Restoration Shaman Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Restoration Shaman, depending on the type of damage your group is receiving. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your healing output and your mana efficiency. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Restoration Shaman rotation.
Foreword
Welcome to our Rotation page for Restoration Shamans. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.
PvP
The content on this page is purely PvE-related. If you are looking for PvP Rotation tips, please visit our PvP page below.
Rotation / Playstyle for Restoration Shamans
Healing is in great part based on your ability to react to the damage that the raid takes, and as such there is no set rotation. Rather, you must understand what spells are best suited to the different situations that can occur during a raid encounter.
Unlike damage, which is always useful as long as there are enemy targets, healing is only useful if the healed players would die without it. Therefore it is also important to use your damage kit when incoming damage is not threatening.
This playstyle philosophy would translate to — roughly — the following spell priority, in both raids and dungeons.
- Keep
Water Shield active on yourself.
- Keep
Earth Shield active on the tank.
- Use your short (1 minute or less) cooldown spells first — as long
as they will not heavily overheal — and prioritize using the shorter
cooldowns first, in order to maximize the amount of casts you can get of them
in a given encounter. The spells in this category, talents included, are, from
the lowest cooldown to highest:
- No cooldown —
Earth Shield (can only be on 1 target at a time)
- 6-second cooldown —
Riptide
- 10-second cooldown —
Healing Rain
- 15-second cooldown —
Unleash Life
- 20-second cooldown —
Wellspring
- 30-second cooldown —
Healing Stream Totem and
Cloudburst Totem
- 45-second+ cooldown — Your Covenant ability. We will detail their usage separately in the next section.
- 5 to 35-second cooldown —
Downpour (+5 second per target healed)
- 60-second cooldown —
Earthen Wall Totem
- No cooldown —
- When a cooldown spell is not available, use the best non-cooldown spell for
the situation. This means
Healing Wave for non-emergency single-target healing and
Healing Surge for emergency single-target healing. When multi-target healing, use
Chain Heal unless you already have two charges of
Tidal Waves, in which case you should cast a Healing Wave / Healing Surge first. Keep in mind that these spells are either expensive or low impact, so only use them if they will not overheal much. Because of Tidal Waves, there are also diminishing returns to consider when casting a lot of Healing Wave / Healing Surge spells in a row.
- If no one is in risk of dying, use your damage kit! Begin with
Flame Shock, keep
Lava Burst on cooldown, and add in
Lightning Bolt and Flame Shock refreshes when needed. When dealing with two or more enemies stacked together use
Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt, if there are three or more enemies stacked together, replace Lava Burst with Chain Lightning as well.
9.2 Restoration Shaman Tier Set Usage
Restoration Shaman 2-Piece — Your critical healing increases the critical chance of your next
Chain Heal by 2%, stacking up to 50 times.
Restoration Shaman 4-Piece — Your
Chain Heal critical hits reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your totems by 2 seconds. Your
Healing Stream Totem,
Healing Tide Totem,
Mana Tide Totem, and
Spirit Link Totem cast a free, instant Chain Heal when you drop them.
The 2-piece bonus encourages the usage of Chain Heal periodically
in order to avoid wasting any
Heal the Soul stacks. This becomes easier
to do once you also have the 4-piece, as your regular
Cloudburst Totem
usage will take care of most of the stacks by itself, but using a WeakAura to
track the buff can make things even smoother.
The 4-piece bonus is mostly about the free Chain Heals you get
from certain totem casts. You will want to get used to only using these totems
when there are damaged players nearby!
The totem cooldown part reduction is especially powerful when used on
Vesper Totem and
Cloudburst Totem, but this does require you to
not use any other totems in order to get maximum benefit, which is only
worthwhile when you do not need the extra healing and utility other totems bring.
Covenant Ability Usage for Restoration Shamans
Each ability has its own strengths and weaknesses, which you should understand when using them:
- Kyrian —
Phial of Serenity should be used when you are in danger of dying, or if you get a dangerous debuff it can remove.
Vesper Totem should be used on cooldown unless your group is healthy or you know there will be multiple targets to hit with its damage component soon. Most of the time you will simply drop it in melee, cast 3 damage and 3 healing spells and be done with it, but you can reposition it off the global cooldown for min-maxing purposes.
- Necrolord —
Fleshcraft can be used on cooldown, as long as you can channel safely through its full duration.
