On this page, we list your Restoration Shaman coreabilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of WarcraftMoP 5.4. We also explain whento use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtletiesthat you will need to know if you want to excel at playing a RestorationShaman.

The other pages of our Restoration Shaman guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.

1. Rotation↑top

Healing is in great part based on your ability to react to the damage thatthe raid takes, and as such there is no set rotation. Rather, you must understandwhat spells are best suited to the different situations that can occur during a raidencounter.

• Low to moderate damage (raid or tank)
  • Keep Riptide up on both tanks and possibly one or two additional players.
    • Riptide provides you with the Tidal Waves buff and does significant healing over time.
    • Riptide keeps stacking and refreshing Ancestral Vigor on affected players, increasing their maximum health by up to 10%.
    • Never override an existing Riptide.
  • Make extensive use of Healing Wave to heal without spending much mana.
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown (i.e., every 30 seconds), especially if you have taken Rushing Streams. For 15 seconds, it will heal the most injured nearby players within 40 yards every 2 seconds. Thanks to Glyph of Totemic Recall, you can recall it after the last tick and still get refunded 100% of the mana cast.
• Moderate to high tank or single-target damage
  • Keep Riptide up on the tanks and several other players.
  • Use both Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave; the higher the damage, the more you will use Greater Healing Wave.
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown, especially if you have taken Rushing Streams.
• Moderate to high raid damage
  • Keep Riptide up on the tanks and several other players.
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown (i.e., every 30 seconds), especially if you have taken Rushing Streams. For 15 seconds, it will heal the most injured nearby players within 40 yards every 2 seconds.
  • Start using Chain Heal.
    • Chain Heal should preferentially be used on targets with an active Riptide, as this causes Chain Heal to be 25% more efficient. That said, between a Riptide player with 98% health and a non-Riptide player with 70% health, it is more efficient to cast Chain Heal on the latter.
    • If there is no player with an active Riptide, then you can cast Chain Heal anyway or do surgical heals with Greater Healing Wave or Healing Wave.
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown.
• High sustained tank or single-target damage
  • Keep Riptide up on the tanks and several other players.
  • Make extensive use of Greater Healing Wave.
  • Forsake Healing Wave, as its low throughput will cause you to fall behind in healing.
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown, especially if you have taken Rushing Streams.
• High sustained raid damage
  • Use Healing Stream Totem on cooldown, especially if you have taken Rushing Streams.
  • Keep Healing Rain up (use Unleash Elements before every other cast of Healing Rain).
  • Keep Riptide up on the tanks and several other players.
  • Make extensive use of Chain Heal.
    • Prefer casting Chain Heal on players with Riptide active, for increased effect.
• Emergency situations
  • Use Healing Surge, but only if you feel that the target will die before you have a chance to complete a Greater Healing Wave cast on them. If you suspect that a player may be in danger of dying in the near future, apply Riptide on them, this will give them a bit of healing and, thanks to Tidal Waves, this will increase the critical strike chance of Healing Surge.
  • Healing with Healing Surge will drain your mana very quickly and should not be used lightly.

1.1. Shield and Weapon Imbue

Use Water Shield and Earthliving Weapon.

Water Shield lasts for 1 hour and damage does not cause itto drop. Water Shield increases your mana regeneration and, thanks to Resurgence (a Restoration-specific passive ability), your critical healswith single-target spells will also cause you to recover mana.

1.2. Additional Actions To Perform

• You should always have Earth Shield up on the current tank (or another target that is likely to take damage, if another Restoration Shaman is already shielding the tank).
• If you have chosen Glyph of Telluric Currents as one of your major glyphs,then you should cast Lightning Bolt on the boss or an add whenever you can,in order to regain mana.
• When you want to increase the mana efficiency of one of your direct heals,cast it after casting Unleash Elements.
• If you chose Elemental Blast as your tier 6 talent, then you shoulduse it on cooldown (i.e., every 12 seconds).

2. Cooldown Usage↑top

As a Restoration Shaman, you have 4 healing cooldowns thatare granted to you by default (technically, there are 5,but Healing Stream Totem is already covered in the rotation section).

• Mana Tide Totem is a powerful raid-wide mana regeneration cooldownand you should consult with your raid leader(s) to decide when to use it.
• Ascendance is your Mists of Pandaria ability. It has a3-minute cooldown and causes all the healing you do for 15 seconds to beduplicated and distributed evenly among nearby allies. This spell is bestactivated in times of heavy raid-damage when you can make extensive use of Healing Rain and Chain Heal.
  • Try to use Healing Rain exactly before you use Ascendance. When Healing Rainruns out, it is only worth refreshing (while Ascendance is still active) if you have Ancestral Swiftness available (to make Healing Rain an instant cast).
• Healing Tide Totem is a powerful healing totem that heals the 5 most injuredraid or party members within 40 yards every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
• Spirit Link Totem is one of the most powerful healing cooldowns in thegame. It has a 3-minute cooldown and causes all players within 10 yards of thetotem to have a shared health for 6 seconds.

