G'day

I have been feral, cat, spec from lvl 1 and love the dps. Upon reaching lvl 80 I am considering switching to Resto. The guild I am in is a small group of RL friends and we do not do alot of raiding. Recently a few members have hit 80 and now we have 5 people but no healers. Our lvl 80's consists of a lock, warrior, hunter, DK, and me the druid. Healign is not new as I have a retired holy priest who wasa staple in MC/Zg back in the day.

But not having played a resto druid am looking for some input, woudl it be worth the respec and regear??

cheers

Well, that kind of depends what you want to get out of the game?

The respec and gear will be minimal, but the playstyle will be game altering! If you are looking for group content, then I would absolutley reccomend giving resto a shot. It's very, very different from priestly healing though. Druids are all about pre-emptive heals. Keep the HoTs rolling and everyone wins.

It's a bit like whack-a-mole at times. I like how, if you choose a good raid frame UI, you can preemptively know who to heal (because you'll see they are being targeted or have high threat). The challenges are different and become how do I do the most healing yet not blow all my mana. Even with our great mana regeneration I still have to be careful, especially if we have a lot of DPS die.

And it always makes me feel good to get through a boss fight without having to pop innervate.

I'd suggest getting the Overcast gear made until you can get better gear running heroics.

If you're into the idea of healing, yes.

Druid healing is different to Priest healing and leads to no end of [fun] arguments in guild as to which is "better". Druid Heal over Time Healing is more than capable in 5 man groups.

If you're coming from a "pure" feral background with no healing set sat in your bank you do need to get some healing gear but if you've got a tailor and Leatherworker in guild then you should be able to get enough gear to heal at least normal instances for a while as you get some better gear to progress onto Heroic 5-man instances.

Basically you want any Leather or cloth that stacks SpellPower, Intellect and Spirit.

As mentioned, look into the various mods available, Healbot is the most popular but I'm a big fan of Lifebloomer, so I'll mention that as well. Both are relatively easy to install and configure and will make healing in instances much easier than trying to rely on the bog standard Blizz UI.

I'll plug Grid for minimalistic look with just the right amount of information so you don't get overloaded. Couple it with Decursive and you'll be pretty well set.