Druid talent analysis

From WoWWiki

Druid talents, perhaps more than those of any other class, serve to drastically change the character and playstyle of the class. Druids can be called a very weak class with very strong talents. For example, a Resto druid's feral utility is very, very weak; with a respec that same druid suddenly becomes a powerhouse in melee. This makes druids a very fun class to play since the druid's gameplay, be it tanking, melee DPS, spell DPS, or healing, can easily change with a respec. Therefore, it is important to understand not just the relative value of each talent but the way in which your build will affect your desired gameplay.

Each talent is listed with its maximum talent point investment. Notes are included in the analysis where lesser investments are common or useful.

Note that "nothing special" doesn't mean that the talent is or isn't valuable in a particular situation, merely that there aren't any special benefits unique to that playstyle.

Talent Trees In General

First of all it is important to note that druids of every spec can find a niche for themselves in most playstyles. There are Balance and Feral druids who raid, and Restoration druids who PvP, for example. Each bring unique strengths and capabilities to their role; however, it remains true that certain specs are naturally linked to certain playstyles. As usual, each talent tree contains some abilies which are useful for the role associated with one of the other trees (like healing bonuses in the Feral tree, or melee damage increase in the Restoration tree).

Balance is the offensive spellcasting tree. It will lead to a ranged magical DPS gameplay similar to that of a Mage, Shadow Priest or elemental Shaman. Balance druids tend to focus on solo and PvP play. One lesser known variant of a balanced druid is the combination of mana regeneration and meleeing damage dealing in Moonkin form. With high Strength, Attack power and Stamina, a moonkin can fight indefinitely without the need to drink, since mana will regenerate on almost every swing of the weapon (depending on the amount of Attack Power). This is a highly effective non-raiding option, very efficient when grinding multiple melee enemies.

The Feral combat tree concentrates on melee power through the druid's cat and bear forms. Points spent in the Feral tree usually improve both the melee DPS role of the cat form and the tanking role of the bear form. It is a very popular multi-purpose tree for soloing, leveling, raiding and PvP. Notably, the Feral tree is the only Druid talent tree that does not give an additional shapeshifting form.

Restoration talents improve a druid's healing capabilities. Restoration druids tend to have a game experience similar to that of a Restoration Shaman, Holy-spec Paladin, or Priest. They are very good raid healers and a popular PvP healer thanks to their many Heal over Time effects.

Balance

Starlight Wrath

5 points: Reduces the cast time of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 0.5 sec.

• Lower cast time equals higher DPS and a reduced chance to be interrupted.
  • Solo Utility: Moonkin druids sometimes spam Wrath point-blank, counting on its very short casting time to prevent interrupts. This is a useful tactic if a mob is nearly dead anyway, or if you already have something else rooted and have to let it close to melee range.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special apart from DPS increase.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special; in PvP the reduced interrupt is even more important.
• Bottom Line: If you are planning on a nuke-focused build (such as a full-out Moonkin), this is a must-have talent.

Nature's Grasp

1 point: New Spell, Instant, 1 min cooldown. While active, any time an enemy strikes the caster they have a 35% chance to become afflicted by Entangling Roots (highest rank you have). Only usable outdoors, castable in all forms except travel form. 1 charge. Lasts 45 sec.

• As a preemptive, instant-cast root spell, it allows you to root a mob with a minimal investment of time.
  • Solo Utility: Highly useful for balance druids or druids at low level. An insta-root can be critical in a sticky situation.
  • Raid Utility: Most raids are indoors, where this spell is useless.
  • PvP Utility: Very valuable. Melee classes hate being rooted, and the cast time on Entangling Roots can sometimes be fatally long. Even feral druids sometimes get this, for flag running and as an escape mechanism.
• Bottom Line: If you can spare the point, it's worth taking, even if you don't go further into the Balance tree.

Improved Nature's Grasp

Requires 1 point in Nature's Grasp
4 points: Increases the chance for your Nature's Grasp to entangle an enemy by 65%.

• Unlike Nature's Grasp, this is a very controversial talent. Some players feel that 35% is more than sufficient, as within a few hits the spell will proc anyway. Others prefer the lower proc rate, on the theory that when you're being zerged that the mob/player that attacks more often will be more dangerous and have a better chance of being rooted. Still others argue that reliability is critical, and that the five point investment (bringing the total chance to 35%+65%=100%) is important. Even one or two points spent here will make the roots proc noticeably faster.
  • Solo Utility: Not terribly important: most mobs don't hit that hard, and letting them hit you once or twice before the proc isn't dangerous.
  • Raid Utility: Completely worthless.
  • PvP Utility: This is the case where the controversy strikes. Most druids can do without it.
• Bottom Line: If you feel you have to take it, do so, but there are much better talents to blow points on.
• Note: This is one of three questionable low level talents in the balance tree (Control of Nature and Brambles being the other two). However, if you plan on going deep into the balance tree you have to invest three points (one of them in Improved Nature's Grasp or Control of Nature) in these talents to get the 15 points need to access higher level talents.

Control of Nature

Requires 5 points in Balance Talents
3 points: 100% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting Entangling Roots and Cyclone.

• For the balance druid, Entangling Roots (and eventually Cyclone) are powerful tools for controlling a fight. Note that one and two points in this talent give a 40%/70% chance to avoid losing casting time due to damage.
  • Solo Utility: Quite useful for situations where initial roots are resisted and Nature's Grasp is not available.
  • Raid Utility: All the roots spells are outdoor only, so the whole deal is moot in raids. Besides, Cyclone's effect is too short to be a reliable CC, so no gain here either.
  • PvP Utility: Rooting and Crowd Control are often more powerful in PvP than raw DPS.
• Bottom Line: A decent talent for soloing and pvp. Avoiding Spell Interruption for Entangling Roots is great for making a quick escape or for getting far enough away to heal, for Cyclone it makes a strong spell even stronger, especially on PvP.
• Note: This is one of three questionable low level talents in the balance tree (Improved Natures Grasp and Brambles being the other two). However, if you plan on going deep into the balance tree you have to invest three points (one of them in Nature Grasp or Control of Nature) in these talents to get the 15 points need to access higher level talents.

Focused Starlight

Requires 5 points in Balance Talents
2 points: Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath and Starfire spells by 4%.

• It's a cheap way to up DPS considerably, and is a pre-req for the powerful Vengeance talent. It also has a nice synergy with Nature's Grace deeper in the Balance tree.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special besides the DPS boost.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special besides the DPS boost.
  • PvP Utility: Crits make the damage spiky and less predictable, which is always a good thing in PvP.
• Bottom Line: If you plan on going deep into the Balance tree, you want this talent.

Improved Moonfire

Requires 5 points in Balance Talents
2 points: Increases the damage and critical strike chance of your Moonfire spell by 10%.

• This is a strong upgrade to the already-useful Moonfire spell.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special besides the DPS boost.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special besides the DPS boost.
  • PvP Utility: Awesome. Balance-spec druids do spam Moonfire sometimes, for example, to chase someone down while finishing them off. And the crit bonus nicely makes the spell even burstier. With the extra crit, moonfire can be used to force a Nature's Grace proc, to get a fast spell cast in the heat of battle.
• Bottom Line: PvP balance druids will want this. Others will also want this, simply because it's a good use of points in this tier of the talent tree.

Brambles

Requires 10 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Increases damage caused by your Thorns and Entangling Roots spells by 75%.

