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/healers/druid |
Unlike every other healer in the game, Druids rely on heal over time spells to do a majority of their healing. While this leads to extremely good healing numbers on constant steady damage, you can't deal with damage spikes very well.
Every dungeon needs a healer, and with a good group your job could be very easy. If you get stuck in a group that take a lot of damage, you're going to find yourself hating yourself as you blow through all your cooldowns and mana trying to keep people alive.
Every 25 man raid wants a resto druid. Your job in the raid is to keep your HoTs on anyone who is going to take consistant damage. By keeping hots on characters such as tanks, your heals will constantly go into raw healing instead of overhealing, and your hots will often allow a tank to stabalize long enough after taking a big hit for the other direct healers to land a heal on them to bring them back up.
Being a "usable" druid means managing your healing over time spells primarally on the tanks and anyone who will take small to moderate damage on a regular basis. If you can keep your hots rolling on those people (and dispell when needed), you'll be okay in any raid group.
Mastering the druid is an art of wonder. This means knowing the fights, knowing who is going to take damage, and being proactive instead of reactive to that damage. There is nothing more satisfying to a druid healer, than listening to a priest complain that their heal was completely wasted because of all the HoTs rolling on the target.
You're a healer, and your dps is severely gimped. Unlike any other kind of druid, shifting forms won't provide you any benefits as you don't have boomkin form, and both bear & cat require agility. While you have the ability to hop into a dungeon to level, you don't really have the toolkit to help a bad group. It is highly recommended to go feral or balance to level.
If you're looking for large heals, this isn't the healer for you. Playing a druid is also so much different than any other kind of healer, that if you listen to any other healer talk about how they heal and try to mimic it, you'll never use a resto druid to their fullest potential. If played right, a resto druid can be very satisfying, and can perform quite well on the meters, just be prepared to work with other resto druids and learn to be a proactive instead of a reactive healer.