Talent Builds
Farseer Whispering Waves
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This setup is straightforward but powerful. The goal is to apply Riptide to as many people as you can, then repeatedly cast Healing Wave to heal all those affected by Riptide through Whispering Waves. Since the Season 2 tier bonus is gone, you don’t need to bother with Healing Rain anymore, which frees you up to cast even more Healing Wave.
With the Season 3 set bonus, each time you use Ancestral Swiftness, you gain a short period where Riptide has a shorter cooldown, your spells cost less mana, and your healing and damage are boosted. This allows you to cast more Healing Wave and Riptide, which lines up well with major damage events that happen every 30 seconds.
Totemic Chain Heal
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I'll leave a Totemic talent setup here for the people that like it, it plays very similarly, just a bigger focus on your “elemental buffs” from Surging Totem.
This setup offers strong AoE healing by boosting Chain Heal with various talents, while also adding powerful AoE abilities like Downpour and Surging Totem. However, these spells are quite Mana-heavy, so you’ll need to manage your Mana carefully to perform well, as it’s easy to run out fast. To prevent this, avoid using Chain Heal too often on its own, and save it for moments when you have strong buffs like High Tide active.
Farseer M+ Build
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Played a bit differently than the Farseer Raid build, but still focuses on your Ancestors.
We are opting for Unleash Life for almost 100% uptime on at least 1 ancestor, and you will be pressing Chain Heal quite a lot in this build. It also offers quite a hefty amount of damage output.
Remember to change your Class Talent tree around depending on what dungeon you are running.
Class Talents
In this section, we are going to talk about a few key talents for Restoration Shaman. I will explain how they work, when they find good use and how to maximize their potential.
Stone Bulwark Totem
Stone Bulwark Totem is a defensive totem that gives you a flat absorb shield for 15 seconds. In addition, it gives you a small additional shield every 5 seconds for 30 seconds.
This is a very powerful personal damage reduction totem that has great use in rot-type fights. It’s on a decent cooldown timer and essentially works as a large defensive ability. Although it does not give you any % damage reduction, the numbers the shields provide are substantial.
Totemic Recall
Totemic Recall resets the cooldown of your most recently used totem, with a base cooldown of less than 3 minutes.
This is a very undervalued talent, that has the potential to give you either extra stacks of Cloudburst Totem, for more hps throughput. Alternatively, you may use it to reset the cooldown of your Wind Rush Totem, should your raid/group need two speed boost abilities in a shorter window.
This talent paired with Call Of The Elements (reduces Totemic Recall cooldown by 60sec) puts Totemic Recall on a 2 minute cooldown. A very strong combination and a pick you will always want to make.
Gust of Wind
Gust Of Wind is a utility spell, where the Shaman is pushed forward through a ‘leap’.
This spell has so much usage for Restoration Shamans in all content. Often times, we are stuck hardcasting spells like Healing Wave and Chain Heal, a spell that can leap us forward or away, will help so much with positioning and surviving. It’s on a fairly low CD timer (20sec) and the animation and speed of the leap sequence are decent.
Spec Talents
In the Spec Talents section, I will be talking about a couple of key talents specifically. Mostly our Spec talent tree is in a very balanced position, where you can choose to pick more single target healing or group healing. It also doesn’t feel like we have to make bad choices or leave out key talents in order to be relevant.
Spirit Link Totem
The most notorious totem in our arsenal, the Spirit Link Totem. It summons a totem for 6 seconds that reduces all friendly targets' damage taken by 15% within 13 yards. Immediately and every 1 seconds the health of all players is redistributed evenly.
The Spirit Link Totem has been the strongest ability for Restoration Shamans since forever. It is the main tool why Shamans are relevant in both raids and m+. The Spirit Link totem can single-handedly carry a whole group or raid through some very nasty damage, by redistributing health to make all friendly players have equal health. Make sure you know when the best time to use this ability is, it will help your raid and group significantly.
Ascendance
Ascendance transforms you into a Water Ascendant, duplicating all healing you deal at 70% effectiveness for 18 seconds and immediately healing allies for X amount. Ascendant healing is distributed evenly among allies within 40yds.
Ascendance is our key hps throughput cooldown. It has the potential to be one of the most powerful raid wide healing cooldowns if played correctly. A couple of pointers how to make use of it the most when you have entered the Ascendant form:
- Make sure to have at least one stack of Cloudburst Totem when you plan to use Ascendance. Cloudburst will fill up to become a huge heal after you have fed into it during Ascendance.
- Cast your Healing Rain / Surging Totem right before entering Ascendant form.
- Make sure to have your Unleash Life and Ancestral Swiftness / Nature's Swiftness also ready, to have an instant big Chain Heal ready for when you start.
- Use Chain Heal as much as you can - bear in mind that this is very mana costly. So if you have an Innervate from a Druid at your disposal, this is the time to make use of it.
- Other totems don’t feed into Ascendance healing.
Ancestral Protection Totem (Ankh Totem)
The Ancestral Protection Totem or commonly referred to as ‘Ankh totem’, is a totem that is placed where needed for 33 seconds and has a 23yds radius around it. All allies gain 10% increased health. If an ally dies, the totem will be consumed to allow them to Reincarnate with 20% health and mana. If they die of massive damage, the cannot reincarnate.
This totem is widely used throughout raids and m+ to counter or deal with mechanics that would else be very difficult to deal with. Mechanics targeting players that are impossible to overcome with else, will have great assistance from this spell. It is also a very handy raid cooldown, due to its 10% increase to health for all allies. This spell along with Spirit Link Totem will make Restoration Shamans very feasible in any content.
Hero Talents
Both Totemic and Farseer are great options in both Raid and Mythic+, so here’s a quick rundown of what each of them does and what builds they focus on.
Totemic
All Totemic builds focus on Chain Heal because of one of the passive talents called Lively Totems. This will make your totems fire off Chain Heal for you, rather than you needing to cast them yourself. Surging Totem replaces Healing Rain and instead places a Healing Rain around the location of the Surging Totem. This is instant-cast, and lasts for 24 seconds, which cuts back on some of the button bloat that Shaman has. Totemic builds have an endless amount of AoE healing, with the catch of being quite mana intensive if you’re not careful. If you enjoy playing builds that focus on Chain Heal, then Totemic is the build for you.
Farseer
This tree has a lot more flexibility when it comes to talent choices, but it primarily focuses on Riptide. The goal here is to summon Ancestors by pressing Unleash Life, getting Undulation, or randomly by pressing Riptide, and using those Ancestors to help you heal or deal damage. This tree has a little bit of RNG associated with it, but is a pretty passive tree if you’re not looking to change up your gameplay too much.