Restoration Shaman Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Restoration Shaman. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Restoration Shaman spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Restoration Shaman but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

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, 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.

Besides the Core Changes explained above, The War Within is also bringing a new Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion, which will cause Shaman playstyle to slow down drastically in the first tier as Critical Strike levels are reduced dramatically, leading to much lower Mana gains from Resurgence.

On the other hand, the first Restoration Shaman Tier set seems aimed at speeding gameplay by making Tidal Waves more effective, allowing for quicker rotations and including a Mana reduction effect to let your Mana last through the quicker casting.

Restoration Shaman gets to choose between the Farseer and Totemic Hero Talent Trees. In the sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Farseer Hero Tree Talents are all about spawning ancestor-friendly NPCs which can heal or deal damage based on what spells you are using. You can spawn them with Unleash Life or Undulation through Call of the Ancestors, with Riptide with Routine Communication, on despawn with Ancient Fellowship, and through Ancestral Swiftness, which is a slightly more powerful version of Nature's Swiftness.

Gameplay-wise, you will mostly just be playing normally as you already want to use the low-cooldown activators Unleash Life or Undulation (especially powerful with Primordial Wave spawning multiple Ancestors at once) and Ancestral Swiftness as much as possible, but there can be some extra value to delaying some of their uses slightly in order to have as many ancestors as possible out for when burst healing is required, as they only last 6 seconds baseline. You will also be able to save a regular talent point in Echo of the Elements by taking Elemental Reverb instead, as the vast majority of the power is in the first Riptide charge.

Power-wise, expect a solid all-rounder that further amplifies your burst healing potential but as ancestor healing is not considered your healing, there is no synergy with existing talents such as Ancestral Guidance, Cloudburst Totem, and Ascendance, which is a large downside considering current Restoration gameplay patterns.

Defensively, Farseer is extremely weak as both Natural Harmony and Earthen Communion are among the worst defensive talents present in any Hero tree currently.

Overall, Farseer is expected to be a great Mythic+ and small group content tree, as the Ancestors can contribute DPS when healing is not needed and are more useful in single target and spread healing scenarios than what Totemic can offer with its Chain Heal and Healing Rain focus.

The Totemic Hero Tree Talents bring a new active ability, Surging Totem, which replaces Healing Rain and casts a 24-second duration Healing Rain around the totem, which can be moved instantly frequently with Totemic Projection.

Gameplay-wise Surging Totem frees a lot of time that would otherwise be needed for Healing Rain recasts and thus lets you use the rest of your kit more often, at the cost of having even more of your healing potential tied to the small radius of Healing Rain than usual.

It also has a heavy Chain Heal focus, mostly because of Lively Totems and Totemic Rebound, which heavily benefit from Chain Heal talents and frequent rotational usage. Lively Totem Chain Heals count towards healing multiplier spells such as Ascendance, which is a great bonus when compared to Ancestor healing.

Whirling Elements is another interesting talent which provides various motes with helpful effects that interact with your core kit, including a way for Chain Heal to apply the Earthliving Weapon effect even if you do not have it talented on the regular tree! It is also possible that Cloudburst Totem will lose its longstanding standard pick status due to the combination of Supportive Imbuements, Reactivity, and the regular tree Living Stream which highly benefits from both.

Defensively, Totemic has the simple Wind Barrier, which provides a powerful shield every 30 seconds and scales with your maximum health, making it have some synergy with our generally high health pools due to Brimming with Life, Ancestral Vigor, and Downpour.

Finally, Surging Totem also doubles all one-time Healing Rain-related healing such as Tidewaters and Downpour, creating more opportunities for burst healing and allowing you to use your other spells more often!

Thus, due to its reliance on Healing Rain and Chain Heal, Totemic is a great tree for Raiding that doubles down on Shaman burst healing and utility strengths, but also its spread healing weaknesses.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Restoration Shaman in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Shaman Restoration Season 1 2pc — Tidal Waves increases the healing of affected spells by 10%. This is a simple bonus which translates into a straightforward 10% healing increase to some of your core spells such as Healing Wave, Healing Surge, and also Chain Heal, which is often easy to forget about as it used to provide, rather than consume, Tidal Waves in Classic expansions!
• Shaman Restoration Season 1 4pc — Tidal Waves is 80% more effective and reduces the Mana cost of affected spells by 8%. This is a very significant increase in Tidal Waves power and you will want to focus heavily on generating and spending them with your gameplay once you get this bonus.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and do not have significant gameplay impact, as generating and consuming Tidal Waves is already how you should be optimally playing, even without the tier set bonuses. Doing it correctly will be much more powerful, while failing to do so will be further punishing.

The 2pc bonus is strong but not overwhelmingly so, as much of your healing comes from unaffected spells such as Healing Tide Totem and Healing Rain.

The 4pc bonus is much stronger, as the 8% Mana reduction is similar in power by itself to the 2-piece bonus, and you also get a freebie with extra Critical Strike on Healing Surge and much faster casting of Healing Wave and Chain Heal, which is especially valuable in the first Season of the expansion when secondary stats such as Haste are at their lowest!

Overall this is a simple yet strong tier bonus which does not change how you play but strongly emphasizes playing correctly, so take it as a great time to hone your Tidal Waves management skills!

Strengths

• Farseer talents and gameplay are tailored towards no- Chain Heal builds and strong even when group heavy spread is imposed
• Your burst healing capabilities will become even stronger with the new talent trees, return of the Lively Totems bonus, and Farseer ancestors;
• Totemic makes Shaman stacked healing even stronger, with Surging Totem ensuring you never miss out on any Healing Rain casts and Ancestral Vigor being easier to spread than ever through the large amount of automatic free Chain Heals jumping around.

Weaknesses

• You will also still be without teleports, immunities, or tank cooldowns, limiting your group utility;
• While Farseer helps in this regard, all Restoration Shamans depend on stacked group tools for some of their healing and utility, from Healing Rain to Spirit Link Totem;
• Talents such as Tidebringer and Tidal Waves (especially with the new 4-set bonus) emphasize granting us large Haste bonuses, but none of these reduce the Global Cooldown, making us end up stuck waiting for it to end after casting extremely fast spells.