Restoration Shaman Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2

This page will go over the best Dragonflight talents, explaining them in detail. For Restoration Shaman, specifically, talents mostly change the amount of spells you want to press on cooldown or utility options to deal with specific scenarios. Our Rotation guide will have more specific information on how all of these talents combine with the baseline kit to create our gameplay loop:

Restoration has many situational talents, and many perform better in Mythic+, Raiding, or PvP. We have guides for content-specific talent builds below:

For a quick, all-purpose build, we recommend using the Raid talents, which focus on maximizing your healing abilities, and thus allow you to fulfill your main role well. Use the Mythic+ talents if you want a more damage-focused approach to your Restoration Shaman, although high keystones might benefit from having a similar healing focus in the early part of the season.

Flow of the Tides is very strong in a vacuum, but, unfortunately, its Riptide deletion effect has anti-synergy with multiple talents and both the current and previous tier set bonuses, making Ancestral Reach the recommended choice.

Although Ascendance was nerfed, Deeply Rooted Elements is still a very strong choice for Season 3, but swapping it and Undercurrent for the added consistency of Improved Primordial Wave and Continuous Waves is an equally good option.

Also, make sure to adjust these builds to include any utility needed for specific encounters. We will recommend different talent builds on a boss-by-boss basis on our raid tip pages, so make sure to check those out!

3.

Best Talents for Restoration Shaman

Raid Mythic+ Talent Details

4.

Best Raid Talent Build for Restoration Shaman

While these are the baseline recommended talents, feel free to swap to different utility talents to suit your raid setup and boss-by-boss needs.

The logic behind the raid talents is having as much area healing as possible, including extra cooldowns such as Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem and Earthen Wall Totem, which can easily be swapped to Ancestral Protection Totem on specific fights that favor it. High Tide provides consistently high healing from Chain Heal when used alongside Unleash Life, Tidebringer, and Cloudburst Totem. Consistent Riptide usage is key to this build alongside the new tier set bonuses, and talents such as Wavespeaker's Blessing help in spreading them out as much as possible.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the build directly into your game!

5.

Best Mythic+ Talent Build for Restoration Shaman

While these are the baseline recommended talents, feel free to swap to different utility talents to suit your group composition, target dungeon, and active weekly affixes.

The idea behind these talents is to give you high baseline healing and utility, including many DPS talents, but without making you spend all of your time casting Lava Burst and weaving in Master of the Elements for simplicity's sake. Stoneskin Totem is skipped for similar reasons.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the build directly into your game!

6.

Talent details for Restoration Shaman

We will not discuss every talent on this page, as this is done in the dedicated spell summary guide, instead:

Restoration Shaman Spells

7.

Key Class Tree Talents for Restoration Shaman

7.1.

Rows 1 to 4

Ability	Description/Effect
Chain Heal	One of the few no-cooldown multi-target heals in the game, and its healing jumps prioritize the most injured players in range, making it a very powerful spell. As one of the core spells of a Restoration Shaman, there are many talents that can interact with it, such as Unleash Life, Nature's Swiftness, Flow of the Tides, and High Tide.
Astral Shift	Your main defensive cooldown and an important talent that provides a a lot of defensive power, especially in the hands of an experienced player.
Wind Shear	Your interrupt, and a good one as it has the lowest cooldown among ranged interrupts, although it compensates by having lower range and lower lockout time. In Mythic+ or whenever you are planning to fight enemies with interruptible casts, you should take this.
Planes Traveler	An excellent way to increase your Astral Shift uptime, and generally the most valuable talent in this choice node.
Ancestral Defense	A great talent, providing a significant amount of valuable tertiary stats for a single point.
Static Charge	Allows you to use Capacitor Totem more often, which can be valuable if you are able to use it on cooldown effectively. This is mostly the case in Mythic+.
Earth Shield	Provides a lot of healing for the single global it takes to cast, and also increases your healing on the target by 20% and reduces damage taken by 6% when used alongside Earthen Harmony, making it a great pick whenever you will be casting heals on the target regularly.
Elemental Orbit	Allows you to have Earth Shield on yourself at the same time it is on another target of your choice. This can be great when used alongside Earthen Harmony.

