Restoration Shaman Healing Guide — The War Within (11.1.7)

There are no changes to Restoration Shaman in Patch 11.1.7.

Patch 11.1.7 introduces a new feature: the one-button Combat Assistant. For Restoration Shaman this will alternate between Flame Shock, Lava Burst, and Lightning Bolt on two or less targets, or just spam Chain Lightning if three or more targets will be hit by it.

While this is a great feature for starting players who are overwhelmed with the amount of buttons Restoration uses, or players looking to save button space, it is not as optimal as a manual DPS rotation due to having a longer global cooldown on its usage to compensate for the ease of use benefits.

• Elemental Reverb now increases Riptide healing by 20% (was 10%);
• Maelstrom Supremacy now increases the healing of Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Wellspring, Downpour, and Chain Heal by 25% (was 15%);
• Offering from Beyond now reduces the cooldown of Riptide by 3 seconds (was 2 seconds);
• Primordial Capacity now increases maximum mana by 10% (was 5%);
• Final Calling Hydrobubbles absorption increased by 25% and last 15 seconds (was 10 seconds).

These are very powerful buffs to Farseer, which improve almost every part of the base healing kit. Unfortunately, Healing Rain is the spell that enables our strong 4-piece tier set bonus and is still much easier to cast and maintain as Totemic, making Farseer maintain its low quality of life status.

If you are willing to jump through its hoops, however, you will be rewarded with significantly increased healing, which is likely to make it more popular at high levels of play, especially in Mythic+ settings where it already saw some top key usage.

• Ancestral Guidance has been removed, with Restoration receiving a 9% healing buff to compensate.

While there is only one change, it is of high significance for Restoration, as Ancestral Guidance was an important cooldown which synergized with Ascendance, allowing it to smart heal targets much farther away than the default Ascendance radius, and also fed Cloudburst Totem creating high burst healing moments that did not rely on stacked healing.

Thus, despite the compensation 9% healing buff which more than covers for the overall healing lost, the hit to the spread burst healing niche that defined Restoration Shaman in Season 1 is likely to be felt in the Season 2 content.

• Primordial Wave was replaced by the new Whispering Waves;
• Mana Tide Totem was replaced by a choice node between Mana Tide and Spiritwalker's Tidal Totem;
• Therazane's Resilience is now on a choose-one node with Reactive Warding;
• Ancestral Vigor now requires two talent points in order to become a 10% health buff;
• Healing Wave is no longer a talent and is learned baseline;
• Acid Rain damage was buffed by 25%;
• Wavespeaker's Blessing now additionally increases the periodic healing of Riptide by up to 20%.

The talent changes and additions to Restoration Shaman seem to be aimed at simplifying the specialization and cutting down on buttons. While there is potential in the idea, as the high utility of Restoration Shaman leads to multiple situational talents and buttons, Whispering Waves is currently a bit too niche and likely to lead to degenerate gameplay of pure Healing Wave and Riptide, as there is no cooldown to its benefit, but it is also small enough that mixing in other spells drastically reduces its benefit. Losing Primordial Wave is equivalent to losing the no- Chain Heal playstyle as it currently stands.

Therazane's Resilience is a good quality of life talent, but the removal of Mana Tide Totem also removes a free Chain Heal source for Totemic. Since its cooldown was very high to begin with, this is not of high importance. Ancestral Vigor becoming a two-pointer again is somewhat compensated by not needing to talent Healing Wave anymore.

Farseer received further changes:

• Farseer Ancestors had their base healing nerfed by 15% but now also benefit from your Mastery, Whispering Waves, and cast a different and slightly more powerful single target heal than before;
• Maelstrom Supremacy now increases healing done by multiple spells by 15% instead of 8%;
• Elemental Reverb now increases Riptide healing by 10% instead of 5%.

Overall these changes make Farseer more integrated with the new Whispering Waves playstyle and increase baseline healing from spells, while slightly nerfing Ancestors (area) healing in most scenarios.