The other Resto class got to be trees again! And what did we get? Fewer totems. Which, depending on your point of view, is good or bad. But, nonetheless, Mists of Pandaria and WoW Patch 5.3 is here, bringing Throne of Thunder and apparently quite a lot of changes for Resto, at least if you read the patch notes. If you want to get up to speed quickly, here’s our Quick Start Guide to Resto spells and abilities, glyphs, stats, reforging, gemming, and talent builds in MoP!
Updated 22nd May 2013 for World of Warcraft Patch 5.3
Changes to Resto Shamans in WoW Patch 5.3
Chain Heal’s AI has been improved so that it won’t fizzle when hitting a target with full health.
Resto Healing “Rotation” and Priorities
Well, yeah, OK, not a “rotation” – but here’s how to make people not die real good:
Tank Healing As Resto
Keep Earth Shield on the tank. Use Riptide on cooldown, Healing Wave any time you don’t need to use something bigger (you CAN spam this, most likely), Greater Healing Wave if the tank’s taking serious damage, and Healing Surge only if you are sure that the extra second to cast Greater Healing Wave will kill the tank – although note that Healing Surge is actually useful now. Bear in mind that Riptide will proc an effect making both your Healing Wave spells much quicker for two casts.
Raid / Group Healing As Resto
Use Earth Shield on the tank anyway. Use Healing Wave to spot heal when the group or raid isn’t taking much damage. If the damage starts coming in heavy, use Healing Rain for mass group damage (warning, expensive) or Chain Heal any time it will heal 3 or more targets. Use Riptide on cooldown, and ask your raid leader if you should be keeping it rolling on the tank for the 10% health buff.
Buffs
Keep Earth Living Weapon on your weapon, and keep Water Shield on yourself.
Cooldowns
- Use Unleash Elements to buff your next spell (although it’s not that powerful). Use on cooldown.
- Healing Stream Totem is a useful smart raid heal – although it’s expensive to cast on cooldown, so save it for higher-damage situations.
- Mana Tide Totem is a powerful mana restoration ability for your entire raid or party. Coordinate with your leader as to when to cast it.
- Spiritwalker’s Grace is vital if you need to move – you can still cast whilst moving.
- Spirit Link Totem is a save-the-group spell, particularly in 5-mans – it averages out health across the group, and will save a tank or other person taking heavy damage.
- Ascendance is a powerful AOE healing cooldown. It has a reasonably wide range, so you don’t need to be too close for people to benefit from it.
- Oh, and remember Bloodlust / Heroism – work with your raid leader in a raid to choose the best time to cast it.
See also Talent Choices, below.
Restoration Shaman Talent Choices
There’s a new talent system in WoW 5.3, and it’s a lot more flexible than older talent “builds”, so we encourage you to test out different talents (see the Links below for more discussion of Resto talents).
However, if you want a quick-start talent build that’s decent in most situations, we recommend:
- Tier 1: Astral Shift – provides a nice personal damage mitigation cooldown.
- Tier 2: Windwalk Totem – another cooldown helping your raid avoid movement-impairing effects.
- Tier 3: Call of the Elements – ANOTHER cooldown, resetting CDs on your totems
- Tier 4: Ancestral Swiftness – another cooldown, making a healing spell instant.
- Tier 5: Healing Tide Totem – a very powerful group-wide HoT CD.
- Tier 6: Unleashed Fury if you’re mostly doing direct heals, Primal Elementalist if you’re mostly doing AOE.
Stats, reforging and gemming for Restoration Shaman
Intellect is probably the most important Resto stat. Spirit controls mana regen – you will probably need to experiment with higher Spirit values due to changes in 5.3 giving you less mana than you’re used to.
All 3 stats other than Spirit are roughly equal but have different effects – Haste will make you more powerful but burn more mana, Crit will restore some mana and also boost healing but by less than Haste, and Mastery will boost your heals on people who are more injured. .
Reforging: Very personal, but reforge to Spirit until your mana feels comfortable for the content you’re doing. If you can get to a Haste cap (871 is an important one, as is 3764 – see the Totemspot guide in Links for others), reforge Mastery and Crit to Haste.
Gems: Use a Brilliant gem in red and yellow sockets and a Sparkling gem in Blue sockets. Use Reckless or Artful gems in Yellow sockets.
Meta Gem “Revitalizing” meta gems are the best choice in the early stages of the expansion.
Note: These are “rule of thumb” suggestions. Stats for Resto Shamans are complicated – once you’re comfortable with the basic mechanics, read the stat sections in the guides below and make choices on more complex reforging then.
Resto Shaman Glyphs
Glyphs in 5.3 are a lot more situational, and I’d recommend reading more about them in the guides under “Links”, but here are some good no-downside options for a quick start:
Major: Glyph of Healing Stream Totem, Glyph of Healing Wave, Glyph of Cleansing Waters
Minor: Your choice! No performance effects from any of them.
Restoration Shaman enchants and item enhancements
You should almost always use a profession enhancement item if it provides appropriate stats instead of a general enchant.
- Shoulders – Greater Crane Wing Inscription
- Back – Enchant Cloak – Superior Intellect
- Chest – Enchant Chest – Mighty Spirit
- Wrist – Enchant Bracer – Super Intellect
- Hands – Enchant Gloves – Superior Mastery or Enchant Gloves – Greater Haste
- Belt – Living Steel Belt Buckle
- Legs – Greater Pearlescent Spellthread
- Feet – Enchant Boots – Pandaren’s Step
- Weapon – Enchant Weapon – Jade Spirit
- Off-Hand Weapon – Enchant Weapon – Major Intellect
Links
Lots of good Resto Shaman info out there!
