Classic Restoration Shaman Healer Gear and Best in Slot

With Naxxramas comes the best gear WoW Classic has to offer, and also the hardest raid challenges to surpass.

Shamans Tier 3, The Earthshatterer is a pure healing set, and has almost perfect itemization in all pieces, making it a great set to use for its stats alone. You will also gain:

• 2 pieces: Reduces the mana cost of your totem spells by 12%. This is a decent Mana gain when you are replacing your totems often in speed runs or while Totem Twisting.
• 4 pieces: Increases the mana gained from your Mana Spring totems by 25%. The more uptime you have on your Mana Spring totem, the more benefit you gain from this bonus, but it will always represent a small mana gain, regardless.
• 6 pieces: Your Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave spells have a chance to imbue your target with Totemic Power. This means a 10% chance to buff 28 Mp5 on Shamans, Priests, Druids and Paladins, 80 Spell Damage on Mages and Warlocks, 140 Attack Power on Rogues and Hunters and 700 Armor on Warriors. These buffs are great, but the proc rate is low and you should be using Chain Heal for the most part, limiting its benefit.
• 8 pieces: Your Lightning Shield spell also grants you 15 mana per 5 sec. while active. This is a solid bonus with 100% uptime, but using 8 pieces of Tier 3 will prevent you from using the exceptional Tier 2 chain heal 3 piece bonus, which is generally not recommended.

Our recommendation for a perfect Naxxramas setup is using 3 pieces of Tier 2 alongside the best Tier 3 and off-pieces available in the game, resulting in a massive healing and mp5 increase without downsides.

An alternative setup, which should be way easier to get at this point in Classic, is to combine the Tier 2 bracers, belt and gloves with the full Tier 2.5 set for faster chain heals. This will allow you to output very strong raid healing, at a significant Mana cost if downranking is not used.

In order to make the best use possible out of multiple long cooldown trinkets, such as Zandalarian Hero Charm, swap them into your gear set when they are off-cooldown and replace them with others during their cooldown.

While the list above contains the absolute best gear setup, you are unlikely to quickly gather all of it. We provide more options below, some which are very close to the best and some which are just much easier to get!

This is the gear we recommend for Restoration Shamans in the AQ40 patch. With fights becoming harder and longer, the value of Mp5 gear increases, but we will keep looking primarily for +Healing as it has the biggest impact on your throughput, overall.

Shamans Tier 2.5, Stormcaller's Garb tries to have something for every type of Shaman, and thus fails at actually being good for any of the specs, unfortunately. The benefit of the 5-set bonus does not generally compensate for the overall lack of useful stats on the items, especially as you are required to spend significantly more Mana in order to take advantage of it.

• The 3-set bonus gives you a chance to gain Nature Spell damage whenever you deal damage with your lightning spells, making it useless for healing.
• The 5-set bonus reduces the cast time of your Chain Heal by 0.4 seconds. This is a great throughput boost, but also requires a lot of extra Mana to spare. Combined with the weak stats on the set items themselves, it is not advised to go for this set in normal circumstances.

By this point, using full Tier 1 and focusing on Healing Wave starts being much worse throughput-wise, than simply using the highest throughput off-set pieces available. You can still keep using it for a long time, but look towards replacing it with the non-set pieces we present below.

This is the gear we recommend for Restoration Shamans in Blackwing Lair. While we list some great Mp5 gear, +Healing gear can be much better for you if you use Mana consumables and have short fights.

Shamans Tier 2, The Ten Storms is a great set with one of the strongest, if not the strongest set bonus for healing in the game:

• The 3-set bonus increases Chain Heal's healing to targets beyond the first by 30%, increasing its smart healing power by a huge amount. You will want to get this bonus as soon as possible and never drop it off throughout most of WoW Classic. Using full Tier 1 can still be worth it, for its 8-set bonus, if you have it.
• The 5-set bonus increases the critical chance of your Nature spells by 3%. This is a nice healing boost that works well with Ancestral Healing.
• Finally, the 8-set bonus gives you a 25% chance to give your target a 50 damage Lightning Shield when using your single target heals. This is a generally weak set bonus and you should look to use it only if you want to use the full set for looks or stats.

While the main focus is on Blackwing Lair gear, the list below also contains some gear from older raids, PvP sets and world bosses, when warranted, in order to create a good list for players who regularly clear the raids up to Tier 2.

*These items have random suffixes. You will be looking for "of Healing", which gives +Healing. Since you need both the item and the correct suffix to drop, these are often hard to farm, so make sure you have reasonable alternatives until you can get the correct drop.

** Will of Arlokk is a special case in that, while it is a relatively good healing weapon, it is mostly used for its extremely high Spirit value. This allows you to swap to it in situations where you are outside the 5 second rule in order to maximize your Mana regeneration.

This is the gear we recommend for Restoration Shamans in Blackwing Lair. While we list some great Mp5 gear, +Healing gear can be much better for you if you use Mana consumables and have short fights.

Shamans Tier 2, The Ten Storms is a great set with one of the strongest, if not the strongest set bonus for healing in the game:

• The 3-set bonus increases Chain Heal's healing to targets beyond the first by 30%, increasing its smart healing power by a huge amount. You will want to get this bonus as soon as possible and never drop it off throughout most of WoW Classic. Using full Tier 1 can still be worth it, for its 8-set bonus, if you have it.
• The 5-set bonus increases the critical chance of your Nature spells by 3%. This is a nice healing boost that sinergizes with Ancestral Healing.
• Finally, the 8-set bonus gives you a 25% chance to give your target a 50 damage Lightning Shield when using your single target heals. This is a generally weak set bonus and you should look to use it only if you want to use the full set for looks or stats.

While the main focus is on Blackwing Lair gear, the list below also contains some gear from older raids, PvP sets and world bosses, when warranted, in order to create a good list for players who regularly clear the raids up to Tier 2.

This is the gear we recommend for Restoration Shamans in the phase 2 end game: Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair, World Bosses, and PvP.

Shamans Tier 1, The Earthfury is one of the few Tier 1 sets in WoW Classic that are well worth using for their 8 set bonus. It allows your Healing Wave skill to heal additional nearby targets when used, multiplying its effectiveness. The 5 piece bonus and 3 piece bonus are also great, increasing your Mana efficiency with Healing Wave and saving you a talent point in Totemic Mastery, respectively.

This is the gear we recommend for Restoration Shamans to chase in Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair.

While we list both +Healing and Mp5 gear, go with +Healing gear when in doubt, as it will serve you better in the short fights that characterize WoW Classic's metagame. The value of Mp5 increases alongside fight duration, as longer fights allow you to regenerate more Mana from its effect.

Shamans Tier 1, The Earthfury is one of the few Tier 1 sets in WoW Classic that are well worth using for their 8 set bonus. It allows your Healing Wave skill to heal additional nearby targets when used, multiplying its effectiveness. The 5 piece bonus and 3 piece bonus are also great, increasing your Mana efficiency with Healing Wave and saving you a talent point in Totemic Mastery, respectively.

*These items have random suffixes. You will be looking for "of Healing," which gives +Spell Healing. Since you need both the item and the correct suffix to drop, these are often hard to farm, so make sure you have reasonable alternatives until you can get the correct drop.