Restoration Shaman Healing Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

Restoration Shaman is an extremely flexible specialization that shines when healing groups of clumped players. They have a variety of unique tools to deal with otherwise deadly influxes of damage, such as Spirit Link Totem.

Because Chain Heal has no cooldown, Restoration Shamans are one of the few healers that can area-of-effect heal continuously when dangerous, unexpected damage happens, a situation also perfectly suited to their Mastery effect, Mastery: Deep Healing, and to external Mana tools such as Innervate.

Shaman can be quite mobile with Spiritwalker's Grace, Ghost Wolf, and Gust of Wind or Spirit Walk, and deal decent damage when focusing on it, but for the most part cannot heal at the same time as they deal damage; this is considered one of the major weaknesses of the specialization.

In order to properly play a healing role, you will need more than just class-specific information. To better understand healing in general, we recommend that you read our healing guide.

Strengths

• Meta class in both Raids and Mythic+;
• Great healing, especially when your group can stack inside Healing Rain;
• Can often cast while moving with Spiritwalker's Grace and jump around with Gust of Wind;
• Unique support tools: Ancestral Vigor, Spirit Link Totem, and Ancestral Protection Totem;
• Excellent survivability with Astral Shift, Earth Elemental, Stone Bulwark Totem and passives such as Brimming with Life;
• Great non-healing tools such as Skyfury, Reincarnation, Wind Rush Totem, Wind Shear, Purge, Tremor Totem, and Capacitor Totem.

Weaknesses

• Only passive source of damage is Acid Rain;
• Non-cooldown healing is Mana inefficient, or tied to high cast times;
• Loses healing potential in situations that force the group to spread;
• No tank cooldowns outside of Spirit Link Totem which has a long cooldown;
• No teleports like Blink or damage immunity capabilities like Divine Shield.

• Skyfury now costs 1% base mana (was 4%).
• All Shaman Ascendance models have been updated. Fire for Elemental, Lightning for Enhancement, and Water for Restoration.
• New Glyph: Glyph of Energetic Ascendance – Your Ascendance transformations embody energetic forms, unleashing their power.
• New Glyph: Glyph of Traditional Ascendance – Your Ascendance transformations embody their traditional forms.
• Shaman can now float on water while in their Ascendance form.
• Poison Cleansing Totem now has a 2 minute cooldown (was 45 seconds).
• Mana Spring no longer has an aura displaying who is benefiting from it.
• Updated spell visuals for Lava Burst.
• Primordial Wave's icon has been updated.

The most impactful change is the almost tripled cooldown on Poison Cleansing Totem, which will negatively affect our ability to keep poisons debuffs and the Void Rift Xal'atath:Devour affix under control in Mythic+ dungeons.

• New Talent – Coalescing Water: Chain Heal increases the initial healing of your next Riptide by 75%, stacking up to two times and Chain Heal’s mana cost is reduced by a significant amount. Reactive Warding now also allows Earth Shield and Water Shield to consume charges of the shields 1 second faster.
• High Tide’s progress is now tracked through an aura called Swelling Tide. When Swelling Tide’s stack count reaches 100, High Tide triggers.
• High Tide’s progress now resets at the start of raid encounters and Mythic+.
• Chain Heals from Lively Totems are now cast by the Shaman. This is intended to clarify that Chains Heals cast this way will interact with Shaman talents and effects that enhance Chain Heal.
• Updated the wording on Surging Totem and Oversurge to clarify its functionality.
• Fixed an issue causing Nature's Swiftness to be consumed when Surging Totem is used.
• Fixed an issue causing the Chain Heal from Totemic Rebound to sometimes target pets instead of players.
• Fixed an issue causing Reactive Warding to not heal the Shaman sometimes when refreshing Earth Shield with Elemental Orbit and Earthen Communion talented.

Besides multiple bug fixes, the most important addition is the new Coalescing Water talent, which allows pathing towards High Tide from Tidebringer with a single talent point, and is quite a good power up for Chain Heal builds, especially those of the Farseer variety which always need to hard cast their Chain Heals.

