Hey, level 51 druid here with some problems. I rolled a druid as a second character because my first character is a caster dps and I wanted some more options, like perhaps tanking or healing. I leveled up to now as mostly feral, because I heard it was good for leveling, and it's been good at that purpose. But recently I've wanted to respec to Restoration, because I think healing is what I would like to try and I need some practice at the spec before I hit Outlands dungeons.
But, my problem here is that druids are too versatile. The most lauded aspect of druids is that they have so many options-- you can go to bear for the armor bonus, you can heal, you can cast or go cat for damage. There are so many different things I can do, I have no idea which one to do at all. As resto, then to take mobs down I can either go cat, and switch out to put up a couple hots then return to cat form. But then that's exactly what I always did with Feral, and my heals were never insufficient: all these Restoration talents I now have just seem excess and unnecessary. Or, I can stay out of form and use ranged casting abilities-- but that completely annihilates my mana, and if I use that strategy why not just spec Balance?
Also, I have no idea which stats a leveling resto is supposed to stack-- do you go intel and spirit because of your heals and spells, or if you're supposed to fight in cat form do I stack strength and agility? Or do I level it all out, in which case everything gets spread thin?
I've been panicking over figuring out how a resto is supposed to play, and have spent a fortune just today in respecs and more respecs. I tried Balance for a while, but I don't know why because that spec is not where I want to take the character at all. The solution to this is just to go back to Feral, but I have no intention of going that direction when I hit level 70. I hate tanking. But if I stay in my leveling spec until level 70, then 1) I'll have no experience when I finally hit the dungeons and 2) I'll have to sacrifice either my leveling feral gear or my healing gear's quality to improve the other. Especially since I won't be able to pick up any healing gear from OL instances, because of course the healer would get first dibs on those.
How do people generally go about levelling as a healer spec?