Mists of Pandaria Classic Restoration Shaman Stat Priority

The stat priority for Restoration Shaman is as follows:

1. Intellect
2. Haste (aim for specific breakpoints such as 3379 for extra ticks on Healing Stream Totem)
3. Spirit
4. Critical Strike
5. Mastery (especially good in progression / underhealing raid setups)

Intellect is the primary stat for all casters and increases the magnitude of all spells, including heals, as well as increasing your chance to Critical Strike slightly.

Your Intellect will also get further increased by raid buffs such as Blessing of Kings, making it the stat to stack above all others. You will get more of it on higher item level gear naturally, making it an easy stat to stack.

Haste Rating is also a great secondary stat for Restoration, which allows you to quickly push out heals and make periodic ones such as Healing Stream Totem tick more times within their total duration, as long as you are inside a breakpoint. The main downside of Haste is the added Mana costs derived from casting more frequently. Make sure you have enough Spirit to support the amount of Haste you have to avoid running out of Mana before a fight has ended.

In Mists of Pandaria, Haste adds additional ticks to damage over time and healing over time spells if you reach certain breakpoint numbers. This increases the potency of healing spells such as Healing Rain by giving them more healing within the same total duration.

The breakpoints will vary depending on what buffs or racial you have such as the Elemental Oath and equivalent Haste raid buff, the Goblin racial Time is Money, Troll Berserking racial, or Bloodlust / Heroism raid buff.

Hitting your closest Haste breakpoint is very important as Restoration, as doing so will improve both your total healing and also the Mana to Healing efficiency of the spell which breakpoint you just hit. Try to avoid stacking Haste past a reachable breakpoint, as that will increase the pressure on your Mana without the equivalent heal over time efficiency benefits.

Compare the Haste percentages on the chart below to the Haste % on your character sheet to gauge where you stand relative to the most common breakpoints in a raid setting with Elemental Oath or a similar buff active.

Ticks Gained	Healing Stream Totem	Healing Rain / Healing Tide Totem	Riptide
1 Extra Tick	3379 Rating;	2017 Rating;	1345 Rating;
2 Extra Ticks	8785 Rating;	10118 Rating;	8085 Rating;
3 Extra Ticks	14170 Rating;	18207 Rating;	14846 Rating;
4 Extra Ticks	19557 Rating;	26308 Rating;	21596 Rating;

You can input these breakpoints into the Reforgelite Classic addon to easily calculate your optimal reforging with any gear setup.

Spirit is primarily a healer stat that grants increased Mana regeneration while not casting. As Restoration you get Meditation which allows 50% of your Spirit Mana regeneration to continue while casting and, more importantly, Mana Tide Totem which multiplies your Spirit by 200% and grants it to the whole raid group whenever used. It is no longer used as Spell Hit for Restoration because the Spiritual Insight passive takes care of all Spell Hit needs by default once unlocked.

Critical Strike Rating has synergy with the Ancestral Awakening and Resurgence Restoration passives. Ultimately the main problem with Critical Strike Rating is that you need a lot of Rating to get 1% more chance to land critical strikes and the other stats are all very strong already as well, but it is not a bad stat by any means, especially in 10-mans where you are likely to benefit heavily from Ancestral Awakening.

Restoration Mastery is Mastery: Deep Healing, which increases your healing done proportionally to the missing health of the target, making lower health targets be healed by much more than full health targets.

This makes it a very powerful stat when underhealing content, as you will be able to do more healing the more injured the raid is, but also means your ability to top players off will be relatively weak and inefficient when stacking Mastery.