When you want to get the highest throughput possible, try using Spirit Link Totem together with Ascendance or Healing Tide Totem,as Spirit Link Totem causes these two abilitiesto do no overhealing. That said, using 2 healing cooldowns at once may not alwaysbe the optimal way to keep your raid alive. Sometimes, it is better to spreadthem out.

Spiritwalker's Grace is not a healing cooldown per se, but it willbe useful in movement-heavy encounters. This ability should be used when youneed to move and heal at the same time. You can also use it to cast Lightning Bolt during periods of movement where there is no damage toheal. Finally, Spiritwalker's Grace can be really useful when you need touse Ascendance during a time of heavy movement.

In addition, your talents grant you a number of DPS cooldownsthat you can use to contribute DPS to the raid. We give more detailsin a subsequent dealing damage as a RestorationShaman section.

Finally, your talents grant you a number of cooldowns, as weexplain in our talent cooldown section.

3. Optional Read: Mastering Your Restoration Shaman↑top

Restoration Shamans are a sort of hybrid healing class. They shine when theyhave to combine single-target healing and raid healing, thanks to the way theirsingle-target heals interact with their AoE heals, and vice versa.

Therefore, it is important to understand the various mechanics of yourheals and how they work together. This way, you will know how to efficientlycombine your single-target and raid healing capabilities.

3.1. Procs and Mechanics

3.1.1. Mastery: Deep Healing

Mastery: Deep Healing is your Mastery as a Restoration Shaman. It causes your healsto be more powerful on low health targets.

Your mastery heavily influences the way you play a Restoration Shaman.

• When raid healing, you should focus on low health targets more so than any othertype of healer, as you have the most efficient tools to heal them.
• When single-target healing, your mastery has less influence because youshould give priority to your assignment and cannot freely choose low health targets.By being aware of how much damage your assignment will take, you can optimise yourheals to benefit from your mastery. For example, Healing Wave is more manaefficient than Greater Healing Wave, but not so efficient that youshould cast 3 or 4 Healing Waves to keep your assignment topped off when youcan just let it take damage and then heal it with one Greater Healing Wave.

In addition, you have smart healing mechanics,such as Chain Heal and Ancestral Awakening, that always heal theplayers that are lowest on health. These heals benefit from your mastery and contributeto making it very desirable, as we will see in the Statistics article.

3.1.2. Riptide and Chain Heal

Riptide and Chain Heal have an important synergy.Whenever you cast Chain Heal on a target on which you have anactive Riptide, it will cause your Chain Healto be 25% more powerful.

Therefore, you should always cast Chain Heal on targetswith an active Riptide.See our Addons articlefor addons to track Riptide on multiple targets.

Note that Chain Heal is a smart heal. It will always try to jump tothe player in range (12.5 yards) with the lowest health.

3.1.3. Tidal Waves

Tidal Waves is an important mechanic for a Restoration Shaman.Every time you use Riptide or Chain Heal, you get the Tidal Waves buff.The buff lasts for 15 seconds and has two charges. Each charge enablesyou to cast Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave 30% faster. TidalWaves also buffs your Healing Surge spell by increasing its critical strikechance by 30%; this can be useful when thebuff is up and you need to use Healing Surge for an emergency.

If you are focusing on single-target healing, keeping a good uptime on Tidal Waves (with Riptide) is important as it makes it easierto react to damage (since your main spells are cast faster).

If you are focusing on raid healing, Tidal Waves is less of a concern,as you will cast Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, and Healing Surge less often. Moreover, your frequent casts of Chain Heal will enableyou to keep a high uptime on Tidal Waves without really focusing on it.

Note that when you use Glyph of Riptide, you can maintain a 100%uptime on Tidal Waves, which is not otherwise possible because of Riptide's 6-second cooldown.

3.1.4. Earthliving

The Earthliving effect is triggered by any of your heals, thanks the Earthliving Weapon buff on your weapon. This effect has no internalcooldown, meaning that it will sometimes be refreshed to its original duration.It can also proc on different players at the same time.

When you cast a single-target spell on a player who is below 35%, Earthliving will always be triggered.

You have no real control over Earthliving, as it randomly procs.However, when the raid is stacked, using Healing Rain will give you agood chance to have Earthliving up on almost every raid member.

3.1.5. Earth Shield

Earth Shield places a 9-charge shield on a friendly player. You can onlyhave one Earth Shield active at a time and only one Earth Shield can be activeon the same target at a time. Every time a shielded player takes damage,the shield will heal them for a small amount, losing a charge in the process.

Even though Earth Shield is tailored for tank healing, you should still haveit up when raid healing. In the latter case, simply choose a target that will takeconstant damage (usually the tank, if no other Restoration Shaman is shielding them).

Casting Earth Shield on a target already shielded by another RestorationShaman will cancel the previous shield and create a new one with 9 charges.Therefore, discuss with other Restoration Shamans in your raid to decide whowill cast Earth Shield on whom.

3.2. Mana Management

As with all healing classes, you will need to carefully choose your spellsso that you avoid overhealing your fellow raid members, thus wasting your mana.

Your mana pool will remain constant at 300,000 mana at level 90. So yourentire mana regeneration will depend on Water Shield and theamount of Spirit you have.