• How much of your DPS really comes from roots and Thorns? That's right: not much at all.
  • Solo Utility: You'll be rooting a lot, but roots won't be a significant source of damage compared to the rest of your balance arsenal.
  • Raid Utility: Not terribly useful. Even with tank aggro multipliers, the aggro gained is minimal, and the boost from this talent is as well.
  • PvP Utility: Against a couple rogues or other duel-wielders with fast attack rates, this talent actually does very good damage over the course of the fight, especially with the new level of Thorns. But it's still pretty situational.
• Bottom Line: There are better options than this talent.
• Note: This is one of three questionable low level talents in the balance tree (Control of Nature and Nature's Grasp being the other two). However, if you plan on going deep into the balance tree you have to invest three points (one of them in Nature's Grasp or Control of Nature) in these talents to get the 15 points need to access higher level talents.

Insect Swarm

Requires 10 points in Balance Talents
1 point: 175 mana, 30 yd range, instant cast. The enemy target is swarmed by insects, decreasing their chance to hit by 2% and causing 792 damage over 12 sec.

• Even though it doesn't do much damage, it's one of the most mana-efficient spells in the game, and at only one point not a huge investment either.
  • Solo Utility: Another mana-efficient DoT to dump on a mob that also lowers the damage dealt by the mob.
  • Raid Utility: Very useful because it also helps the tanks' damage mitigation. Cheap and effective.
  • PvP Utility: Another cheap and effective source of damage.
• Bottom Line: A decent debuff that's good for both PvE and PvP, and quite mana efficient.

Nature's Reach

Requires 10 points in Balance Talents
2 points: Increases the range of your Balance spells and Faerie Fire (Feral) ability by 20%.

• A larger range is always good.
  • Solo Utility: Increases your survivability because it allows you to hit mobs from farther away. This gives you more time to hit them before they hit you. It also allows you to hit a mob that is running before they pull other mobs.
  • Raid Utility: Extremely useful. Many mobs have ranged attacks on non-aggro targets, or AOEs. If they can be out-ranged at all, this talent usually lets you cast from outside that range.
  • PvP Utility: Similar to soloing--use it to catch that pesky flag carrier.
• Bottom Line: A must have if going balance.

Vengeance

Requires 15 points in Balance Talents
Requires 2 points in Focused Starlight
5 points: Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Starfire, Moonfire, and Wrath spells by 100%.

• This makes crits do double-damage, just like melee crits. It's a significant overall DPS boost.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special apart from the flat DPS boost.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special apart from the flat DPS boost.
  • PvP Utility: Makes your attacks far burstier if you're going to be nuking. Bursty damage is good in PvP.
• Bottom Line: If you're this deeply invested in Balance, it's a very worthwhile talent to have.

Celestial Focus

Requires 15 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Gives your Starfire spell a 15% chance to stun the target for 3 sec and increases the chance you'll resist pushback when casting your Wrath spell by 70%.

• The pushback resistance on Wrath is the main benefit on this talent. The stun is nice but will proc infrequently due to the low rate and the fact that Starfire is not a primary spell for Soloing or PVP.
  • Solo Utility: A must have talent for a Moonkin that primarily solos. The resistance to interruptions makes this a very nice soloing talent, since you will often be using Wrath point-blank. The stun is not terribly reliable, although it does make a good opening attack.
  • Raid Utility: Situationally useful at best. While most mobs in 5 mans are stunnable, as well as much of the trash in Karazhan, the stun procs so infrequently that it is not reliable. The push back resistance is not incredibly useful because, a balance druid generally won't be getting hit when raiding, and Wrath usually is not included in most raiders spell rotation. However, the 70% Wrath interrupt is extremely useful situationally (e.g. tanking the Shaman add at Maulgar in Gruul's Lair).
  • PvP Utility: A must have for a PvP focused balance druid. Any kind of stun is handy in PvP. It cannot be relied on, but it might buy you time to cast another Starfire or a heal. The ability to resist pushback (losing cast time) on wrath is essential in PvP.
• Bottom Line: A great talent for Soloing and PvP, the ability to stun and not lose cast time on Wrath makes this a strong PvP talent. Situationally useful in raiding, but should not be apart of any standard raiding build.

Lunar Guidance

Requires 20 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Increases your spell damage and healing by 25% of your total Intellect.

• Scales nicely with gear, gives you another source of much-needed +dmg, this is a great addition to a casting Druid's repertoire.
  • Solo Utility: A Flat DPS boost but nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: A Flat DPS boost but nothing special.
  • PVP Utility: A Flat DPS boost but nothing special.
• Bottom Line: More DPS = good. A must have talent for balance spec druids, you should have a ton of Intellect laying around anyway.This is also a key talent for a "Dreamstate" build since it affects both damage and healing.

Nature's Grace

Requires 20 points in Balance Talents
1 point: All spell crits immediately reduce the casting time of the next spell by 0.5 sec.

• It is useful because it increases DPS and is a prereq for Moonfury. Whereas it does not significantly impact Wrath due to the global cooldown, it works quite well with the more mana-efficient nuke, Starfire.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: Since this is a prereq for Moonfury it is a required talent for balance druids. Other than that it only has average utility. However, since it only costs one point, it is not a big burden.

Moonglow

Requires 20 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Reduces the Mana cost of your Moonfire, Starfire, Wrath, Healing Touch, Regrowth and Rejuvenation spells by 9%.

• Whole builds are based on this talent. Restoration druids will want to combine it with Tranquil Spirit to vastly improve their mana efficiency. Balance Druids will want it because they aren't called "Oomkin" without reason.
  • Solo Utility: This is mostly a grinding efficiency boost, though the staying power helps beat unexpected adds.
  • Raid Utility: Fantastic. Raid encounters usually are drawn out, very mana-intensive affairs, so a talent that helps mana efficiency is critical whether nuking or healing.
  • PvP Utility: Mana efficiency isn't that important in PvP, but it's still useful.
• Bottom Line: Simply get it. Many builds go this far into Balance just for this one talent. Another key talent for the "Dreamstate" build as it reduces the mana cost of both damage and healing spells.

Moonfury

Requires 25 points in Balance Talents
Requires 1 point in Nature's Grace
5 points: Increases the damage done by your Starfire, Moonfire and Wrath spells by 10%.

• This is a flat DPS improvement to all nukes.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: Highly recommended.

Balance of Power

Requires 25 points in Balance Talents
2 points: Increases spell hit chance and reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 4%.

• Chance to hit is an oft-overlooked part of good offensive caster itemization. The defensive aspect is also useful.
  • Solo Utility: Depends on how you play. Useless against lower-level mobs. Very useful against higher-level mobs.
  • Raid Utility: Absolutely essential. The mobs in raids are same or higher-level all the time. That chance to hit is effectively a flat DPS upgrade.
  • PvP Utility: Very situational; helps against resists when your opponent is a caster, although nothing is worse than being down to the wire and dying because the opponent resisted the last nuke or root. However, in level 70 PvP, the base spell chance to hit is 96%, and the improvement cap is 99% (you cannot have a 100% chance to hit with spells). Additionally, the 4% hit reduction only affects spells; melee attacks against you are unaffected. Therefore, anything more than +3% to spell hit is a waste. A meager 38 points in +spell hit gear (12.6 points per 1%) is sufficient to pass on this talent.
• Bottom Line: Chance to hit isn't a bottomless pit: there's a limit to how much is useful. However, Balance itemization doesn't include much +hit gear, so PvE offensive caster builds should almost always make room for this talent.

Dreamstate

Requires 30 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Regenerates mana equal to 10% of your Intellect every 5 sec, even while casting.