Primordial Wave should also be used on cooldown unless you are preparing for a large damage burst, in which case you will hold it until a few seconds before damage hits, in order to land the copied
Healing Waves when allies are hurt. You can min-max a little bit with
Echo of the Elements by banking 2 charges to use once there is a little bit under 18 seconds left for the damage to occur, but it will usually be safer to keep them on cooldown.
- Venthyr —
Door of Shadows can be used whenever you need to move quickly from one place to another, and is especially useful to "jump over" gaps and dangerous mechanics on the ground.
Chain Harvest combines
Chain Heal and
Chain Lightning in one and hits like a truck, but has a relatively long cooldown to compensate. Buff it with
Unleash Life, aim it at a player in the center of the raid (it can only "jump" to allies in a circle around the initial target) and cast it so that it lands after big raid damage.
- Night Faes —
Soulshape is a great movement ability and will come in handy whenever you need to move quickly from one place to another. You can even jump over dangerous mechanics with its blink!
Fae Transfusion should be used on cooldown as long as there is at least one enemy target nearby and you can channel its full duration safely. Make sure to release its healing at an appropriate time before it times out and keep in mind its low 8 yards range around you will force you to be very close to the target(s) you want to heal.
Legendary, Soulbind, and Conduit Usage for Restoration Shamans
There are a few popular Legendaries which have rotational impacts:
Deeptremor Stone does very high area damage, but can die very quickly if it gets aggro from a lot of small enemies, so make sure to keep an eye on its health and avoid using it in situations where it will just get killed instantly.
Elemental Equilibrium provides an on-demand damage buff which is easy to activate, as you are likely to be using Fire and Nature damage spells already, making it activate with a single
Frost Shock whenever extra damage is needed.
Raging Vesper Vortex causes extra damage whenever damage or healing charges on
Vesper Totem are fully expended and thus encourages the full use of both. While you have a lot of time to use all the charges, it is still advisable to focus on interweaving damage and healing spells until all charges are expended.
Elemental Conduit (especially when combined with
Skybreaker's Fiery Demise) gains a lot of value in situations where you can keep multiple
Flame Shocks rolling, and keeping them on as many targets as possible is a must when using this Legendary.
Seeds of Rampant Growth reduces your
Healing Tide Totem (HTT) cooldown significantly, so make sure to use it before casting
Fae Transfusion (FT)! Ideally, you would use
Healing Rain, HTT and FT in quick succession as group damage is happening in order to get maximum value from the extra Critical Strike chance on your most powerful spells.
Splintered Elements provides a lot of Haste when you make use of the
Primordial Wave buff, but it can overwrite itself, and thus waste some value when Primordial Wave's cooldown is reset by the
Tumbling Waves Conduit. It is not worth it to wait for the end of the Haste buff unless the extra healing will be wasted.
Unlike Legendaries, Soulbind and Conduit powers rarely affect your rotation,
and the ones which do, such as Swirling Currents, are self-explanatory or
fit naturally into your normal rotation. You can read more on these systems in
our dedicated pages below.
Cooldown Usage for Restoration Shamans
Correctly utilizing cooldowns is one of the most important things when playing a healing specialization, and often the organization of the healing cooldowns is the determining factor in the success (or devastation) of a raid group. Acclimatizing yourself to your cooldown kit and understand when each applies to your current situation is key to your success.
Healing Tide Totem
Healing Tide Totem is the specialization's baseline throughput
cooldown. As it is a totem, you can use it and immediately be free to move or
cast other spells, without needing to channel or stand still like other
healer's raid cooldowns. Healing Tide Totem heals everyone within 40 yards for
a relatively low, flat amount. This means that it scales linearly with the
amount of allies in its range. While its power in small groups is low for a
3-minute cooldown, when everyone in a large raid is hurt, it will do massive
healing.
Ascendance
Ascendance is a powerful throughput cooldown that
works very differently from
Healing Tide Totem. While it is active,
it duplicates all of your non-totem healing and redistributes it among all
group members. This allows you to do massive burst healing if there are only a
handful of allies in range, but its impact on each quickly falls off as the
amount of targets the duplicated healing is split to increases. Due to this,
while Healing Tide Totem works best in large groups because of scaling linearly
with the amount of group members, Ascendance works best in small groups where
its duplicated healing has a big impact.
Cloudburst Totem
Playing with Cloudburst Totem does not change your priority much,
and you should nearly always cast it on cooldown, unless you are delaying it
for a specific timing or instance of damage. There are a few interesting
interactions between Cloudburst Totem and your other abilities and talents,
however, and capitalizing on them will allow some significant extra healing
from this totem:
- When you are under the effects of
Ascendance, the extra healing it provides will also be transferred to
Cloudburst Totem.