7.2.

Rows 5 to 7

Ability	Description/Effect
Wind Rush Totem	Great for raiding, and you should take it whenever your group's strategy involves getting a speed boost to go from point A to point B unless someone else is already providing this effect.
Healing Stream Totem	Must-have, as it contributes significant healing, especially when transformed into Cloudburst Totem.
Totemic Projection	Great when used alongside Spirit Link Totem and Stoneskin Totem, in order to make sure the right targets are hit by these support totems but are generally a niche talent.
Totemic Surge	Great for Restoration, as you rely heavily on multiple totems, from the short cooldown Cloudburst Totem to the long cooldown Spirit Link Totem.
Winds of Al'Akir	Rather weak movement talent, but if you want to get Spirit Walk or Gust of Wind, you need to spend two talent points here.
Brimming with Life	Excellent talent which increases your health significantly in most situations, and allows you to use Reincarnation more often if you are dying often, which is exactly when you would want to reduce its cooldown.
Spirit Walk	Excellent mobility tool which allows you to cover large distances quickly with its effect and avoids the landing position issues Gust of Wind can have. Unfortunately, it does not help you against knockback mechanics and is less likely to allow you to live when crossing large gaps or falling from high places and has double the cooldown, making it a less likely pick than its counterpart.
Gust of Wind	Low cooldown mobility tool that allows you to quickly reposition at a fixed distance in front of your character. While the added mobility is nice, what really makes it stand out is that it allows you able to break knockback effects, cross gaps, and avoid fall damage, making it a powerful situational spell.

7.3.

Rows 8 to 10

Ability	Description/Effect
Thunderstorm	Fantastic for solo play and PvP when you are being trained by melee enemies. You might want to use Thundershock along with it if you only want the CC aspect, but not the knockback.
Thundershock	Allows you to use Thunderstorm to CC enemies in place in PvE and reduces its cooldown, making it useful when you do not want to knock enemies away.
Mana Spring	Decent Mana generator for a large raid group with multiple healers.
Totemic Focus	Increases your totem duration and radius. As you rely on multiple totems for both healing and utility; this is a great talent for Restoration Shamans.
Totemic Recall	has the niche effect of resetting the cooldown of your most recently used totem with a baseline cooldown under 3 minutes, making it mostly useful with Earthen Wall Totem and Cloudburst Totem.
Creation Core	Allows you to reset the cooldown on Earthen Wall Totem and Cloudburst Totem at the same time, and is a decent option when you are using both in close proximity.
Ancestral Guidance	A very powerful healing cooldown that you will almost always want to get in all types of content. Fortunately, the talents leading into it are also very powerful for Restoration, so there is a natural path to it. It combos particularly well with Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem, as it distributes their high overhealing into targets that need focused healing.
Stoneskin Totem	Short cooldown, low-impact totem that can help your tank and other party members affected by physical damage survive. While unimpressive by itself, it is a form of damage reduction that stacks with other sources, and could be just what your tank needs to survive a particularly high spike in damage.

8.

Key Restoration Tree Talents for Restoration Shaman

8.1.

