Restoration Shaman Healing Spell List and Glossary — Season 4

If you are new to Restoration, it is recommended you read this before proceeding! In this section, we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, and how they interact with important cooldowns. If you have played this spec before or have already achieved a level of comfort playing this spec in a practical environment, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.

Your main resource as a Restoration Shaman is Mana. Mana is restored periodically in combat through your Mana regeneration, and you are also refunded a percentage of maximum Mana from your spells by your Resurgence talent. Some of your spells have a high Mana to healing ratio, meaning their output, when compared with their cost, is very high compared to other spells in your kit. These spells typically provide more convenience or have faster cast times, allowing you to potentially save lives. Learning to select the right spell for the right situation in order to properly conserve and spend Mana at the correct times is very important to playing a Restoration Shaman skillfully.

Note that this page simply lists all the different abilities, assuming you are at max level. If you are leveling, check out our dedicated Restoration Shaman Leveling page, which has detailed information on when you unlock all of these abilities.

These abilities are available no matter what talents you chose and form the bread and butter of this specialization.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Lightning Bolt	LB	Your main filler. It deals decent damage and generates 8 Maelstrom. It can become quite strong with a Lightning-focused build.
Flame Shock	FS	A damage-over-time spell you should keep applied to your primary target at all times. It deals weak damage-over-time but has an important interaction with your Lava Burst: it guarantees that all Lava Burst casts will be critical hits. Flame Shock has no Maelstrom cost but has a 6-second cooldown.
Healing Surge	HS	Heals for a significant amount with a fast cast time. It costs 25% of your Mana pool. Do not hesitate to use it on yourself or others.
Bloodlust/ Heroism	BL	Formerly the signature Shaman cooldown, increasing the haste of all your party and raid members by 30% for 40 seconds, with a 5-minute cooldown. Presently available to Mage, Hunter, and now Evoker as well.
Reincarnation	Ankh	A passive ability allowing you to raise from the dead with 40% of your Health and Mana. This has a 30-minute cooldown, which does not reset on wipe. This is a unique and incredibly powerful ability when it is available.
Earthbind Totem	-	Projects a totem that slows everything around it by 50% for 20 seconds. Very useful, especially if you kite around the totem.
Lightning Shield	-	Deals damage to enemies that hit you in melee; not very useful.
Flametongue Weapon	-	Not used as Restoration.
Primal Strike	-	You will never use this. Take it off your bars.
Ghost Wolf	-	Transforms you into a wolf, preventing you from casting but increasing your movement speed by 30% as long as you stay in this form. In addition, your movement speed cannot go below 100% while in this form.
Ancestral Spirit	-	Allows you to resurrect allies after a very long cast. It is not usable in combat.
Astral Recall	-	Is essentially a second Hearthstone charge, with a 10-minute  cooldown. It is still linked to your Hearthstone, and you can only use this  to teleport back to the location you picked with your Hearthstone.
Far Sight	-	Is one of the least useful spells in the game; it allows you to see at a distance. You can safely remove this from your bars.
Water Walking	-	Allows you or whoever you target to walk on water as long as no damage is taken.

