Restoration Shaman Healing Spell List and Glossary — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

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 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.

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 depending on what Hero Talents you pick between Farseer and Totemic.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Call of the Ancestors	CA	Allows you to summon Ancestor-friendly NPCs with 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 more powerful.
Ancient Fellowship	AF	Ancestors will occasionally call a new Ancestor to aid you when their duration expires.
Offering from Beyond	OfB	Whenever you summon an Ancestor, you will also reduce Riptide's cooldown.
Natural Harmony	NH	Reduces the cooldown of Nature's Guardian and causes it to heal you for an extra percentage of your maximum Health.
Earthen Communion	EC	Increases the maximum charges of Earth Shield and makes it heal you for more. This has good synergy with Reactive Warding.
Heed My Call	HMC	Makes Ancestors last longer.
Routine Communication	RC	Causes Riptide to have a small chance to summon an Ancestor.
Primordial Capacity	PC	Increases your maximum Mana.
Maelstrom Supremacy	MSup	Significantly increases the healing done by Healing Wave, Downpour, and Chain Heal.
Elemental Reverb	ER	Lava Burst and Riptide damage and heal for more and gain an extra charge.
Spiritwalker's Momentum	SwM	Using spells with a cast time increases the duration of Spiritwalker's Grace and Spiritwalker's Aegis, up to a maximum amount.
Final Calling	FC	When an Ancestor expires, it will cast a small absorb shield on a nearby injured ally that steadily decays over a short duration.
Ancestral Influence	AInf	Your Intellect is increased by a small percentage for each active Ancestor.
Windspeaker	Wspkr	Reduces the cast time of Healing Wave, Chain Heal and Lava Burst by a significant amount.
Mystic Knowledge	MK	After using Ancestral Swiftness (or Nature's Swiftness) your Riptide recharges faster for a short period and Lava Surge becomes permanently more likely to proc.
Ancestral Swiftness	AS	Replaces Nature's Swiftness and causes your next healing or damage spell to have an increased effect, on top of being free and instant cast. If you also know Nature's Swiftness it will also summon an Ancestor for a short duration when used.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Surging Totem	ST	A longer duration, higher impact Healing Rain replacement.
Totemic Rebound	TReb	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.
Amplification Core	AC	Increases your damage and healing by 3% while Surging Totem is active.
Oversurge	OS	Makes Surging Totem much more effective while Ascendance is active.
Wind Barrier	WB	Grants a large absorb shield periodically if you have any totem active.
Pulse Capacitor	PC	Increases the healing of Surging Totem significantly.
Supportive Imbuements	SI	Allows you to imbue your shield to increase all of your healing by a minor amount and extends the duration of Healing Stream Totem by a small amount.
Lively Totems	LT	Causes your Healing Tide Totem, Spirit Link Totem, and Healing Stream Totem to cast an instant free Chain Heal that benefits from all of your Chain Heal talents.
Splitstream	Sstr	Makes your Healing Stream Totem heal a second target at reduced effectiveness and increases the healing done by Healing Tide Totem significantly.
Totemic Coordination	TCord	Causes the Chain Heal effects cast by totems to be significantly more effective.
Earthsurge	ESurge	Increases your healing by a decent amount on allies affected by your Earthliving Weapon heal over time proc.
Totemic Momentum	ToMom	Reduces the cooldown of Healing Stream Totem by a small amount.
Elemental Attunement	EleAtu	Increases your Mastery by a minor amount.
Primal Catalyst	PriCat	Causes Healing Stream Totem and Healing Tide Totem to have a decent chance to apply the Earthliving Weapon proc when healing allies.
Whirling Elements	WE	Using Surging Totem grants you 3 motes with special effects: the Water mote causes your next Healing Wave to also heal a different ally within the Surging Totem effect for a reduced amount; the Air mote reduces the cast time of your next heal significantly, and the Earth mote causes your next Chain Heal to apply a significantly more powerful Earthliving Weapon proc effect on all targets hit.

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 Wave	HW	Heals for a significant amount with a fast cast time. It also has very significant talent support, making it the strongest single-target ability of the kit.
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.
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.

