Restoration Shaman Level 58 Boost Guide

The purpose of this guide is to help you decide on whether you want to boost a Restoration Shaman Level 58, and to give a quick rundown on talents, important spells, and stats so that you can start playing right away!

Restoration Shamans are one of the best area of effect healers in the game, sporting strong single-target healing and a massive amount of utility, which is only made stronger in TBC.

Draenei is the only race available. While it is not one of the most impactful Shaman races, it does provide useful benefits, especially to caster groups with its 1% Spell Hit aura effect!

Trolls are the best choice if your goal is to maximize your PvE throughput, due to Berserking, which speeds your casts, especially if activated at low health. This ability is also powerful in PvP, but so are the ones from the alternative races.

Orc is the go-to PvP race, due to Hardiness, which allows you to occasionally resist stun effects. This is especially useful against Rogues. They also have Blood Fury, which is a powerful throughput cooldown, but does come with a significant penalty which makes it not usable in every situation.

War Stomp is quite reliable in PvP, often allowing for an emergency Lesser Healing Wave cast, but has little PvE uses. The 5% increased health from Endurance is minor. Finally, Taurens have a larger hitbox (especially males), which grants them a slightly increased casting range, but also makes them be hit by enemy abilities more easily.

The talent build listed below is a jack of all trades with which you can do PvE, PvP, and level to 60, while using only the talent points available at Level 58.

This build gets you almost all of the good healing talents and sets you up for leveling to 70 in a group. You can check which talents to pick up next on our specialized leveling guide linked below.

The list below compares the relative value of 1 point of the stat, or rating in the case of Spell Haste Rating, for example.

1. Spell Healing;
2. Mp5;
3. Intellect;
4. Spell Haste;
5. Spell Critical Strike;
6. Stamina;
7. Spirit.

This is the order that will generally help the most with healing. Although Stamina does not give damage, it does help you stay alive, especially against unavoidable damage, so make sure to not neglect it!

1. Use Lesser Healing Wave as an emergency heal for players about to die.
2. Remove dangerous debuffs from group members as soon as possible. This includes preparing for Fear effects with Tremor Totem.
3. Keep Earth Shield on the tank at all times.
4. Keep your group-buffing Totems active and in range of group members at all times.
5. Keep Ancestral Healing and Healing Way, if applicable, on the tank at all times.
6. Use Chain Heal to heal group damage and Healing Wave to heal single-target damage, otherwise.

A simple concept, which is born from the ease with which you can run out of Mana while casting your maximum rank spells, Cast Cancelling is the act of starting a maximum rank spell cast (typically Healing Wave) on a target that you predict will be tanking damage by the end of the cast (such as the tank) and cancelling the cast just before it goes off if the target is not injured enough for the heal to be efficient.

This has two major benefits:

• You can constantly have huge, Mana efficient heals lined up for the tank well ahead of damage happening, allowing you to bypass the large cast time of these types of spells.
• If the target is not injured by the time you are about to heal, you can simply cancel the cast, allowing your Mana regeneration to continue and saving the Mana of the cast itself.

As well as a major downside, since you will be effectively spending a lot of time doing nothing, which can be a problem when other targets would have benefited from having weaker / area effect heals used on them. So this is mostly a strategy for periods of downtime where the tank is the main target being hit.

In order to keep healing throughout a long fight, and to avoid overhealing in general, it is a good idea to downrank your spells when heavy healing is not necessary. As an example, Rank 1 Chain Heal gets the same benefit from Spell Healing as Rank 3, but is much cheaper.

The best ranks to use for some of our core spells in the pre-patch are:

• Chain Heal Rank 1 for efficient group healing and Rank 3 for maximum area of effect healing throughput.
• Healing Wave Rank 1 for quick and cheap Ancestral Healing and Healing Way buffing, Rank 5 as a medium-sized single-target heal, and Rank 10 as a huge single-target heal, usually used with Nature's Swiftness.
• Earth Shock Rank 1 for Mana efficient interrupting.

While all professions have their unique benefits, we would recommend PvE-focused players to level Leatherworking, for the Windhawk Armor set, which doubles as a very strong Elemental Shaman set. You will also get Drums of Battle, which are an important consumable only brought by Leatherworkers.

Enchanting also has significant personal benefits due to exclusive ring enchants which will increase your throughput for all of TBC.

Tailoring is also good, but only very early on, as the Whitemend Wisdom and Primal Mooncloth crafted gear is available right away in Phase 1 and has strong healing stats, but lacks Stamina and will be replaced once by Tier 4 quality gear. Tailoring is also a solid gold maker with its periodic cloth transmutes.