• Also known as MP5, in-combat mana regen is very powerful for caster classes. This one talent usually yields around 35 mana/5. There is constant discussion as to whether a healer druid is more desirable with a full restoration build, which emphasizes utility, or a "Dreamstate build," which combined with Moonglow and Lunar Guidance offers very high mana efficiency at the cost of Swiftmend and Tree of Life.
  • Solo Utility: When soloing, this talent isn't very important, because it doesn't suffice to make drinking between fights superflous.
  • Raid Utility: Absolutely essential.
  • PvP Utility: PvP tends to be burstier and normally offers plenty of opportunities to drink. Can safely be skipped.
• Bottom Line: Raiding Moonkin consider this a must have, and even healer druids will often give up Restoration talents for this talent. The talent for which the "Dreamstate" build was named. Therefore it is a key talent of that build.

Moonkin Form

Requires 30 points in Balance Talents
1 points: 28% of base mana, Instant Cast. Transforms the Druid into Moonkin Form. While in this form the armor contribution from items is increased by 400%, attack power is increased by 150% of your level and all party members within 30 yards have their spell critical chance increased by 5%. Melee attacks in this form have a chance on hit to regenerate mana based on attack power. The Moonkin can only cast Balance spells while shapeshifted. The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and other movement impairing effects.

• Often-hated, sometimes marveled at, the Moonkin is a controversial form, mostly because it's a flat-out statement that you are a Balance-spec druid. The mana regen from melee power is not terribly useful, but the spell crit aura is extremely useful and the armor is excellent. Consider this the Druid answer to the elemental-spec Shaman, with better control but less melee. As a side note, Moonkin can eat, drink and use potions just like they could in caster form.
  • Solo Utility: Fantastic. Sure it's impossible to heal in this form, but there's usually no need to do so, and it's always possible to shift out and heal if necessary. This talent, Celestial Focus + Starlight Wrath enables point-blank Wrath tanking. The mana regen provided by Moonkin form, along with a little +str or attack power and a fast weapon can allow you to grind mobs almost indefinitely. Elune's Touch procs often (50%+) and can return 200+ mana per hit with even a minimal investment in attack power
  • Raid Utility: This form will be a significant DPS boost to all casters in your party. Most other DPS casters will be able to out DPS a Moonkin, but most likely the 5% crit bonus will match or even exceed a group having a fifth Warlock or Mage. While Moonkin were once something of a liability in raids, Burning Crusade offers better itemization for caster-type druids, and many Moonkin now report being able to keep up in damage with other spellcasters in raid situations. Alternatively, this can be used in conjunction with healers. Paladins regain 60% of the mana cost of a heal if it crits, and a Restoration/Balance hybrid will benefit from Nature's Grace.
  • PVP Utility: Excellent! This talent is a significant reason balance is considered a good PvP build. Survival is essential in PvP so the armor boost is substantial gain vs. melee opponents. A 5% boost to crit for yourself and group members helps towards spike damage. The melee aspects of this form are fairly worthless; as mana regeneration is less important in PvP, and you will rarely be in a situation to melee. This form will significantly boost your ability to defeat any melee class, although it’s far less useful against magic classes that can ignore armor. Remember that this form will ensure that your enemies can pick you out as a balance druid easily, even in raid sized battlegrounds.
• Bottom Line: Excellent for soloing, and can dramatically reduce your reliance on drinks. After spending 30 points in Balance, by all means take this talent.

Improved Faerie Fire

Requires 30 points in Balance Talents
3 points: Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 3%.

• This talent is a nice upgrade to Faerie Fire, but its usefulness varies wildly based on playstyle.
  • Solo Utility: Useless, because the damage caused by the druid while soloing is magical, not melee or ranged.
  • Raid Utility: Great for early raid encounters but is a little controversial. Since it does not benefit you directly it is often the first talent given up for greater threat reduction of Subtlety. Not as useful in higher level raids because of +hit itemization, even some dual wielders may have reached their to-hit cap.
  • PvP Utility: Faerie Fire rocks in PvP, but this upgrade just doesn't give a noticeable benefit.
• Bottom Line: Raiders should consider this a must have. Others probably will invest their points elsewhere. Many druids don't buy this talent because it moves them down on the DPS charts (by improving the physical DPSers without helping themselves); however, this is probably a mistake in terms of overall raid utility.

Wrath of Cenarius

Requires 35 points in Balance Talents
5 points: Starfire gains an additional 20% and Wrath gains an additional 10% of +damage effects.

• The benefits from this spell are largely gear-based. With a lot of +damage gear, it'll result in a big improvement; otherwise, it may be hardly noticeable.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: This far down in the tree, you should have quite a bit of gear complementing your spec. As long as you have gear that gives you +Damage, this is a great talent no matter what you are doing.

Force of Nature

Requires 40 points in Balance Talents
1 point: 12% of base mana, 30 yd range, Instant cast, 3 min cooldown. Summons 3 treants to attack the enemy target for 30 sec.

• This is a controversial power. Individually, the treants do a decent amount of damage, and when all 3 treants attack, they are quite effective in interrupting or delaying spells from being cast. Treants are also supposedly affected by the caster's +spell damage, increasing their damage slightly. They do a respectable amount of damage, although they are quickly dispatched by AoE due to their somewhat low health.
  • Solo Utility: Incredible to have, especially when soloing groups of mobs.
  • Raid Utility: Most bosses have nasty AoEs, so the trees aren't very useful. They cannot be controlled, thus they may attack CC'd mobs or may otherwise lead to a wipe.
    • UPDATE: As of Patch 2.4 the trees will no longer attack cc'd mobs and thus may be used more often without the concern of party wipe from breaking crowd controls.
  • PvP Utility: Useful for distracting and harrying most classes (especially casters).
• Bottom Line: This talent can greatly enhance your survivability in PvP. In PvE, the treants can noticeably increase your overall DPS; however, in fights where there is almost constant AoE of some sort, they are completely useless.

Feral

Ferocity

5 points: Reduces the cost of your Maul, Swipe, Claw, Rake and Mangle by 5 Rage or Energy.

• Wow. This is a flat DPS upgrade. Good for cat form, fantastic for bear form. This one talent basically upgrades every bread-and-butter feral combat move you have.
  • Solo Utility: Noticeable improvement. 33% rage efficiency is huge for bear grinding, and cat DPS is also substantially increased.
  • Raid Utility: In addition to the significant DPS boost, this talent also lets your bear form generate stupendous aggro.
  • PvP Utility: With the rage you save, you will actually have enough rage and energy handy to use those special moves like Bash.
• Bottom Line: If you plan on putting talents into Feral at all, you would be insane not to get this.

Feral Aggression

5 points: Increases the Attack Power reduction of your Demoralizing Roar by 40% and the damage caused by your Ferocious Bite by 15%.

• A decent talent for bear form tanking and cat form DPS. The problem is that Ferocity and other nearby talents are so good that something has to give, and this is it.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special. You'll usually be soloing in Cat form and finishing with Maim. Even if you use FB, +15% to a move you use once per fight at most is a bit weak.
  • Raid Utility: Little usage for raid, since your Demoralizing Roar will be overwritten by Demoralizing Shout. Also, cat DPS is maximized if you use Rip instead of Ferocious Bite. Handy when no warrior is available and when Rip is ineffective, either due to the target's bleed immunity or impending death.
  • PvP Utility: Ferocious Bite is very useful as a source of burst DPS in PVP. Worth 5 points? Probably not.
• Bottom Line: In most fights you'll be casting one or the other of these, and only once per fight. Not a bad talent, just that there's so much better that very few druids find a reason to buy this one.

Feral Instinct

Requires 5 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases threat caused in Bear and Dire Bear form by 15% and reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while Prowling.

