Restoration Shaman Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

1. Use Healing Stream Totem as an emergency heal or whenever you hit maximum charges;
2. Cast Unleash Life and Ancestral Swiftness to spawn Ancestors and use its buff on Healing Wave;
3. Use Healing Rain on cooldown in a place where it will hit your group and any enemies you are currently fighting;
4. Cast Riptide on cooldown;
5. Use Healing Wave to heal single players;
6. DPS if no one is in danger to make the key faster.

1. Use Healing Stream Totem as an emergency heal or whenever you hit maximum charges;
2. Cast Unleash Life and Ancestral Swiftness to spawn Ancestors and use its buff on Healing Wave;
3. Use Healing Rain on cooldown in a place where it will hit your group and any enemies you are currently fighting;
4. Cast Riptide on cooldown;
5. Use Healing Wave to heal single players;
6. DPS if no one is in danger to kill the boss faster.

1. Use Healing Stream Totem as an emergency heal or whenever you hit maximum charges. Doing this will be your main way of casting Chain Heal;
2. Cast Unleash Life on cooldown and use it on Chain Heal or Healing Wave;
3. Place Surging Totem in a place where it will hit as many allies and enemies as possible, and use Totemic Projection to move it as needed;
4. Use Downpour for large burst healing inside your Surging Totem radius;
5. Cast Riptide on cooldown;
6. Use Healing Wave to heal single players;
7. DPS if no one is in danger to make the key faster.

1. Use Healing Stream Totem as an emergency heal or whenever you hit maximum charges. Doing this will be your main way of casting Chain Heal;
2. Cast Unleash Life on cooldown and use it on Chain Heal or Healing Wave;
3. Place Surging Totem in a place where it will hit as many allies and enemies as possible, and use Totemic Projection to move it as needed;
4. Cast Riptide on cooldown;
5. Use Healing Wave to heal single players;
6. DPS if no one is in danger to kill the boss faster.

Spirit Link Totem represents one of the most unique and flexible cooldowns within the World of Warcraft. Every second, the health of the group inside the totem's area of effect is redistributed, so all targets have an equal percentage of maximum health. It also grants a 15% damage reduction to players inside its area of effect and a massive heal shortly after its effect starts with Spouting Spirits. You can use Spirit Link Totem to split overwhelming damage on a single target to everyone in the group, making it non-threatening. Or to instantly ensure everyone has high health just before a highly damaging ability hits the group. If you add in Darkness, you can also further reduce the damage your group takes by 20% with no randomness involved. Finally, because Spirit Link Totem ensures that everyone inside its effect is damaged as long as at least one person is damaged, it allows healers to rapidly heal the whole group efficiently with just area-of-effect healing spells.

Healing Tide Totem is on a choice node with Ascendance and is meant to be used by Totemic players due to hero talents that boost its performance in this tree such as Splitstream and Primal Catalyst. As it is a totem, you can use it and immediately be free to move or cast other spells without needing to channel or stand still like other healer's raid cooldowns. Healing Tide Totem heals all allies within 40 yards for a flat amount, which is larger the fewer allies it heals, with maximum healing always being done as soon as you have at least 5 allies within range. It can also now benefit from First Ascendant and Preeminence due to being an alternative to Ascendance.

Ascendance is on a choice node with Healing Tide Totem and is a powerful throughput cooldown that works very differently from Healing Tide Totem, and is meant to be used by Farseer players due to their lack of synergy with Healing Tide Totem. While it is active, healing is increased by 30% and Riptide casts cause your next Healing Wave (or Chain Heal) to become an instant cast and apply Riptide to its target. This allows you to rapidly spread Riptides and quickly cast Healing Waves for huge Whispering Waves healing, and Deeply Rooted Elements procs can further extend the duration of the buff if you are lucky!

Nature's Swiftness gives you an instant, Mana-free cast every minute. With Totemic this is typically used for free Chain Heals, but Farseer upgrades it with Ancestral Swiftness into a version that empowers the instant cast spell and spawns an Ancestor, making it an important spell to press on cooldown.

Unleash Life allows you to amplify the healing of your next Healing Wave, Riptide, or Chain Heal when used. As it also lowers the cast time of the affected spell, you should usually use it on Chain Heal when playing as Totemic or Healing Wave when playing as Farseer due to the supporting talent typically picked with either specialization. Earthen Accord further boosts the power of Unleash, and its direct healing is significant enough that it should be cast on an injured target whenever possible.

As with all healing classes, Mana management is at the core of this specialization. It is important to choose your spells and timings wisely so that Mana can last until the end of the encounter, especially in a progression raid setting. Ideally, you should aim to keep your Mana pool roughly at the same percentage as the enemy's Health Points throughout an encounter. This ensures that you both keep enough Mana around for the later parts of the fight and also that you end the fight around 0% Mana, thus not wasting any of its potential healing.

Using a logging tool to analyze how your Mana was spent (or wasted) during an encounter can be a great way to improve your Mana management. No one is perfect in this regard, and practice is the key to success. Even seasoned veterans of the specialization will take some time to learn each individual encounter and how aggressively they can afford to play with their Mana pool while still having enough reserves to last the entire fight.

Beyond Mana, 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.

Mastery: Deep Healing is your Mastery as a Restoration Shaman. It causes your heals to be more powerful on low-health targets. When you heal a target with full health, you get no additional healing. When you heal a target with 0% health (1 health point), you get the full benefit of your Mastery.