The Shaman Class Tree has most of your situational utility abilities and is likely to change slightly but frequently to counter the specific content you are doing.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Chain Heal	CH	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.
Lava Burst	LvB	Is an automatic critical strike when used on a target with Flame Shock,  making it a strong DPS spell.
Astral Shift	AS	Your main defensive cooldown and an important talent which provides a lot of defensive power, especially in the hands of an experienced player.
Chain Lightning	CL	Is your main area effect damage spell, and while its 3-target cap is quite low for Mythic+, and its damage is quite decent, making it a good pick whenever you expect to face multiple foes.
Earth Elemental	EE	Provides an emergency tank for your party which can save you in emergencies, and a 15% health boost for a full minute, as long as the elemental survives, making it a decent extra defensive cooldown.
Wind Shear	WS	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.
Frost Shock	FrS	With Explosive having been removed in Season 2 of Dragonflight,  this is mostly a dead talent for Restoration Shamans in PvE.
Earth Shield	ES	Provides a lot of healing for the single global it takes to cast, and also increases your healing on the target by 20%, making it a great pick whenever you will be casting heals on the target regularly.
Capacitor Totem	Cap totem	Is your area stun, and a great pick whenever you will be facing many targets that can be stunned, mostly in Mythic+.
Improved Purify Spirit	Cleanse	Great whenever there are dangerous Curses that can be dispelled.
Spiritwalker's Grace	SWG	Great movement tool, which allows you to move while casting for a short duration.
Tremor Totem	Tremor	Is of great value in fights where you can remove Fear, Charm and Sleep effects with it.
Purge	-	Useful whenever there are dangerous magic effects that you can remove from enemies.
Greater Purge	-	Removes 2 beneficial magic effects from an enemy target. It has twice the mana cost of Purge and a 12-second cooldown. Currently does not seem to have a useful niche.
Planes Traveler	-	Reduces the cooldown of Astral Shift by 30 seconds.
Astral Bulwark	-	Increases damage reduced by Astral Shift by 20%.
Spirit Wolf	-	Increases your movement speed and damage reduction by 5% every second you stay in Ghost Wolf form, up to 4 times.
Ancestral Wolf Affinity	-	This talent allows you to cast most of your utility spells and totems in Ghost Wolf form, which is especially useful in PvP scenarios in order to keep the damage reduction benefit of Spirit Wolf for as long as possible.
Thunderous Paws	-	Increases the movement speed of Ghost Wolf form by an additional 25% for the first 3 seconds and removes any snare effects on you. This effect can only occur every 20 seconds.
Maelstrom Weapon	-	Unused by Restoration.
Fire and Ice	-	Increases all Fire and Frost damage you deal by 3%.
Elemental Orbit	EO	Increases the number of Elemental Shields you can have active on yourself by 1 and allows you to have Earth Shield cast on yourself and one ally at the same time.
Ancestral Defense	-	Increases your Leech and Avoidance by 2%.
Static Charge	-	Reduces the cooldown of Capacitor Totem by 5 seconds for each enemy, it stuns up to a maximum reduction of 20 seconds.
Guardian's Cudgel	-	Spawns a secondary Capacitor Totem when it fades or is destroyed.
Flurry	-	Not used as Restoration.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Wind Rush Totem	WRT	Summons a totem for 15 seconds that increases the speed of allies within 10 yards by 60% for 5 seconds. The speed buff is continually refreshed, as long as they are within range.
Earthgrab Totem		Summons a totem at a target location for 30 seconds with a 30-second cooldown. Every 2 seconds, all enemies within 8 yards of the totem is rooted in place for 2 seconds. Enemies previously rooted by the totem instead suffer a 50% movement speed slow.
Hex	-	Is the Shaman equivalent of Polymorph. This spell transforms 1 enemy into a frog for 60 seconds, preventing it from attacking or casting spells as long as you do not attack it. It only works on humanoids and beasts.
Healing Stream Totem	-	Heals allies up to 40 yards away over 15 seconds. It can be transformed  into Cloudburst Totem with a Restoration tree talent.
Totemic Projection	-	Is a 10-second cooldown ability that allows you to move all your active totems to a location within 40 yards.
Spirit Walk	SW	Removes all movement-impairing effects and increases your movement speed by 60% for 8 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown.
Gust of Wind	GoW	Propels you forward on a 30-second cooldown.
Graceful Spirit	-	Reduces the cooldown of Spiritwalker's Grace by 30 seconds and increases your movement speed by 20% while it is active.
Spiritwalker's Aegis	-	Enhances your Spiritwalker's Grace by making you are immune to Silence and interrupt effects for 5 seconds when you cast it.
Nature's Fury	-	Increases the critical strike chance of your Nature spells by 2% per point (2 points maximum).
Totemic Surge	-	Reduces the cooldown of your totems by 2 seconds per point (2 points maximum).
Elemental Warding	-	Reduces all magic damage taken by 2% per point (2 points maximum).
Nature's Guardian	NG	Heals you for 10% of your maximum health per point whenever your health is brought below 35% (2 points maximum). This effect has a 45 seconds cooldown
Voodoo Mastery	-	Reduces the cooldown of your Hex spell by 15 seconds.
Enfeeblement	-	Slows the target of your Hex spell by 70% for 4 seconds after the spell ends.
Winds of Al'Akir	-	Increases the movement speed bonus of Ghost Wolf by 5% per point. Additionally, when you have 3 or more totems active, your movement speed is increased by 7% for one point, 15% for two points (2 points maximum).
Brimming with Life	-	Increases your maximum Health by 8% when Reincarnation is off cooldown. Additionally, while you are at full health, Reincarnation cools down 75% faster.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Nature's Swiftness	NS	Is a one-minute cooldown ability that makes your next healing or damaging Nature spell instant and cost no Mana.
Thunderstorm	-	Does very little damage but knocks away enemies around you and slows them by 40% for 5 seconds. Quite useful, especially when you use it to displace an enemy in a specific direction.
Mana Spring Totem	-	Summons a totem for 2 minutes that restores a small amount of Mana to you and 4 allies within 30 yards of the totem whenever you cast Lava Burst or Riptide. Decent for long fights in a raid setting.
Lightning Lasso	Lasso	Is a channeled ability that stuns a target within 20 yards and deals considerable damage over 5 seconds. You can move while channeling and it has a 45-second cooldown.
Poison Cleansing Totem	-	Removes all poison effects from a nearby party or raid member within 30 yards every 1.5 seconds for 6 seconds on a 45-second cooldown.
Totemic Recall		Resets the cooldown of your most recently used totem that has a base cooldown shorter than 3 minutes.
Ancestral Guidance	AG	Converts 25% of your damage and healing done into healing on up to 3 nearby party and/or raid members, making it one of your best healing cooldowns, especially when combined with Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem. It lasts 10 seconds, with a 2-minute cooldown.
Stoneskin Totem	-	Summons a totem that grants 10% physical damage reduction to you and the 4 nearest allies within 30 yards for 15 seconds, on a 30-second cooldown.
Tranquil Air Totem	-	Summons a totem that prevents cast pushback and reduces the duration of all incoming interrupt effects by 50% for you and the 4 nearest allies within 30 yards for 20 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown.
Swirling Currents	-	Increases the healing of Healing Stream Totem and Cloudburst Totem  by up to 20%.
Totemic Focus	-	Increases the radius of your totem effects by 8% / 15%. Additionally, it  increases the duration of your Earthbind Totem and Earthgrab Totem  by 5 seconds per point, and the duration of your Healing Stream Totem, Tremor Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem and Wind Rush Totem by 1.5 seconds per point (2 points maximum).
Surging Shields	-	Increases the Mana returned by Water Shield by up to 50% and the  healing done by Earth Shield by up to 25%.
Go with the Flow	-	Reduces the cooldown of Spirit Walk by 10 seconds and the cooldown of Gust of Wind by 5 seconds per point (2 points maximum).
Thundershock	-	Makes Thunderstorm knock enemies up instead of away and reduces its cooldown by 5 seconds.
Call of the Elements	-	Reduces the cooldown of Totemic Recall by 60 seconds.
Creation Core	-	Makes Totemic Recall affect an additional totem.

