them one less interrupted to deal with and will even make it easier for you to heal. So if you have time to do so, this is a great way to stall the enemy team from gaining momentum.

Of course, most targets won't let you Cyclone them for free, which is where your other CC comes into play. Let's first look at your stuns, which include Bash, Rake, and sometimes Mame if talented.

All three of these are slightly different, but can all help us achieve the same goal of setting up Cyclone. Now obviously stuns can be used defensively on their own as a way to deal with the enemy team.

As a way to just temporarily stop damage or as a micro CC to stop a cast. This can just give you some breathing room to heal and can even deny targets from CCing you.

And once the target is stunned, you now have a chance to freely cast Cyclone assuming no other interrupts are available.

Just do be careful of stunning too much defensively or even offensively since putting anyone on stun DR can interrupt with your team's win condition if you're playing with specific classes like Rogues and Hunters. Roar can also be used as a multi-purpose defensive option in similar ways to stuns.

Like stopping unavoidable spell casts or simply locking multiple players out of the game temporarily. And now for the 11.1 CC changes.

Roar will no longer break on minor damage which allows it to act as a pseudo stun. At this point we have yet to touch on roots, just like Cyclone they can also help us stall the game.

But unlike Cyclone we don't necessarily need to use our stuns and incaps to guarantee them a lot of damage. Their baseline range is much longer and can even be made instant during tree form and with the blooming infusion buff we get from Keeper of the Grove.

It should be obvious that the best targets to root are often melee DPS but in general roots are designed to help create distance. This can prevent melee from having uptime on any target they're attacking and can potentially prevent ranged DPS from moving in line of sight of you or your team.

Mass Entanglement rooting is excellent for this especially since it's instant and AoE meaning it can deny two melee or an army of pets from staying connected. One of the best times to use Mass Entanglement is against BM Hunters for denying pet damage while Bestial Wrath is active.

And finally we have Vortex which is incredible for keeping enemy targets pinned down to land CC. Now just like roots Vortex is most effective against melee and can help you land Cyclone cast against targets with melee ranged kicks.

It's also great as a standalone kiting tool for both yourself, and for your team especially after using a mobility spell. Most of the time melee will look to use gap closers to reconnect to a target but you can instantly suck them back with a well-timed Vortex.

Now of course CCing to stall the game is just one of our goals. Our second goal is to use our CC to help our team win the game.

The principles here will be exactly the same. We want to land Cyclone on the enemy healer or even on off targets and we're going to accomplish that by using our other CC tools to do that.

Here we have the most basic use of Cyclone which is on the enemy healer to either initiate or continue a CC chain. This is most effective when Cyclone is used with other CCs with different DRs like stuns or incapacitates.

Cyclone can be used offensively on enemy kill targets. That's because it will prevent all healing in the application of any buffs effectively locking their HP in place while you look to switch CC to the enemy healer.

This is ideally when the enemy healer is still on DR for all of your team's CCs. Meaning they're free to top their partner.

But by cloning the kill target you prevent heals while also buying some time for DRs to fully reset on the healer. And when that happens you can CC the healer once again.

Now we're going to have to warn you that this type of Cyclone is far more advanced and you can easily backfire this so you should only attempt these low clones as a more experienced player. Now for the most part your stuns are used on enemy targets as a way to start or continue a CC chain.

Using Bash into Cyclone for instance has been a pinnacle combo in the Druid toolkit for over a decade. But you could use any of your stuns to help your partners with chain CC as well.

Once again incapacitating Roar can perform the same function as a stun these days acting as an offensive CC starter to chain together with Cyclone. The benefit of this spell is that it allows you to keep an enemy target in place for a Cyclone without needing to put them on stun DR.

Just be careful here since incapacitating Roar is a very common stun. The effect is much more powerful than the other ones.

The effect is much more powerful than the other ones. The effect is much more powerful than the other ones.

Incapacitating DR, which includes polymorph, sap, and freezing trap, all of which are vital tools for kill setups which means using Roar recklessly can interfere with your team's win condition. The effect is much more powerful than the other ones.

And finally that all brings us to root effects, which most players don't really think of as being offensive. But once again remember that all roads lead to Cyclone and we can pin a healer in place with roots in order to prevent them from landing on you.

So you can use Roar to kill your teammates and if you're not sure what to do with your team, then you can also use Roar to kill your teammates. And that's it.

Thanks for watching. Have a great day.

And once again, the same thing applies to our Vortex, which we can use to keep an enemy healer in place to try and land Cyclones. Before we finish though, we have one super important note.

Even though you have a bunch of CC available to you, healing almost always comes first. Many Resto Druids make the huge mistake of thinking they need to go absolutely ballistic with their CC, stunning multiple targets, spamming Cyclone, and getting the best of their abilities.

But if you're a good hero, you can also use the best of the best of the best to get the best of your team. Now, we're not lying, this can be a fun way to play, but it can easily be punished.

Instead, the best druids are the ones who carefully balance the strength of their healing toolkit with the nuance of their control. That's because it's a symbiotic relationship.

Being good at healing makes you better at control.