Rows 1 to 4

Ability	Description/Effect
Riptide	Core ability that is Mana efficient and provides high healing on a short cooldown.
Healing Stream Totem	Must-have talent which contributes significant healing, especially when transformed into Cloudburst Totem. If you took the talent with the same name in the general tree, you will have two charges of this spell.
Healing Rain	Low cooldown, high-efficiency spell, with multiple modifiers that allow it to also contribute significant damage ( Acid Rain) and do instant healing ( Overflowing Shores).
Stormkeeper	This talent causes your next two Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning to deal 150% extra damage and be instant cast. If you are looking for extra damage, this is a fine talent to take, especially if burst damage is what is needed!
Tidal Waves	Causes Riptide casts to give you two charges that reduce Healing Wave and Chain Heal cast time and increase Healing Surge critical strike chance. This is a fantastic talent that ties your kit together and boosts many of your core spells significantly.
Acid Rain	Turns your Healing Rain into a heal that also deals significant damage. This is a must-use talent for DPS purposes and works especially well against multiple targets that stand inside the rain for its whole duration.
Ancestral Vigor	Good talent that works well in any situation. Your highest priority with this talent is to ensure it is running on the tanks and other priority targets at all times to grant them additional survivability.
Resurgence	Significant Mana sustain talent, which will return a huge amount of Mana to you over the course of a fight. Logically, if Mana is not an issue, then this talent loses some value, but it is a very important talent whenever extra Mana is valuable.

8.2.

Rows 5 to 7

Ability	Description/Effect
Spirit Link Totem	Iconic Restoration Shaman ability, which has excellent life-saving potential due to instantly restoring the life of whoever is most injured inside a player grouping.
Cloudburst Totem	Stores some of the healing you do while it is active and releases it all at once evenly among nearby friendly targets. This is a very powerful talent, which acts as a multiplier on your healing, especially during cooldown-boosted periods.
Healing Tide Totem	Provides high-spread healing over a period of time and can be used while moving, which allows you to use it while doing fight mechanics or casting other healing spells.
Ancestral Reach	Increases the healing of Chain Heal slightly and causes it to bounce one extra time. Its unconditional nature makes it attractive for newer players, or when maintaining Riptide uptime is of critical importance.
Flow of the Tides	Also causes Chain Heal to bounce one extra time but has a higher 30% healing increase, which is conditional on casting on a target with Riptide. While the extra 22% healing is very welcomed, make sure to be on top of using it on targets with low duration Riptides in order to make the most out of the effect. Tidebringer is a must when taking this talent in order to ensure the buffed Chain Heal jumps the maximum amount of times, even when cast on sub-optimal targets.
Wavespeaker's Blessing	Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 seconds, which is a small healing increase on its own, but also has some impact for Undercurrent uptime and Primordial Wave target count.
Lava Surge	Provides a decent single target damage and quality of life increase by making many of your Lava Burst casts instant and allowing you to cast it more often.
Undulation	Great if you cast a lot of Healing Wave and Healing Surge. If these 2 spells are your main healing sources, such as in Mythic+, then this talent is a great pick. Otherwise, you should probably take a different talent.
Echo of the Elements	Provides an extra Riptide and Lava Burst charge. While the Lava Burst charge is only a small damage increase, the extra Riptide charge allows you to perform your rotation without needing to constantly worry about losing potential Riptide casts, and as Riptide is the centerpiece of all Shaman healing, it also makes this talent next to mandatory.
Mana Tide Totem	Grants your group a weak Mana regeneration boost, which is only worthwhile in fights where Mana is an issue, or when taken alongside Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem.
Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem	This talent causes your Mana Tide Totem to reduce the cost and cast time of Chain Heal and Healing Wave by 50% for 10-seconds. This makes for a strong healing cooldown on its own and can be further multiplied by activating Ancestral Guidance at the same time!
Unleash Life	An extra instant heal and a strong boost to your next heal. The boost depends on the spell, but you will generally use this on Healing Rain while raiding, on Chain Heal, or on Primordial Wave fueled Healing Wave, as those present the highest potential healing gains.
Earthen Wall Totem	Good for reducing frequent incoming damage on a stacked group of allies. Since it only absorbs a small, fixed amount of each individual attack, it is not recommended to use against enemies that deal slow, powerful attacks, but is great in almost all other situations.
Ancestral Protection Totem	The best choice whenever you plan to intentionally have one ally die to bypass encounter mechanics; just be mindful of the 200% maximum health killing blow limit. It should also be picked whenever your group is consistently struggling to keep everyone alive through a short, specific part of an encounter.
Earthliving Weapon	A 1 hour imbue for your weapon that causes some of your healing spells to have a 20% chance to activate a small heal over time on the target. While each heal is weak, the overall effect is a decent healing increase.