• Unlike a Rogue, you can't vanish, so being revealed is often a death sentence. +15% threat will put you on par (and in many cases above) a Warrior's threat generation. This talent provides the same stealth increase as Master of Deception thus giving you the same stealth level as that of any rogue.
  • Solo Utility: Huge. This talent fully specced out allows a definite increase in the Druid's ability to stealth and can make many quests soloable that would not be otherwise.
  • Raid Utility: Essential if you plan on tanking at all.
  • PvP Utility: Worthwhile. Being able to sneak up on an opponent unnoticed and open with a large attack or stun tips the odds in your favor.
• Bottom Line: If you plan on bear tanking, it's a must-have. If you plan on solo-leveling or PvPing, it's a very nice talent to have.

Brutal Impact

Requires 5 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Increases the stun duration of your Bash and Pounce abilities by 1 sec.

• This is a great power, though precisely how great is up for debate. For some, the bash is just long enough to get a Healing Touch off and shift back. For others, it's a crutch and you can get a heal off anyway. In instances, stuns have situational value (e.g. if the healer goes down) but the value of an extra second of stun per pull is questionable.
  • Solo Utility: As above, the main use is for self-healing, however, the combination of Shredding Attacks with this one makes for an excellent opener.
  • Raid Utility: When stuns are needed in raids, the mobs needs to be stun-locked, which druids can't do.
  • PvP Utility: In PvP, stuns rule, mostly as interrupts, but also to get self-heals off, or to escape. There's a lot of debate among PvP druids as to whether this is essential or superfluous.
• Bottom Line: If you have points to spare, by all means get it. If you can't afford to, or if you are sticking to group PVE, you don't need it.

Thick Hide

Requires 5 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases your Armor contribution from items by 10%.

• In most forms, this is a decent waste of points. In Bear form, though, the bonus multiplies. The base 400% armor bonus in dire bear form is multiplied by 10%. Depending on your armor, this can be substantial.
  • Solo Utility: Decent. Bear form is already pretty good, so it's skippable if you don't spend much time in bear form. The bonus is especially noticeable for soloing elite mobs, which is usually done in bear form.
  • Raid Utility: Excellent, a solid upgrade to your damage mitigation for bear tanking.
  • PvP Utility: Also excellent. You'd think a bonus like this wouldn't be noticeable, but it is. It's great for fighting melee classes, helps to tip the balance in your favor.
• Bottom Line: Skippable, but you'll notice it if you have it. If you are tanking at all end-game, this is a must.

Feral Swiftness

Requires 10 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Increases your movement speed by 30% while outdoors in cat form and increases your chance to dodge while in cat form, bear form and dire bear form by 4%.

• Keystone talent. For levelling, you can use cat form as an early travel form. Also improves your survivability. Note that this speed upgrade applies even when you're stealthed (though you must still be outdoors). It also stacks with the set speed increase from the PvP armor which can put you very near the non-epic mount speed.
  • Solo Utility: Fantastic. While levelling you'll move faster, which means you'll level faster. The survivability means you'll pop out to heal less frequently (which in turn means at some point your regen exceeds your use of mana, which means you won't be drinking at all usually).
  • Raid Utility: Excellent. Two points for 4% dodge? Hell yeah.
  • PvP Utility: Moving faster while stealthed in BG's is extremely useful since players fidget and wander even when they don't know you're about to ambush them. The dodge is also handy.
• Bottom Line: A must have for nearly any feral build.

Feral Charge

Requires 10 points in Feral Talents
1 point: 5 rage, 8-25 yd range, Instant cast, 15 sec cooldown. Requires Bear Form, Dire Bear form. Causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing and interrupting any spell being cast for 4 sec.

• The talent guide on the official druid forum calls it "the game's weirdest Counterspell". It can be used to counterspell, to close quickly with an enemy, and much more, all at a pretty cheap rage cost.
  • Solo Utility: Not essential for solo play. You're probably grinding in cat form anyway.
  • Raid Utility: Good when tanking. Mobs with knockback or who change targets can be quickly charged and taunted back into control. Also a very effective way to catch runners or pull a mob off a healer.
  • PvP Utility: Fantastic. Use it to interrupt hostile spellcasters. To stop that hunter who is trying to kite you. To root an enemy flag carrier. As a kind of "bear sprint" when carrying the flag yourself. All for one point.
• Bottom Line: It's just one point, and a great power for many situations.

Sharpened Claws

Requires 10 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases your critical strike chance while in Bear, Dire Bear or Cat Form by 6%.

• In addition to being an overall DPS boost, this talent is a prerequisite for Primal Fury, which is fantastic for druids with a high crit rate. So it's a must-have for Feral druids.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special.
  • PvP Utility: Crits make your damage burstier, which helps make you less predictable and harder to fight.
• Bottom Line: Get this. If you're spending points on this tier, you'd be crazy not to.

Shredding Attacks

Requires 15 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Reduces the energy cost of your Shred ability by 18 and the rage cost of your Lacerate ability by 2.

• Important for most cat form builds, and useful for tanking.
  • Solo Utility: Druids who build and gear for Pounce/Mangle/Shred/Maim/Shred progressions can see Shred go up to as much as 15% or more of their overall DPS along with a pseudo-stunlock. Also, when combined with the Brutal Impact talent, Shred becomes just cheap enough to use twice immediately after a pounce. For most mobs, this means you have done a fair amount of damage and gained three combo points (or possibly more with Primal Fury), all before the target has had a chance to act.
  • Raid Utility: In a raid, if you're using cat form at all, this is a talent that you must have. This talent supplies the best cat form raid DPS and you get the bonus of 30% more damage when the debuff from Mangle is on your target.
  • PvP Utility: In many situations you will be using mangle instead of shred due to shred only being usable from behind a target, and the fact that the slightly lower cost on lacerate doesn't justify the talent by itself, as you won't be using it much in PvP. However, as with soloing, a pseudo-stunlock is possible using this talent that delivers significant damage, and in big melees there's a big chance of consistently attacking someone from behind during a relatively long period of time. And we all know how many runners become victims of "dash" and "shred" :).
• Bottom Line: This is a great talent for DPSing on raids, a good talent for soloing, and maybe only occasionally used for PvP. If you invest in Omen of Clarity, Brutal Impact, Primal Fury and Mangle for a "druid's answer to Assassination spec", this talent becomes an excellent investment.

Predatory Strikes

Requires 15 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases your melee attack power in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear and Moonkin Forms by 150% of your level.

• Level 70 --> 105AP --> about 7.5 DPS. An unworthy talent that you must take, as it happens to be the prerequisite for Heart of the Wild, the best druid talent ever.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing Special
  • Raid Utility: Nothing Special
  • PVP Utility: Nothing Special
• Bottom Line: If you're going for Heart of the Wild, and most druids this far into feral do, then get it.

Primal Fury

Requires 15 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Gives you a 100% chance to gain an additional 5 Rage anytime you get a critical strike while in Bear and Dire Bear Form and your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point..

• A must-have for any feral druid. For Cat Form, this talent is essentially the Seal Fate talent that rogues get. For bears, there are all kinds of tricks you can use (swipe on lots of mobs, for example) to turn this into a bottomless pit of rage. Not to mention a nice boost to your DPS.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special, though it makes a pseudo-stunlock possible with fast combo point generation and Maim. In Bear form, you can AoE farm certain mobs for rep and cash using Swipe and this talent.
  • Raid Utility: The aggro you can generate with this talent and some other typical talents is unholy. The extra combo points raises your DPS considerably-- not only do you get to Rip faster, but you reduce the number of wasteful Mangles you need to use to keep the debuff up while you Shred.
  • PvP Utility: Finishing moves like Ferocious Bite and Maim are raw burst DPS and control, so the fast combo point accumulation helps a lot. Rage is another story-- it's feast or famine anyway whether you have this talent or not.
• Bottom Line: This is a must-have.

