Restoration Shaman PvP Rotation and Playstyle — Midnight Season 1

Use this to heal sustained damage throughout the match (damage done when the other team does not have burst cooldowns available).

It is important to note that there are multiple ways to keep your team alive to heal through sustained damage.

1. Maintain Earth Shield on the teammate taking the most damage.
2. Use Riptide on cooldown, which also generates stacks of Tidal Waves.
3. Use Stormstream Totem / Healing Stream Totem for passive healing.
4. Use Unleash Life to increase the heal of your next direct heal.
5. Cast Healing Wave when you have at least 1 stacks of Tidal Waves.

Use this if the enemy team uses their cooldowns to try to kill a teammate.

• If one of your teammates is taking strong single-target damage:
  1. Make sure Earth Shield is on the party member taking the most damage.
  2. Use Unleash Life, which creates an Ancestor for increased healing.
  3. Use Ancestral Swiftness/ Nature's Swiftness to be able to instantly cast a casted heal.
  4. Use Healing Wave for direct single target healing.
  5. Use Stormstream Totem / Healing Stream Totem for passive healing.
  6. Use Riptide, which also generates Tidal Waves.
  7. Use Healing Wave for direct single target healing.
  8. Use Spirit Link Totem as a last resort.
• If your entire team is taking strong spread pressure:
  1. Make sure Earth Shield is on the party member taking the most damage.
  2. Use Riptide, which also generates Tidal Waves.
  3. Use Healing Tide Totem for more significant passive AoE healing.
  4. Use Healing Stream Totem for passive healing.
  5. Use Riptide, which also generates Tidal Waves.
  6. Cast Healing Wave if a fast heal is needed on one teammate.
  7. Use Spirit Link Totem as a last resort.

Astral Shift is the main defensive for Enhancement Shaman, which is on a 1.5-minute cooldown. This ability decreases damage taken by 40% for 8 seconds and is not usable while stunned. It is best to communicate with your healer and use this cooldown at high health when your opponents are using their offensive cooldowns and your healer needs help keeping you alive.

Burrow an immunity, similar to Dispersion from a Shadow Priest. While under the ground, you can be healed and can move at full movement speed. This is particularly useful if your healer gets crowd-controlled and the Shaman does not have Astral Shift available.

Ghost Wolf is an underrated ability; it allows the Shaman to stay at 100% movement speed with any slowing debuff active. This is the way Restoration Shaman can kite melee opponents and stay very mobile. If you are moving beyond a very short distance, Ghost Wolf is worth the global cooldown it incurs. Ghost wolf can be purged, which is one of the reasons why the Spirit Wolf talent is not as good as it could be.

Gust of Wind jumps the Shaman forward, which can be used to jump onto platforms or simply quickly changing position, similar to Mage Blink.

Nature's Guardian gives you a tool to survive stuns, something that Restoration Shamans are normally weak at. If a team is able to make this go off, play extra defensively until you are able to use Nature's Guardian again.

Spirit Link Totem: this is your strongest totem. It will keep your entire team alive as long as it is active. It is best used when someone is about to die, and you do not have the time to cast spells.

Grounding Totem summon an Air Totem with 5 Health at the feet of the caster that will redirect all harmful spells cast on a nearby party or raid member to itself. It will not redirect area of effect spells and lasts 3 seconds. This talent is important to help you avoid incoming crowd control. You can also use this to stop some incoming spell damage.

Tremor Totem breaks friendly team members out of Fear or Mind Control effects.

Hex is a curse 7-second crowd-control which can be broken by damage. In general, you do not want to damage a target that has been hexed. That player does still have control of their character to move out of line of sight. This is best used on the enemy team when they have used an offensive or defensive cooldown or the healer as part of a crowd-control chain.

Earthbind Totem/ Earthgrab Totem is a placed totem that roots or slows any enemies within the radius. This totem is incredibly useful and should be used on cooldown. This helps your team's positioning. This totem can also help you land Capacitor Totem.

Purge or Greater Purge can be used defensively to purge off your opponent's offensive cooldowns or Mana back cooldowns, which are purgeable. One very important use is during a Priest's Mind Control of your teammate. When a Priest does this, it is better to use purge on your Mind Controlled teammate and not use your Wind Shear interrupt. This is because purge has no cooldown, while Wind Shear is on a 12-second cooldown.

Capacitor Totem is placeable Totem, which can be relocated using Totemic Projection, and can AOE stun for 3 seconds. It does require 2-seconds to detonate so be thoughtful when placing the totem it won't be instantly killed.

Static Field Totem allows you to restrict player movement, and move the enemy players trapped within the totem using Totemic Projection.