[Legion patch 7.1] Resto Shaman quick guide: FAQ, talents, stats

[Pandacho 286]

Updated for Legion patch 7.1

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Where are all my glyphs?

A: Major glyphs (playstyle affecting) are gone. The remaining ones (former Minor) are purely cosmetic now and only affect the appearance of spells.

New glyphs are consumable that are being applied directly to a spell in your spellbook.

Q: Where are all the Elemental shields?

A: Water shield was removed completely, Earth shield is a PvP talent now, Lightning shield is an Ench spec talent.

Q: Where are my Elementals?

A: They were removed from the resto spec together with the Primal Elementalist talent.

Q: Seriously? What else has gone?

A: Spirit has gone. Now you have a standard mana pool and a standard mana regen (44000 mp5) both in and out of combat. Some other healing classes have a talent or an artifact trait for increased mana regen, resto shamans - do not.

You can’t see Spell Power in your Character Info or on your weapon - it was merged with the Intellect. So for math purposes, Int=SP. If you want to see detailed attributes, use an addon, for example DejaCharacterStats

Damaging abilities: Fire Elemental, Searing totem, Elemental Blast, Frost Shock have gone.

Our damaging abilities now are Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning.

Ghost wolf speed boost: the glyph has gone. You have a Class Hall Champion Reghar Earthfury boosting your wolf form speed in the outdoor world.

Q: Where is the Totemic Projection, I want to move my totems around?

A: The talent has gone. All the healing totems now spawn at your feet and remain there, all the utility totems has a targeting reticle so you can place them anywhere in range.

Q: What professions should I choose for my shaman?

A: Professions don’t affect directly your gameplay so choose whatever suits your playstyle.

I'd suggest Enchanting/Alchemy/Jewelcrafting or Alchemy/Herbalism (if you are comfortable with gathering) for the raiders and Alchemy/Engineering for those who aim for Mythic+ content.

Q: What is the stats priority for a resto shaman?

A: Intellect>Mastery>Haste>Crit>Versatility

In-depth explanations and math are done by Gardiff (Mythic resto shaman on Kil’jaeden-US) - a theorycrafter and the Resto Shaman Secondary Stat Simulator developer. The SIM and walls of text are here and here.

Q: But why not to prioritize Crit, Resurgence is still the only regen mechanic outside of base regen?

A: It is, but it is garbage, in-depth explanation is here:

 

Crit and mana regen (written by Gardiff):

Crit helps partially in the HPM department through resurgence, but in general, resurgence restores a very low amount of mana. Not to mention, you must remove the baseline 5% Crit (as well as passives) when determining just how much mana it actually returns.

When you discount the bonus of Tidal Waves on HS, 10% Crit from Floodwaters, Refreshing Currents, and 5% baseline Crit (since all 4 of these would be present whether or not you stacked Crit), the gains are somewhere between pointless, and borderline useless. Sitting at 20% bonus Crit (before the 5% baseline, so 25% total), the resurgence gains attributed to this amount is about 250000-300000 mana in an 6-7 minute fight (based on LFR, normal mode, heroic mode, and mythic mode beta logs).This is about 25% mana.

This is an exorbitant amount of Crit to stack for a very mediocre gain. Remember, a Dreamless Sleep potion gives you about 22% mana. And your baseline regen gives you about 300% mana in this same timeframe.

Not to mention, if you don't OoM, you don’t need the mana in the first place.

And lastly, if you simply optimized your output (and chose better spells) to do more healing with the correct secondary stats, you would actually have a higher gain in the long run, compensating for the fact that you might be casting 4 or 5 fewer chain heals (i.e. stacking a massive amount of Crit) over a 6-8 minute fight.
It isn't always about regen, even when you are OoMing. That's the point. Even on beta we can still see shamans who do nothing but CH spam for absurd levels on actual duration fights. The end result is they OoM themselves within 3 or 4 minutes. Then they are stuck wondering what to cast. You have to get used to use more efficient spells and cast when you need to. Having 10% mana or whatever from a boatload of Crit isn't going to change this.

