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Part 1: Talent builds and glyphs

The most popular build and the one I personally use for raiding is the following:(0/16/55)

It has everything a restoration shaman may want and it’s very similar to the other (0/16/55)build which I would also recommend, and the only difference between these two builds is, as you can see, is 3 points taken from Healing Focus in favor of Healing Way.

Healing focus when coupled with a Paladin’s Concentration aura means you never have to worry about spell push back which is quite a huge advantage in the current end-game content as you will find lots of encounters with AoE raid damage which is not necessarily avoidable or just hard to avoid.

The other build give a significant buff to your Healing Way. But then again, you should ask yourself a question: “how often I’m going to use healing wave? Should I prioritize this particular spell?” Basically shaman is a raid healing class and when you heal raid you rarely use healing wave, but for some encounters you may be asked to heal a certain tank in which case you will probably want to improve your healing wave.

There’s one more optional build for restoration shaman: (0/13/58) which basically covers both healing wave and healing focus in at the expense of Elemental Weapon what basically means you lose 30% bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon.

This bonus increases healing done by each spell by 45 (instead of basic +150 healing power from your Earthliving you get + 195). However, this talent does not affect the healing done by HoTs when Earthliving procs. And what’s more important, this talent also does not scale well as your gear improves, what basically means the more spell power you get from your gear, the less contribution to your healing power this talent gives in percentage terms. For example, at +2000 spellpower, the talent increases your spell power by 2.25%. At +2500 spellpower, the talent increases it by 1.8%.

Now let’s talk about glyphs you’ll want to use for more effective healing.

Let me start with a side note.

Shaman often change glyphs, depending on the boss and their healing assignment. For example, if assigned to heal a single target, you might want to use the LHW glyph instead of CH. It is advisable to carry a few copies of each glyph that you use in your bag and adjust as necessary.

But let’s look at universal glyphs which you will find most effective in 80% of cases.

#1 glyph which is a must have glyph for 25 men content is Glyph of Chain Heal. However, you may find it less effective in 10 men raids and even less effective in 5 men groups. Depends on raid / group disposition.

#2 glyph is Glyph of Earth Shield since your Earth Shield will be quite valuable spell in percentage terms of your total healing done.

#3 glyph will be Glyphs of Riptide, which becomes more and more important as you update your gear to T10. For better understanding of Riptide mechanics and the impotency of this particular spell, see Riptide spell details in Major Abilities section.

Alternative glyphs you may want to use according to situation and healing assignment:

* Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave
* Glyph of Healing Wave
* Glyph of Healing Stream

Glyphs I wound not recommend for using:

* Glyph of Water Mastery– it basically provides additional 30 MP5 which it not to be compared with advantages of the other glyphs listed above.
* Glyph of Earthliving Weapon – increases the base chance of your Earthliving to trigger for 5% (from base of 20% to 21%) which is close to nothing. Leave along the fact that Earthliving is mostly over healing.

As for minor glyphs, you should definitely go for Glyph of Water Shield as it’s the only glyph which will affect your effective healing.

Choose other minor glyphs to your liking. I personally prefer  Glyph of Renewed Life and Glyph of Water Walking, so that I don’t care about reagents for these 2 abilities.

Part 2: Spells and abilities

Let’s now have an overview of shamans’ healing abilities.

Chain Heal

The most topical spell which shaman use for massive healing.

Chain heal jumps to 3 targets (or 4 with a glyph) based on who is missing the most health (by absolute value). If there are no targets in range below 100% it will not jump. The heal can jump back to the shaman if they have taken damage.

Chain Heal got significant buffs in Patch 3.2. Jump range increased to 12.5 yards, from 10 yards. Also, each jump reduces the healing done by 40%, instead of 50%.

Chain heal can crit on any (or all) of the three to four jumps. However, the healing done to the next target is based on the non-crit healing done. Crits from chain heal will proc Ancestral Fortitude.

Many trinkets will proc based on a “direct healing spells” as each jump of chain heal is considered a direct heal.

However, each separate jump do not count as a separate spell and will not trigger trinkets proc based on “each spell cast.”

Riptide

This brilliant spell becomes even more important in T10 content considering T10 2 set bonus and Totem of the Surging Sea.

Basically Riptide is a talent that gives shaman their only instant heal. About 57% of the healing is instant and the remaining 43% is a HoT over the next 15 seconds.

If you cast Chain Heal on someone affected by Riptide, it consumes the Riptide and increases your Chain Heal by 25% on all jumps of that Chain Heal. With T10 2 items set bonus it will additionally grant you 20% spell haste for the next spell cast.

Note, that only a direct Chain Heal will proc Riptide, not the jumps and Chain Heal from other shaman will not proc your Riptide.

