Druids are probably the most versatile class in World of Warcraft, being able to tank, heal, melee DPS, and supply caster DPS. This makes them an extremely popular class to play in both PvE and PvP.

While able to do anything well, when it comes to PvP and Arena combat, where the druid class really shines is when playing a resto healing build. This is due to the fact that no other class can supply as much healing while maintaining near constant movement as a Druid can. This is critical in arenas as a druid can keep out of line of sight most of the time while still healing their arena partners.

This guide takes you through the basics of being a druid healer in the arenas. It will cover all your key abilities, a basic PvP build, gear to start off with, and the basic tactics you can use regardless of which classes you are teamed with.

Stats

Stat priorities for Arena Healing are vastly different than what you would prioritize for PvE healing. In PvE druids tend to focus heavily on spirit and haste which allows them to cast heals for a long time that tick faster, healing more. In PvE however, there is more to consider.

In PvP you need to factor in the three extra stats, two of which are PvP only. Since you will be required to sometimes go offensive and cause damage and use CC on the enemy, you need to worry about your Hit. The PvP only stats that you need to consider are Spell Penetration and Resilience which allow your spells to get through the enemy resistances and for you to take less damage.

Without going into a lot of the math and numbers behind the stats, here is what I aim for when gearing:

PVP Hit Cap (4%) > Spell Penetration (195) > Intelligence > Resilience > Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery

Key Abilities

Resto druids have a number of key abilities that allow them to do well in the arenas. The first ones that we will talk about are of course their heals. Resto Druids have a huge Number of HoTs (Heal over Time spells) that they can cast on themselves or their partners that keep healing even once you are out of LoS (Line of Sight). This is what gives you a lot of your survivability in the arenas. You can throw some HoTs on a partner and then get away from the fight for a few seconds to stay undamaged and then get back in to throw more heals.

Of all your heals in the arena, Lifebloom is the most important. Lifebloom is a solid heal over time that also provides a big heal when it expires and the replenishment ability while up. This should be used as your primary heal all the time. You also have Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Wild Growth that provide HoTs. When needed you can also take the time to cast your big heal, Healing Touch. Ideally this is preceded by Nature's Swiftness to make it an instant cast, but sometimes not.

As a Resto Druid you also have great CC abilities to work with. These include Root to bind players in place, Hibernate to put beasts to sleep, and Cyclone to effectively remove players from the fight for a short term. All of these abilities are on different diminishing returns and can be effectively used to keep an enemy out of the fight for a long time.

You also have the ability to form shift to get out of root effects. Form shifting also allows you to survive some burst damage, to bash the enemy in bear form, to escape in travel form, to stealth in cat form, and more. Probably your best form though is your tree form which allows you to put out a huge amount of healing on demand and even be more aggressive and help go for the kill.

Sample Arena Build

Here is a fairly basic PvP arena Resto Druid build to start from: Resto Druid 6/3/32

A Typical Resto PvP Arena Build

Things to note that are different from a typical PvE build are a lot of the key PvE healing abilities. For example Empowered Touch is a pretty powerful talent that grants an extra 10% healing to your key spells, however, its side effect of refreshing your lifebloom makes it essentially unusable in PvP since you really need to count on lifeblooms expiring for their heals. Refreshing lifebloom would really mess up the PvP playstyle.

Another big ability that is missing is Efflorescence, which is only really useful when you have a large group of players for it to effect. In the small numbers found in arenas, the points are much better spent elsewhere.

Key abilities that you need are the Balance of Power talent from the second tier in Balance. This talent with just one point in it will solve all your spell hit issues by allowing your spirit to grant hit as well. This ensures that your CC spells hit the enemy, and when you do go offensive your Starfire and Wrath do as well. Furor from the feral tree is also very powerful as it grants you 15% extra mana and the ability to shift forms and start with rage or energy to start using bear or cat abilities.

PvP Glyphs

Since your talents are going to be different from the basic PvE build, and your key healing spells change as well it makes sense that your glyphs are going to change also. So which ones are best for PvP?

Prime Glyphs – Your choices here are pretty easy, grab swiftmend, lifebloom, and rejuvenation. Swiftmend makes it so that this already good ability is even better by not consuming a HoT when using it. Lifebloom provides 10% greater crit chance, and rejuvenation will heal for 10% more. All great abilities.

Major Glyphs – These are a bit more varied as there are options, however, the base line glyphs to grab are Barkskin and Frenzied Regeneration. Barkskin reduces the chance you will be critically hit by 25% when barkskin is up, and frenzied regeneration boosts healing effects on you while under its effect. Once past those Entangling Roots has some value, but post patch 4.1 it only cuts the time a little, it does not make it an instant cast, still useful though.

Minor Glyphs – The only one here that is really required is the Glyph of Treant. This allows you to go back to the original tree of life form and ignore the butt ugly new one.

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PvP Gear to Start Arenas With

Before you actually step into the Arenas you will want to have at least some PvP gear. How much depends on a few things. The first being your expectations, if you don’t mind a few hours to get your 5 wins for the week you can get away with far less. If you want to survive and win a few tight fights then the more you can get the better.

Fortunately arena gear is fairly easy to get. You can find a lot of crafted gear cheap on the auction house that will give you a good head start on resilience, however it is not that great for us since it doesn’t come with Spirit. This makes it sub par at best, however resilience is resilience when you are starting out, so I still suggest picking up a few pieces.

