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Restoration Shaman

Raids

When Raiding you should strive to be efficient with your resources, namely your mana. Pacing your Chain Heals properly so you can keep healing throughout the duration of the fight is something you should actively think about. For this guide we will assume you are playing Totemic, as it is currently the recommended default hero tree choice.

Where Does Your Healing Come From

Your biggest sources of healing will be Chain Heal, Healing Rain, Riptide and Stormstream Totem. Keeping Riptide on cooldown is very important for a variety of reasons: The spell itself does a good amount of healing, gives you stacks of Undercurrent, applies Deluge to people, and can give you procs of Stormstream Totem. Healing Rain will do high amounts of healing on its own and also activate Overflowing Shores and Tidewaters. Stormstream Totem, being your apex talent, is tuned very high and also inherits all the Healing Stream Totem bonuses like Quickstream and Lively Totems. Finally, Chain Heal is your spammable heal and your mana throttle: You control your mana by casting more or less Chain Heals and this is your single strongest spell.

Restoration Shaman doesn't ramp nor does it have long sequences of preparation before doing heavy burst healing, it simply presses spells as needed and healing happens. You don't need to force yourself to always be casting during the whole fight but if there is people that need healing and you aren't casting heals you should have a very good reason why.

Important Things to Know

  • A majority of your Stormstream Totems will come from pressing Natures Swiftness. The random procs from Riptide are good but overall rng shouldn't play a significant factor on Stormstream healing in raids.
  • Totemic applies Healing Rain by using Surging Totem. It is very important that you refresh Surging Totem as soon as it runs out.
  • Healing Stream Totem does a good amount of healing and also casts a full-power free Chain Heal when you use it. Using your charges when you need to move to keep casting Chain Heals while moving is a great way to maximize your healing.
  • Both Healing Wave and Chain Heal are good but serve different purposes. Chain Heal is your primary source of healing but costs more mana; Healing Wave is better for one or two target healing and is very cheap. Pick the correct tool for the situation and manage your mana.

Gameplay

Your gameplay will consist of using all your short cooldowns on cooldown as much as possible and then filling in the extra time with one of Healing Wave or Chain Heal. Your main goal is to minimize downtime and simply cast your spells every time they are available. The only proc you need to react to is Deeply Rooted Elements and during it your filler casts become much more valuable and you can focus on just casting them for the duration.

  1. Use all your Stormstream Totems, most of them will come from Natures Swiftness but you can also get one every time you press Riptide. The buff lasts for a decently long time so you are not in a huge rush to use them but holding it for too long might mean you start losing out on uses of Healing Stream Totem which is fairly bad.
  2. Cast Riptide as much as possible and on different targets. Spreading Riptide gives you more stacks of Undercurrent and more targets for Deluge. It can also proc Deeply Rooted Elements and Stormstream Totem so there is a lot of very good things attached to Riptide.
  3. Use Natures Swiftness on cooldown. The most important part of this is to not miss out on Stormstream Totem procs but the free instant Chain Heal you get from it is also very good.
  4. Keep Surging Totem active.
  5. Use Healing Stream Totem as a way to cast more Chain Heals. It can be a good idea to pool charges for when you need to do several fast casts back to back or when you need to move and won't have Spiritwalkers Grace but make sure you are not overcapping the cooldown.
  6. The rest of the time heal people with either Healing Wave or Chain Heal. Chain Heal does much more overall healing but costs more mana and it is your highest hps choice. If the damage is focused on a single or two targets or you want to conserve mana you would instead opt to Healing Wave.

During Ascendance both Healing Wave and Chain Heal improve massively. The normal distinction of Healing Wave being better for one or two targets healing and Chain Heal doing much more overall healing still applies. Usually in a raid you will use all the time inside of Ascendance to cast as many Chain Heals as possible. You want to do a little bit of set up before going into the cooldown to make sure you get the most out of it:

  1. Use all your charges of Riptide to get stacks of Tidal Waves and to not waste the cooldown.
  2. Try to time Surging Totem so it doesn't expire while you are in Ascendance
  3. Use Ascendance.
  4. Use Natures Swiftness.
  5. Use all the Healing Stream Totems and Stormstream Totems you have available.
  6. Cast your chosen spell repeatedly until Ascendance is over.

During Deeply Rooted Elements simply try to cast as many Chain Heals or Healing Waves as possible.

Conclusions

Totemic Restoration Shaman is a very easy spec to play, as long as you remember to cast all of your short cooldowns every time they are up and to fill in with as many Chain Heals as your mana allows, you are bound to have good results. For further optimizations, keep in mind to spread Riptide to as many targets as possible rather than refresh it on the same, and move Surging Totem around with [Totemic Projection] to always get full value.