You will not be able to cast Riptide and Chain Heal in gear all the time as Riptide has initial 6 second cooldown, so pay keep an eye on the spell tooltip and use the Riptide + Chain Heal bundle if possible in a situation when you would generally cast Chain Heal.

Healing Wave

This is the largest heal shaman can cast. Not taking into account your spell haste, it takes 2.5 seconds to cast (3.0 seconds without talents). Basically the situation when you may find this spell most useful is when you need have some significant healing on a single target (for example when you assigned to a certain tanks’ healing) and in a bundle with Nature’s Swiftness often saves lives.

Lesser Healing Wave

This is the fastest but smallest heal a shaman can cast. In addition, Tidal Waves does not reduce the GCD and thus LHW throughput is capped by the GCD.

LHW is most powerful when a shaman have Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave and an Earth Shield on the target.  You may find it mostly useful when you assigned to a single target healing.

Earth Shield

A shield with 6 charges (8 with talents) that heals the wearer every few seconds while taking damage.

You want to have Earth Shield on one of the tanks all the time.

How much healing the Earth Shield does is based on the spellpower at the time it is cast, not when it procs.

One of the most frequently asked questing is: how does ES affects tanks aggro?

The aggro from healing is attributed to the person who cast the shield starting in Patch 3.0.2. Each point of damage healed will generate 0.725 threat divided evenly among the mobs present.

Protection paladins have a talent called Spiritual Attunement that restores mana equal to 10% of the healing they receive. Since Patch 2.1.0, they have received mana back from the healing done by Earth Shield (and Prayer of Mending). Each point of mana restored generates 0.5 threat.

Earthliving Weapon

This is a weapon buff used by shamans to increase the effectiveness of healing.

Make sure that this buff is always on your weapon. Earth Living Weapon causes any direct heals to proc a small hot called Earthliving on the target.

Earthliving procs off:

* Riptide
* Healing Wave
* Lesser Healing Wave
* Any bounce of Chain Heal

The proc has no internal cool down and can potentially proc off every Chain Heal bounce.

Earthliving will not proc off:

* Healing Stream Totem
* Earth Shield
* Ancestral Awakening
* Glyph of Healing Wave

Ancestral Awakening

This is a passive ability and it works like this: each time you crit with Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave or Riptide, you instantly heal the raid member with the lowest percentage of health within 40 yards for 30% of the amount healed (including any overhealing).

As of Patch 3.0.9, this talent benefits from purification, so in practice Ancestral Awakening heals for 33% of the total heal.

Ancestral Awakening cannot crit and will not proc earthliving.

Tidal Force

Using Tidal Force gives you a buff with 3 charges. Each charge increases your chance to crit with lesser healing wave, healing wave and chain heal. Each crit consumes a charge INCLUDING each jump of chain heal. Therefore, it’s possible for one chain heal to use all three charges. Tidal Force is best used with Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, as they greatly increase the chance for mana returned via improved water shield, and have a chance to proc ancestral awakening (if applicable).

Often used in conjunction with Nature’s Swiftness to increase the size of an emergency heal. Tidal Force has a 3-minute cool down.

Tidal Waves

This is a passive ability.

When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast.

Your Lesser Healing Wave spell gains an additional 10% of your spell power, and your Healing Wave spell gains an additional 20% of your spell power. This effect is passive and completely independent of the Tidal Waves proc.

And that’s about it. So much for shamans’ healing abilities.

However, there’s one more spell I can’t pass by, thought it’s not a literally a healing spell.

Water Shield

It’s a very valuable tool for the Restoration Shaman which plays very important role in mana regeneration.

It costs no mana to cast.

It’s important to have it on at all times and refresh it before it expires. I personally recommend to wait until all the charges have been used, but refresh you WSh whenever you have time (i.e. when there’s a lull in healing and you can spare your global cooldown time to put up new charges) .

Improved Water Shield: this talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Part 3: Totems

With help of default totem UI you can customize up to three sets of totems (4 totems in each set). You can now instantly drop 4 different totems on one global cooldown. It still costs the combined mana cost of all four totems.

Most totems affect everyone in your raid or party within 30 yards. The following are exceptions and only affect the 5 people in your party:

* Mana Tide Totem:  Restores 24% of a player’s mana over 12 seconds. 5-minute cool down. This spell is available in restoration branch only and therefore can be used only by restoration shamans (neither elemental nor enhancement will ever go that deep into restoration tree).
* Healing Stream Totem: Amount healing depends on the +spell power of the shaman. Talents boost the amount healed by 45%. A glyph boosts the amount another 20%.
* Tremor Totem
* Cleansing Totem

As you can have only 1 totem of each element at a time, you’ll need to prioritize them.

