Restoration Shaman DPS Guide — Season 4

You should look to deal damage as a healer specialization character in order to optimize your gameplay by filling in moments where your healing will not make a difference with extra damage, which always makes a difference, especially in timed Mythic+ runs and raid bosses.

The faster an enemy dies, the less overall healing will have to be done, and it also reduces the probability of mistakes and deaths happening, leading to the dreaded 0,1% wipes common during progression raiding.

Because you will only have 3 DPS players, the difference between a 0 damage healer in Mythic+ dungeons and a healer that actively uses his damage abilities can be up to 10% of the total group DPS. Also, although you are the only healer, you can often simply heal your group between pulls instead of during them.

While all Shamans should contribute DPS between their healing requirements, Battle Shamans focus almost exclusively on damage dealing and healing cooldown usage in raids, while saving their healing kit and Mana to emergencies or hard healing phases.

This is a playstyle that first appeared in the Battle for Azeroth's azerite armor system, which allowed dedicated Restoration Battle Shamans to deal DPS almost equal to that of DPS specializations. While the initial trait is no longer present, our damage spells were buffed to compensate, and, especially, had significant Mana reductions. This means that DPSing in between healing is more important than ever, even if the dedicated Battle Shaman is mostly dead.

Because of our Mastery healing for more when targets are deeply injured and the nature of a Shaman's healing kit, which combines multiple high-impact cooldowns such as Spirit Link Totem with the expensive but no-cooldown Chain Heal and Healing Surge, it is very viable to focus on damage dealing (which barely uses any Mana by itself) and cooldown usage until hard healing is required, at which point you can quickly go through your entire Mana pool to do a crazy amount of burst healing over one minute or so.

• Acid Rain turns your Healing Rain into a good damage spell and should be used on cooldown if at least one target will be standing within it for its full duration;
• Flame Shock is your main damage-over-time (DoT) effect;
• Lava Burst can be a strong single-target spell but is talent-reliant;
• Lightning Bolt is your single target filler spell;
• Chain Lightning is your main AoE spell;
• Stormkeeper is a cooldown that allows you to deal high burst damage on demand.

The talent Lava Surge gives each of your Flame Shock ticks a chance to reset the remaining cooldown on Lava Burst and make it instant. Thus, the more Flame Shocks you have active, the higher your odds of getting extra Lava Bursts, drastically increasing your DPS potential.

Pandemic is a passive effect that makes it so that when refreshing your periodic damage or healing effects, the remaining duration is added to the new one, up to a total maximum of 130% of the base duration. Understanding this effect is very important to maximizing your damage. For example, if you attempt to refresh Flame Shock (21-second base duration) at 10 seconds left, the new duration will become 21 + (21 * 0.3) = 27.3 seconds. You will want to refresh your DoTs in a so-called Pandemic window, which is defined as any time before the DoT expiration and 30% of its maximum duration. For the Flame Shock example, it will be a time frame between 0 and 6.3 seconds. Casting Flame Shock at this point will add the full 21 seconds, ensuring you lose no damage and your DoT is always on the target dealing damage.

Because of the low amount of spells involved, the Shaman DPS rotation is very simple (assuming you took all DPS talents, including Lava Surge):

1. Cast Healing Rain (with Acid Rain) on cooldown;
2. Cast Stormkeeper on cooldown;
3. Cast Flame Shock on each target and refresh it whenever it has 6.3 seconds or less duration left;
4. Cast Lava Burst at the priority target whenever it is available;
5. Cast Lightning Bolt at the priority target, otherwise.

1. Cast Healing Rain (with Acid Rain) on cooldown;
2. Cast Stormkeeper on cooldown;
3. Cast Flame Shock on each target and refresh it whenever its debuff has 6.3 seconds or less remaining;
4. Cast Lava Burst if you get a Lava Surge proc;
5. Cast Chain Lightning, otherwise.

1. Cast Healing Rain (with Acid Rain) on cooldown;
2. Cast Stormkeeper on cooldown;
3. Cast Chain Lightning.

If you lack Lava Surge, just drop Lava Burst from your rotation and proceed with the rotation suggested. You will do less single-target damage, but also use less Mana, global cooldowns, and save a talent point in the process.

Some Dragonflight trinkets have powerful direct damage effects and can be used with great effect by us as well. Some of the best ones are:

• Belor'relos, the Suncaller (Amirdrassil);
• Nymue's Unraveling Spindle (Amirdrassil);
• Ominous Chromatic Essence (Aberrus);
• Whispering Incarnate Icon (Vault of the Incarnates);
• Rashok's Molten Heart (Aberrus);
• Water's Beating Heart (Halls of Infusion);
• Screaming Black Dragonscale (Aberrus);
• Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge (Amirdrassil);
• Neltharion's Call to Dominance (Aberrus);
• Spoils of Neltharus (Neltharus);
• Darkmoon Deck Box: Dance (Inscription);
• Idol of the Lifebinder (Jewelcrafting);
• Idol of the Spell-Weaver (Jewelcrafting);
• Alacritous Alchemist Stone (Alchemy);
• Sustaining Alchemist Stone (Alchemy).

These tend to be extra powerful for dealing damage relative to their position on the tier list of the gear guide, but any trinkets that give you non-Mastery stats are also fine; make sure to check them out!

As mentioned before, even though this is a DPS guide for Restoration Shamans, you will still be expected to heal whenever needed. You have two options on how to proceed:

• Use your regular healing rotation but always making sure to keep Flame Shock active on targets and Lava Burst on cooldown. This leads to good sustained healing and damage but low burst healing capabilities.
• Follow the damage rotation detailed above until healing is absolutely required, at which point you swap to Chain Heal and Healing Surge spam, depending on the type of healing required. This leads to low sustained healing but good sustained damage and high burst healing capabilities.

Which style you should adopt depends on your raid's needs and the encounter's damage profile, and you should generally consult with your raid / healing leader in order to figure out what style suits your group the best.

In general, equipping the highest item level pieces without Mastery on them will give you the highest damage. If you have equal item-level pieces, follow the stat priority list below.

1. Intellect
2. Versatility = Critical Strike = Haste