Patch 4.0.3 level 80 Restoration Shaman FAQ

[Deleted]

This will be updated for level 85 content when I have the time. I will be trying to write a guide before the 85 content is here, but I will be busy during early december (Playing the new content + Lots of work stuff). The good news is early into the first pvp season I should have a decent pvp guide going on as well, so for all you pvp'ers out there this will also be for you.


Use this thread as a simple guide for patch 4.0.1. This post is still in its very early stages, so please use this thread to discuss any other findings. I will be moderating this heavily and updating it with new information as it is presented.


For the full shaman changes see: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...aman-Cataclysm

Talents:

In 4.0.1 talent trees have drastically changed. The trees have been reduced in size to 31 points and you have to put 31 points into a tree before moving on. You also gain some abilities just from putting some original talents into that tree.
Many talents are now optional, this allows a lot more freedom when selecting talents. However some talents are still compulsory and should always be taken.

Restoration Tree

Ancestral Resolve
This is an optional talent. If you find yourself dying a lot or if there is heavy raid damage in cataclysm content this may be worth taking.

Tidal Focus
This is a compulsory talent if you suffer from no mana issues ever, then you may want to pick up some filler talents instead.

Spark of Life
This is a compulsory talent. 6% increased healing + more survivability in one talent.

Improved Water Shield
This is a compulsory talent. Our mana regen talent. Do not ever skip this.

Totemic Focus
This is an optional talent. The only reason you would take this is to increase mana tides duration. Judge if you need the extra mana or not.

Focused Insight
This is an optional talent. If timed right you can produce a powerful heal, which could save a player from dying. If you have spare GCD it can be worth getting. Unfortunately we have no hit rating, therefore if you miss it is a waste of a GCD and mana. If you do decide to use this talent, use flame shock.

Nature’s Guardian
Generally considered worth skipping. A pvp talent, but if you find you pull aggro to much in a 5m environment by healing then feel free to take it (or get a new tank).

Ancestral Healing
This is a compulsory talent. Even if you have a Priest in your raid, it is still worth taking this talent as they overwrite each other.

Nature’s Swiftness
This is a compulsory talent. Our only cooldown currently in game, can be used to quickly save a player.

Nature’s Blessing
This is a compulsory talent. If you ever have to throw a heal onto the tank this will improve the healing.

Soothing Rains
This is a compulsory talent. Currently it will just improve healing stream, but compared to other optional talents, it will give more healing.

Improved Cleanse Spirit
This is a compulsory talent. Not much to say here, unless you never ever have to dispel should you skip this.

Cleansing Waters
This is an optional talent. If you find yourself dispelling lots of the time this talent will be greatly beneficial to you. It heals a reasonable amount while reducing the mana cost.

Ancestral Awakening
This is a compulsory talent. Increases your scope of healing when tank healing or spot healing. Should never be skipped.

Mana Tide Totem
This is a compulsory talent. A good source of mana regen, while also helping other mana users.

Telluric Currents
This is an optional talent. If you find time to throw some bolts then feel free to pick it up. Currently it gives a decent amount of return, in cataclysm it will not (so enjoy it while you can).

Tidal Waves
This is a compulsory talent. Also one of the most important talents in the tree. With it being a huge boost to healing it should never be skipped.

Blessing of the Eternals
This is a compulsory talent. Since it lost the 4% crit bonus it has become fairly poor. But it will still give you more of a throughput boost to healing then the other optional talents. Unless you purely heal the tank, it should be taken.

Riptide
This is a compulsory talent. A instant single target heal, very useful when on the move , increasing the heal of chain heal and activating Tidal Waves.

I'm not going to go into to much detial into the other specs. But you should talent into the Enhancement tree and take:
Elemental Weapons
Improved Shields
Ancestral Swiftness

After you should get Acuity in the Elemental tree.

In 4.0.1 you should choose between the crit gain from Acuity or the healing gain from Elemental Weapons.

For level 85 there is some debate wether Elemental Pricision with Telleruic Currents is worth taking over Ancestral swiftness. So far looking at the beta logs, many restoration shamans in raid content have been stacking Int and using LB for mana. This allows you to do some dps and restore mana during down time and then be able to use more expensive burst heals when needed.
The issue here is you lose mobility from instant GW and there will likely be some encounters you wont have the time to dps.

In my opinion the spec you should go for if you are unsure on optional talents is this:
http://db.mmo-champion.com/utils/tal...GCF.a6q.shaman.

Glyphs:

Prime:

Earth living
Earth shield
Riptide
Currently these 3 Prime glyphs are best

Water shield - If you strugle on mana (this may become better at 85).


Major glyphs:

Chain heal
Healing wave
Stoneclaw
Healing stream totem

Spells:
Restoration shamans are not changing a great deal, spell wise, then from wotlk. Riptide, Earth shield and Chain heal all remain very similar (the riptide hot now scales like all hots and chain heal bounces to 4 automatically).

