Season of Discovery Restoration Shaman Healer Talents and Runes

Most of the points taken are straightforward throughput increases, such as Improved Healing Wave, Tidal Mastery, and Purification. Ancestral Healing and Totemic Mastery are examples of strong utility points that improve your group's quality of life through non-healing means.

Ancestral Knowledge is taken for its small, but relevant contribution to the Mana returned by Shamanistic Rage.

Mana Tide Totem is another good example of utility, and while it is underwhelming for yourself on its own, it has great group benefits in a raid setting.

• Gloves — Water Shield or Lava Burst (DPS)
• Pants — Earth Shield
• Chest — Overload
• Waist — Power Surge or Fire Nova (AoE DPS)
• Feet — Spirit of the Alpha (if not available from other Shaman) or Ancestral Awakening
• Head — Tidal Waves
• Wrist — Riptide
• Back — Coherence
• Ring — Nature Specialization
• Ring — Fire Specialization

Water Shield is the best option for healing, while Lava Burst is a powerful DPS option if healing is easy.

With Shamanistic Rage turning baseline in Phase 4, Earth Shield is the best option for the Leg slot as it can help smooth out healing on the tank and is a very efficient heal for the time it takes to cast. It is especially powerful on Warlock tanks as they occasionally need to cast while tanking and thus also benefit from the pushback reduction.

Overload is generally superior to Healing Rain (which is area limited and group restricted), as it will work on your damage spells and single target heals, making it much more flexible than Healing Rain, and still good for area healing when used with Chain Heal.

The Waist slot has some interesting options. Power Surge provides a ton of Mana while also occasionally granting instant offensive spell casts, while Fire Nova enables excellent AoE damage if the encounter calls for it.

The Feet slot is quite straightforward: Spirit of the Alpha should always be taken if you do not have an alternative way to obtain this buff in your group, but if you will already be getting it from other Shaman in the group, just get Ancestral Awakening for a small throughput increase.

Tidal Waves and Riptide are synergistic runes that heavily boost your single target healing and provide a way to instantly heal, especially useful in PvP and when moving in PvE.

Coherence increases the potential throughput of Chain Heal drastically, as it increases the targets hit while also reducing the healing loss for each jump. Finally, Nature Specialization and Fire Specialization increase your Spell Hit, making your DPS during downtime more potent and making interrupting with Earth Shock more reliable.

Make sure to check our Shaman Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!