Restoration Shaman: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Restoration Shaman. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Restoration Shaman spec in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Restoration Shaman, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

A quick summary of the current state of the specialization is listed below:

Strengths

• Very strong 5-man utility and small group healing.
• Simplified rotation allows for easy picking up of the spec by new players.
• Pure reactive healer with little to no requirements for predicting damage ahead of time.
• Unique abilities to increase raid survivability beyond healing in Ancestral Vigor and Spirit Link Totem.

Weaknesses

• Weak single target healing with the removal of Healing Surge and Tidal Waves.
• Very slow specialization in Midnight due to the loss of most cast time reducing effects.
• Raid healing usually requires stacking due to Healing Rain and Chain Heal having very limited range.
• Burst healing potential is low and tied to random effects such as Deeply Rooted Elements and the new Stormstream Totem.

The class and specialization design focus in Midnight is simplification, which is justified by the complex state of specializations in The War Within, and also the much simpler custom user interface options players will have access to, with the removal of support for most combat addons.

Many healing cooldowns, procs, and buffs are being removed, which will slow down gameplay. For Restoration Shaman, these are the most important core changes to the specialization tree:

• Cloudburst Totem, Earthen Wall Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem, and Wellspring have been removed. These were high-impact buttons which often required good timing and skill to optimize.
• Tidal Waves, High Tide, Tidebringer, Undulation, Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem, Master of the Elements, Mana Tide, and Tide Turner have also been removed. Some of these buffs were core to Restoration, and their effects will now be baked into the spells they affected. Chain Heal has 25% more jump range and 20% faster cast time in Midnight, while Healing Wave also casts 20% faster baseline.
• Unleash Life was reworked to have a longer cooldown and higher healing to compensate, as well as a new cast time reduction effect and support talent that increases its healing further.
• Healing Surge was replaced by Healing Wave and now benefits from effects that worked with it before, such as Refreshing Waters. The new talent Crashing Waves also makes it crit 12% more often, which is a nod to the old effect of Tidal Waves on Healing Surge.
• Ascendance is now on a choice node with Healing Tide Totem and talents that worked with Ascendance now also work with HTT, such as First Ascendant and Preeminence.
• Ascendance itself has been redesigned: while active Riptides make the next Healing Wave or Chain Heal instant, Healing Wave / Chain Heal apply Riptide to their main target, and your healing is increased by 30% instead of being duplicated.
• The Totemic hero talent Reactivity has been renamed to Splitstream and increases the healing done by Healing Tide Totem by 25% on top of its old effect which doubles Healing Stream Totem healing. When combined with the Ascendance change listed above, the intent is for Totemic to favor Healing Tide Totem while Farseer prefers Ascendance.
• Healing Rain now lasts 18 seconds, but also has an 18-second cooldown baseline. This will make it more palatable to cast for non- Totemic builds, but without Totemic Projection to move it, 18 seconds will often lead to losing healing when players move away before its duration and cooldown are finished.
• Downpour no longer grants a 10% health increase to allies hit, but it can now be improved by the Water Expulsion and Double Dip talents, which strengthen its healing potential considerably.

The Shaman class tree also had multiple important changes:

• Therazane's Resilience and Reactive Warding are now a choice node in the Class tree instead of a Restoration specialization node.
• Thunderstorm is now only learnable by Elemental, and is no longer available to Restoration, lowering their crowd control capabilities.
• Stone Bulwark Totem and Totemic Recall have been removed and replaced with passive Spiritual Awakening and Instinctive Imbuements. This removes active buttons with long cooldowns but relatively weak effects.
• Winds of Al'Akir was changed to provide a flat 5% movement speed bonus on top of extra 5% movement speed when in Ghost Wolf form.
• Static Charge, Brimming with Life, and Winds of Al'Akir are now 2-pointers instead of a single point for the same effect.
• Wind Shear now has a 30-second cooldown instead of 12, but Restoration Shaman is also the only healer still having an interrupt in Midnight and it spell locks targets for 4 seconds instead of 2.
• Seasoned Winds was converted into Windveil, which now reduces all spell damage taken by 15% when Wind Shear interrupts an enemy instead of being tied to the school of the interrupted spell, but no longer stacks and lasts 6 seconds less.

Farseer gained extra talents: Ancestral Influence, Windspeaker, and Mystic Knowledge. Offering from Beyond also lowers the cooldown of Riptide by 2 seconds instead of 3 in Midnight. The new talents are very strong and aimed at supporting a Whispering Waves build similar to that of The War Within Season 3 where you rapidly cycle through Riptides and Ancestors for healing purposes.

Totemic also gained extra talents: Totemic Momentum, Elemental Attunement, and Primal Catalyst. These further support Healing Stream Totem and Healing Tide Totem healing which is a major theme of the tree.

Apex talents consist of a special talent row which unlocks at the same time as the bottom tier of regular specialization talents.

Restoration Shamans will unlock Stormstream Totem, the two-pointer Stormstream Totem, and Stormstream Totem. This apex talent grants Riptide a small chance to proc a very powerful version of Healing Stream Totem which can be cast without using regular HST charges once you fully unlock the talent.

In addition to Apex talents, Restoration will gain access to three additional talents for each Hero Talent Tree once maximum level in Midnight.

Below are the first Tier Set Bonuses for Restoration Shaman in Midnight. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicised.

• 2-set bonus — Unleash Life's cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds and its direct healing is increased by 100%. This is a very simple bonus which increases the potential healing of Unleash Life.
• 4-set bonus — Unleash Life affects an additional spell cast at 100% effectiveness. Since much of the healing gain from Unleash is in the buffed spell you get afterwards, this is also a nice bonus that is easy to use.

Overall this is a simple yet strong tier bonus which does not change how you play but strongly emphasizes playing correctly, which means hitting injured players with Unleash Life for its initial heal, doing so on cooldown to avoid waste potential healing, and using the follow-up buff on the correct spells for the situation.

The overall effect of these changes is to reduce Restoration burst healing capabilities and rotational complexity, making it one of the easiest healers to pick up and play for new players. Much of its unique utility is still intact, especially the parts that depend on the class tree, which should maintain Restoration Shamans as one of the best healers for 5 man groups, despite losing Thunderstorm.

With most healing buttons having been pruned, you will mostly be casting Unleash Life, Riptide, Healing Stream Totem, and Healing Rain plus Downpour on cooldown, and filling in the rest of the time with Healing Wave for single target healing or Chain Heal for additional area healing.

Whispering Waves will still mostly ignore Chain Heal and Healing Rain in favor of more Healing Wave casts.

Spirit Link Totem and either Healing Tide Totem or Ascendance should be used to counteract periods of high damage and Earth Shield should be maintained on yourself and a squishy target at all times.

Despite the simple rotation, there will still be at least two important talent swaps to prepare:

• For stacked healing: Totemic, Downpour, and all Chain Heal talents. This is likely to be the strongest overall healing build, especially during the early period where secondary stats are low, but is not particularly strong at healing heavy spread encounters. Skilful players will want to maximize their Surging Totem healing with Totemic Projection to ensure 5 injured allies are within for as long as possible.
• For spread healing: Farseer, Whispering Waves, all Riptide talents and no Chain Heal or Healing Rain talents or usage at all. This build plays similarly to The War Within season 3 meta and is heavily reliant on Haste stacking, which will be hard to obtain early on, but has the benefit of being able to fully heal spread targets at all times. The new Unleash Life and tier set bonuses also synergize nicely with this build as you can use its frequent healing increases with Whispering Waves without worrying about the Mana.