How we bangin'?

Our PlaystylE

 

Our core abilities

Heals

Lifebloom: Our bread and butter heal- let it pop if your target is missing 30k or more health.

Rejuv: Cheap as fuck to cast so don’t be shy and throw it around like a party favour.

Regrowth: Hits better than it used to due to master change + crits doubling the strength, can be spammed with no risk of interrupts in ToL form.

Wild Growth: Cheap['ish] and does acceptable HPS if healing 3+ , ticks quickly.

Nourish: Dirt cheap- kinda ok with a 2sec cast time but only in BG’s or if you are totally oom. As a general rule its cheaper to CC than heal in terms of mitigating damage.

Swiftmend: Deliciouisususususs use it on CD. ’nuff said.

Efflorecense: An extra hot is welcome specially since it stems as a procc from an instant cast heal.

Tranquility: Best HPS ever- channeled so make sure your opponent is cc’d or unable to kick you before using it. Mega situational but great when resetting after some heavy burst.

Healing Touch: Only use it with NS due to the 50% healing bonus, however it is still a waste. Keep NS for instant cyclones.

CC

Cyclone: So full of epic win it hurts, can be used offensively to halt incoming heals on enemy target and keeping him suspended while your partner lines up a nuke or defensively to break pressure. Immune to dmg and incoming heals. Cannot be dispelled. Fuck yes.

Hibernate: Sends target (beasts only)to sleep- breaks on dmg and can be dispelled. Hunters pets and ferals is what this is ideal for. Its a nature spell so NS will work with it.

Entangling Roots: Roots the target, does a shitty dot while rooted and breaks from damage, can be dispelled.

Damaging attacks

Moonfire: DOT, does around 2.8k instant damage- situational spamming is viable when burning an enemy down. cheap to cast, use it to break totems and keep people in combat.

Insect Swarm: Basic dot, doesn’t do significant damage- but if you play with an affli it can be fun to have 5 dots on one target. Some pressure is better than no pressure.

Wrath: What you will be spamming in ToL when not healing- 7k+ dmg and cheap to cast.

Starfire: Mega long cast time but if you have nothing to do (although CC’ing is always a better choice) I would recommend using starfire since the school of magic is arcane and our heals are nature. ;) Its better for them to waste lockouts on a dps school rather than our healing school and interrupt classes cant resist hitting that 3sec cast. ;)

Hurricane: Costs a metric fuckton of mana to cast, AoE..Can break stealth and interrupts capping of flags. About all that I can say about it- a BG ability as far as I am concerned.

Thorns: A fuck you to melee, everytime you are struck hits the opponent for around 1.5k Very nice against fast hitting dps, sorta mediocre against slower hitting ones- but all pressure is good pressure. Only use it if you are facing more than 1 fast hitting dps or if you have a fuckton of spare mana.

Wild Mushroom: Instant cast with pretty nice damage- very situational and requires alot of forethought to set up in terms of positioning however its a nice way to punish people from following you when your poledancing as well as making tank and spank a viable strategy for us resto’s against melee. Personally I favor this ability since its nice to time when you are the one being focused and when he is low you can POP and take around 30k hp away no problem.

Debuffs

Fairie Fire: Stacking debuff (x3) that reduces enemy armor by 15% (with full stacks) and stops the enemy from returning into stealth or prowl. Useful against ferals and rogues especially but nice in general if you play with a melee dps partner. Can also cover dispels so use when hibernating an enemy.

Soothe: Removes the following enrage effects:

Death Knight:
Unholy Frenzy

Druid:
Owlkin Frenzy
Enrage
Savage Roar

Warrior:
Berserker Rage
Death Wish
Recklessness

Really nice specially against Berserker rage!

Demoralizing Roar: AoE debuff- reduces physical dmg of enemies by 10% for 30secs. I often forget to use it but its a pretty nice spammable debuff.

Misc skills

Shapeshifting: We can’t be polymorphed or hexed in a shapeshifted form so if running against a mage or shaman keep them in your focus frames and watch them as they cast it- pre-emptively shift and /lol at them as you are immune.

Omen of Clarity: Makes your next nature spell with a cast time cost 0 mana. Use it with Regrowth and nothing else since swiftmend is already cheap and HT takes too long to cast (unless NS'ing it).

Natures Grace: Haste buff, try to time it for when going for cyclones- I activate it using moonfire since pressure regardless how small is always useful (that and moonfire is cheap is chips).

Skull Bash: Feral ability that interrupts spell casting and locks out the target for 4 secs (in that school). Nice against healers. 1min CD.

Stampeding Roar: Gives increased movement speed to your party members around 10y, real nice if you play with a melee who needs to get closer to his mark and when poledancing hard.

Bash: Bear stun, 4 secs. Nothing more to add.

Frenzied Regen: Pop it when silenced and getting burned down with Enrage up to give you a slight rage buffer.

Dash: A useful way to get away from bad bad situations, its a buff so you can still powershift without losing it. Noice.

Barkskin: Flat damage mitigation with reduced chance for crits against you when glyphed, use it on CD when getting burned down. Try to time it to coincide with your opponenets CD's.

Natures Grasp: I have it macro'd with Barkskin as a fuck you to melee when they sit on me, lifebloom + travel form away, the dps will be dispelled by under 3 seconds by his healer but those 3 seconds can buy you some time.

Innervate: The primary way resto's get mana back besides replenishment, can be dispelled so make sure offensive dispellers are CC'd before popping it. I usually pop it in cat or bear form so they don't see my blue bar filling up. ;)

The Strategy

 

You should spend your time layering hots and focusing on CC rather than supplanting your partners DPS.

If your DPS partner relies on you as the means to applying pressure then…get a new partner.

S’all I can say.

I define cataclysm resto as a weaving style of play, in arena layer hots with lifebloom as a priority (and let it expire should the target have 20% or more HP missing) since cc chains at the start are mitigated when the stacks of lifebloom pop- truly the best way to marginalize the opening burst from a warrior!

When feeling intense pressure pop an instant cyclone on the nuking dps using Natures Swiftness and you have in the span of 10 seconds turned the table around and dictated the pace of the encounter allowing you to marginalise your opponenets strategy. Engage in CC chains with your partner or reset the fight by running to a more advantageous position without interference from your opponent whilst of course keeping those hots rolling.

The key is control- and in an ideal world you want to be the one with it. ;)

As your comfort level increases certain events will trigger default responses, for example when I see an enraged warrior I almost subconciously hit that soothe button or when I see 9 stacks of necrotic strike with my health @ 30% I almost automatically reset the fight by cc'ing the DK (instant cyclone or asking/begging for a peel from my teammate) and then hitting tranquility behind a pillar.

Arena is about your comfort threshold, you enter the world healing and cc'ing occasionnaly and leave it with all sorts of neat tricks from awkward mushroom stacks as a deterrent to melee as they go in for the kill, bash+cyclone as the buffer against interrupts to perfect situational timing as you pop tree form, instant cyclone the healer>entangle one of the dps and nuke the remaining one to pieces in the span of 5seconds.

Healers should heal and PvP'ers should win. Do what it takes to win while keeping you and your opponenent up would be my advice in a nutshell.