Savage Fury

Requires 20 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Increase the damage caused by your Claw, Rake and Mangle (Cat) abilities by 20%

• This is a strong talent for cat druids, especially if you PvP. No longer the boon it once was to bear form, and therefore skippable for pure tank builds..
  • Solo Utility: Get it. It's nearly a 20% upgrade to your yellow damage for grinding.
  • Raid Utility: For cat form, in most encounters you will be Shred-spamming, making Shredding Attacks a better investment. However, maintaining the debuff requires an occasional Mangle (Cat), so you'll still see an effect.
  • PvP Utility: Dealing more damage rarely hurts. Your enemies will rarely allow you to stay in behind them after your initial ravage/pounce combo, and you'll end up spamming Rake and Mangle quite a lot.
• Bottom Line: No longer a must-have, but very useful. In PvP and solo PvE, get Savage Fury. If you're raid DPSing in cat form, get Shredding Attacks.

Faerie Fire (Feral)

Requires 20 points in Feral Talents
1 point: 30 yd range, instant cast, 6 sec cooldown. Requires Cat Form, Bear Form, Dire Bear Form. Decrease the armor of the target by 610 for 40 sec. While affected, the target cannot stealth or turn invisible.

• Unless you're going for Swiftmend and just dabble in Feral for soloing, this is a fantastic power. First, it's free. That's right, ZERO energy or rage cost. Second, it's a ranged attack in feral form. Third, it prevents stealth or invisibility.
  • Solo Utility: Get it. It's the only way you'll be able to pull in feral form. Plus a nice little debuff to marginally up your DPS.
  • Raid Utility: Get it. In raids, it's a minor increase to everyone's melee/ranged DPS. It's a small but free bonus to your aggro every six seconds. It's also a great pulling ability when tanking.
  • PvP Utility: Get it. Rogues can't vanish when they're Faerie Fired, and although it may be removed by the level 66 Rogue ability Cloak of Shadows, it's a free power which may be re-applied if the rogue returns.
• Bottom Line: Get it. It's one friggin point.

Nurturing Instinct

Requires 20 points in Feral Talents
2 points: Increases your healing spells by up to 100% of your Agility and increases healing done to you in Cat Form by 20%.

• A talent that makes your heals in full feral gear better, with potential to give you a very nice increase, however your mana pool in this armor will be another matter entirely.
  • Solo Utility: It boosts your heals by a little bit.
  • Raid Utility: Allows you to heal nicely if you have to take over the role when in feral-spec gear, however your mana pool in this armor will again be too small to allow to heal for very long. The Cat Form bonus is a nice helping hand to the healer, however.
  • PvP Utility: This talent may improve your survivability greatly depending on your playstyle. For example, you can drop heal over time spells on yourself, then shift to cat form, and your heal over time spells will gain the 20% bonus. This, combined with the agility bonus, can make for some very powerful self heals. Also the 20% cat form bonus stacks with leader of the pack. Setup some macros to switch to healing weapons while dropping heal over time spells for yet an additional bonus.
• Bottom Line: Now active all the time, these points might now be worth taking as they allow you to be a bit more efficient. Useful but never essential. You might consider investing points into Naturalist in the restoration tree instead.

Heart of the Wild

Requires 25 points in Feral Talents
Requires 3 points in Predatory Strikes
5 points: Increase your Intellect by 20%. In addition, while in Bear or Dire Bear Form your Stamina is increased by 20%, and while in Cat Form your Attack Power is increased by 10%.

• This is the key talent of the Feral tree. As the official talent guide puts it, "this talent makes you 20% more druid."
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Even if you are a healer in raids, this mana boost is huge, especially since it scales well with gear. The stamina is essential for tanking. The attack power is great for DPSing. And it all scales with gear.
  • PvP Utility: More AP = more damage. More damage = faster kills.
• Bottom Line: Clutch. Must-have. If you're this far into Feral, get it. It helps every playstyle and every build.
• Note: Prior to Patch 2.3, Strength in Cat Form was increased by 4/8/12/16/20%, but was change to increased Attack Power by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Survival of the Fittest

Requires 25 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases attributes by 3% and reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 3%.

• Not bad, not bad at all. The 3% to attributes will barely be noticeable, it is the 3% to avoid crits that makes the talent. With an understanding of how the attack table works, a druid tanking in PvE can give a warrior a very strong run for his money in overall mitigation.
  • Solo Utility: Nice, but not essential.
  • Raid Utility: It's essential for any raid tank to be able to "push critical hits off the table" by acquiring enough defense. Usually tanks need +140 defense to be uncrittable, this talent reduces that need to +65.
  • PvP Utility: Very nice talent to have. One of the key benefits of resilience is the crit chance reduction. In that respect, this pushes the envelope even further, increasing your survivability.
• Bottom Line: Must have if you plan a lot of tanking in heroic or raid instances, otherwise you can safely pass this talent.

Primal Tenacity

Requires 30 points in Feral Talents
3 points: Increases your chance to resist Stun and Fear mechanics by 15%.

• Good talent, nice low cost.
  • Solo Utility: When soloing, if this were important you'd need a lot more resistance to rely on it.
  • Raid Utility: For tanking, some bosses make heavy use of fear. Since druids can't stance-dance like warriors, they have a harder time tanking these bosses. This talent won't change that, but might help you if you need to temporarily pick up aggro. This talent also helps with threat generation against mobs with stuns. Stuns early in fights can be extremely dangerous for a party since the tank can't generate very much threat while stunned. If you're DPSing in Cat Form, this will help you resist any AoE Fear that may be happening, allowing you to continue attacking uninterrupted.
  • PvP Utility: This talent owns. Against warlocks and rogues especially you'll spend a good part of your time feared or stunned. Other classes can do similar things. This talent helps break their control over the fight.
• Bottom Line: For PVP, definitely. For everyone else, if there's room.

Leader of the Pack

Requires 30 points in Feral Talents
1 point: While in Cat, Bear or Dire Bear Form, the Leader of the Pack increases the ranged and melee critical chance of all party members within 45 yards by 5%.

• Excellent talent. Not only are crits good, but with Primal Fury you're getting free Rage/Combo Points out of it.
  • Solo Utility: You blew three points into Sharpened Claws, didn't you? This is nearly the same for only one point.
  • Raid Utility: This is why feral druids are loved by melee DPS groups. It's great for you, great for them.
  • PvP Utility: Also great. Crits = burstiness, and PVP is all about bursty damage. In battlegrounds you'll find fewer of your party members are close by though.
• Bottom Line: Take this talent.

Improved Leader of the Pack

Requires 30 points in Feral Talents
Requires 1 point in Leader of the Pack
2 points: Your Leader of the Pack ability also causes affected targets to have a 100% chance to heal themselves for 4% of their total health when they critically hit with a melee or ranged attack. The healing effect cannot occur more than once every 6 sec.

• This talent requires three things: first, that the members of your party be white-damage types and second, that they be critting fairly often, and third, that their hitpoint totals be relatively high. With the Burning Crusade changes to stamina on gear, it's pretty much godly.
  • Solo Utility: This is a good grinding talent. With this you won't have to pop out to heal between fights. On long fights in bear form, you can get a lot of staying power.
  • Raid Utility: Makes fights much easier on healers, Melee DPS can now continue to heal themselves and continue to do damage. Useful for fights like Lothaeb where normal healing isn't possible, and helps keep a DPS group up while healers concentrate on the MT.
  • PvP Utility: Eh. When you take damage at all you'll take way more than this talent will help.
• Bottom Line: Good in solo play, great for raiding.

Predatory Instincts

Requires 35 points in Feral Talents
5 points: Increases your critical strike damage bonus with melee attacks by 10% and your chance to avoid area of effect attacks by 15%.