All healers have 3 basic healing spells. One for HPS, one for high healing value and one for healing per mana.
Our three are:
Healing surge (LHW) - This is a high HPS heal that heals a large amount but is very un-mana efficient.
Healing wave – Our new spamable heal. It has a medium strength heal, medium hps and is very mana efficient. Currently on live you should be able to spam this without losing mana.
Greater Healing wave – This is the replacement for our old healing wave. Its costly, with low hps but a high strength heal. Like with the old healing wave this is a situational heal. Use it with nature’s swiftness or when you know a large burst of damage is incoming.

Cleanse now no longer dispels Poisens and Diseases, but dispels Magic and Curses. Also if the talent Cleansing Water is taken, it also heals that target.

Mana Tide - Mana tide now gives 350% Spirit over 12 seconds, or 17 seconds if you have totemic focus.


Stats:

Spirit:
Like all healers in 4.0.1 spirit is our new Regen stat. You want a decent amount of spirit to support your healing. But if you are in ICC gear, you should have no mana issues. Meditation will allow 50% of your spirit to Regen in combat.

Int:
Spell power has been removed and instead has been replaced by Intellect. The only item spell power is still on are caster weapons. This increases the value of intellect by a large amount since wotlk.

Haste:
Haste is still just as valuable as it was before. In fact it is more valuable than before, since our hots now scale with haste.

Crit:
Crit will continue to be a useful stat for restoration. Sadly we lost 14% crit from talents, although you can gain 3% crit from Acuity, you won’t be able to gain access to this until 85 (unless you skip imp shields/elemental weapons). Its worth noting that although crit is a helpful stat, haste and int will continue to be better.

Mastery:
Try to avoid reforging to Mastery. Currently in game its not worth it. With the smaller health pools + large heals, players rarely drop that low for long. In cataclysm the benefit of this spell will be alot greater, but currently don't worry about it.

Reforging:
If you are in 'end game' gear I would not bother with reforging. The benefits will be tiny and soon all those epics will be replaced.
If you do choose to reforge you should focus on changing stats to haste. This is important if you are low on the haste side and want to catch up. Crit and spirit will be the only stats you can reforge to haste (unless you have hit gear).
Just make sure when you are reforging you still keep a decent amount of crit and spirit to keep your mana safe.



You should only be wearing mail now due to the mastery bonus. You gain a 5% bonus to intellect while wearing only mail (apart from neck, back, rings, trinkets, weapons).

Gems should not be changing. Continue to gem haste (Quick King's Amber) + haste and intellect (Reckless Amentrine).




To add in cata:
PVP guide
Full in depth 85 guide

[Riavan]

I'm healing all 80 heroics in 4.5k gs elemental gear as resto, really easily too. I just don't use healing surge at all, the others are more than enough.

I do with we had a better aoe heal, I see we get one during the next few levels, but it's still a small area, not like prayer of healing or whatever the one is my druid has which puts a Hot on everyone.

[Hottie4Hire]

You didn't mention Mastery in the OP. And that brings me to my question: What's the value of mastery in relation to haste and crit? I assume not much. In Cata will this change?

As well, what's the value of the glyphs?

[Instant]

Thing about glyphs.

I'd add Stoneclaw to the list. It's way more usefull than Ghost Wolf, and (depending on fight) Healing Stream Totem.

At this moment it's ~15k absorb on 20 seconds cooldown. This is extremely underappreciated glyph.

At this moment mastery is weakish, but with large HP pools it's very, very powerfull. At ~20% of HP you should get full benefit out of it.

[Foxhoundn]

My second spec apart from Enha is Resto, and always been. I can say, that Stoneclaw totem is hundred times better than GW, unless we have the points to spend in Ancestral Swiftness.

Also I found Telluric Currents the best talent resto ever had, when i was running OOM, i just thrown a few bolts and and i was back in game. In raid with buffs/debuffs my LB was critting about 7k and returned around 3k mana.

Resto healing arsenal is really wide now, and the healing is extremely fun. Apart from our mastery that sucks, at least on lvl 80 with this low health pools. This will ofcourse change with everyone having large health pools.

[Deleted]

I have noticed that it has become alot easier and more mana efficient to heal heroics / raids on my resto shaman after the patch. My main since vanilla is/was a paladin, but i have pretty much stopped playing him since all the holy power and what not got added to them. My shaman rocks though ;-)

Cheers for the post!

[Deleted]

You didn't mention Mastery in the OP. And that brings me to my question: What's the value of mastery in relation to haste and crit? I assume not much. In Cata will this change?

As well, what's the value of the glyphs?