Your Mastery heavily influences the way you play a Restoration Shaman.

• When raid healing, you should focus on low-health targets more so than any other type of healer, as you have the most efficient tools to heal them;
• When single-target healing, your Mastery has less influence because you should give priority to your assignment and cannot freely choose low health targets. By being aware of how much damage your assignment will take, you can optimize your heals to benefit from your Mastery.

Proper movement/usage of movement abilities is paramount to maximizing the time you have available to heal / DPS while dodging encounter mechanics. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to explain how to move and reposition within a fight, but as a healer, there are some basic principles you should follow as much as possible.

• Position yourself central to your raid for best access to all targets;
• Ghost Wolf can allow you to avoid mechanics easily, even while slowed, as it stops you from being slowed below 100% movement speed;
• Take advantage of your instant-cast spells and totems when you have to move. If none are available, use Ghost Wolf to get to your destination faster;
• Gust of Wind can help you against knockback mechanics to cross wide gaps, and when emergency movement is needed;
• Track mechanic timers and position yourself in advance to avoid moving later;
• If you have time, take stutter steps over an extended period to reach your intended destination. Every time you use an instant cast, take a few steps while you are locked by the Global Cooldown.

Many players will unconsciously move during fights, despite it being unnecessary. For example, sometimes the boss or adds will be moved by the tank a couple of yards, and though you are still in range to cast, you subconsciously mirror that movement, costing you global cooldowns. Consciously work to "quiet" your movement, and reduce unnecessary movement to a minimum. The best way to see this in action is to take a video of your raid then watch yourself play. Most players will be surprised by the amount of wasted movement they commit. When you are forced to move, make use of the tips above and make your path as direct and decisive as possible.

Spiritwalker's Grace should be used during periods of heavy movement where healing throughput is a concern. It can also be used to allow you to reposition while continuing to heal your group.

Restoration Shamans are well known for the high amount of utility — non-healing benefits to yourself or your group — they bring. It is not always obvious how to best use these tools to the benefit of your group, and often, they are used as part of your guild's overall encounter strategy.

Bloodlust and Heroism allow your group to dish out increased damage/healing for a long duration, which is of critical importance to beating soft and hard enrages on raid bosses and successfully dealing with Mythic Keystone dungeons / PvP situations. Usually, this spell is cast at the start of an encounter/dungeon boss when allies have their DPS cooldowns but this can change depending on the encounter's specifics.

If your group needs a movement speed increase to facilitate doing encounter mechanics, Wind Rush Totem is a great help, granting a significant group-wide speed boost every 2 minutes. As the totem's speed buff only lasts 5 seconds, but the totem itself lasts for 15 seconds; it is possible to get multiple speed boosts from a single totem as long as you return to it once your speed boost is gone.

Earth Elemental calls an elemental with very high health to taunt and tank non-boss enemies for you for a long duration. This is best used to increase your DPS during an encounter or as an emergency tool to relieve some pressure off your group's tank. You can also exchange its tanking capabilities for a 15% health buff with Primordial Bond while the Elemental is active, making it a personal defensive.

Astral Shift allows you to survive/ignore mechanics you usually would not be able to and should be used whenever you feel like you might die in the next few seconds of an encounter, preferably while you still have plenty of health remaining.

Tremor Totem enables you to quickly remove Fear / Sleep / Charm effects from yourself or your group members, as long as you cast it before you are crowd-controlled. Its PvE usefulness depends on the encounter mechanics, and it does not work on all types of Fear / Sleep / Charm you will find, but it is nearly always useful in PvP.

Capacitor Totem allows you to stun a group of enemies at will, allowing your group to dispatch them before they can deal further damage / heal.

Earthgrab Totem and Earthbind Totem allow you to root/slow enemies in an area. This is very useful whenever your group has to crowd-control powerful enemies (and in PvP), but ultimately, its specific use depends on the encounter mechanics you are dealing with.

Hex allows you to crowd-control a humanoid or beast target for a long while. Handy in PvP and in dungeons but of limited use in raids.

Purify Spirit allows you to dispel Magic (and Curse when talented) effects, something that is often essential to completing dungeons and raids successfully. It also has great PvP uses, depending on the enemy compositions. Keep in mind that if you dispel a target that has just been completely dispelled by another healer, you waste Mana.

Restoration Shamans make ideal candidates for doing interrupt and dispel assignments, as they are the only healer with a ranged kick. Take advantage of Wind Shear whenever possible, though you should avoid compromising raid healing if this is during a period of heavy incoming damage. Purge is also great on fights where a dispel is necessary, but bear in mind that this costs Mana, so if resources are tight, consider asking a DPS to fulfill this job.

When playing as Farseer with Call of the Ancestors, you can spawn Ancestor NPCs to help you for a short duration with Unleash Life and Ancestral Swiftness.

These Ancestors cast spells that mimic what you are casting, but generally do not benefit or interact with your talents:

• Healing Wave casts cause Ancestors to also cast Healing Wave, and their healing counts towards Whispering Waves, making it the best healing value cast for Ancestors in most situations;
• Riptide and Unleash Life result in a Healing Surge from Ancestors, which does not propagate through Whispering Waves;
• Chain Heal, Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem, and Healing Tide Totem result in a Chain Heal cast by the Ancestors;
• Chain Lightning results in a Chain Lightning from the Ancestors on your target, while single target damage spells result in Lava Burst casts.