• This talent provides a decent mix of offensive and defensive capability. The bonus on the damage done by crits is nice (the talent is different from the Rogue/warrior versions Impale/Lethality, it adds a direct 10% damage to a crit, which means 200% * 1.1 = 220%). Though not large for where it is on the talent tree, the 11% bonus to crits from other talents make the bonus to overall damage substantial. The resistance to AOE is situational but comes up more often than one would expect. This talent does not stack with Primal Tenacity.
  • Solo Utility: Soloing, you won't notice much of a difference. But DPS is DPS.
  • Raid Utility: In raids, much of the damage that the damage dealers receive is from AOE, so this talent helps a lot. Since druids cannot directly mitigate magical damage like warriors in defensive stance, this talent is very strong for tanking bosses with AOE magic effects.
  • PvP Utility: Gives you a decent shot at avoiding the many AOE spells and effects that you will come across in PvP, especially by giving you a shot to stay in stealth while in the proximity of one. Also ups your burst damage a bit.
• Bottom Line: A solid talent for almost any build for bridging the gap to Mangle.

Mangle

Requires 40 points in Feral Talents
Requires 1 point in Leader of the Pack
1 points: Mangle the target, inflicting damage and causing the target to take additional damage from bleed effects for 10 sec. This ability can be used in Cat Form or Dire Bear Form.
Mangle (Bear): 20 rage, 5 yd range, instant cast, 6 sec cooldown, requires Dire Bear Form. Mangle the target for 115% normal damage plus 155 and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from Shred and bleed effects for 12 sec. Generates a high amount of threat.
Mangle (Cat): 45 Energy, 5 yd range, Instant, Requires Cat Form. Mangle the target for 160% normal damage plus 264 and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from Shred and bleed effects for 12 sec. Awards 1 combo point.

• This is a phenomenal talent for all seasons. For cat form, this is a replacement and upgrade to Claw, which does more damage and accentuates your DOTs and Shreds. For bear form, it provides a much more powerful, high aggro attack to burn that extra rage, and enhances the damage and aggro generated by lacerate.
  • Solo Utility: More DPS = better soloing.
  • Raid Utility: More DPS = more aggro in bear form, also boosts overall dps from rogues or warriors that use bleed effects. With the recent Mangle (Bear) nerf, the damage is lower but the aggro remains considerable. Cat forms with appropriate spec and build can compete successfully with comparably equipped rogues.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing Special, though you'll have higher DPS with some burst capability. Mangle doesn't hit quite as hard as it used to, but it is still quite powerful. It still manages to completely replace Claw in Cat form.
• Bottom Line: For a full frontal feral build, this is a critical talent. Get it.

Restoration

Improved Mark of the Wild

5 points: Increases the effects of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells by 35%.

• This talent isn't as powerful as it sounds. +35% is worth 119 armor, +5 to all stats, and 9 resist, all at the cost of 5 talent points.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: If someone needs a rebuff from a druid who doesn't have as many points invested in this talent as the one who initially buffed the person, the spell will not work. With the normal reshuffling of players that happens as you reorganize for different fights, this comes up all the time. Usually you can't convince the raid leaders to let all druids go without this talent, so for political reasons many druids will have to put 5 points into it.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: Since you have to have 5 points in the first tier to get to the second tier, this talent is required for all Restoration druids and Raiding Moonkin. Feral druids can pass it by for Furor.

Furor

5 points: Gives you a 100% chance to gain 10 rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form or 40 Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form.

• This is a damn good talent for Feral Druids that is under-rated because so many raiders have to buy Improved Mark of the Wild.
  • Solo Utility: OK, you've just shifted out, healed yourself, and are ready to shift back. What now? Well, if you have this talent, instead of starting with an empty energy/rage bar, you start with enough to get a special move off or two.
  • Raid Utility: Good for emergency rage or energy, especially for bears who are out of rage. However, not necessarily needed if you are a Restoration Druid, as you will almost never change into cat or bear forms during a raid or party.
  • PVP Utility: Fantastic. Druids shift all the time in PVP, to escape roots and snares, to break a polymorph, to do an insta-heal. That 10 rage or 40 energy comes in damn handy when you return to feral form.
• Bottom Line: If you're Feral, then you want this. Even resto druids have to grind once in a while. PvE Balance should pass it by. PvP Balance should pick it up; with this talent and a macro to shift into bear form, Bash, then shift back out, it's a spell interrupt.

Naturalist

Requires 5 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: Reduces the cast time of your Healing Touch spell by 0.5 sec and increases the damage you deal with physical attacks in all forms by 10%.

• This used to be two talents, for a total of ten points. Those were ten points well spent then, and they're five points very well spent now. Faster healing touch and a flat DPS upgrade, what's not to like?
  • Solo Utility: Very handy for full resto builds, as this is one of the few talents that will improve your combat skills. Also one of the better feral talents.
  • Raid Utility: Healing Touch takes forever to cast; it's one of your biggest weaknesses as a healer. This talent fixes that. Expendable talent, however, if you are going for Tree of Life form. If you are feral it's a must, 10% increase to all your DPS is always good.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: Restoration druids should get it. Great for a feral dabbling in healing, or a feral who just likes doing 10% more damage. Generally taken by raiding Moonkin to get to the tier 3 Resto talents.

Nature's Focus

Requires 5 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: Gives you a 70% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting the Healing Touch, Regrowth and Tranquility spells.

• This is another great talent to have.
  • Solo Utility: Very useful since you'll always have aggro while healing, particularly when Barkskin is on cooldown.
  • Raid Utility: Not as useful, since you won't usually have aggro. But there are lots of times when adds jump on you or AOE damage slows your casting and you'll be glad you had this talent.
  • PVP Utility: Awesome. People see you healing and they will start beating on you. Sadly, this talent won't help you defeat interrupts like Counterspell, Kick or Earth Shock.
• Bottom Line: It's well worth the investment, even if you raid.

Natural Shapeshifter

Requires 5 points in Restoration Talents
3 points: Reduces the mana cost of all shapeshifting by 30%.

• Shapeshifting is expensive, so cutting costs on it will help your mana supply. But, how much this discount is worth it depends on your play style.
  • Solo Utility: Solo players shift once in a while, so a moderate discount is to be had here. Druids with little or no investment in balance or feral trees will however need this, having to shift and heal themselves more often due to their limited capability to inflict damage.
  • Raid Utility: Raiding druids hardly ever shift-- your gear and strategy will have you doing one thing in one form. So you won't see much benefit here at all.
  • PVP Utility: PVPing druids shift all the time, repeatedly and spastically. You shift as the situation changes, you shift to break certain attacks, you shift to escape vulnerability to other attacks. This discount is gargantuan for the PVP druid, especially ferals who won't have a big mana pool to throw around.
• Bottom Line: Whether this talent is worth it depends on your play focus. You will notice the difference even with less than all 3 points so you might consider investing partially into this talent as a way to open up other talents if you need to. This is a major boon to Moonkin Form and Tree of Life Form; lower mana costs for shapeshifting means more is mana available when you go into Moonkin or Tree of Life Form.

Intensity

Requires 10 points in Restoration Talents
3 points: Allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting and causes your Enrage ability to instantly generate 10 rage.