Mastery is not worth it right now. Below haste and around equal to crit (a tiny bit lower at this point). With the smaller health pools you don't get the full benefit of it right now. I'll add something in the FAQ about this later.

@Instant
Good point, im currently using that glyph on live and completely forgot about it.

@Foxhoundn
Telluric Currents is ok. At this level of end game gear, you should not be dropping that low to go oom. I do like the talent, shame it sucks at 85


Keep more points coming and I can add them in where I see fit. In the end this will hopfully turn into the level 85 pve guide as well.

[Seriss]

New haste softcap for Healing Surge is at 1405. Having more haste than that is still nice for the slower heals. No change there

I reforged all my spirit gear to haste where haste was not present and to crit where crit was not present. At 80, it doesn't look like we'll need a lot of spirit yet. I wear at least 1 Solace all the time though.

[sparks]

still a little confused( LITTLE LOL)
anyway thanks to everyone.
I was gun shy. After mainly healing for a year I am now afraid to even spec resto.
What totems are you now dropping?

[Deleted]

What you confused with? If you healed as a resto shaman in wotlk its still very simaler now.
Totems generally:
Wrath of air, flametounge, healing stream, stoneskin.
(But they change depending on who else is providing the buffs).
Generally healing stream + mana tide are your important ones. The rest you should work out if you need to drop depending on the group.

[Foxhoundn]

What you confused with? If you healed as a resto shaman in wotlk its still very simaler now.
Totems generally:
Wrath of air, flametounge, healing stream, stoneskin.
(But they change depending on who else is providing the buffs).
Generally healing stream + mana tide are your important ones. The rest you should work out if you need to drop depending on the group.

Can you set recount to show how much healing HS totem did? I am really curious, since its healing for 1k whole raid.

---------- Post added 2010-10-19 at 10:38 AM ----------

New haste softcap for Healing Surge is at 1405. Having more haste than that is still nice for the slower heals. No change there

I reforged all my spirit gear to haste where haste was not present and to crit where crit was not present. At 80, it doesn't look like we'll need a lot of spirit yet. I wear at least 1 Solace all the time though.

When I am running OOM i throw 10 LBs at any target and I am at full mana, so basically there is no need to worry about mana at all, as long as you spec for Telluric Currents.

[Instant]

Yes you can set it to recount. You have to untick pets somewhere in options (don't remember exactly where is it ).

but HST doesn't heal whole raid. Just the four other people that you're in party with.

[Foxhoundn]

Yes you can set it to recount. You have to untick pets somewhere in options (don't remember exactly where is it ).

but HST doesn't heal whole raid. Just the four other people that you're in party with.

I believe healing stream was changed in 4.0.1 to heal all raid members rather than party ones. Am I incorrect?

[Instant]

I'll put it another way.

Imagine a spell, that costs 1k mana, lasts 5 minutes, and heals everyone in raid, that's withing it's range (30 yards) for 1k every two seconds - that's healing stream totem.

Now imagine a spell that has 30 seconds cooldown, 10 seconds duration, has 20 yards range, heals for 1k every second and costs 10k mana. That's new paladin spell - holy radiance.

Now, you honestly believe that HST heals whole raid?

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=5394

[Foxhoundn]

I'll put it another way.

Imagine a spell, that costs 1k mana, lasts 5 minutes, and heals everyone in raid, that's withing it's range (30 yards) for 1k every two seconds - that's healing stream totem.

Now imagine a spell that has 30 seconds cooldown, 10 seconds duration, has 20 yards range, heals for 1k every second and costs 10k mana. That's new paladin spell - holy radiance.

Now, you honestly believe that HST heals whole raid?

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=5394

A simple "No it doesnt" would be enough....really.

[Instant]

Simple no was in my first post though

Also i just wanted to tell you why it wouldn't be a good idea for HST to heal whole raid.

I didn't try to be mean/sarcastic, just wanted to cover all grounds :]

[Zireael]

Thing about glyphs.

I'd add Stoneclaw to the list. It's way more usefull than Ghost Wolf, and (depending on fight) Healing Stream Totem.

At this moment it's ~15k absorb on 20 seconds cooldown. This is extremely underappreciated glyph.

Just wanted to mention, as far as i know, stoneclaw still heals for around 4,6k (4x 1169 = 4676). I know the blue said its going to be around value you gave, but for 4.0.1 didn't happen.

[Instant]

Yes, you're right. My number was taken from beta, and it's valid for lvl 85 character.

I know this is 4.0.1 FAQ, but still i thought it was worth mentioning and remembering

[druun]

I dont see anything about the new totem tranquil mind.

Ive had quite a few people ask me to drop this while in ICC. Is it really that beneficial right now? Better said, is it more beneficial than having healing stream out?

[Instant]

If you have a paladin in your raid group, it's better if he/she switches his/her aura on.