- When talented,
Echo of the Elements allows your
Cloudburst Totem to have two charges. You still cannot have two active simultaneously, however, as the second charge is only usable after the first totem expires or is recalled. It does allow you to have up to 3 Cloudburst Totems active, one after another, for 45 seconds in a row. Finally, the flexibility Echo of the Elements grants allows you to nearly always have a Cloudburst Totem active when using
Wellspring on cooldown.
Unleash Life
Unleash Life allows you to amplify your next direct heal by 35%
every 15 seconds. You should always use this as soon as it comes off cooldown
and then use the healing buff on
Chain Heal if group healing is
needed,
Healing Surge (with
Tidal Waves) if emergency healing is
needed or
Riptide otherwise, for maximum efficiency.
Utility Usage for Restoration Shamans
Restoration Shamans are well known for the high amount of utility — non-healing benefits to yourself or your group — they bring. It is not always obvious how to best use these tools to the benefit of your group and, often, they are used as part of your guild's overall encounter strategy.
Mana Tide Totem
Mana Tide Totem should be used when you and your co-healers have 90% or
less Mana remaining and can be stacked up for its duration. It provides a short
duration Mana regeneration boost to everyone within a small radius around the totem.
Ancestral Protection Totem
Ancestral Protection Totem grants 10% extra Health Points to
everyone inside its area of effect for a long period, which helps the group
survive through the hardest mechanics this game has to offer. Even if someone
dies while this effect is active, Ancestral Protection Totem will consume
itself to allow them to self-resurrect. As it does not count towards the battle
resurrection limit, this is one of the most powerful abilities in the game
whenever your group's strategy implies the sacrifice of an ally at some point
in the encounter.
Bloodlust / Heroism
Bloodlust and
Heroism allow your group to dish out
increased damage / healing for a long duration, which is of critical importance
to beating soft and hard enrages on raid bosses and succesfully dealing with
Mythic keystone dungeons / PvP situations. Usually, this spell is cast at the
start of an encounter / dungeon boss when allies have their DPS cooldowns, but
this can change depending on the encounter's specifics.
Earth Elemental
Earth Elemental calls an elemental with very high Health to
taunt and tank non-boss enemies for you for a long duration. This is best used
to increase your DPS during an encounter or as an emergency tool to relieve
some pressure off your group's tank.
Spirit Link Totem
Spirit Link Totem represents one of the most unique and flexible
cooldowns within the World of Warcraft. Every second, the health of the group
inside the totem's area of effect is redistributed, so all targets have an equal
percentage of maximum health. It also grants 10% damage reduction to players
inside its area of effect. You can use Spirit Link Totem to split overwhelming
damage on a single target to everyone in the group, making it non-threatening.
Or to instantly ensure everyone has high Health, just before a highly damaging
ability hits the group. If you add in
Darkness you can also further
reduce the damage your group takes by 20% with no randomness involved. Finally,
because Spirit Link Totem ensures that everyone inside its effect is damaged as
long as at least one person is damaged, it allows healers to rapidly heal the
whole group efficiently with just area of effect healing spells.
Wind Rush Totem
If your group needs a movement speed increase to facilitate doing encounter
mechanics, Wind Rush Totem is a great help, granting a significant
group-wide speed boost every 2 minutes. As the totem's speed buff only lasts 5
seconds but the totem itself lasts for 15 seconds, it is possible to get
multiple speed boosts from a single totem, as long as you return to it once
your speed boost is gone.
Astral Shift
Astral Shift allows you to survive / ignore mechanics you usually
would not be able to, and should be used whenever you feel like you might die
in the next few seconds of an encounter, preferably while you still have plenty
of Health remaining.
Tremor Totem
Tremor Totem enables you to quickly remove Fear / Sleep / Charm
effects from yourself or your group members, as long as you cast it before you
are crowd controlled yourself. Its PvE usefulness depends on the encounter
mechanics and it does not work on all types of Fear / Sleep / Charm you will
find, but it is nearly always useful in PvP.
Capacitor Totem
Capacitor Totem allows you to stun a group of enemies at will,
allowing your group to dispatch them before they can deal further damage /
heal.
Earthgrab / Earthbind Totem
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 (and in PvP), but ultimately its specific use depends
on the encounter mechanics you are dealing with.
Hex
Hex allows you to crowd control a humanoid or beast target for a
long while. Handy in PvP and in dungeons but of limited use in raids.
