Restoration Shaman Healing Spell List and Glossary — The War Within (Season 1)
On this page, we present you with all spells and procs that you need to understand as a Restoration Shaman in World of Warcraft — The War Within (Season 1).
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Restoration Shaman spells.
Restoration Shaman Spell Summary
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.
Main Resource for Restoration Shaman
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 the 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.
Unlocking Abilities
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.
Hero Talents for Restoration Shaman
These abilities are available depending on what Hero Talents you pick between Farseer and Totemic.
Farseer
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
Call of the Ancestors | CA | Allows you to summon Ancestor-friendly NPCs with Undulation or Unleash Life which help you heal by casting damage spells, single target heals, or area heals depending on the spells you cast while they are active. |
Latent Wisdom | LW | Causes your Ancestor spells to be 20% more powerful. |
Ancient Fellowship | AF | Ancestors will call a new Ancestor to aid you 20% of the time when despawning. |
Offering from Beyond | OfB | Whenever you summon an Ancestor, you will also reduce Riptide's cooldown by 2 seconds. This has good synergy with Riptide talents. |
Natural Harmony | NH | Reduces the cooldown of Nature's Guardian by 15 seconds and causes it to heal you for an additional 10% of your maximum Health. |
Earthen Communion | EC | Increases the maximum charges of Earth Shield to 12 and makes it heal you for 25% more. This has good synergy with Reactive Warding. |
Heed My Call | HMC | Makes Ancestors last 4 seconds more. |
Routine Communication | RC | Causes Riptide to have a 15% chance to summon an Ancestor. This has good synergy with Riptide talents. |
Primordial Capacity | PC | Increases your maximum Mana by 5% and allows for 4 Tidal Waves to be stored instead of 2. |
Maelstrom Supremacy | MSup | Increases the healing done by Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Wellspring, Downpour, and Chain Heal by 8%. |
Elemental Reverb | ER | Lava Burst and Riptide are 5% more effective and gain an extra charge. This makes Echo of the Elements mostly redundant, saving one specialization talent point. |
Spiritwalker's Momentum | SwM | Using spells with a cast time increases the duration of Spiritwalker's Grace and Spiritwalker's Aegis by 1 second, up to a maximum of 4 seconds. |
Final Calling | FC | When an Ancestor expires, it will cast a small absorb shield on a nearby injured ally that lasts for 10 seconds and steadily decays over its duration. |
Ancestral Swiftness | AS | Replaces Nature's Swiftness and causes your next healing or damage spell to have a 10% increased effect, on top of being free and instant cast. If you also know Nature's Swiftness it will also summon an Ancestor for 6 seconds when used. |
Totemic
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
Surging Totem | ST | A longer duration, higher impact Healing Rain replacement. |
Totemic Rebound | ST | A passive Chain Heal boost that makes your Totems do an additional, less powerful Chain Heal of their own. |
Oversized Totems | OToT | Makes your totems larger in both size and radius and increases their Health. |
Swift Recall | SR | Causes some of your support totems, such as Poison Cleansing Totem, to have a reduced cooldown after performing their duties. |
Imbuement Mastery | IM | Increases the duration of Earthliving Weapon's heal over time proc by 3-seconds. |
Amplification Core | AC | Increases your damage and healing by 3% while Surging Totem is active. |
Oversurge | OS | Makes Surging Totem 150% more effective while Ascendance is active. Good synergy with Deeply Rooted Elements. |
Wind Barrier | WB | Grants a large absorb shield every 30 seconds if you have any totem active. |
Pulse Capacitor | PC | Increases the healing of Surging Totem by 25%. |
Supportive Imbuements | SI | Allows you to imbue your shield to increase your healing by 2% and increase the duration of Healing Stream Totem and Cloudburst Totem by 3 seconds. Good synergy with Living Stream. |
Lively Totems | LT | Causes your Healing Tide Totem, Mana Tide Totem, Spirit Link Totem, Healing Stream Totem, and Cloudburst Totem to cast an instant free Chain Heal that benefits from all of your Chain Heal talents and procs such as High Tide. Massive synergy with Chain Heal talents. |
Reactivity | Reac | Makes your Healing Stream Totem heal a second target at 50% effectiveness and increases the healing stored by Cloudburst Totem by 25%. Good synergy with Living Stream, as the Cloudburst bonus is much weaker. |
Earthsurge | ESurge | Increases your healing by 10% on allies affected by Earthen Wall Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem, or your Earthliving Weapon heal over time proc. |
Totemic Coordination | TC | Causes the Chain Heal effects cast by totems to be 25% more effective. Good synergy with Chain Heal talents. |