The Restoration talent tree also has some utility talents but is mostly focused on throughput talents, allowing you to choose between single-target healing and damage, area healing and damage, or a mix.

                                                                                                                                                        

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Riptide	RT	Core ability that is Mana efficient and provides high healing on a short cooldown.
Healing Wave	HW	Slow, Mana-efficient heal that provides a way to heal efficiently during periods of low damage and is used to activate Primordial Wave.
Healing Stream Totem	HST	Must-have, as it 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	HR	Low cooldown, high-efficiency spell, but only when at least 3 injured players will be standing inside it for its full duration, which makes it much more circumstantial than most of your kit. It is still worth casting on cooldown in raids for its healing and in Mythic+ if you also have Acid Rain, however!
Stormkeeper	SK	Excellent damage ability, which allows you to deal high burst damage on demand if that is what you are looking for.
Deluge	-	Empowers some of your spells significantly, as long as they hit allies inside your Healing Rain or with Riptide. That makes it a decent talent for increasing your general healing, and you will generally want to take it now that it no longer competes with Echo of the Elements.
Tidal Waves	TW	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.
Overflowing Shores	-	Causes your Healing Rain to instantly heal allies when dropped and grants it a slightly larger radius, both of which are fine bonuses if you will be using Rain heavily.
Acid Rain	AR	Turns your Healing Rain into a heal that also deals damage. The amount of damage dealt is good enough that you will always want to use rain on cooldown if you picked this talent, even against a single target, as long as it will stay inside for the duration.
Ancestral Vigor	AV	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 in a Mana scarcity situation.
Flash Flood	FF	Significantly increases your average casting speed as long as you are spending your Tidal Waves regularly. This is beneficial for both single target and group healing, but requires you to spend more Mana to achieve the same healing benefits as that of alternative talents.
Water Totem Mastery	-	Reduces the cooldown of your water totems by a decent amount as long as you are spending your Tidal Waves regularly. The gain is small but requires no extra Mana to get going, and the talent is required for Cloudburst Totem anyway, making it an easy pick for most builds.
Water Shield	WS	Great for Mana sustain if you are consistently activating it from being melee attacked when soloing or in PvP, but is generally weak outside of these scenarios.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Spirit Link Totem	SLT	An 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	CBT	This 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	HTT	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.
Current Control	CuC	Reduces the cooldown of Healing Tide Totem by 30 seconds. This is negligible cooldown reduction for a weak cooldown, making it a weak talent.
Tide Turner	TT	Causes the lowest health player healed by Healing Tide Totem to be healed by 30% more and also receive 15% more healing from the Shaman for 4 seconds. While this can be useful in small groups, it is also a weak effect when compared to many of the alternatives in PvE.
Mana Tide Totem	MTT	Grants your group a Mana regeneration boost, making it a powerful Mana sustain tool for yourself and allies. It can be combined with Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem to create a strong healing cooldown.
Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem	STT	Causes your Mana Tide Totem to also reduce the cost and cast time of Chain Heal and Healing Wave by 50% for 10 seconds. This can double your throughput for a short while, and is a powerful healing cooldown when combined with Ancestral Guidance or Ascendance.
Resonant Waters	RW	Taking this talent makes your Mana Tide Totem last longer and have 20y longer range. These bonuses are negligible when compared to the alternative talent.
Unleash Life	UL	Provides an extra instant heal and strong boost to your next heal. The boost depends on the spell, but you will generally use this on Healing Rain while raiding, or on a Primordial Wave fueled Healing Wave, as those present the highest potential healing gains.
Earthen Wall Totem	EWT	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	APT	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	ELW	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 not particularly powerful, it provides a steady trickle of passive healing that does add up over time.
Ancestral Reach	-	Increases the healing of Chain Heal and causes it to bounce one extra time. This is a strong healing increase for Chain Heal and generally worth picking up for new players who struggle to use Flow of the Tides correctly.
Flow of the Tides	-	Increases the healing of Chain Heal by 30% when cast on a target with Riptide, also consuming the Riptide. It also adds the extra bounce of Ancestral Reach permanently, making it a superior option whenever you can reliably consume low-duration Riptides.
Refreshing Waters	-	Mostly forgettable, as the amount of Healing Surge casts on yourself  should be low on most types of content.
Master of the Elements	MotE	Increases the damage or healing of your next spell by 20% after a Lava Burst cast.  This can be helpful, especially for the extra damage component.
Living Stream	-	Causes your Healing Stream Totem to heal for 10% more on every tick. This is a decent healing increase, but considering it competes with Cloudburst Totem, should also be weaker, especially in hard PvE content where you are required to do significant healing, which can be multiplied with Cloudburst.
Wavespeaker's Blessing	-	Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 seconds, which is a small direct healing increase, but also has some impact for Undercurrent uptime and Primordial Wave target count.
Lava Surge	LS	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.
Torrent	-	Increases Riptide's initial heal significantly, making it is a decent use of points but usually not as good as alternatives when used optimally.
Undulation	Und	Performance depends on how much of your total throughput consists of Healing Wave and Healing Surge casts. 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	Echo	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.