Finally, Alchemy is a good passive gold-making profession due to the transmute recipes and the new elixir, potion, and transmute masteries, making it a strong profession on an alt that you do not want to min-max your throughput on.

A Totem is instantly placed on the ground near you when you cast it, it does not move and generally has single digits of health, allowing it to be destroyed by your enemies with any single-target ability. Their effects only apply to your group or 5 player group, even when you are in a raid group.

Every Shaman Totem has a specific niche role to fill and a distinct ability. There are four types of Totems: Air, Earth, Water, and Fire, and you can have only one Totem of each element placed at a time, which will be replaced if you cast a new Totem of the same element.

Chain Heal is the best area of effect heal in the game due to its high healing relative to cost and smart heal properties, which will cause it to jump to the most injured targets in range, regardless of the group they are on.

Lesser Healing Wave casts much faster than Healing Wave but also heals for much less baseline, and it also gains less benefit from your gear's Spell Healing as a result of its fast casting speed. Use it in PvP or as an emergency heal.

Healing Wave is a strong but slow single-target heal. This makes it likely to overheal, so be prepared to stop casting at the last moment, if it looks like that will be the case.

Lightning Bolt deals damage to a single target from range. This will be your main damage spell in PvE due to having the best damage to Mana ratio in our kit and no cooldown.

Chain Lightning deals damage to three targets from range. It does more damage than Lightning Bolt, even to its primary target, and has a lower cast time, but it also has a 6-second cooldown and a huge Mana cost. Use it for area of effect damage or when bursting down an enemy.

Earth Shock deals damage and interrupts its target for 2 seconds. While the damage increases with ranks, the interrupt effect does not, making it a good spell to downrank if you are mostly interested in the interrupt.

Frost Shock deals damage and slows its target by 50% for 8 seconds. This makes it useful when chasing, or fleeing from enemies.

Flame Shock deals damage over time to its target. This can contribute a small, but consistent, chunk of damage in a fight, and has the added usefulness of preventing Rogues and Druids from staying in stealth while it is active.

Windfury Totem is the largest DPS increase a Shaman can provide to a melee group with Warriors and Rogues in it. It grants a temporary weapon enchant to your group, allowing them to sometimes do multiple auto attacks with extra attack power whenever they hit the enemy with melee abilities. Warriors are a particularly good target for this effect, due to the extra Rage gained by the extra auto attacks.

Grace of Air Totem boosts the Agility of group members. While not as high of a DPS increase as Windfury Totem for Warriors and Rogues, it provides a higher benefit to Hunters and Druids, who cannot make use of Windfury with their forms and ranged attacks, and should thus be used whenever you are in the Hunter or Druid group.

Tranquil Air Totem lowers threat caused by group members by 20%. This allows tanks to be more defensive and still keep aggro on the enemies, and as such is a great tool when threat is the limiting factor, but do keep in mind it does not provide a direct DPS increase.

Grounding Totem will redirect to itself any harmful spell cast at a nearby group member, which is great to handle problematic spells in PvP, such as Counterspell.

Nature Resistance Totem increases the Nature Resistance of your group, allowing them to survive Nature-based attacks better.

Sentry Totem grants vision over an area when the buff it leaves on the casting Shaman is right-clicked, which causes your vision to swap to the Totem's. It also gives warnings to you when it is being attacked, which is useful when exerting control over an area, especially in PvP.

Windwall Totem lowers ranged damage taken by your group by a small amount per hit. This can be useful when dealing with Hunters, but for the most part, incoming ranged damage will rarely warrant using this Totem.

Strength of Earth Totem grants extra Strength to your group and is the only DPS-increasing Earth Totem, making it the general go-to in groups with melee players.

Tremor Totem removes Fear, Charm, and Sleep effects from your group every 5 seconds, and is the only effect of its kind for the Horde. This makes it invaluable in fights with Fear effects, such as Onyxia or Nefarian or in PvP. Make sure to drop it when slightly under 5 seconds are left for the Fear effect to hit the group, so that it is removed almost instantly.

Earthbind Totem slows nearby enemies, allowing for kiting. By running around the Totem you can keep this effect active while only going into melee range whenever your swing timer is ready, avoiding a lot of damage in the process if you are using a slow two-hander.

Stoneskin Totem lowers melee damage taken by your group by a small amount per hit. This makes it useful against Rogues or other fast-hitting enemies, or when supporting a tank against multiple enemies.