Q: What are the right talents for solo playing/Mythic+/raiding?

A: You can find different talent builds below in this post.

Q: How should I fill the Artifact for the best performance in raids?

A: Resto shaman Artifact Calculator

1) Right path up to the Gold Trait

2) Left path up to the Gold Trait (yes, Tidal Pools it’s not a great gain but leaving it out doesn’t help either)

3) Jump to the third Gold Trait through either side (right or left) - they both are not a great gain for the raids, leave Refreshing Currents for the very end.

I would suggest to go through the left side for 2 reasons:

- the Sense of Urgency affects our raid healing even not being used to its fullness in every fight, while Servant of the Queen doesn't affect our healing at all.

- While Ghost in the Myst was firstly considered as a mostly PvP talent, it helps a lot to mitigate damage from certain boss abilities and is not restricted to a cooldown like Astral Shift or to usage of a specific spell like Caress of the Tidemother.

Q: May / should I level as a resto? I hate dps spec / afraid to lose artifact power.

A: Resto spec is a viable spec for leveling while definitely not great. The main concern here is that you kill mobs slower than any dps spec, the advantage is that you are literally unkillable in any situation.

Don’t worry about the Artifact: no matter which one you will choose on lvl 100, you will get the Artifact quests for the remaining specs on lvl 102.

Don’t worry about losing artifact power during leveling: almost all of it is stored in consumable items so just respec to resto before using them.

Don’t worry about upgrading your offspec Artifact during leveling: first 13 traits on every artifact are very cheap, their cost starts to jump in geometric progression only from the 14th trait.

Spending AP for the first 13 traits of your offspec artifact for easier leveling wouldn’t hold back your main weapon even for 1 day.

Q: I’m new to resto, what are all these HPM, QA, TW abbreviations?

A: The most frequently used abbreviations are:

Spoiler

HPS - Healing done per second

HPM - Healing done per mana spent

HW - Healing Wave (spell)

HS - Healing Surge (spell)

HR - Healing Rain (spell)

CH - Chain Heal (spell)

HST - Healing Stream Totem

HTT - Healing Tide Totem

SLT - Spirit Link Totem

CBT - Cloudburst Totem (talent)

TW - Tidal Waves (buff)

CW - Crashing Waves (talent)

AG - Ancestral Guidance (talent)

AV - Ancestral Vigor (talent)

EotE - Echo of the Elements (talent)

WS - Wellspring (talent)

HT - High Tide (talent)

QA - Queen Ascendant (Artifact trait)

TC - Tidal Chains (Artifact trait)

 

 

Talent Builds:

Soloing content in resto spec:

The main idea of a talent build for solo playing is to maximise your dps relying on passive/instant healing, while keeping mobs away as long as possible.

Tier 1: Torrent (increases your instant heal)

Tier 2: Gust of Wind or Graceful Spirit. I personally would prefer GS for the additional passive increase of movement speed in Ghost Wolf form.

Tier 31: Earthgrab Totem to keep your enemies away

Tier 4: Ancestral Guidance to convert your damage into healing

Tier 5: Earthen Shield Totem: redirects a part of every attack against you and allies to itself.

Tier 6: Echo of the Elements: double HST, Riptide and Lava Burst - extremely useful.

Tier 7: Doesn't matter: nothing here will affect your solo experience.

 

Mythic+ (+2- +7):

Tier 1: Torrent.

Torrent pretty much turns Riptide into a full power instant heal and pair nicely with EotE.

Tier 2: Graceful Spirit - most of low Mythic+ are being run for 3 chests so it's good to have an additional constant speed boost.

Tier 3: Lightning Surge Totem.

Tier 4: Ancestral Guidance.

Tier 5: Earthen Shield Totem or Ancestral Vigor.