The best option is to jump in battlegrounds for a few days and stack up on some battleground pieces. What I would suggest is at lest two of the cheap set pieces to get your 400 resilience 2 piece bonus, and a couple of the cheap 1250 point pieces. This, combined with a couple crafted items, should easily get you to over 1500 resilience before you ever step into the arena.

Long term you will want to stack as much resilience as you can, aiming for about 4000. One thing that can really help with stacking resilience as a druid is the fact that you can split your PvP sets to get double two piece bonuses. Take 3 Kodohide pieces and 2 Wyrmhide pieces, each set will provide the two piece 400 resilience bonus. This gives you a huge boost on resilience very easily.

Basic Tactics

Now that you have your talents in place and are geared up and ready to go, it’s time to talk about basic Druid Healing tactics in the arena.

Movement - The first and probably most important thing is to always keep moving and out of LoS of the enemy. Anytime you are stationary or in LoS you are asking to be switched to and hit hard. This will take a lot of practice and getting used to, but you will get better at it over time. The idea here is to step out, get HoTs up on your partners, step out of LoS, step back out, CC an enemy, break LoS, rinse and repeat. You never want to be in LoS for more than a second or two. This means you will be fighting neat obstacles a lot, so learn how to move around them well.

Part of your movement should also be recognizing when it is time to shift over to travel form to get to a new area, or to switch to bear to charge someone, or even to cat to potentially stealth and relocate. Travel form is especially useful right after you root a melee that is attacking you, as it gives you a head start on getting away from them.

HoT Timing - The second thing to learn is the timing on your HoTs, especially timing your Lifebloom. You do not want to clip your HoTs by re-applying early as it essentially wastes mana and reduces overall healing, but you also don’t want to leave your partners without heals for any length of time. This means learning near perfect timing to have the next HoT up within ½ second of the old one expiring.

The exception to the above comment about not refreshing is with Lifebloom. The biggest bonus to the lifebloom heal is the end heal proc. This makes it critical to watch for and plan for. If your lifebloom target is under heavy attack then you want to let it expire before re-appling it. If, however, they are caught up on health and don’t need the large heal it procs, then throw a refresh on it to keep that big heal in your back pocket for another 10 seconds. Managing lifebloom expiries can make a huge difference in a fight.

CC Coordination – You are able to provide a lot of CC as a druid and therefore should constantly be using it. The important part though is to not use it randomly. Coordinate with your partner(s) and use it effectively. Cyclone especially can be used when going for a kill to CC the healer, drag the DPS away, then root the healer out of range. Mix in your partner's CC and you can keep the healer away for a long time.

Cyclone Timing – As mentioned above Cyclones are important. However, many players don’t initially realize how important. The important thing to remember is that when under the effects of a Cyclone nothing effects the target. This means that sometimes you can use it against your team's current DPS target just as a big heal is about to land, or just before their druid's lifebloom expires on them, or any number of other abilities just to stop that ability. Great uses for cyclones include stopping innervate, shield wall, mana tide, pain suppression, shadowfiends, and many more.

Offensive Ability – While not great, you do have some ability to do damage. Most of this comes in the form of your two DoTs (Starfire and Insect Swarm) as you can easily keep them up on enemies just to keep a little damage going on that needs to be dealt with. You also can use Wrath but due to it’s cast time it is situational at best. It can help with that final push to down an opponent though.

Tree of Life – This is one of your best abilities both for healing and for helping go for the kill. When in Tree form you can throw faster heals and use lifebloom on multiple targets, this allows you to heal through very tight spots. However, the even more important part of tree form is the speed increase to your Wrath spell. If your team is having issues getting someone down, and you really need that extra bit of burst damage, switching to tree form and casting a bunch of Wrath spells back to back can really throw out some bust damage. This isn’t required in 5v5, but can be a factor in 3v3 and is almost an essential skill in 2v2.

Team Makeup

Druids fit well with almost any team at the 2v2 and 3v3 level. At the 5v5 level it gets a little more complicated. To start with just get involved in the arena with your friends or guildmates and start getting some experience and points.

From there you can try some of the more popular team compositions such as Warlock, Warrior, Rogue, or Deathknight partners for 2’s or Warlock/Warrior, Warrior/Rogue, Mage/Rogue, or Warrior/Deathknight for 3’s. Keep in mind that the best comp shifts constantly based on the current patch and season. So if you're not at the top level and just in it for some fun then go with people you know despite the class. It will be harder to get wins, especially in 2v2 and 3v3 where comp is sometimes even more important that skill and gear, but you will get your wins eventually.

Wrap Up

As you can see there are a lot of different things to keep in mind when playing a Resto Druid in the Arena system. That complexity and variation is what makes it one of the most fun and rewarding classes that I know of in this format of play. Keep in mind also that this is just a primer guide, there is a lot more to learn and know to optimize your play. This should give you a good basic foundation to start with though.

Your next task is to get out there and get your gear, your team, and start participating in the Arenas. Your skill level and gear level will soon start to rise and you may soon find yourself striving to reach the top of the Arena team ladder. Remember that you only need 5 wins per week to gain maximum points and while below 1500 rating you earn just under 1400 points a week. This means an epic PvP piece at least every other week, which adds up fast.

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