Reactive Warding also received a strong buff, allowing your shields to proc up to 33% more than before which will increase their throughput potential and also cause them to lose charges faster for the refresh bonus! This is now one of the best places to spend the point saved by the more efficient Coalescing Water talent pathing.

Restoration Shaman has finally received a powerful raid buff in Skyfury, as well as major improvements changes to its talent tree, which is now mostly composed of 1-point impactful talents such as the new Spouting Spirits, Tidewaters, Downpour, and First Ascendant or Preeminence, to name a few of the best new tools available!

The Class tree also received some changes, removing much of the fluff that had to be taken for minor healing gains and adding new defensives, such as Stone Bulwark Totem and Primordial Bond, much-improved access to the mobility node that includes Gust of Wind, and a new choice node for Wind Rush Totem, which provides niche but potentially fantastic utility with Jet Stream and Ascending Air.

Finally, Restoration also has access to two new Hero Talent trees:

• Farseer is all about spawning Ancestors, mostly through Call of the Ancestors and Ancestral Swiftness. These are friendly NPCs that heal or deal damage based on what spells you use while they are active, making this tree a solid all-rounder that amplifies your burst healing potential but which also has poor synergy with Ancestral Guidance, Cloudburst Totem, and Ascendance, as Ancestor healing is not considered your healing.
• Totemic is all about using Totems, including the new Surging Totem, which replaces Healing Rain with a 24-second duration instant cast and can be moved with Totemic Projection. This frees up a lot of casting time, especially when combined with Lively Totems, and its free Chain Heals when using throughput totems. These talents simplify gameplay greatly, at the cost of tying your throughput potential even more to the small radius of Healing Rain.

Once these factors are all considered, Shaman is now the top Mythic+ healer. This is thanks to high reactive throughput, many healing cooldowns, and especially its unique utility, which includes an area stun and knock-up, a short cooldown ranged interrupt, one-click poison removal tool Poison Cleansing Totem, and multiple ways to increase your group's effective life pool with Ancestral Vigor and Downpour.

On the other hand, Shaman's poor Mana efficiency and reliance on stacked healing for Surging Totem or Healing Rain makes it struggle in the raid, especially in long fights or if you lack external Mana sources and consumables.

If you want to play a Restoration Shaman, but currently do not have one at max level, you can check out our leveling guide for tips on your journey.

Once you reach the max level, it can be somewhat overwhelming to completely change the way you play by suddenly implementing a large number of addons in a short space of time, especially if they have a heavy visual impact on your UI. We recommend using some of the more basic addons recommended on our Addons page below while leveling so that you have more time to get used to them during the easier phases of playing your class.

Restoration Shaman, like any healer, is all about using your abilities strategically. Rather than a fixed rotation, you will be using your flexible spell kit to adapt and overcome whatever the game throws at you.

Cooldown abilities, such as Riptide, Unleash Life and Healing Rain are very efficient, and thus important to use as many times as possible throughout a fight, while the likes of Healing Wave and Chain Heal can be thrown in at any time they are needed, as long as you still have Mana left.

If you are an absolute beginner to the spec but would like to learn the basic fundamentals of the class, we recommend looking through the Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below.

If you are already somewhat familiar with Restoration Shamans, you can head straight to the Talents and Rotation pages to jump right into more detailed information.

Gearing can be hard to pin down due to the huge number of variables that can affect your character's performance. You can find information on how best to gear a Restoration Shaman on our dedicated gearing page, which includes the current Best in Slot from this tier.

Once you have started to gear, you will need to make sure that you have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more. We have a dedicated page for this, as shown below, as well as the stats page, where you can find more information on the possibility of a changing stat priority and the necessary changes you may need to make for consumables.

Starting off can look very different from end-game pursuits. Our Mythic+ Dungeon and upcoming Raiding guides can guide you to performing as well as possible, regardless of your favored focus in end-game content.

While you will be primarily focused on healing, being able to consistently deal damage when healing is not required is what separates good players from great players. Learn more about this subject on our specialized page below!

If you are finding your performance lackluster, but are not sure where you are going wrong, you can check out the pages below for potential tips or answers to questions you may have.