Cataclysm Classic Restoration Shaman Talent Builds

Restoration Shaman, like most Cataclysm specs, is heavily restricted to its namesake specialization tree, Restoration. You will always want to put points into this tree first and foremost, with the few leftover points after you hit the capstone talent, Riptide, being dedicated to passive healing increases in the Elemental and Enhancement trees.

While the build below is an example of a 25-man talent build, keep in mind there are many talent swaps and adaptations possible for 10-man or trade offs between mobility and Mana sustain, as explained below.

Restoration has a lot of optional talents:

• Ancestral Awakening is very strong whenever you mostly cast single target spells such as Greater Healing Wave, making it great in 10 man.
• Blessing of the Eternals has the opposite dynamic, and is much stronger when you mostly cast area spells such as Chain Heal, making it stronger in 25 man.
• Ancestral Swiftness is a great mobility talent and a must-pick on any fight you are expected to move around often.
• Elemental Precision is better on fights where you can stand and cast, especially if the boss has an increased damage taken phase which will allow you to fully restore your Mana regularly with Telluric Currents. You get most of the benefit of this talent with 2 points due to our preference for Spirit, and if taking it, Concussion is preferable to Convection.

Taking the above lessons in mind, here is a sample 10-man talent build, also using the alternative Spell Hit tech for Telluric Currents's benefit:

In this section we will go over some of the key talents you will use when you are playing a Restoration Shaman. Be sure to understand your most important talents as they are vital to play the build to its top strength.

• Ancestral Resolve — reduces damage taken while casting by 10%. Since you will be looking to constantly be casting, even if it is Lightning Bolt for Telluric Currents, or while moving with Spiritwalker's Grace, this talent grants a huge amount of damage reduction!

• Resurgence — causes your spell crits to restore Mana. This is a very powerful effect that directly scales with your critical strike chance, making it a much stronger stat, overall.

• Focused Insight — allows your shocks to reduce the Mana cost and increase the healing done by your next spell, essentially making them mostly free to cast and increasing your DPS. It combos particularly well with Healing Rain since you are limited by its cooldown and thus the extra healing is quite valuable.

• Nature's Swiftness — causes your next spell to be instant cast. This will typically be used on Greater Healing Wave for emergency healing, but can also be used with Healing Rain or Chain Heal to speed up your rotation or enable casting while moving.

• Ancestral Healing — reduces physical damage taken by 10% on the target of one of your critical heals, increasing the value of critical strike, and also increases the health of anyone healed by you by up to 10% of their maximum health, making them much less likely to die from raid damage mechanics.

• Improved Cleanse Spirit — converts your Cleanse Spirit into a magic dispel, allowing you to do encounters that involve dispelling such effects.

• Spirit Link Totem — creates an area around the totem for 6 seconds where the health of allies is equalized every second. This makes it especially powerful against mechanics that hit targets inside a clump of players for deadly damage, as it will spread that damage across the whole clump evenly, making it easy to heal with area heals.

• Mana Tide Totem — provides extra Spirit to your raid equivalent to 200% of your own Spirit for 12 seconds. This is a great Mana regeneration talent which benefits your whole raid and scales heavily with your Spirit, making it one of the top reasons to stack Spirit in the first place.

• Ancestral Awakening — is fantastic whenever you are casting a lot of single target spells, and also scales well with your critical strike chance, making it a great 10-man and small group content talent.

• Tidal Waves — reduces the cast time of Greater Healing Wave and Healing Wave by 30% and increases the critical strike chance of Healing Surge by 30%. You will gain two charges of this buff whenever you cast Riptide or Chain Heal, allowing you to have permanent uptime of this massive single target healing bonus.

• Riptide — is a heal over time with a strong direct heal component which is often used to save allies close to dying, especially considering our Deep Healing Mastery. You will typically use it with Glyph of Riptide, which increases the heal over time component massively.

Prime glyphs are new to Cataclysm, giving you a third "row" of glyphs you can use on your character. While there are a couple of different options to choose from, there are some very clear front runners for each specialization.

• Glyph of Earthliving Weapon — a nice passive boost to your Earthliving Weapon imbue healing.
• Glyph of Riptide — huge increase to Riptide healing and also drastically increases the amount of time you have to use Chain Heal on it for extra healing.
• Glyph of Earth Shield — another passive boost, this time to your Earth Shield healing.

Major glyphs typically offer utility-based options and can be highly situational. While there are many different options for Restoration, we will list below the ones we find more useful.

• Glyph of Chain Heal — increases the smart healing done by Chain Heal while slightly reducing healing to the first target, which is often overhealing anyway.
• Glyph of Healing Stream Totem — removes the need for using Elemental Resistance Totem by baking its power into Healing Stream Totem.
• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem — converts your Stoneclaw Totem into a strong personal cooldown.

Minor glyphs typically provide very minor benefits. Your choices will typically depend on what quality of life increase is the most meaningful for you. We give a few suggestions below.

• Glyph of Water Walking — allows you to cast Water Walking without a reagent, saving gold in the process.
• Glyph of Renewed Life — removes the reagent requirement from Reincarnation, saving some gold over time.
• Glyph of Astral Recall — lowering the cooldown of your Astral Recall allows you to move around more frequently, especially if you have your Hearthstone at your faction's central hub and all its portals.