AIR:

1. Windfury Totem if there is no Frost Death Knight or Enhancement Shaman (who will certainly have it in his set)
2. Wrath of Air Totem otherwise

FIRE:

1. Flametongue Totem if there is no Elemental Shaman or Demonology Warlock in your group.
2. Searing Totem or Magma Totem if you can spare the global cooldown to refresh them and there is no danger of grabbing aggro on phase transitions or aggoing other mobs.
3. Since Patch 3.3.0 Fire Elemental Totem has a 10 min cooldown (down from 20 min) what makes it an excellent option of a fire totem during a boss fights. So, as Jimmy Morrison used to say: “Come on baby, light my fire!”

EARTH:

1. Strength of Earth Totem if there is no Enhancement shaman. Death Knights have a similar buff called Horn of Winter Horns of Winter; however it lasts only 2 minutes (3 minutes with glyph).
2. Stoneskin Totem which stacks with a paladin’s devotion aura.
3. Tremor Totem as needed.

WATER:

1. Mana Spring Totem if there is no paladin for Blessing of Wisdom which is utterly a rare case.
2. Healing Stream Totem
3. Cleansing Totem as needed

Note: sometimes a restoration shaman will need to drop Windfury, Strength of Earth and Flametongue totems even if presence of enhancement shaman in a raid if the raid is spread out to provide additional coverage.

Part 4: To wear, or not to wear

With so many types of healers in the game it’s easy to get lost in many quasi-healing stats.

Let’s see what stats are actually useful for a shaman and prioritize them.

1) Haste rating

Until you have a soft cap of 1269 buffed and Spell power – the 2 most important stats for a restoration shaman. But if Spell Power is an indispensable attribute of any casters / healer piece, haste rating is something you should particularly look for as it occurs less frequently. Also may want to use Quick King\’s Amber for your yellow and blue sockets (unless you need a blue gem for a meta gem bonus).

Spell Haste is calculated after talents.

Taking under consideration that 1% haste = 32.78 haste rating at level 80, arithmetic formulas for spell cast time modified by your haste will look like this:

Spell Cast time modified by haste = basic cast time / (1 + haste rating / 3278)

In most of the raid groups, you will have a total of 8.15% haste before gear: 5% from Wrath of Air Totem + 3% from Improved Moonkin aura (balance druids) or Swift Retribution (retribution paladin)

Haste is multiplicative so the total benefit is 8.15%

The soft haste cap for resto shamans is 1269 haste rating (38.7%). On your character sheet (without raid buffs), you approach the soft haste cap at about 30%. The soft haste cap refers to the amount of haste needed to lower the global cooldown from 1.5 seconds to 1.0 seconds. No amount of haste (including Heroism or Bloodlust) will reduce the global cooldown below 1.0 seconds. It is called a soft cap because additional haste rating will reduce the cast time of longer spells, such as Chain Heal.

Haste Need to Reduce Chain Heal Cast Time at Level 80

2.4 seconds = 137 haste rating

2.3 seconds = 286 haste rating

2.2 seconds = 447 haste rating

2.1 seconds = 625 haste rating

2.0 seconds = 820 haste rating

1.9 seconds = 1036 haste rating

2) Crit rating

Apart from increasing the pure amount of healing, your critical heals will trigger some of your abilities (such as Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening). Regarding T10 set bonus the value of crit rating increased and currently it is prioritized over MP5.

3)MP5

This is a source of mana regeneration, so make sure you have gear with MP5 stat on it. You’ll also find some trinkets (like Solace of the Defeated) very useful for that purpose.

4) Intellect

Raises your total mana pool and also increase you spell crit and spell power. However the value of intellect you’ll find on the gear as a white stat should not be boosted in any ways. There’s no need to emulating a quasi-paladin full-intellect way of gearing.

10 Int = 5.5 mp5 in a five-minute fight if you use Mana Tide and have 100% uptime on Replenishment
Initial mana pool. +181 mana (3 mp5)
Replenishment 100% uptime (1.8 mp5)
Mana Tide (0.7 mp5)

10 Int = 1.8 spell power

10 Int becomes 12.1 Int with Kings and Ancestral Knowledge.
12.1 * 0.15 = 1.8 spell power (Nature’s Blessing)

10 Int = 3.3 crit rating
166.67 int = 1% crit
%1 crit = 45.91 crit rating at Level 80
12.1 Int = 3.3 crit rating

And finally, one important note: DO NOT use gear / enchants / gems with Spirit – it’s basically a waste of stat for a shaman.I hope that helped clear up some of the confusion out there with abilities and stats as the right choice of gear / tanlent build / spells really does make a big difference to your HPS.

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