Classic Restoration Shaman Healer Spec, Builds, and Talents
On this page, you will find out the best PvE talent choices and builds for your Restoration Shaman Healer in WoW Classic.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Restoration Shaman talents.
Talent Builds for Restoration Shamans
Restoration Shaman talent builds focus on throughput, sustainability and usually
involve a trade-off between raw healing talents and improving your support Totems,
especially Windfury Totem and
Strength of Earth Totem.
Leveling Builds
If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Shamans.
Restoration Shaman Talent Builds: Deep Restoration

This build provides the highest healing potential out of all Shaman talent builds,
with a focus on Chain Heal and
Healing Wave, but does so at the cost
of not improving our support totems,
Windfury Totem and
Strength of Earth Totem.
This makes it the favored build when playing in a caster group, which would not benefit from these totems anyway.
Feel free to swap points from Improved Reincarnation or
Totemic Focus
into
Healing Grace, to reduce your threat output and make it less likely
that you pull aggro from the tanks.
Restoration Shamans Talent Builds: Enhancing Totems

For the cost of losing Totemic Focus and
Improved Reincarnation,
you can gain
Enhancing Totems, which increases the DPS output of your group,
as long as it has melee or Hunter players that can benefit from the improved totems.
Because more points are spent into the Enhancement tree, you can apply your
preference points to a larger array of talents. Feel free to swap out Guardian Totems
for
Improved Lightning Shield for solo farming, or
Improved Healing Wave
and
Healing Way for
Improved Reincarnation,
Totemic Focus,
and
Healing Grace if you don't feel the need to use
Healing Wave
much in your groups.
Restoration Shamans Talent Builds: Improved Weapon Totems

This build forgoes many of the Restoration tree talents in order to pick up
Improved Weapon Totems, which makes
Windfury Totem even stronger.
While this trade-off is generally not worth taking in a vacuum, you are also able
to pick up
Flurry and
Two-Handed Axes and Maces, which grant
you better soloing abilities and, especially, allow you to use
Nightfall
(or
Annihilator, if needed) with great efficiency for your group.
Since you are forced to go deep into the Enhancement tree, there are plenty of
preference points available. We opted to make the build as
Totem Twisting
friendly as possible by maxing out Totemic Focus, but beware of this style's
high Mana cost, which will tax your healing if the encounters go long.
All of Healing Wave focused talents were removed as well, allowing you
to still cast your main raid heal,
Chain Heal with close to maximum efficiency.
Notable Restoration Shamans Talents
Elemental Tree
The Elemental Tree is mostly useless for a Restoration-focused Shaman in PvE, but it has a lot of PvP power associated with it, that you can consult on our Classic Shaman PvP guide.
Enhancement Tree
The Enhancement Tree has a lot of Totem enhancing talents that are worth using when you are supporting melee groups.
Guardian Totems increases the damage reduction of
Stoneskin Totem
by up to 20%, which is a small boost to your tanking support capabilities.
Improved Ghost Wolf reduces
Ghost Wolf's cast time heavily,
which is great for quickly moving around when outdoors.
Enhancing Totems increases the Strength and Agility granted by
Strength of Earth Totem
and
Grace of Air Totem by up to 15%, making them stronger DPS increases for the
melee players in your group.
Two-Handed Axes and Maces allows you to use its namesake's weapons.
Besides the high damage boost it brings to a Shaman, it allows you to use
Nightfall,
which is one of the best raid boosting tools in WoW Classic.
Flurry increases your attack speed by up to 30% whenever you land a
critical strike. This allows you to keep
Nightfall's debuff more reliably
and is a significant damage increase.
Improved Weapon Totems increases the melee attack power granted by your
Windfury Totem, which makes it even stronger at boosting your melee group's
damage.
Restoration Tree
The Restoration Tree is your bread and butter as a Shaman healer, allowing you to heal for large amounts efficiently.
Improved Healing Wave decreases your
Healing Wave's cast time
by up to 0,5 seconds. This is a significant healing gain, and should always be taken
whenever you are considering using this spell a lot, typically for dungeons or if
you are tank healing in a raid group.
Ancestral Healing increases your target's armor significantly after
you land a critical heal.
Chain Heal can apply this to multiple targets
at once, but its real value is in boosting the tank's armor, which will increase
their survivability significantly.
Totemic Focus reduces the Mana cost of your Totems significantly.
This is extremely useful when you are Totem Twisting,
but contributes an insignificant amount of Mana, otherwise.
Healing Focus lowers the chance of suffering spell pushback on heals
from taking damage. This is extremely useful in any fight where you are damaged
often, such as Sapphiron.
Totemic Mastery increases the range of your totems to 30 yards, allowing
them to affect targets that are further away. While this talent does not stack with
our Tier 1's 3 piece bonus, it is generally a good talent to use, ensuring maximum
uptime on your Totem's effects.
Healing Grace reduces the threat caused by your heals. While this is
generally a non-issue when playing with good tanks, in certain situations where
enemies spawn mid-fight it can be the difference between getting killed or surviving.
Tidal Mastery increases your critical strike chance with heals and lightning
spells. This has synergy with
Ancestral Healing and also contributes to
your damage potential when soloing.
Healing Way causes your
Healing Wave spells to increase the
healing of subsequent Healing Waves on the target for 15 seconds. This is typically
quickly and cheaply stacked on the tank with Rank 1 Healing Wave, serving as a massive boost
to your single-target healing afterwards.
Nature's Swiftness causes your next Nature spell to become instant. This
is great when trying to land an emergency
Healing Wave on a struggling tank,
or a direct healing increase with
Chain Heal.
Mana Tide Totem returns a significant amount of Mana to your group over 12
seconds, but due to its high 5-minute cooldown it has a low impact in the course
of a fight, overall. For maximum benefit, try to rotate Mana Tide Totems into the
caster's group during a raid.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2024: Page updated for Classic Anniversary.
- 02 Aug. 2019: Page added.
More Classic Shaman Guides
More Classic Guides from Other Classes
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Reputation Guides

This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Warrior, Mage and Shaman Discords, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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