• Again, this used to be two talents, which were mostly worth it even then. The mana regen helps both Balance and Restoration specialists greatly. The enrage bonus is a bit more situational.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: A must have for Moonkin and Resto druids. Raiding is all about mana efficiency and regeneration, and this talent delivers. Ferals also enjoy the improvement to Enrage, as they can put out a little more aggro at the beginning of a fight, but don't need it tremendously. They won't be spending nearly as much time in caster form, too.
  • PVP Utility: Mana regeneration in PVP is a nice-to-have. But for a bear druid, Enrage delivers enough instant rage for a special move, and is critical, especially when you're being kited or feared around and your rage isn't building normally.
• Bottom Line: Well worth it, especially for raiding Casters. It's also a prerequisite for Nature's Swiftness, so even if those three points did nothing whatsoever, it would still be worth taking.
• Note: Prior to Patch 2.3, mana regeneration while casting was increased by 5/10/15%, but is now increased to 10/20/30% while casting.

Subtlety

Requires 10 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: Reduces the threat generated by your spells by 20% and reduces the chance your healing spells will be dispelled by 30%.

• This talent reduces threat, some may like it, some may find it useless.
  • Solo Utility: When soloing, you're the only one with aggro anyway. And very few soloable mobs use dispel.
  • Raid Utility: A handful of mobs have dispel effects, but not many. And if you're pulling aggro healing, it is the problem of your tanks, not you. Balance druids should consider this talent a must-have, because unlike many other DPS classes, moonkin have no aggro clear.
  • PVP Utility: Threat is irrelevant in PVP, but while the dispel resistance is nice, if you're going to be dispelled at all, it is usually spammed on you which makes this talent irrelevant. However, anti-dispel is great for intensive PvP fight like arena, where every move counts. If the dispeller wastes a global cooldown on your healing over time spell, they have less chance to dispel more useful buffs, like blessings, or Bloodlust.
• Bottom Line: For soloing, or PvP, not worth it. Essential for raiding Moonkin.

Omen of Clarity

Requires 10 points in Restoration Talents
1 point: 120 mana, instant cast. Imbues the druid with natural energy. Each of the druid's melee attacks has a chance of causing the caster to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next damage or healing spell or offensive ability by 100%. Lasts 30 min.

• This is an interesting power. It is very popular with Feral Druids, but is rarely taken by Resto or Balance druids because they rarely melee a target. You can use it either to up your DPS, or (when timed appropriately) to shift out and get a heal off for free. It proc's about twice a minute.
  • Solo Utility: Very useful for mana efficiency when grinding in feral forms, but also handy for healing yourself mid-fight. Single most efficient upgrade for cat DPS (apart from Mangle). Useful to moonkin druids who are meleeing for mana, if it procs you have a free heal when you're done
  • Raid Utility: Great for aggro generation and cat DPS. Casters won't usually be close enough to hit a mob and will be spamming nukes or heals anyway, so far less useful for casters.
  • PVP Utility: Minor-- if you are nuker or healer. However, a free shred or mangle from a cat is devastating. In arenas, it also serves as dispel fodder.
• Bottom Line: A must have for feral druids, but is less useful for Balance or Resto druids.

Tranquil Spirit

Requires 15 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: Reduces the mana cost of your Healing Touch and Tranquility spells by 10%.

• Healing is all about mana efficiency, and this is a flat improvement to it.
  • Solo Utility: You won't be healing yourself that often, and with plenty of time to regen between heals, this isn't as important a talent.
  • Raid Utility: Very nice. 10% lower costs for Healing Touch mean 10% more staying power. Less useful now that druids are moving towards Heal Over Time spells, but still a worthy investment if you plan on casting Healing Touch a lot. Its usefulness is further reduced if you're built for Tree of Life healing, since Healing Touch cannot be cast in Tree form.
  • PVP Utility: Crap. Even if you are a PVP healer, healing is already relatively efficient. The points are better spent elsewhere.
• Bottom Line: You probably won't be using either enough to make this worthwhile.

Improved Rejuvenation

Requires 15 points in Restoration Talents
3 points: Increases the effect of your Rejuvenation spell by 15%.

• Rejuvenation has taken on new importance with the post-2.0 stacking of heals over time, but even before it was a staple druid healing spell.
  • Solo Utility: Useful situationally, but probably not useful enough to blow three points into it.
  • Raid Utility: Essential. If you go for Tree of Life, you'll be casting this spell all the time, and 15% is a lot of healing. With stacking heals over time, you can even use this to bear the brunt of main tank healing. Plus it's a prerequisite for Improved Regrowth, another talent with great Tree form synergies.
  • PVP Utility: The spell is useful for heals on the run, but again, maybe not useful enough to blow points on.
• Bottom Line: If you're going to be doing healing in raids or going deep into the Restoration tree, then go for it.

Nature's Swiftness

Requires 20 points in Restoration Talents
1 point: Instant, 3 min cooldown. When activated, your next Nature spell becomes an instant cast spell.

• This mostly includes heals, but will also work with roots, Hibernate and Wrath (among others). Instant cast lets you avoid spell interruption, cast on the run, and get a spell off now. Force of Nature and Mangle must contend against this spell even in Balance and Feral builds. It's that good.
  • Solo Utility: Great to have, but not really essential. Just yet another way to get a heal off, then be back to DPSing immediately.
  • Raid Utility: Damn useful. Some call it a crutch, but in raids the main tank is always a bad run of crushing blows or crits away from an emergency. Druids don't get emergency management spells except through talents, and this is a great way to save the day. Even feral hybrids can use this to pop out, save the main tank, and then get back to business.
  • PVP Utility: Again, incredibly handy. Insta-heals while flag running, fighting, etc are an awesome source of a "free extra life". Also, popping an insta-hibernate on a flag running druid is a rude way to bring their feral career to a screeching halt.
• Bottom Line: If you're this far into Restoration, get this talent. One of the best in the game. Even non-healers can find lots of opportunities to use this.

Gift of Nature

Requires 20 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: Increases the effect of all healing spells by 10%.

• For healers, another way to make your mana go further and your heals hit harder.
  • Solo Utility: Like most Restoration talents, not as useful for soloing.
  • Raid Utility: Like most Restoration talents, incredibly useful for raid healing.
  • PVP Utility: Depends on your build-- but more powerful heals tend not to matter as much as getting even a weaker spell off quickly.
• Bottom Line: A solid part of a Restoration build. Also a prerequisite for Swiftmend, which is a fantastic talent.

Improved Tranquility

Requires 20 points in Restoration Talents
2 points: Reduces the threat caused by Tranquility by 100%.

• How often do you cast Tranquility? Yeah, I didn't think so.
  • Solo Utility: Nothing special.
  • Raid Utility: Nothing special-- you can spread Rejuvenation over a whole group (not just your own) about as quickly and without the chance of being interrupted.
  • PVP Utility: Threat doesn't matter anyway in PVP, and Tranquility rarely used there.
• Bottom Line: Not worth it even for Restoration builds.
• Second Opinion: As of 1.12, Tranquility was buffed to do a lot more healing per second. If your group finds itself low on hp, Tranquility will often save the day, ticking for around 2k health every two seconds. However, that much healing will generate A LOT of threat (AoEs cause a lot of threat, Healing causes a lot of threat; an AoE heal... Tanks would kill to be able to cause that much threat). As resto druids may not find better talents available to them, this talent is a decent choice as casting Tranquity now is pretty much an AoE Taunt.
• Third Opinion: On the other hand, an interesting strategy for a tanking druid to gain EXTREMELY dominant threat is to pop out and cast tranquility. Or for a druid taking over tanking to do the same. This talent makes that strategy useless, and therefore, this talent CAN be a liability.
• (to Third Opinion) as long as tank druid don't have enough ponits to get or even think to get this talent, that your comment was no point at all

Empowered Touch

Requires 25 points in Restoration Talents
2 points: Your Healing Touch spell gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects.