I personally prefer AV because M+ are all about fast moving forward so you'll find the group constantly run out of your shield.

Tier 6:: Echo of the Elements.

EotE has two advantages: double Riptide and HST for healing and double Lava Burst for dps. Unlike in raids, both Riptide and HST receive back the 2nd charge while we are moving between packs.

Tier 7: Ascendance.

You rarely can make a good use of CH in 5-man and having another healing CD leaves you more time to dps :)

For really low M+ (+2 - +5) run with a highly experienced group you may actually use even Wellspring. It's good when you dps most of time rather than heal so hitting an AoE heal button once in a while will leave you more time to dps.

 

Mythic+ (+8- +10....):

Tier 1: Undulation

Undulation is fully utilized in here because of constant need in heavy single target healing.

Tier 2: Wind Rush Totem or Graceful Spirit. Take WRT if a group speed boost is needed during the encounter, otherwise GS.

Tier 3: Lightning Surge Totem

Tier 4: Crashing Waves for the best synergy with Undulation

Tier 5: Earthen Shield Totem or Ancestral Vigor.

I personally prefer AV because M+ are all about fast moving forward so may find the group constantly run out of your shield but for +10 with certain affixes you may need EST mitigation as well.

Tier 6:: Echo of the Elements.

Tier 7: Ascendance

 

Raid:

These are generally preferred talents, though there are fights where some tweaking would give a better performance especially when progressing.

Tier 1: Torrent (increases your instant heal)

You may want to use Unleash Life paired with Chain Heals on Ursoc or Undulation on Dragons. 

Tier 2: Wind Rush Totem or Graceful Spirit. Take WRT if a raid speed boost is needed during the encounter, otherwise GS. Frankly, I didn't find WRT any particular use in raids except of fast moving out from Ambush in Elerethe encounter.

Tier 3: Lightning Surge Totem is pretty useful on trash.

Tier 4: Crashing Waves or Ancestral Guidance.

Crashing Waves if you go with Undulation in Tier 1, otherwise AG - its synergy with CBT is just awesome.

Tier 5:  Ancestral Vigor for most of the fights because people tend to move a lot and constantly leave your Earthen Shield Totem area.

Earthen Shield Totem may be worth considering on fights like Ursoc or Dragons where at least half of the raid stacked during high damage.

Ancestral Protection Totem - I didn't find it useful on any fight so far.

Tier 6: Cloudburst Totem. Not really debatable best talent in this tier for most of fights - saves a lot of mana accumulating not only your healing but overhealing too and releasing the stored power to actually injured targets.

Bottomless Depths are useless because 1) Resurgence returns a miserable amount of mana and 2) Proccing Resurgence is our very last concern when raid drops below 60%.

Echo of the Elements should be considered for the fights with constant movement where it's hard to maintain full amount of CBT and charge the totem properly.

Tier 7: High Tide for most fights.

The concerns we had before Legion went live about mana management are gone - resto shamans are in a really good place right now mana wise. There's no particular problem with spamming CH when needed so High Tide is still a good to go talent.

Ascendance may be nice for fights where you can't make a good use of CH (heavy ST damage) or when you raid is short of healing CDs.

Wellspring underperforms in raids. It just does less healing than High Tide or Ascendance.

 

What trinkets are our BiS?

It's hard to say really because of this new implemented system where every item may be upgraded to somewhat between 840-895 ilvl and to have (or not) a socket.

A more or less general agreement for now (Emerald Nightmare) is that Vial of Nightmare Fog and Heightened Senses are very good. 

Chrono Shard and An'she's Infusion of Light with Mastery are worth considering same as Unstable Arcanocrystal. Horn of Cenarius is considered a bad choice and it's better not to use Cocoon of Enforced Solitude if you have something with good secondaries.

Crafted trinkets (both with mana saving and crit) are worth considering if you don't mind the price and didn't have any luck with raid drops.