Whirling Elements | WE | Using Surging Totem grants you 3 motes with special effects: the Water mote causes your next Healing Wave or Healing Surge to also heal a different ally within the Rain; the Air mote reduces the cast time of your next heal by 40%, and the Earth mote causes your next Chain Heal to apply a 150% effect Earthliving Weapon proc effect on all targets hit. |
Baseline abilities for Restoration Shaman
These abilities are available no matter what talents you choose and form the bread and butter of this specialization.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
Lightning Bolt | LB | Your main single-target damage filler. |
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. |
Healing Surge | HS | Heals for a significant amount with a fast cast time. It also has very significant talent support, making it one of the strongest single-target abilities you can use if you take them many of them together. |
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 Evoker as well. |
Reincarnation | Ankh | A passive ability allowing you to self-resurrect with partial Health and Mana. This has a 30-minute cooldown, which does not reset on wipe and 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 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 | - | 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. |
Class Tree Spells for Restoration Shaman
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.
Rows 1-4
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. It is also the spell with the most powerful talent support in the Restoration Shaman kit, making it a cornerstone of some of our recommended talent builds. |
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. |
Winds of Al'Akir | - | Increases the movement speed bonus of Ghost Wolf by 10%. Additionally, when you have 3 or more totems active, your movement speed is increased by 15%. |
Brimming with Life | - | Increases your maximum Health by 10% when Reincarnation is off cooldown. Additionally, while you are at full Health, Reincarnation cools down 75% faster. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
Rows 5-7
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. |
Ascending Air | AsA | Making Wind Rush Totem lower cooldown can be excellent for specific encounters, as can the added duration. |
Jet Stream | JS | Becoming even faster and having Wind Rush Totem remove snares can also be great, making this the most generally useful of the two Wind Rush Totem nodes. |
Earthgrab Totem | EG | 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 | HST | 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 20-second cooldown. |
Graceful Spirit | GS | Reduces the cooldown of Spiritwalker's Grace by 30 seconds and increases your movement speed by 20% while it is active. |
Spiritwalker's Aegis | SWA | 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 4%. |
Totemic Surge | - | Reduces the cooldown of your totems by 6 seconds. |
Elemental Resistance | - | Reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage taken by players healed by Cloudburst Totem or Healing Stream Totem by a slight amount and a short duration. While it is not very impactful, it will usually be taken for pathing reasons. |
Elemental Warding | - | Reduces all magic damage taken by 6%. |
Nature's Guardian | NG | Heals you for 27% of your maximum Health whenever your Health is brought below 35%. This effect has a 45 seconds cooldown |
Voodoo Mastery | - | Reduces the cooldown of your Hex spell by 15 seconds and makes it slow the target while active and for 6 seconds afterward. |
Thunderstorm | TS | 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. |
Rows 8-10
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. |
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 10% of your 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 Ascendance and Cloudburst Totem. Lasts 10 seconds, with a 2-minute cooldown. |
Stone Bulwark Totem | SBT | Long cooldown totem, which grants you a personal absorb shield that is reinforced every 5 seconds it stays up. While the shield is not huge, this is a decent extra defensive at your disposal. |
Totemic Focus | - | Increases the radius of your totem effects by 15%. Additionally, it increases the duration of your Earthbind Totem and Earthgrab Totem by 10 seconds, and the duration of your Healing Stream Totem, Tremor Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem and Wind Rush Totem by 3 seconds. |
Thundershock | TShock | Makes Thunderstorm knock enemies up instead of away and reduces its cooldown by 5 seconds. |
Traveling Storms | TStorms | Traveling Storms allows you to cast Thunderstorm on an ally within healing range, knocking and slowing enemies more than a regular Thunderstorm would. |
Call of the Elements | CaE | Reduces the cooldown of Totemic Recall by 60 seconds. |
Creation Core | CrC | Makes Totemic Recall affect an additional totem. |
Restoration Tree Spells for Restoration Shaman
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.