• A somewhat strange power. You aren't going to have it unless you're deep in the Restoration tree, unlike the other Healing Touch talents that are easy for other spec's to grab. But Restoration specialists are often going for Tree of Life, a form where you can't cast this at all. This talent is sometimes taken by Dreamstate healing druids who use healing touch as their main heal.
  • Solo Utility: As with most Restoration talents, not terribly helpful soloing.
  • Raid Utility: Useful if you're stopping short of Tree of Life, perhaps for a modified mana efficiency (Balance/Restoration) build.
  • PVP Utility: Nothing special.
• Bottom Line: You can safely skip this talent unless you are leaning hard on Healing Touch for your heals. In that case, go wild once you have the gear to take advantage of it.

Improved Regrowth

Requires 25 points in Restoration Talents
Requires 3 points in Improved Rejuvenation
5 points: Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth spell by 50%.

• Regrowth is an interesting bird. It starts as a slightly faster-cast heal that is incredibly inefficient. With relentless investment in the Restoration tree, though, it turns into a powerful tool in your healing arsenal. The secret is that over time, those Regrowth crits will on average deliver more healing for the mana. Plus the heal over time effect, although it doesn't crit, will deliver a useful supplement to your Rejuvenation ticks.
  • Solo Utility: In solo play, you're not going to care about Regrowth crits.
  • Raid Utility: Combined with Tree of Life, you can buff this enough to make this a potent replacement for Healing Touch. Still not spammable except as a raid patch, but an important supplement to Lifebloom and Rejuvenation stacking.
  • PVP Utility: This is the only fast cast heal you have. If you plan to be a PvP healer, this is one of a few must have talent in restoration tree.
• Bottom Line: If you go Tree of Life, get it. If not, it's more of a tossup.

Living Spirit

Requires 30 points in Restoration Talents
3 points: Increases your total Spirit by 15%.

• This is obviously another healer-focused power. On the surface, it gives you raw non-casting mana regen and bigger innervates. With talents like Intensity, you'll get a boost to your in-combat mana regeneration, too. But the real use here is with Tree of Life. 25% of that extra Spirit will go directly into more +healing for your entire group. If you have 300 spirit (very feasible even for people who aren't well geared after buffs are considered), this talent gives you 75 more spirit, or about +19 healing to your group in Tree form.
  • Solo Utility: None, really.
  • Raid Utility: Useful whether you get Tree of Life or not. While Tree of Life does gain much more of a benefit, everyone can take advantage of the extra spirit with some more regen.
  • PVP Utility: None.
• Bottom Line: If you're not healing in a raid, skip it. Otherwise the additional Sprit will be more than welcomed. Remember that the more Spirit you have, the more this talent will benefit you.

Swiftmend

Requires 30 points in Restoration Talents
Requires 5 points in Gift of Nature
1 point: 16% of base Mana, 40 yd range, instant cast, 15 sec cooldown. Consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on a friendly target to instantly heal them an amount equal to 12 sec of Rejuvenation or 18 sec of Regrowth.

• To make the description more plain, this spell removes a heal over time buff from the target and gives them that whole heal buff all at once-- even if the HOT has mostly run its course. It's basically a complicated insta-heal, great for handling emergencies and keeping tanks up.
  • Solo Utility: While not designed for soloing, you could use this as a kind of poor man's Nature's Swiftness heal. 15 seconds is a much shorter cooldown than 3 minutes.
  • Raid Utility: Fantastic for healing raids-- you finally get an emergency measure with a reasonable cooldown. Perfect for main tank healing. And (unlike Nature's Swiftness-->Healing Touch) usable in Tree of Life form.
  • PVP Utility: Useful also, since you can cast it on the run. Don't you dare try to carry a flag like this, but keeping a flag carrier up with Swiftmend is very doable. Or, better yet, use it to keep people up defending flags in any battleground.
• Bottom Line: If you're this far into Restoration, it would be criminal not to get Swiftmend. I think you can actually be arrested in some jurisdictions for having Tree of Life and not having Swiftmend.

Natural Perfection

Requires 30 points in Restoration Talents
3 points: Your critical strike chance with all spells is increased by 3% and grants the Natural Perfection effect after being critically hit, reducing all damage taken by 5% for 8 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.

• This talent appears to be a pvp oriented talent. Being that it is so high in restor, it may be more attuned to raiding restor/balance specs, or for a pvp healer.
  • Solo Utility: Lacks use in general. But the 3% chance to crit isn't completely useless if you're working on solo content as a resto druid.
  • Raid Utility: Not too useful, unless you are, for some reason, really interested on increasing by 3% your Regrowth crits.
  • PVP Utility: If you are a PVP healer, this is an important talent. To get an equal amount of crit damage reduction at level 70, 3 stacks up, you would need 295 resilience rating. (Note that this talent doesn't affect crit frequency or DoT effects, though.)
• Bottom Line: Primarily useful for reducing incoming burst damage in PVP.

Empowered Rejuvenation

Requires 35 points in Restoration Talents
5 points: The bonus healing effects of your healing over time spells is increased by 20%.

• This helps not just Rejuvenation, but also Regrowth and Lifebloom. Since you'll be loading up on +Healing just from Tree of Life, not to mention all your +healing gear, this is a great talent.
  • Solo Utility: Again, healing isn't terribly useful for soloing.
  • Raid Utility: A great talent to boost your already powerful +healing effects.
  • PVP Utility: Not terribly useful, but necessary to get to Tree of Life, which in PVP can be useful for defense in BG's.
• Bottom Line: If you're going for Tree of Life, you have to get it.
• second opinion : if you want to have PVP resto spec and even not to get tree of life,you should consider this, because you will often run and spam HOT's on you and others.. with this +20% better. (and ofc from better HOT's is better swiftmend)

Tree of Life

Requires 40 points in Restoration Talents
Requires 5 points in Empowered Rejuvenation
1 point: 28% of base Mana, Instant cast. Transforms the Druid into the Tree of Life Form. While in this form you increase healing received by 25% of your total Spirit for all party members within 45 yards, your movement speed is reduced by 20%, and you can only cast Swiftmend, Innervate , Nature's Swiftness , Rebirth , Barkskin , poison removing and healing over time spells, but the mana cost of these spells is reduced by 20%. The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.

• Tree of Life is primarily a raid healing form. Even though the druid does not have access to the Healing Touch spell in this form, efficient HoT spells due to its inherent bonuses (Lifebloom has an outstanding health-per-mana ratio), combined with a wise use of Swiftmend, make a very solid main healer. When paired with another healer that uses fast-casting direct heals, such as a Paladin, Shaman, or Priest, a druid in Tree of Life form is arguably the best possible raid-wide healer in a raid setting. The aura, combined with the 20% mana cost reduction to HoTs, the ability to use innervate, and the extra incentive (Living Spirit talent, bonus to Tree of Life aura) to acquire large amounts of spirit gives this form incredible longevity while healing in a raid setting.
• What you lose is that you can not use Healing Touch.
• Don't let the movement speed reduction fool you. Even though it's a considerable limitation under certain circumstances, most of your healing will be done through instant spells, so you can, for example, spam rejuvenations in anticipation of an AoE attack while taking cover yourself.
  • Solo Utility: This form is tailor-made to not be solo-friendly.
  • Raid Utility: Healing-wise, the Tree of Life form drastically improves healing output (both by reducing the own mana costs and by increasing healing done to party members). In fights where utility or movement are important, it can safely be deactivated.
  • PvP Utility: It increases the potential healing at cost of flexibility. An important note is that in Tree of Life form, the caster is considered elemental, not humanoid, and can be banished by warlocks. Also, due to the 20% movement speed reduction, it's best to stay in caster form in fast moving places like Alterac Valley, Arena, World PvP, etc.
• Bottom Line: If you're this far in and aren't interested in solo potential, it's probably a good option to have.

See also

• Druid builds
• Druid talents

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