2.1.
Midnight Season 1 Release Changes
Midnight Season 1 has released, and with it came a lot of new content.
It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season
1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided
some dedicated hubs covering everything available!
2.2.
Patch 12.0.5 Changes
Restoration Shaman has received a global 8% healing buff and 30% damage buff
in Patch 12.0.5. These are very strong buffs to our viability in all PvE content,
without requiring any changes to talents and rotation in the process.
In addition to this, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!
The Voidforge Unlocks!
The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to
target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also
further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our
Gear page.
Void Assaults are Unleashed
Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting
their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and
you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
Disrupt Ritual Sites
Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced
content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.
Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes
For the start of Season 1, Restoration received a 45% buff to 
Healing Rain
and 20% buff to 
Chain Heal, improving our area healing capabilities
drastically. As class changes are common throughout a season, we will ensure
to update this guide as soon as new changes occur, or new theorycrafting findings
have been made.
When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive
with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately
afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available;
these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on
March 24.
Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered
during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas
available the week of March 31. For these two passes we err on the side of caution with
the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being
overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes
planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear
sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel
it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.
2.3.
Restoration Shaman Changes in Midnight
The overall goal of the Midnight changes is to reduce healer burst
healing capabilities and rotational complexity, and this is especially true for
Restoration Shamans, which were already one of the easiest specs to pick up and
are now perhaps the easiest healer in the game with almost half of their possible
active buttons being gone in the Midnight, as well as almost all temporary
buff effects to spells.
- These are the most important core changes to the specialization tree.
► Click to expand
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.
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.
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 Healing Wave
always crits and hits a second ally for 50% effect and Chain Heal hits 3
extra targets and loses only 10% healing per jump.
- 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.
► Click to expand
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 movement speed bonus
on top of extra 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.
Much of their 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.
2.4.
Hero Talent Changes
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 the Midnight. The new talents are
strong and make Farseer a great spot healer.
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.
2.5.
Apex Talents: Stormstream Totem
The Apex talents of Restoration Shamans are Stormstream Totem, the
two-pointer Stormstream Totem, and final talent Stormstream Totem.
As a whole, these apex talents 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. 
Nature's Swiftness
(or 
Ancestral Swiftness) also grant a proc when used.
The proc stays active for up to 60 seconds and stacks twice, allowing you ample
time to wait for the best time to use it, although you will generally want to
do so before both charges of regular Healing Stream Totem are ready to avoid
wasting potential uses.
2.6.
Rotational Aspects
With many healing buttons having been pruned, you will mostly be casting Unleash Life,
Riptide, Healing Stream Totem, and Healing Rain on cooldown,
and filling in the rest of the time with Healing Wave for single target
healing or Chain Heal for area healing.
2.7.
Cooldown Adjustments
Spirit Link Totem and either Healing Tide Totem or
Ascendance will still be used to counteract periods of high
damage, but you will no longer have access to both at the same time as they are
now on a choice node with each other.
First Ascendant and Preeminence used to support Ascendance and
now also work for Healing Tide Totem but 
Deeply Rooted Elements is still
only tied to Ascendance, making it slightly weaker for Totemic due to
the new Splitstream and Primal Catalyst talents which boost the
performance of Healing Tide Totem.
Farseer
Totemic