Purify Spirit
Purify Spirit allows you to dispel Curse and Magic effects,
something that is often essential to completing dungeons and raids
successfully. It also has great PvP uses, depending on the enemy compositions.
Keep in mind that if you dispel a target that has just been completely
dispelled by another healer, you waste Mana.
Wind Shear / Purge
Restoration Shamans make ideal candidates for doing interrupt and dispel
assignments, as they have a ranged short cooldown kick. Take advantage of
Wind Shear whenever possible, though you should avoid compromising
raid healing if this is during a period of heavy incoming damage.
Purge is also great on fights where a dispel is necessary, but bear
in mind that this costs Mana, so if resources are tight consider asking a DPS to
fulfill this job.
It should also be noted that Restoration Shamans are the only healer equipped with an interrupt, which further adds to our value and utility above other healers.
Optional Read: Mastering Your Restoration Shaman
Mana Management
As with all healing classes, Mana management is at the core of this specialization. It is important to choose your spells and timings wisely so that Mana can last until the end of the encounter, especially in a progression raid setting. Ideally, you should aim to keep your Mana pool roughly at the same percentage as the enemy's Health Points over the course of an encounter. This ensures that you both keep enough Mana around for the later parts of the fight, and also that you end the fight around 0% Mana, thus not wasting any of its potential healing.
Using a logging tool to analyze how your Mana was spent (or wasted) during an encounter can be a great way to improve your Mana management. No one is perfect in this regard, and practice is the key to success. Even seasoned veterans of the specialization will take some time to learn each individual encounter, and how aggressive they can afford to play with their Mana pool while still having enough reserves to last the entire fight.
Dealing Damage
Very often it can be beneficial to deal damage rather than heal, especially
during periods where the incoming damage is low and you want to recoup your
Mana. Lightning Bolt is cost-free, allowing you to help
push some important timings or assist with high priority targets while your
Mana bar fills up. Shaman is also a well equipped class to assist in dealing
damage at minimal cost to healing time with instant cast
Flame Shock and
Lava Surge procs, but keep in
mind the high Mana cost of these spells.
Mastery: Deep Healing
Mastery: Deep Healing is your Mastery as a Restoration Shaman.
It causes your heals to be more powerful on low health targets. When you heal a
target with full health, you get no additional healing. When you heal a target
with 0% health (1 health point), you get the full benefit of your Mastery.
Your Mastery heavily influences the way you play a Restoration Shaman.
- When raid healing, you should focus on low health targets more so than any other type of healer, as you have the most efficient tools to heal them.
- When single-target healing, your Mastery has less influence because you should give priority to your assignment and cannot freely choose low health targets. By being aware of how much damage your assignment will take, you can optimise your heals to benefit from your Mastery.
Movement Management
Proper movement / usage of movement abilities is paramount to maximizing the time you have available to heal / DPS while dodging encounter mechanics. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to explain how to move and reposition within a fight, but as a healer there are some basic principles you should follow as much as possible.
- Position yourself central to your raid for best access to all targets.
Ghost Wolf can allow you to avoid mechanics easily even while slowed, as it stops you from being slowed below 100% movement speed.
- Take advantage of your instant cast spells and totems when you have to
move. If none are available, use
Ghost Wolf to get to your destination faster.
- Track mechanic timers and position yourself in advance to avoid moving later.
- If you have time, take stutter steps over an extended period to reach your intended destination. Every time you use an instant cast, take a few steps while you are locked by the Global Cooldown.
Quiet Movement
Many players will unconsciously move during fights, despite it being unnecessary. For example, sometimes the boss or adds will be moved by the tank a couple yards, and though you are still in range to cast, you subconsciously mirror that movement, costing you global cooldowns. Consciously work to "quiet" your movement, and reduce unnecessary movement to a minimum. The best way to see this in action is to take a video of your raid, then watch yourself play. Most players will be surprised by the amount of wasted movement they commit. When you are forced to move, make use of the tips above, and make your path as direct and decisive as possible.
Spiritwalker's Grace
Spiritwalker's Grace should be used during periods of heavy
movement where healing throughput is a concern. It can also be used to allow
you to reposition while continuing to heal your group.
Changelog
- 22 Feb. 2022: Added thoughts on tier set implications for the rotation.
- 21 Feb. 2022: Page reviewed and approved for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 29 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 24 Nov. 2020: Page updated for Shadowlands launch.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Shaman Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Seksi, member of Arctic Avengers and healing aficionado. You can find him answering questions and discussing Restoration Shaman gameplay on the Ancestral Guidance and Earthshrine Discords.
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