Restoration Shaman Healing Guide — Shadowlands 9.0.2

Restoration Shaman is an extremely flexible specialization that shines when healing groups of players that are clumped together. They have a variety of unique tools to deal with otherwise deadly influxes of damage, such as Spirit Link. Because Chain Heal has no cooldown, Restoration Shamans are one of the few healers that can area of effect heal continuously when dangerous unexpected damage happens.

While mobility is not one of the specialization's strong points, periods of heavy movement can be handled by Spiritwalker's Grace. It is also notable that Restoration Shamans deal most of their maximum potential damage in the form of instants: Flame Shock and Lava Surge-enabled Lava Burst allow them to put out a respectable amount of damage while moving, without cutting into healing time.

In order to properly play a healing role, you will need more than just class-specific information. To better understand healing in general, we recommend that you read our healing guide.

Strengths

• Great spot and stacked group healing.
• Can often cast while moving, using Spiritwalker's Grace.
• Unique, powerful healing tools: Spirit Link Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem and Ancestral Vigor.
• Great non-healing tools: Reincarnation, Wind Rush Totem, Wind Shear, Purge, Tremor Totem, Earthbind Totem, Earthgrab Totem, and Capacitor Totem.

Weaknesses

• Mediocre sustained single-target healing and no tank cooldowns.
• Mediocre group healing in situations that force a large spread.
• Mediocre mobility, most healing comes from spells with high casting times.
• Mediocre survivability, no immunities or very high damage reduction defensive abilities.

We are maintaining a list of changes for Shamans, so you can see what changed between Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. The new expansion also introduces new character customization options with Covenants and Legendary Powers, for which we have Shaman-specific pages that you can access below.

Restoration Shaman is staying mostly the same in Shadowlands and is still a fun specialization with lots of viable talent choices that affect your playstyle. While multiple spells are returning, the ones most relevant to the specialization are:

• Earth Shield was already available as a talent, and is now returning as a baseline ability, increasing our sustained single target healing potential, which is especially relevant in PvP and Mythic+.
• Water Shield is also an old ability which returns in order to provide us with a small Mana regeneration increase, made more significant if you are being hit by melee attacks.
• Mana Tide Totem, an old favorite, returns as a Mana regeneration boost for all allies nearby, with a really small radius; make sure to warn in voice chat before you use it!

As Earth Shield's replacement in the talent row, Surge of Earth competes in the level 25 row with Echo of the Elements and Deluge. As it currently stands, it is by far the weakest talent in the row, while also being the least flexible.

Finally, the removal of Corruption in the Shadowlands pre-patch means that you will likely be running much lower levels of Critical Strike and / or Versatility. While this is a big power loss, it affects everyone else equally and the content has been adjusted accordingly. There are no gameplay changes for Restoration Shamans due to the loss of the Corruption system.

Gameplay changes will come from the new borrowed powers in Shadowlands: Covenant Abilities, Soulbinds and Legendaries, which are not available yet. Keep an eye out on this guide for new pages detailing what and why to pick in each of these categories going forward!

If you want to play a Restoration Shaman, but currently do not have one at max level, you can check out our leveling guide for tips on your journey.

Once you reach max level, it can be somewhat overwhelming to completely change the way you play by suddenly implementing a large number of addons in a short space of time, especially if they have a heavy visual impact on your UI. We recommend using some of the more basic addons recommended on our Addons page below while leveling, so that you have more time to get used to them during the easier phases of playing your class.

Restoration Shaman, like any healer, is all about using your abilities strategically. Rather than a fixed rotation, you will be using your flexible spell kit to adapt and overcome whatever the game throws at you.

Cooldown abilities, such as Riptide, Unleash Life and Healing Rain are very efficient, and thus important to use as many times as possible over the course of a fight, while the likes of Healing Wave and Chain Heal can be thrown in at any time they are needed, as long as you still have Mana left.

If you are an absolute beginner to the spec, but would like to learn the basic fundamentals of the class, recommend looking through the Spell Summary first, as well as the Easy Mode page linked below.

If you are already somewhat familiar with Restoration Shamans, you can head straight to the Talents and Rotation pages to jump right into more detailed information.

In Shadowlands, once you are at level 60, you will be prompted to choose from one of the four major covenants: Kyrian, Necrolord, Night Fae or Venthyr. This choice will determine your end-game questing and some of your weekly activities.

You will also gain two new abilities: one rotational spell and one utility spell. We explain what each of these covenants brings to our class, as well as their Soulbinds and Conduit impacts in our dedicated guide.

Legendaries are back with Shadowlands and you can pick from a large selection of powers to apply to special gear crafted by professions, and which can be bought from other players.

Learn more about what the new Legendaries can offer you and their niches in our guide below.

Gearing can be hard to pin down, due to the huge number of variables that can affect your character's performance. You can find information on how best to gear a Restoration Shaman on our dedicated gearing page, which includes the current Best in Slot from this tier.

Once you have started to gear, you will need to make sure that you have the appropriate consumables, gems, enchants, and more. We have a dedicated page for this, as shown below, as well as the stats page, where you can find more information on the possibility of a changing stat priority and the necessary changes you may need to make for consumables.

Starting off can look very different from end-game pursuits. Our Mythic+ Dungeon, Torghast, Raiding, and PvP guides can guide you to performing as well as possible, regardless of your favored focus in end-game content.

While you will be primarily focused on healing, being able to consistently deal damage when healing is not required is what separates good players from great players. Learn more on this subject in our specialized page below!

If you are finding your performance lackluster, but are not sure where you are going wrong, you can check out the pages below for potential tips, or answers to questions you may have.