What the datamined Druid changes mean for a Boomkin/Resto hybrid.

If you’ve been anywhere near the Forever forums this weekend you’ll have seen the Restoration Druid threads (the ones with words like gutted in the title), and if you were planning a Balance/Restoration hybrid rather than a dedicated healer you’re probably wondering whether the plan still holds. None of it is official patch notes, it’s a set of hotfixes pulled out of the client’s cache days before launch on the 4th of November, so some of it can still move, however it’s close enough to live that I think it’s worth planning around. This post walks through the changes that matter to a Balance/Resto build and gives you my read on each of them.

Whilst I’ve been theorycrafting this build for a while and intend to play it in duels and battlegrounds from the day Restokins hits 60, nobody has played any of this on a live level 60 character yet (the game isn’t out), and that includes me. Treat what follows as a starting position rather than a verdict, and expect me to correct some of it in print once the fights start.

What Actually Changed

The full list is on wowforevertalents.com and foreverchanges.pro, both of which read the hotfix cache directly, and Warden’s thread on the official forums is where most of the healer reaction lives. For a hybrid, the changes that matter are the following:

• Swiftmend consumes your HoT again, and it has to be your own Rejuvenation or Regrowth rather than one another Druid put up. The beta version left the HoT (heal over time) ticking underneath, which made Swiftmend close to free, and that version is gone.
• Gift of the Earthmother is now Bloom, in the same slot. Instead of taking half a second off the global cooldown of Rejuvenation, Swiftmend and Wild Growth, it heals the target for 100% of your Spirit when a Rejuvenation or Regrowth runs its full duration (50% if it was dispelled instead).
• Naturalist and Genesis both doubled, from 5% to 10%. Naturalist now adds 10% to all of your damage and Genesis adds 10% to periodic damage and healing, so Moonfire, Insect Swarm and Rejuvenation all tick harder.
• Heart of the Wild and Furor swapped trees, with Heart of the Wild now in Restoration and Furor now in Feral. Reflection also moved up a row in Restoration, trading places with Subtlety.
• Wild Growth has a 3 second cast (2.5 with Naturalist), which is where most of the forum anger sits, and which was never part of an 18-point Restoration investment anyway.

Notably, some of what’s being discussed as new isn’t. Improved Wrath cutting Wrath’s mana cost by 50% at 5/5, Moonglow’s larger cost reduction, and Nature’s Grasp and Omen of Clarity coming from the trainer were all in Forever before this weekend, so if your build leaned on those, nothing has moved.

Swiftmend Is a Decision Now

In my opinion, and it is an opinion, the Swiftmend change matters most to this build and it’s also the one I mind least. Essentially the beta Swiftmend was a free instant heal every 15 seconds as long as a Rejuvenation was ticking, and free instant heals get pressed, which cost a global, some mana and a Wrath you didn’t cast every single time. A Swiftmend that costs me the HoT underneath it is one I’ll save for the moment it changes the result of a fight, and that’s where I wanted it anyway. It’s a decision now, not a button.

That said, it was never only the cost of Swiftmend. Moonkin Form blocks healing spells, so an emergency heal on this build is a shift out, a Rejuvenation, a Swiftmend and a shift back in, and even with Natural Shapeshifter taking 30% off each shift (at 3/3) that’s a meaningful amount of mana. The change doesn’t make that sequence worse, it makes it something you do deliberately, and I’m comfortable trading healing frequency for offensive uptime. I’m keeping Swiftmend, and I’d be wary of anyone telling you to drop it because the build is damage first.

Bloom and the Spirit Problem

Bloom is where I think the hybrid gets quietly worse. It scales with Spirit, and a Balance PvP set at 60 is built around spell damage, Intellect and Stamina, so call it 120 Spirit as a rough figure (I’ll correct this once I’ve seen real gear totals). That makes Bloom a 120 heal when a Rejuvenation runs its full 12 seconds, on top of a Rejuvenation that heals for 888 over that time (rank 11’s Classic figure, the best number I have until launch), so roughly 13% extra - and only if you let the HoT expire. Swiftmend eats the same HoT, so on any given Rejuvenation you get Bloom or you get Swiftmend, never both. For a dedicated healer with 300 Spirit letting HoTs run out on purpose, that’s a real talent. For us it’s a point spent on the way to Swiftmend that does very little.

So my current thinking is to test moving that point into Overgrowth, which lets you keep Entangling Roots on a second target at once, turning 33/0/18 into 34/0/17. I haven’t committed to it and won’t until I’ve run both in Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, however think about which of the two changes a fight. A 120 heal doesn’t win a base defence against two attackers. A second set of Roots very well might.

The Damage Side

Naturalist doubling is the change I’d call a straight gift. If you’re taking Restoration deep enough for Swiftmend you were already passing through Naturalist, and it has gone from 5% to 10% on everything you cast without costing you a point. On a Wrath that would have landed for 300, that’s 330 rather than 315, every cast, on top of what Moonfury already gives you. Genesis pays the same way on Moonfire and Insect Swarm, and the way I use those is to put them up once and leave them alone whilst I cast Wrath rather than refreshing them on cooldown, so a harder tick is worth more to me than a cheaper reapplication would be (it also improves the Rejuvenation sitting under your Swiftmend, which softens the first change a little).

All of this to say, the datamine took healing throughput away from the hybrid and handed some of it back as damage, which for a build whose whole philosophy is making the other player respond to you rather than the reverse is close to the trade I’d have asked for.

The Tree Swaps and Reflection

Furor leaving Restoration closes a door I’d been looking at. At 5/5 it gives you 10 Rage the moment you shift into Bear Form, which means a Bash on arrival instead of waiting to build Rage, and that’s very attractive in a duel. With Furor in Feral and zero Feral points in this build it’s off the table, so Bear Form stays a survival tool for us rather than a control opener, and your melee matchups should be planned around that.

Heart of the Wild arriving in Restoration opens a different one. At 5/5 it’s 10% Intellect and 20% Stamina whilst in Bear Form, which is a bigger mana pool and a far sturdier bear, and if you want to carry flags it’s probably the right call. For me it competes for points with Nature’s Focus, and I’m keeping Nature’s Focus, because a 70% chance to ignore pushback (the delay added to your cast each time you take damage) on every Wrath is worth more over a long fight than Barkskin covering 15 seconds in every 60.

Reflection moving up a row is small but welcome, because I was always taking it at 3/3. Half of your Spirit regeneration continuing whilst you cast sounds modest, however duels are decided after both players have spent their cooldowns, by whoever still has the mana to keep fighting, and at 60 mana per five seconds that’s 30 every five seconds whilst casting, 360 a minute and 1,080 over a three-minute duel. With Improved Wrath halving the cost of Wrath that’s a lot of extra casts. Think in total useful casts, not peak damage.

Should You Re-Plan?

Before you move a single point, ask yourself a few things. Were you healing because the fight needed it, or because Swiftmend was free? Do you lose your duels on mana or on health? When your last base defence went wrong, would a 120 heal have changed it, or would a second target in Roots? If your answers point at damage and control, I think the hybrid came out of this weekend fine, and arguably slightly ahead. If they point at healing throughput, the hybrid was never going to give you that, and the datamine has made it less forgiving about it.

Ultimately, if you’ve weighed the above and you still want to play a Druid that hits first and heals when it counts, then I wish you every success with it, and I’d like to see how your version of the tree shakes out. You can find me live weekdays at lunchtime (AEST) on the stream, where I’ll be testing all of this for real from the moment Restokins hits 60.

For the thinking behind the hybrid itself, read the Restokin approach.