- Elitist Jerks’ Resto Shaman guide claims to be for raid healing only, but is actually an excellent, extremely in-depth guide to resto shamaning in general
- Vixsin at Life In Group 5 has a great detailed guide to Resto shamans in MoP
- Totemspot has a guide to Haste breakpoints
- Finally, as a WoW player, you should really check out the latest and greatest from the blogosphere on World of Warcraft, here at the Melting Pot.
If you’ve found this article useful, please consider sharing it using the buttons below!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I happen to disagree with some of the things on this guide (go figure someone disagrees) Mostly i disagree with ur talent picks. I find that the echo of the elements give me better hps. not only does it give u a second heal but it saves precious mana. I actually find myself running OOM a TON less with the echo’s spell. and i have yet to get out healed in game.
I also prefer the conductivity spell over the healing tide totem. As a hardcore rshaman as myself, shamans spam the crap out of their healing rain ability. most shamans sue riptide then healingrain in a combo pack mass healing bundle, sure healing rain may seem expensive but honestly i don’t have mana issues with only 2k spirit. Not only does healing rain with conductivity give me a boost on my major healing spells (which if done right can save mana) it also pops a hot on all the target in the area. i even use healing rain for single targets.
I also see no point in getting Glyph of Cleansing Waters. When are u going to be healing enough for that to do anything special. instead i rather have Glyph of water shield. Not only do u get a lot of mana from ur water shield but with Mop coming, healers WILL get hit by enemies in raids and dungeons. this give u a ton more mana, and that extra mana can be a life saver.
Please consider these changes to ur guide, and let me know if u disagree with my differences to ur guide and why u disagree.
Do you spam healing surge? that’s the only way i oom. if you do, maybe try some other techniques?
I find that Echoes is too random to rely on, personally.
i do not agree with anything you say, healing rain as single target healing, please dont make me laugh, echo of elements not viable with the 6% chance it hits and u loose out on the 5% haste when u make the other choice.
And im curious how you go OOM, i have yet to go out of mana even with a horrible group, you do know that you dont span healing surge right? and with basic healing waves a glyphed riptide and thye ocational chain heal/healing rain i dont think you should ever drop below 50%, i think you should actually read this guide again and maybe try it out, and you will see it is far supirior then your current selections.
First of all, just wanted to say, as the author of Healiocentric, I am honoured to be placed in a short list alongside Vixsin and Elitist Jerks! Thanks, Mr. Hugh Hancock
I also thought I’d address Christian’s comments.
The lovely thing about the new Talent system is that there are not meant to be “right” or “wrong” choices. For example, Echo is “right” for you, but for me, it is “wrong”. Personally, it is “wrong” for me because I don’t like random proc effects for healing, and I don’t like the fact that if I chose a heal that would adequately cover my target’s health deficit, and Echo procs, the Echo bit would be mostly overhealing.
I do think Echo is worth considering if Chain Heal is the primary source of your healing for an encounter, because its proc rate is higher (approx 22% if it jumps to 4 targets), Chain Heal is generally a small heal anyway so doubling it has a low overhealing risk, and the Echo is also a smart heal and can jump to new targets, making it far less likely to be overhealing.
I do think that the tier with Healing Tide Totem, Ancestral Guidance, and Conductivity has completely failed at the Talent tree’s new design philosophy. Healing Tide Totem simply delivers more healing than Conductivity possibly can. I did the calculations looking at the healing (and Lightning Bolt damage!) that I dealt on a Heroic Spine of Deathwing encounter, where everyone in my raid was standing in my Healing Rain 100% of the time, and where the encounter design encourages single-target heal spam, and compared it to what a scaled-to-my-stats-at-the-time Healing Tide Totem would have done, and I found that 3 uses of Healing Tide Totem would have provided almost twice as much healing as the Conductivity talent.
Finally, about Glyph of Water Shield, it is mana-negative if you are struck by a Water Shield-proccing attack less frequently than once every 22 seconds. Unfortunately I could not always track this during Beta raid testing for the new MoP encounters, so I don’t know how often this will be valuable in MoP. Keep in mind though that, like our Talents, our Glyphs are also situational, and it is well worth keeping a stack or two of reagents around so you can tailor your build to each encounter. You may find an encounter where there is a frequent need to cast Dispel on a damaged target (e.g. Protectors of the Endless) and this Glyph could be more useful than, say, the Glyph of Water Shield for that fight.
I don’t agree with everything in this guide either, but because of the way the new Talent and Glyph system works, that’s okay! Not everyone will have to take the exact same Talents in order to be competitive anymore. Again, some Talent tiers have failed to achieve this design goal, but in general, we should be embracing our varied opinions
Thanks for the input, i find ur counterargument very helpful. i’ve been trying to discuss the new talent and glyph system with much other resto shamans and have gotten no good counter’s to my proposal. I see what ur saying about healing stream totem and agree that it is better at healing, but still find it a little less useful than the conductivity talent (FOR ME) since the healing stream is a situational spell for when at least 5 people are below ~30% for 4-12 seconds. No doubt u will get better heals with the healing stream totem though.
As u said before it comes to preference, so it will be good to see what is the most preferred down the line with highly respected rshamans. It seems most are going for the healing stream as of now.
I have definitely not spend near as much time and effort as everyone else but healing time totem has saved my ass a few times and its nice to keep in your back pocket for emergencies
{ 1 trackback }