Restoration Shaman Healing Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Restoration Shaman in Mythic+

Restoration Shamans got a significant improvement to their healing kit with Patch 8.1. By mixing the strengthened Chain Heal and the new High Tide, they can perform strong AoE burst healing on demand, which is critical when clearing high level keys. They also kept their large amount of utility and the ability to do significant DPS when healing is not required.

1.1. Restoration Shaman Mythic+ Rotation

While Mythic+ demands more out of your single target healing kit than raids, your spell priority does not change in Mythic+ content. For more information, check out the full Restoration Shaman Healing Rotation.

1.2. Restoration Shaman Utility

Restoration Shaman provides support for the party through healing, damage, and other additional effects such as dispels and crowd control.

• Purify Spirit removes all Curse and Magic effects from a friendly target on a 8-second cooldown. This can often allow the purified ally to survive otherwise deadly situations and usually lowers the damage intake of that ally.
• Purge removes one beneficial Magic effect from an enemy target. This is very useful in Mythic+, as there are a lot of enemies with very powerful Magic buffs that we can remove immediately.
• Wind Shear interrupts an enemy target and prevents spells of the interrupted school from being cast for 3 seconds on a 12-second cooldown. Restoration Shaman is the only healer that can interrupt and Wind Shear has the shortest cooldown out of all ranged interrupts. As interruptible enemy casts are, often, some of the most dangerous abilities you will face in Mythic+, you should try to interrupt enemies as much as possible, prioritizing the most dangerous casts / ranged enemies that are hard for melee allies to interrupt.
• Capacitor Totem allows you to place a totem up to 30 yards away that, 2 seconds after being placed, explodes to stun a group of enemies in a 16-yard diameter for 3 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. When facing dangerous trash packs, 3 seconds can easily be the difference between victory and defeat, especially against Raging / Necrotic / Skittish. Be careful not to stun enemies on top of Sanguine pools.
• Earthgrab Totem and Earthbind Totem allow you to root / slow enemies in an area. This is very useful whenever your group has to crowd control powerful enemies, for example when facing Raging / Necrotic / Infested.
• Tremor Totem places a totem beneath you that periodically removes Fear, Charm, and Sleep effects from allies within 30 yards. It lasts for 10 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown. This should be used whenever enemies are casting Fear, Charm, or Sleep effects on your group.
• Hex disables a non-boss humanoid or beast enemy for 1 minute. It has a 10-second cooldown but only one enemy can be hexed at a time. This allows you to disable an Infested / especially powerful enemy and deal with him alone after dispatching his pack.
• Earth Elemental summons an elemental with a large health pool and good non-boss tanking capabilities — its taunt does not work on bosses — for 1 minute on a 5-minute cooldown. Since it costs no Mana, it can be used for a minor DPS increase or as an emergency cooldown capable of distracting dangerous non-boss enemies.
• Bloodlust and Heroism increase Haste by 30% for 40 seconds for all group members within 100 yards. This ability applies a debuff to everyone in the group which prevents them from benefiting from other casts of this ability or other classes' equivalent abilities for 10 minutes.

2. Mythic+ Talents for Restoration Shamans

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+; these talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.

Level	Choices
15	✗ Torrent	✓ Undulation	✓ Unleash Life
30	✓ Echo of the Elements	✗ Deluge	✓ Earth Shield
45	? Spirit Wolf	? Earthgrab Totem	? Static Charge
60	✓ Ancestral Vigor	✓ Earthen Wall Totem	? Ancestral Protection Totem
75	✓ Nature's Guardian	✓ Graceful Spirit	? Wind Rush Totem
90	✓ Flash Flood	? Downpour	? Cloudburst Totem
100	✓ High Tide	✗ Wellspring	? Ascendance

There are a few talent builds you can run, with all of them giving out similar results.

The most popular combination before this patch was Undulation, Earth Shield, Flash Flood and Ascendance. The idea behind this build was to shore Restoration's weak tank healing as much as possible, while relying on Ascendance to cover heavy group damage. However, you would regularly struggle in dungeons that required AoE burst healing more often than Ascendance could provide.

A new way to build in patch 8.1 takes advantage of the juiced up Chain Heal and reworked High Tide to surpass these limitations, by taking High Tide instead of Ascendance — try out Cloudburst Totem during Bursting or Grievous weeks as well! A simple rotation of Chain Heal (to generate Tidal Waves) and Healing Surge can outheal anything that can be thrown at you in a dungeon, especially when combined with High Tide activating every 10 or so seconds when you're in a pinch.

3. Mythic+ Affixes

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Battle for Azeroth has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

There are now three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix is enabled immediately at level 2, the second affix starts at level 4, the third affix starts at level 7 and, finally, the seasonal affix starts at level 10.

3.1. Tier One Affixes

• Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.
• Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. These affixes shift the focus of Mythic+ from boss to trash depending on the week. Restoration Shamans excel during Fortified weeks, as our utility allows us to shine at crowd controlling and disrupting packs of enemies. During Tyrannical weeks we need to be more careful with Mana management on bosses. Also, highly damaging boss abilities might require the use of talents such as Spirit Wolf / Ancestral Vigor / Nature's Guardian, in order to survive.

3.2. Tier Two Affixes

• Raging increases the damage dealt by enemies below 30% by 100% until they die.
• Teeming adds additional trash mobs to certain packs throughout each dungeon.
• Bolstering causes dying enemies to increase the maximum health and damage of other nearby enemies by 20%. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus on the highest health pool enemies first.
• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when an enemy dies. This pool will heal enemies who stay inside the zone, while damaging players.
• Bursting causes enemies to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer 10% of their maximum health in damage every four seconds. When handling the Bursting affix, make sure your group knows how many stacks you can handle at a given point and try to save healing cooldowns for larger pulls, which will cause high Bursting stacks.

3.3. Tier Three Affixes

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer 50% of their maximum health in damage. The more enemies you are in combat with, the more volcanic plumes will spawn.
• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking damage over time effect when they fall below 90%. Make sure to quickly remove the debuff with focused healing / cooldowns if needed, or it is likely you will fall behind and deaths will occur.
• Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 20% maximum health in damage to each player caught in the zone and interrupt any casts being finished during the shockwave.
• Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period of time or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not cleaveable and the amount of orbs that spawn scales with the amount of enemies pulled.
• Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and a minor damage over time effect. Restoration Shamans can help the tank survive through the use of Capacitor Totem / Earthgrab Totem / Earthbind Totem / Earth Elemental.
• Skittish reduces the amount of threat generated by tanks throughout the dungeon. Again, you can use Capacitor Totem / Earthgrab Totem / Earthbind Totem / Earth Elemental to quickly get enemies back under control.

3.4. Seasonal Affix

Infested is the seasonal affix for the launch of Battle for Azeroth. Enemies afflicted with the Infested debuff will be scattered throughout each dungeon once you reach key level ten. These mobs will heal enemies around them and, when slain, will spawn two Spawn of G'huun that will attempt to infest remaining enemies.

There are several ways to handle Infested mobs depending on pack size, which mob is infested, and group composition. The first way to handle an Infested enemy is to burn down the infested target and the subsequently spawning Spawn of G'huun while either crowd controlling or ignoring the other mobs in the pack. The second way is to crowd control the Infested mob and burn down all the other enemies. After you kill an infested mob and the Spawns of G'huun spawn, Restoration Shamans can use Capacitor Totem / Earthgrab Totem / Earthbind Totem to stop / slow their movement until they are killed.

4. Changelog