Stoneclaw Totem taunts enemies, serving as a distraction for a short period with its small health pool. It is mostly of use while leveling or soloing.

Fire Resistance Totem increases the Fire Resistance of your group, allowing them to survive Fire-based attacks better.

Mana Spring Totem regenerates the Mana of your group for a small amount every 2 seconds. This improves your group's Mana sustainability, and you should aim to always have this Totem active while in a caster or healer group.

Mana Tide Totem regenerates the Mana of your group rapidly, but only lasts for 12 seconds, with a big cooldown of 5 minutes. Just like Mana Spring Totem, use it when you are in a caster or healer group for maximum benefit.

Healing Stream Totem heals your group for a small amount every 2 seconds. While its healing is low, it is still usually worth keeping it out as it also has a long duration.

Disease Cleansing Totem cures diseases from your group every 5 seconds.

Poison Cleansing Totem cures poisons from your group every 5 seconds.

Searing Totem deals a small amount of single-target damage to nearby enemies. If you can spare the Mana, keep it up for the added damage.

Fire Nova Totem deals a large amount of area of effect damage to nearby enemies a few seconds after it is placed, on a 15-second cooldown. Its burst damage can be helpful, especially when facing multiple enemies.

Magma Totem deals small amounts of area of effect damage to nearby enemies periodically. Since it has no cooldown, you can use it to help deal with multiple enemies when Fire Nova Totem is not available.

Frost Resistance Totem increases the Frost Resistance of your group, allowing them to survive Frost-based attacks better.

Flametongue Totem, just like Windfury Totem, enchants your group's weapons to cause extra Fire damage on hit. Since Windfury Totem is more powerful and its effect does not stack with Flametongue, this Totem goes mostly unused.

Ghost Wolf boosts your running speed by 40% but can only be used outdoors. You can learn it at an early level, making this is a very important movement skill for leveling Shamans.

Reincarnation allows you to return to life after dying, as long as its 30-minute cooldown is ready. You can use it to recover from mistakes.

Ancestral Spirit brings the target back to life, but can only be used while out of combat.

Earth Shock deals damage and interrupts its target for 2 seconds. While the damage increases with ranks, the interrupt effect does not, making it a good spell to downrank if you are mostly interested in the interrupt.

Frost Shock deals damage and slows its target by 50% for 8 seconds. This makes it useful when chasing, or fleeing from enemies.

Flame Shock deals damage over time to its target. This can contribute a small, but consistent, chunk of damage in a fight, and has the added usefulness of preventing Rogues and Druids from staying in stealth while it is active.

Purge removes two buffs from its (enemy) target. You will typically be using it to remove heals over time, shields, and buff effects.

Cure Poison cures a poison effect from its (friendly) target. Use it to remove Rogue poisons or dangerous PvE debuffs.

Cure Disease cures a disease effect from its (friendly) target. Use it to remove Devouring Plague or dangerous PvE debuffs.

Rockbiter Weapon enchants your weapon, granting additional melee attack power and causing your melee attacks to generate extra threat. This will be your first weapon enchant, which you will use until you have Windfury Weapon.

Windfury Weapon enchants your weapon, granting your melee abilities a 20% chance to activate two extra auto attacks with added attack power instantly. This is a sizable, unpredictable damage boost that you should aim to have active whenever you are soloing.

Flametongue Weapon enchants your weapon, causing each hit to deal additional Fire damage. While generally inferior to the alternatives, it can be better than Rockbiter Weapon when you are using a fast weapon.

Lightning Shield grants you a buff that causes damage to melee attackers when they hit you. While not the most useful spell, there is no harm in having it up, either.

Lightning Bolt deals damage to a single target. It is the main spell used while soloing, or if you have Mana and time to spare and want to contribute some DPS on an encounter.

Chain Lightning deals damage to three targets. Use it instead of Lightning Bolt against multiple targets.

Astral Recall recalls you to your set Hearthstone location, with a cooldown of 15 minutes. This is pretty handy for quickly traveling the world.

Water Walking allows you, or another friendly player, to move over water for 10 minutes. Taking any damage will cancel the effect, but you can still use it to quickly move through certain parts of the world.

Water Breathing allows you, or another friendly player, to have unlimited breath while underwater for 10 minutes. Generally useless, but can save you sometimes when doing underwater quests or gathering.

Far Sight grants you vision over an area, allowing you to detect enemy players without actually putting yourself in danger.