I’ve honestly never been a big fan of sites that tell you how to spec your character, but this little website of mine is starting to get more popular and I’m getting a lot of questions about “How should I spec for Raids” or “Why did you choose this talent” so I figured it was about time I made a post about my spec. I’ll perhaps follow up with a post on glyphing and gemming in the near future, on days I have less new content to write about.

So, for people who prefer to look at it in “talent tree” style, here is my spec (Jan 19, 2010 — currently in 3.3.0)

Now I’ll go into my choices a little bit more, so you can understand why I did what I did, and decide if you want to choose the same things as me, or if you think it would be better to make some modifications for your style of healing

Balance Tree

5/5 Genesis – Well, this increases our periodic healing by 5% and we all know how much of our healing is HoTs!

3/3 Moonglow – A 9% reduction in mana cost to most of my spells is always handy in long fights

2/2 Nature’s Majesty - Ok, the 4% crit on Nourish and HT dosen’t hurt… but mostly this is just to get us down to the next level.

1/1 Nature’s Splendor – This is a no-brainer, and a must have… add more time to your HoTs.

Before the GotEM nerf, this is where I stopped on this tree.  If you have 856 haste or above, you can stop here!  If you are not at that haste, we’ll continue down the balance tree a little bit more. Read more about Haste!

3/3 Nature’s Grace – If you happen to be nourish spamming, this is defiantly helpful.  It has come in handy for me on some occasions but, as mention above, you are mainly using it to reach Celestial Focus.  Update: Although I did not have this talent before GotEM’s change, I’ve decided to keep it despite being haste capped.  Occasionally I’m spamming out regrowths, and frankly the talents I’m missing out on, on the resto tree, aren’t that appealing anyway!

1/3 Brambles – This is defiantly a filler click.  It coulda gone anywhere on this tree, I threw it here because our paladin tank is always bugging me for thorns so I thought, what the heck!

3/3 Celestial Focus – And this ladies and gentlemen is what we came this far down for… not the push back… the 3% spell haste.  Again, if you are at or above 856 haste, read what I said above, you shouldn’t bother coming down here!

Restoration Tree

2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild – OMG 2% to stats!?!

3/3 Nature’s Focus – Well… normally I’m casting instant things anyway but… so this is a bit filler-ish… but still, I guess I occasionally cast these things so it’s not totally wasted!

3/3 Subtlety – Yeah, it reduces threat… usually not an issue… helps prevent dispel… also not a huge issue outside of PvP but… better than the other choices on the tree so three of three it is!

3/3 Natural Shapeshifter – simply to get us to the next skill down

3/3 Intensity – Dear God, thank you for spirit based mana regen, I will always be a spirit whore.

1/1 Omen of Clarity – Free spells are good, and it procs a lot

2/2 Master Shapeshifter – Adds an extra 4%

3/3 Improved Rejuvenation – Should I increase the effectiveness of my most cast spell?  Yeah, probably

1/1 Nature’s Swiftness – I have this macroed to healing touch and I call it my “Oh F*ck” Button.  Nice in an emergency!

5/5 Gift of Nature – Um, duh?

5/5 Nature’s Bounty – Yeah, I’ve said I don’t cast these a lot, but when I do, it’s probably because my HoTs are behind and I really need them to crit!

3/3 Living Spirit – No really, I’m a spirit whore, I can’t get enough…

1/1 Swiftmend –  I use this a lot, its great to “catch up” when HoTs fall behind, and even more amazing when glyphed!

5/5 Empowered Rejuvenation – Again, Duh?!?

3/3 Living Seed – I know you’ll see some druids skipping this talent, and that’s fine.  I choose to keep it in, it’s nice in some situations.  I’m not gonna say it’s an amazing must-have talent though

1/1 Tree of Life – Some of these talents… really need no explanation…

3/3 Improved Tree of Life – Yeah so, the official math is: spirit whore + living spirit + improve ToL = Win!

5/5 Gift of the Earthmother – Hi, I’m Angela, I like haste.

1/1 Wild Growth – Of course… and glyph it too!  :)

And that’s that…. when you’re haste is high enough to not need celestial focus, you’ll have 7 more clicks to play around with however you want.  None of the talents we skipped are amazing but hey, experiment and see what you like.  I also want to mention, for leveling up I do put 5/5 into Naturalist and then glyph healing touch, and use healing touch the way I use Nourish at 80.

Hey I Hit the Non-CF Haste Cap!

Congratulations of getting your haste way up there!   Me too!  Now that I no longer need Celestial Focus I use 14-0-57 and I would suggest some variation of it  This is basically the same as above only I throw some points back into revitalize, cuz it never hurts to have!  But… haste first!  Don’t change over unless you’ll be capped without CF.