Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Restoration Druids in The War Within 11.1

All sections for Restoration Druid PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Restoration Druids in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Restoration Druid PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Keeper of the Grove
Hero Talents: Wildstalker
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Keeper of the Grove and Wildstalker. In 11.1, Wildstalker has grown in strength with how Restoration Druid Mastery currently operates, making them equal in performance.

Here we have our preliminary Restoration Druid talent builds for 11.1, thanks to Flop, which is bound to change over the course of a few weeks.

Hero Talents: Keeper of the Grove

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The build featured above is our recommended Keeper of the Grove build in most matchups. Even though our Mastery has been changed to provide less value the more HoTs you have on a target, Germination is still a viable pick as of now and is prioritized in our default loadout.

Down below, we explain in more detail about the core talents we receive in our new Hero talent build.

Protective Growth gives you minor damage reduction whenever you have a Regrowth HoT effect. This adds a bit to your survivability as you are more than likely to use this spell during Clearcasting procs and Incarnation: Tree of Life.
Blooming Infusion will be commonly procced, as this relies on 5 successful Regrowth casts in order to empower your next Wrath, Starfire, or Entangling Roots while making them instant cast. This also applies to Starsurge for an instant cast Entangling Roots or Regrowth, but is way less likely to occur.
Harmony of the Grove works similar to Power of Nature, although this buffs all sources of healing by a decent amount. This also scales off how many treants are active.

Hero Talents: Wildstalker

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Next up, we have our primary Wildstalker loadout. This build is comprised of a variety of damage modifiers in Cat Form, which enables more of an aggressive playstyle primarily for a 2v2 setting.

With the addition of our new PvP talent, Forest Guardian, this also influences us to play more-so in Cat Form and use Starsurge to speed up our HoT ticks. Faster HoT ticks make Symbiotic Blooms proc more often, making the Wildstalker build stronger than how it was originally in 11.0.7.

Here are the talents listed in our Wildstalker tree that make up this build:

Thriving Growth gives us access to both Bloodseeker Vines and Symbiotic Blooms, providing more ways to deliver healing or damage onto targets.
Lethal Preservation makes combo point generation even easier, granting you one combo point after successfully dispelling an effect with Soothe or Remove Corruption.
Bursting Growth makes our burst from Ferocious Bite a bit higher if Bloodseeker Vines is on the target, causing our Bloodseeker Vines to explode. Even if you don’t use Ferocious Bite on the target, they will still explode for some minor AoE damage once they expire.
Implant gives us a way to apply Symbiotic Blooms directly on a target after using Swiftmend.
Vigorous Creepers as a capstone node empowers the effectiveness of both Bloodseeker Vines and Symbiotic Blooms.

Druid Class Talents

In the Druid Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Here are some of the noteworthy talents you will be using in The War Within.

Cyclone will continue to be our main source of Crowd Control.
Renewal provides a solid on-demand heal, and is not affected by dampening.
Heart of the Wild adds some extra defensive bulk to our toolkit, while also reducing the cast time of Cyclone. This talent becomes even better for our Wildstalker tree in order to make use of our Combo Point spenders.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

For our Keeper of the Grove build, you have the option of playing Rake, mainly for its stun effect while in Stealth, and Matted Fur, to which we recommend removing Innervate and Symbiotic Relationship in exchange for them.

As for both builds, you can remove Innervate and Symbiotic Relationship for any of these talents listed below. This should be done if you believe the matchup at hand will not come down to mana.

Matted Fur, Ursine Vigor, or Perfectly-Honed Instincts for more tankiness, depending on your preference.
Typhoon, which is prominent when placed in maps with high Z-axis elevation, primarily Blade’s Edge Arena, to knock players off platforms.
Hibernate could provide some value in 2v2, or occasionally in 3v3 to sneak in some Crowd Control on other Druids in form, Hunter pets, or Shamans in Ghost Wolf.

Restoration Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Grove Guardians and Incarnation: Tree of Life are the basic building blocks of how all of our builds work. Grove Guardians benefit massively by our new Keeper of the Grove hero talent tree, and with Grove Guardians now at a reduced cooldown, you will have Incarnation up more often. With our new Ancient of Lore PvP talent, this replaces Incarnation with a shorter cooldown and a stronger version of itself.
Wild Synthesis makes your next Nourish instant cast after your third successful Regrowth cast and even scales higher with Mastery.

As for our default loadout, these talents listed above are almost always set in stone, However you can alternate some talents depending on what you’re facing or because of preference.

Passing Seasons can be selected instead of Waking Dream if you are facing a composition with heavy burst damage in select windows. A prime example for this talent would be for Subtlety Rogue, however there may be other classes that could make this talent more preferable.

Restoration Druid PvP Talents

With the removal of Focused Growth and Preserve Nature, we will make use of new PvP talents that are deemed useful for both Hero builds.

In the current meta, your default Restoration PvP talent loadout will typically include High Winds, Ancient of Lore, and Forest Guardian.

Ancient of Lore is our new, improved version of Incarnation, while also negating any Crowd Control effect to yourself while active. However, it does have some downsides to it. First and foremost, you become dramatically slower while in this form, and to enter this form it requires you to cast. In order to combat the latter, you can use Nature’s Swiftness before casting Ancient of Lore to make it instant cast.
Forest Guardian allows us to make more utility and offensive decisions without sacrificing out on our HoTs too heavily.
High Winds has been drastically changed from how it used to be in Dragonflight, as it now increases the range of Cyclone instead of reducing the affected target’s healing and damage dealt. In combination with Astral Influence, it will be way less risky to land Cyclone.

For your last PvP talent slot, High Winds will be swapped around with additional PvP talents depending on your matchup and current composition played.

Tireless Pursuit if you want more mobility, as this requires you to shift out of Travel Form or Cat Form in order to gain its movement speed increase.
Disentanglement is typically selected when choosing Verdancy on the Restoration talent tree, and serves more of a purpose when playing with melee cleaves to increase their uptime on targets or against Frost Mages to reduce their snare effects.
Early Spring doesn’t provide much value in arena, but is a very good option if you want additional Wild Growth healing for both Battleground Blitz and Rated BGs.
Thorns has been changed to apply its effects on yourself after using Barkskin, and is best picked against double melee comps in 3v3, or in 2v2 when facing up against melee and healer mirrors. This can help reduce the sense of danger by deterring enemy players from attacking you.