Rows 1 to 4
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! |
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. |
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 throughout 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. |
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. |
Rows 5 to 7
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. |
Spouting Spirits | SpS | Excellent talent which increases the damage reduction of Spirit Link Totem and causes it to massively heal everyone inside its effect after a small delay, making it a much stronger ability than it has been in the past few years. |
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 some 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 45 seconds. Combined with Healing Tide Totem now doing its maximum healing as soon as you have 5 players in your group, it is now a decent 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 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 healing of your next Healing Surge by 30% after a Lava Burst cast, stacking twice. This empowered Healing Surge will also cast Flame Shock at a nearby target, improving your rotational flow. |
Living Stream | LST | Causes Healing Stream Totem to heal for 100% more, decaying over its duration. This allows Healing Stream to pack a much bigger punch when it is dropped, making it a strong reactive healing tool. It also has strong synergy with the Totemic hero talent Reactivity. |
Torrent | - | Increases Riptide's initial heal significantly, making it 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. |
Rows 8 to 10
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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. |
Tidewaters | TWaters | Causes Healing Rain to also do massive healing to players with Riptide active. When used with Totemic Surging Totem it will do double healing to account for the extra cooldown of the totem when compared to regular Rain. |
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. |
Wavespeaker's Blessing | - | Increases the duration of Riptide by 6 seconds, which is a small direct healing increase, but also has some impact for Undercurrent uptime and Primordial Wave / Tidewaters target count. |
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 Ancestral Guidance and Cloudburst Totem. |
First Ascendant | FA | Reduces the cooldown of Ascendance by 1-minute making it exactly the same as Ancestral Guidance and thus making their combo much more powerful. |
Preeminence | PR | Increases your Haste by 25% during Ascendance and its duration by 3 seconds, making it an even stronger cooldown. Great in fights where you cannot get value from a shorter Ascendance cooldown. |
Downpour | DWP | Post rework, it is a great ability that you can activate after using Healing Rain to do massive healing to targets inside it and increase their Health by 10%, stacking with Ancestral Vigor. When used with Totemic Surging Totem it will do double healing to account for the extra cooldown of the totem when compared to regular Rain. |
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 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. |
Reactive Warding | RW | This talent will heal your Earth Shield target when you refresh the shield, with the heal being higher the more stacks your target is missing when refreshed. You will also gain Mana when refreshing Water Shield with the amount being higher if you refresh it at low stacks. While this can theoretically be a decent talent if you always remember to refresh just as stacks are running out, you will get no benefit if you let the shields run out, so make sure to track its effect if you take this talent. |
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. |
High Tide | HT | Allows you to bank powerful Chain Heal casts to counter incoming burst damage, or simply passively increase your throughput. |
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. |
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. |
Improved Earthliving Weapon | IELW | Increases the healing benefit to Earthliving Weapon from our Mastery and causes Healing Surge to always proc it on the target. |
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!
Changelog
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within launch.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 18 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Small adjustments to Ascendance description after Patch 10.2 nerfs.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 13 Jun. 2023: Clarified that Ascendance and Guidance should not be used together.
- 01 May 2023: Updated with Earthgrab new duration, Explosive affix removal and other changes of Patch 10.1.0.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated with the new spells and talents of Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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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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