                                                                                                                                              

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Primordial Wave	PWave	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.
Downpour	DP	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 a fantastic heal by any means; it is a decent one-pointer.
Tidebringer	TB	Causes you to gain a buff every 8 seconds that increases the jump range by 100% and lowers the cast time of Chain Heal by 50%, making it much more useful in every scenario. You can stack this buff twice, allowing for two buffed Chain Heals back to back.
Ascendance	Asc	Creates a healing burst and almost duplicates your healing evenly into nearby injured allies, which means you can use it to rapidly heal a single target when needed, or as a group healing cooldown when combined with your other group heals, especially if you are also under the effects of Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem.
Wellspring	WS	Allows for widespread group healing, a limitation Restoration often struggles with. With its relatively low 20-second cooldown, Wellspring works best when the encounter's damage pattern allows you to cast it on cooldown without heavy overhealing.
Ancestral Awakening	-	Provides a decent healing increase, which scales with your critical strike chance.
Earthen Harmony	-	Helps with keeping your tank and yourself healthy through the large 6%  damage reduction and automatic heals, allowing you to focus on other members  of the group more often and in making a more efficient usage of your Mana overall.
Undercurrent	-	Decent healing increases depending on the number of Riptides that  we can keep rolling on a group. The buff will also be at its highest point  whenever you use Primordial Wave in preparation for burst healing, but  has anti-synergy with Flow of the Tides.
Improved Primordial Wave	-	Causes Primordial Wave to increase the healing of your next Healing Wave by up to 25%. While the timing of this buff is convenient, this talent is mostly taken in order to get to Continuous Waves.
Improved Earthliving Weapon	-	Increases the small healing done by Earthliving Weapon and causes it to always proc on low-health players. Outside of a fight where mechanics dictate, players will be in low health very often this is a rather weak effect.
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.
Tumbling Waves	-	Adds a 30% chance for Primordial Wave to reset its own cooldown when used. While it is very fun to be able to cast Primordial Wave back to back; its random nature makes the similarly powerful on paper Continuous Waves is a better pick with current tuning.
Primal Tide Core	PTC	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, but suffers from pathing issues.
High Tide	HT	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, but does require pathing through the relatively weak Ancestral Awakening first.
Deeply Rooted Elements	DRE	This talent can make a huge difference if you get Ascendance procs at the correct times during a fight, and has a high overall healing value in fights with high, consistent raid damage.

For a more in-depth look at all the Restoration Shaman talents, visit the guide below:

For more information on how to use these abilities together in your rotation, please read our rotation page.

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. You will want at least some of our Macros as well!