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 smart heal. As one of the core spells of a Restoration Shaman, there are many talents that interact with it, such as Unleash Life, Nature's Swiftness, and Flow of the Tides.
Lava Burst	LvB	Is an automatic critical strike when used on a target with Flame Shock, making it a strong DPS spell.
Fire and Ice	-	Increases all Fire and Frost damage you deal by 3%.
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.
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.
Planes Traveler	-	Reduces the cooldown of Astral Shift by 30 seconds.
Astral Bulwark	-	Increases damage reduced by Astral Shift by 20%.
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	The only healer interrupt currently in game, and a good one as it is a ranged interrupt with a relatively short cooldown. In Mythic+ or whenever you are going to fight enemies with casts that can be interrupted, you should take this.
Frost Shock	FrS	Allows you to slow one target but does very low damage.
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.
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.
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.
Winds of Al'Akir	-	Increases your movement speed and the movement speed bonus of Ghost Wolf by a small amount.
Brimming with Life	-	Increases your maximum Health by 10% when Reincarnation is off cooldown. Additionally, while you are at full Health, Reincarnation cools down much faster 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+.
Static Charge	-	Reduces the cooldown of Capacitor Totem by a decent amount.
Improved Purify Spirit	Cleanse	Great whenever there are dangerous Curses that can be dispelled.
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.
Spirit Wolf	-	Increases your movement speed and damage reduction by 5% every second you stay in Ghost Wolf form, up to 4 times.
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.
Nature's Guardian	NG	Heals you for a significant percentage of your maximum Health whenever your Health is brought to low amounts. This effect has a significant cooldown

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.
Nature's Fury	-	Increases the critical strike chance of your Nature spells by 4%.
Elemental Resistance	-	Reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage taken by players healed by Healing Stream Totem for a short duration and small amount. This damage reduction is especially useful in Mythic+ dungeons, but this talent is always very helpful.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
Spiritwalker's Grace	SWG	Great movement tool, which allows you to move while casting for a short duration.
Graceful Spirit	GS	Reduces the cooldown of Spiritwalker's Grace by a significant amount and increases your movement speed by a decent amount 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 Swiftness	NS	Is a one-minute cooldown ability that makes your next healing or damaging Nature spell instant and cost no Mana.
Mana Spring	MSpr	Decent Mana generator for a large raid group with multiple healers.
Totemic Surge	-	Reduces the cooldown of your totems by a small amount.
Elemental Warding	-	Reduces all magic damage taken by small amount.
Tremor Totem	Tremor	Is of great value in fights where you can remove Fear, Charm and Sleep effects with it.
Poison Cleansing Totem	-	Removes all poison effects from nearby group members very often for a short duration on a long 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.
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.
Therazane's Resilience	TR	Causes Earth Shield and Water Shield to never run out of charges and be decently more effective. This is a good quality of life talent which allows you to never have to refresh your shields, saving you Mana and time in the process.
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.

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 Stream Totem	HST	Must-have talent that contributes significant healing, especially with Totemic hero talents and Living Stream. If you took the talent with the same name in the general tree, you would 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!
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.
Ascendance	ASC	Causes a healing burst when used and massively increases your healing while active. Provided you save your strongest healing spells and have multiple heals over time running when used, it can do a huge amount of healing.
Healing Tide Totem	HTT	Provides high 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. Works better with Totemic due to the large boost provided by the Splitstream and Primal Catalyst hero talents. It will do its maximum healing at 5 targets or above, making it good for Mythic+ and small group content as well!
First Ascendant	FA	Reduces the cooldown of Ascendance or Healing Tide Totem by a huge amount, which is essential when trying to cover big damage events that occur in shorter intervals.
Preeminence	PRE	Increases your Haste during Ascendance or Healing Tide Totem and their duration, making them even stronger cooldowns. Great in fights where you cannot get value from a shorter Ascendance or Healing Tide Totem cooldown.
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 Healing Stream Totem by a small amount.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description/Effect
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.
Unleash Life	UL	An extra instant heal and a strong boost to your next Riptide, Healing Wave, or Chain Heal in the form of higher healing and reduced cast time.
Earthen Accord	EA	Makes Unleash Life stronger by increasing its direct healing significantly and also significantly increasing its bonus healing effect.
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.
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 Splitstream.
Torrent	-	Increases Riptide's initial heal significantly, making it a decent use of points but usually not as good as alternatives when used optimally.
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.
Earthliving Weapon	ELW	A weapon imbue that causes some of your healing spells to have a significant chance to activate a small heal over time on the target. While Riptide ticks can proc it, Healing Rain ticks will not. While each heal is weak, the overall effect is a strong healing increase.
Improved Earthliving Weapon	IEWL	Causes Healing Wave to be guaranteed to create an Earthliving Weapon heal over time effect on the target and increases the benefit this heal over time has from Mastery by a large amount.

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.
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. Useful to create extra Riptides for their healing and secondary effects such as the ones from Tidewaters.
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.
Whispering Waves	WW	Causes Healing Waves from yourself and Ancestors to replicate a decent amount of their healing on players with Riptide. This accumulates over time to a large amount of healing and is generally a strong talent.
Wavespeaker's Blessing	-	Increases the duration of Riptide by 6 seconds and its healing over time by 20%, which is a small direct healing increase, but also has some impact for Undercurrent uptime and Whispering Waves / Tidewaters target count.
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.
Double Dip	DD	Allows you to use Downpour twice for each Healing Rain cast.
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.
Undercurrent	-	Decent healing increases depending on the number of Riptides that we can keep rolling on a group. This buff has anti-synergy with Flow of the Tides but works well with the rest of the kit.
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!