8.3.

Rows 8 to 10

Ability	Description/Effect
Primordial Wave	A cheap instant heal that applies Riptide and makes your next Healing Wave hit all targets with your Riptide active. This effect has no range limit, and thus provides an excellent way to heal targets that are spread out from the rest of the group. It also provides extra Riptides for Flow of the Tides.
Downpour	Heals a small area for a decent amount on a relatively short cooldown, which is shorter if you fail to hit the maximum 6 targets. While not fantastic heal by any means; it is a decent one-pointer.
Undercurrent	This talent can be a good healing increase, especially in periods where you have a high amount of Riptides active, but has anti-synergy with Flow of the Tides. The buff will typically be at its highest point whenever you use Primordial Wave, making it a fine contributor to the burst healing produced by the following Healing Wave.
Improved Earthliving Weapon	Increases the healing done by Earthliving Weapon and causes it to always proc on low-health players. Unfortunately, the effect is still small and dealt over time, making it have low life-saving potential.
Continuous Waves	Reduces the cooldown of Primordial Wave by 15 seconds. This is a significant and reliable cooldown reduction effect and allows you to burst heal with Primordial Wave much more often, making it an excellent talent that is unfortunately too deep into the tree to see major use.
Primal Tide Core	Provides extra free Riptides that have the same initial burst healing of hard-casted ones. While it will not create an additional Riptide if your 4th cast target has no allies nearby, the effect will try to proc in every following cast until it works. This talent has good synergy with Primordial Wave.
High Tide	Allows you to bank powerful Chain Heal casts to counter incoming burst damage, or simply passively increase your throughput. It is a strong talent in a Chain Heal focused build, and should always be taken when you are also taking Flow of the Tides and Tidebringer.
Deeply Rooted Elements	This talent can make a large difference in your healing if you get Ascendance procs at the correct times during a fight. This makes it a strong choice in fights where damage is constant, and healing is almost always valuable, and a weak talent in fights where you only care about healing within very narrow periods.
Tidebringer	Previously a PvP talent, this powerful talent drastically increases the cast speed and jump range of your Chain Heals while its buff is active. This buff is automatically obtained every 8 seconds (with 2 talent points) and can stack twice, allowing for back-to-back buffed Chain Heals.
Earthen Harmony	Causes your Earth Shield to reduce incoming damage by up to 6% and doubles its healing if the target is under 75% health. These are fantastic bonuses to have on a tank, and you can also have it on yourself with Elemental Orbit!
Ascendance	Causes a healing burst and almost duplicates your healing for the duration. It is strong in a small group context as its healing spreads evenly into nearby injured allies, which means you can use it to rapidly heal a small group.
Wellspring	Due to the large 30% nerf in patch 10.0.7 and the introduction of Tidebringer, Wellspring is mostly a relic of the past, as Chain Heal can fulfill its role more efficiently most of the time while saving you 3 talent points.

Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

• PvP talents that can be used in the outdoor world.
• 10% to 30% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% to 30% more experience gained while leveling.
• Ability to earn Conquest Points in the outdoor world, which can reward powerful gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility to be "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists. If you need advice on how to fight against other players, visit the link below.

In this section, we will explain the PvP talents and rank them on their leveling and solo / small group PvE content usefulness.

1. Counterstrike Totem replicates and reflects damage you take for 15 seconds on a 45-second cooldown. This can be really strong when in a high damage area to deal some chip damage to targets around you and convert your health pool into additional damage;
2. Swelling Waves provides extra self-healing, which can be occasionally useful;
3. Skyfury Totem increases the critical effect of spells of allies within 40 yards by 20% for 15 seconds, with a 40-second cooldown. It is good for solo play, but excellent if you are doing outdoor content with others.

The remaining talents have their own niches but are not as generally useful in PvE situations with War Mode active.