Leveling restoFollow

you kill stuff with your friend. works great!

Probably putting hots on yourself and hopping into bear/cat form is your best bet. I level with a warlock, so don't have this problem :)

Edited, Feb 4th 2008 4:18pm by Xsarus

I stuck with feral all the way to 68. But I kept a solid healing kit as well and actually healed more instances than tanked. And I generally heal in BGs as well and usually come in top 3 overall. So I'd say you don't need to go resto to heal, just have good gear.

Now if you do want to level resto, I have a friend who's leveled all the way as a holy priest. He's done it all through instances. The only grinding he's done is to get quests needed for instances. He loves it so far - he meets good folks (and been a great recruiter for the guild as well), is always seriously decked out in blues at or above his level, and he's learning all the ins and outs of healing his class. His big issues was which professions to take (tailor and chanting are great instance profs). As a priest (as a healer, actually) he's never had any trouble finding a group to run with. And I don't think he's fallen behind leveling-wise, either.

I think you should level as Resto if you want to be Resto. I'm lvl 69 now and have done it all the way as resto. You will be a much better healer in instances in endgame if you grow up as a healer now and get comfortable with your role.

As for grinding. Yes, get yourself a set of attack power gear, greens are fine. Open up your attacks in caster form with a Starfire, Wrath as the mob runs to you, Mooonfire as the mob gets right in front of you, then throw on a Rejuv and switch to cat form and rip, claw and bite the guy to death. You can normally take a mob a couple levels above you no probs. If you pull extra agro, pop to caster and throw another HOT and go back to cat. I found I could take up to 3 mobs at a time at my level this way. I might be OOM at the end but no biggie.

As for healing gear, first there is not much out there until the 50s and 60s, and to be honest you really don't need any specifically +healing gear to be a good healer until then anyway. Your "healing" gear until the mid-50s and 60s just needs to be high +Int, +Spi and +healing if you can find it.

If you want to be a healer be it now. I partnered up with a hunter and mage from lvl 37 to now, and I have really learned my class questing, pvping and running instances with them. I never am in want of a slot in an instance run and get 3-4 tells a night asking if I will heal a run as I have built a reputation as a reliable healer.

The other side of this is that if you can heal well as an off-spec, then when you do switch to resto, you will find it easy mode :)

We 4 manned the 1st boss in Shadowlabs the other day, with my 68 shadowpriest healing. It was crazy and I finished up OOM but we made it. It teaches you about mana conservation, learning at what point to start a heal to try and anticipate damage incoming, watching your agro & coping with emergencies.

The only thing when you do respec is you have to learn how to use your new abilities - when my druid is resto, i still make very little use of Swiftmend & Nature's Swiftness because I am so used to not having them while healing.

I've been playing a little newbie druid with my boyfriend recently. I'm going Resto/Balance, and he's full Feral. I find it to be great fun to pop a HoT on myself and moonfire a few mobs to pull back to the bear (or kitty depending on how hard the mobs hit). I pop an occasional HoT on him, and just go back for more mobs while he kills the ones he has.

Not to mention it's really awesome when we feel like taking a break from the quest grind. We open up the LFG channel type in "Tank and Healer looking for DPS" and find a group pretty quickly. It makes me wonder how/why we leveled a hunter and rogue together to level 70.