Restoration Shaman Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (Season 1)

In Battleground Blitz, Restoration Shaman is known as a disruptive healer. Having group-wide saves like Spirit Link Totem, and using your totems to support your team like Grounding Totem, Capacitor Totem, and Static Field Totem, while using Earthgrab Totem and Thunderstorm can disrupt positioning of the enemy team and kill enemies knocking them off cliffs.

This build focuses on team utility, along with significant group-wide healing.

Crowd Control as Restoration Shaman

In battleground, Restoration Shamans have multiple crowd controls to interrupt healers, reposition enemies, or crowd control them.

Restoration Shaman should use each of these different spells interchangeably depending on the team composition:

• Hex
• Capacitor Totem
• Earthbind Totem or Earthgrab Totem
• Thunderstorm
• Purge or Greater Purge
• Static Field Totem
• Lightning Lasso
• Wind Shear

Hex is a curse 7-second crowd-control which can be broken by damage. In general, you do not want to damage a target that has been hexed. That player does still have control of their character to move out of line of sight. This is best used on the enemy team when they have used an offensive or defensive cooldown or the healer as part of a crowd-control chain.

Earthbind Totem/ Earthgrab Totem is a placed totem that slows or roots any enemies within the radius. This totem is incredibly useful and should be used on cooldown. This helps your team's positioning. This totem can also help you land Capacitor Totem.

Thunderstorm knocks back all enemies around the Restoration Shaman as long as they are not rooted or have an immunity to knock-backs or magic effects active like Anti-Magic Shell from Death Knights. This is incredibly useful and can be used to save your teammates on arena maps with ledges, Dalaran Sewers, and Blades Edge Arena. This is also a great ability for battlegrounds in Eye of the Storm or certain areas of Twin Peaks and Arathi Basin, which can kill the enemies from fall damage in these cases.

Purge or Greater Purge can be used defensively to purge off your opponent's offensive cooldowns or Mana back cooldowns, which are purgeable. One very important use is during a Priest's Mind Control of your teammate. When a Priest does this, it is better to use purge on your Mind Controlled teammate and not use your Wind Shear interrupt. This is because purge has no cooldown, while Wind Shear is on a 12-second cooldown.

Static Field Totem has only around 5K HP, but it can be an important factor when going for burst for a kill. This will allow you to get off your damage without being kited. This traps the enemy team within the circle. This can also be moved, dragging the enemy using Totemic Projection.

Lightning Lasso is a 5-second non-dispellable stun that does moderate damage each second. This is great for locking down an enemy to allow your team to burst or to crowd control a healer. Note that you will not be able to heal while channeling the stun, and you can be interrupted.

Astral Shift is the main defensive for Restoration Shaman, which is on a 1.5-minute cooldown. This ability decreases damage taken by 40% for 12 seconds and is not usable while stunned. It is best to communicate with your healer and use this cooldown at high health when your opponents are using their offensive cooldowns and your healer needs help keeping you alive.

Burrow an immunity, similar to Dispersion from a Shadow Priest. While under the ground, you can be healed and can move at full movement speed. This is particularly useful if your healer gets crowd-controlled and the Shaman does not have Astral Shift available.

Stone Bulwark Totem is a useful totem providing an absorption shield to the Shaman. This can be reset with Totemic Recall to be used back to back. In addition, the actual totem can be relocated with Totemic Projection to avoid it being focused.

Ghost Wolf is an underrated ability; it allows the Shaman to stay at 100% movement speed with any slowing debuff active. This is the way Restoration Shaman can kite melee opponents and stay very mobile. If you are moving beyond a very short distance, Ghost Wolf is worth the global cooldown it incurs. Ghost wolf can be purged, which is one of the reasons why the Spirit Wolf talent is not as good as it could be.

Healing Surge is a spammable heal that provides significant side-healing. This should be used if your healer is stunned or crowd-controlled.

Earth Shield maintain this on yourself and one teammate due to talent Elemental Orbit to provide side-healing to your team.

Healing Stream Totem should be used on cooldown to provide moderate amounts of passive healing. This is also increased through the 20% benefit if Earth Shield is on the target and will provide significant side healing.

For the Lightning build, the stat priorities are:

1. Intellect;
2. Versatility;
3. Mastery;
4. Haste;
5. Critical Strike;

Buff your team with Skyfury raid buff for Mastery and Windfury.

Talk to your team to see if you should go on offense or defense once the flag is picked up. It is highly likely you will be on offense, use your disruption and high damage in the team fight

Focus on staying away from enemy melee while being close enough to enemy healers to use Wind Shear and crowd control to stop the enemy team from healing.

On resource race maps, talk to your team to see which base you should go to. Focus on bases where your Thunderstorm could give you an advantage. For example, Lumbermill on Arathi Basins allows you to knock people off, which can be significant.

Similar to resource race maps, your role is to disrupt the enemy by knocking them off in the middle while supporting your team.

Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active, and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.

As a healer, you do not want to pick up the orbs on this battleground. This significantly increases the damage you take. Only pick up orbs as a last resort.