Restoration Shaman PvP Guide for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Restorations has many instant healing tools such as Riptide, Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Earthliving Weapon, and its Unleash Life effect when Unleash Elements is used.

The wide array of passive and instant healing tools makes Restoration a very efficient healer, especially when also considering the Mastery stat, Deep Healing, which boosts healing on low health targets, allowing you to easily catch up on healing.

Besides its healing capabilities, Restorations also has a lot of utility they can put to good use in the Arena, such as Tremor Totem, Purge, Grounding Totem, Hex, Wind Shear, and the new Spirit Link Totem, making it one of the most well rounded healers in Mists of Pandaria!

Strengths

• Strongest emergency healing with plenty of instant casts and the Deep Healing mastery
• Wide array of spells and totems available, with most being instant cast and thus not interruptible
• Strong defensive cooldowns such as Spirit Link Totem and offensive dispel with Purge

Weaknesses

• Usually gets focused in arenas as mobility and anti-stun options are not the best
• Vulnerable to interrupts and totem stomping as all healing is from the Nature spell school and casted heals do much more healing than the instants available

• Glyph of Totemic Vigor — increases the health of your totems by 5% of your maximum health, making them much harder to destroy, which is of critical importance for Restoration as much of your healing is totem-based.
• Glyph of Ghost Wolf — causes your Ghost Wolf form to be resistant to slows, allowing you to kite away or reposition mid match more reliably.
• Glyph of Hex — reduces the cooldown of Hex by 10 seconds, allowing you to use it more often.
• Glyph of Healing Stream Totem — causes Healing Stream Totem to reduce the elemental damage taken by its targets by 10% for 6 seconds. This is a very strong glyph against teams that heavily use elemental damage, especially when combined with the Rushing Streams talent.

• Glyph of Totemic Encirclement — creates multiple decoy totems when you use your totems, making it harder to take down your important utility totems.

The rest of the minor glyphs have no impact on PvP gameplay.

If you have not already, we recommend reading the Spells Summary page first. Knowing how each spell and ability works in detail will greatly increase your understanding of the topics discussed on this section. In PvP you will need to react and adapt to different situations, meaning you will not always follow the recommended rotation below. Aim to do whatever allows you to stick on your target the most while dealing as much damage as possible.

1. Make sure Earth Shield is active on the player taking the most damage on your team;
2. Keep Healing Stream Totem active for passive healing;
3. Dispel often with Cleanse Spirit to reduce enemy pressure;
4. Use Unleash Elements on an injured ally;
5. Use Riptide on cooldown for efficient healing and Tidal Waves;
6. Use Healing Surge on highly injured targets as a last resort, hopefully not getting interrupted in the process.

Ancestral Swiftness is great to respond to emergency damage with Greater Healing Wave or instantly CC an important target with Hex.

Healing Tide Totem causes high healing for 10 seconds, making it a great ability to recover from falling behind on healing.

Spirit Link Totem will stabilize the health of anyone within its radius, and is especially powerful in PvP since enemy players will usually be focusing a single player on your team, rather than the whole team at once. It can also bypass Smoke Bomb's effect, making it even more effect against Rogue teams!

In addition to your main spells and cooldowns, you also have many utility spells that can be game-changing when used in the proper scenario. Make sure you understand each of the spells listed below to fully take advantage of your entire spellbook.

• Use Spiritwalker's Grace if you need to move while casting heavy healing spells;
• Mana Tide Totem can be used to recover Mana during a match;
• Earthbind Totem to slow nearby enemies and allow for kiting;
• Tremor Totem can be used to remove Fear and other similar effects, making it an excellent button to break such effects instantly on yourself and your team;
• Grounding Totem should be used to nullify enemy CC and other important casts;
• Wind Shear can also be used to disrupt caster enemies, by interrupting their casts directly;
• Purge can be used to remove enemy buffs, such as Druid heals over time or Priest shields;
• Hex is a hard crowd control spell which can be used to disable an enemy for an extended duration. Take note that it is a Curse effect, making it harder to dispel for some classes, but easier for others.

If you are looking to maximize the potential of your Restoration Shaman in Mists of Pandaria PvP, these are the recommended professions:

1. Blacksmithing — Gives you two additional sockets with Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves, enabling you to stack more Crit in this season.
2. Jewelcrafting — Gives you three extra powerful gems, which can boost your Crit even higher.

The list linked below includes the best possible gear setup for a Restoration Shaman in PvP.

When it comes to evaluating Restoration Shaman's place within the Arena, we have created a number of guides devoted to listing a variety of popular team compositions which you can find below.