To use your mana efficiently, you should be aware of two mechanics thatcan make your life easier.

3.2.1. Telluric Currents and Lightning Bolt

If you have chosen Glyph of Telluric Currents as a major glyph, you willbe able to regenerate 2% mana every time you deal damage with Lightning Bolt. The amount of mana you will regenerate is very smallbecause casting Lightning Bolt costs for most players 1.42% of their maximum mana.Therefore, the only time when you can realistically use this spell as a manaregeneration means is when there is no damage to heal and you have a target you canattack (thanks to Spiritual Insight, you will never miss with Lightning Bolt).

3.2.2. Unleash Weapons and Direct Heals

Unleash Elements provides you with Unleash Life, a temporary buff.This buff increases the efficiency of your next direct heal. It even increases thepotency of Healing Rain, even though this spell is not exactly a direct heal.

Using Unleash Elements does not increase your healing throughput. Indeed,the increased efficiency of your next direct heal does not make up for havingwasted a global cooldown casting Unleash Elements.

You should usually use Unleash Elements with mana management in mindand preferably in combination with Greater Healing Wave.

You can sometimes use Unleash Elements with Riptide, in case you will notbe able to heal for a given period of time and want to leave a strong HoT on a player.

3.3. Dealing Damage as a Restoration Shaman

Thanks to Spiritual Insight, your casts of Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Flame Shock will never miss their targets.Therefore, you can easily contribute DPS to your raid by casting LightningBolt (which can regenerate mana, thanks to Glyph of Telluric Currents),and Lava Burst, all the while keeping Flame Shock on the target(your Lava Burst will always crit if Flame Shock is applied on the target).

In addition, you should keep Searing Totem (single-target damage)or Magma Totem (multiple-target damage) down at all times. Also,use your Fire Elemental Totem and Earth Elemental Totem on cooldown because it only takes a globalcooldown to cast them and they will deal, over the course of theirduration, a high amount of damage (especially your Fire Elemental).

Stormlash Totem is a raid-wide DPS cooldown that causesevery players within 40 yards of the totem to deal additionalNature damage for 10 seconds.

These 3 Totems have a 5-minute cooldown, which means that you willusually only be able to summon them twice per fight. Plan their usageahead of time.

Finally, Tier 6 talents give you the Elemental Blast ability,which will deal a bit of damage every time you use it.

3.4. Talent Cooldowns

3.4.1. Tier 4 Talents

Ancestral Swiftness gives you an emergency heal if you combine itwith Greater Healing Wave(see our macro).

Elemental Mastery greatly increases your healing throughput (andyour mana consumption in the process) for 20 seconds, so you should keep itfor times of high damage.

3.4.2. Tier 5 Talents

Ancestral Guidance is a very powerful healing cooldown. You cancombine it with your other cooldowns to get the highest possible healing throughput,but, in the general case, we advise you to simply spread your cooldowns out duringthe encounter.

3.4.3. Tier 6 Talent: Primal Elementalist

If you chose Primal Elementalist as your Tier 6 talent,you can get your Earth Elemental Totem and your Fire Elemental Totem to stop attacking and channela spell on you that increases your healing done by 10%: Reinforce for your Earth Elemental and Empower for your Fire Elemental.

Your Earth Elemental does little damage, so you will most likely preferletting it boost your healing all the time.

Your Fire Elemental does a significant enough amount of damage thatyou may want to turn on Empower when you need to do more healing,and turn it off when you want to do more damage.

3.5. Play Style Differences Between 10-man and 25-man

The main difference between 10-man and 25-man is that you will cast Chain Heal and Healing Rain a lot more in 25-man. In 10-man,there are less potential targets to heal, so the efficiency of Chain Healand Healing Rain is reduced and you will find yourself castingmore single-target heals.

Ancestral Awakening, one of your passive abilities,only procs from your single-target heals, so ithas a higher chance to proc in 10-man than in 25-man, because you will castmore single-target heals. This means that theTier 15 4-piece bonus is veryvaluable for 10-man raiding.

In 25-man, your frequent casts of Healing Rain make Glyph of Telluric Currents more interesting than in 10-man. Also, youcan more easily interrupt your healing to cast Lightning Bolt,since there are 3, 4, or 5 other healers that will continue healingduring your break. In 10-man, especially if you are 2-healingfights, it is much more difficult to find a proper timing foryour casts of Lightning Bolt.

4. Changelog↑top

• 05 Dec. 2013: Cleared up an explanation about having 100% uptime on Tidal Waves.
• 18 Sep. 2013: More updates from Sonie.
  • Insisted on the fact that using Healing Stream Totem is important, especially with Rushing Streams.
  • Removed mentions of Healing Tide Totem being a Tier 5 talent.
• 10 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4: there have been significant buffs to many spells, but this does not really change the way you play the class.
• 19 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: nothing to change.
• 22 Apr. 2013: Improved rotation and cooldown sections (added several tips for using spells optimally).
• 15 Mar. 2013: Added tip for using Riptide on a target that may soon require urgent healing,so that Tidal Waves is up, which grants Healing Surge a higher critical strike chance.

Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Buffs, Debuffs, and Useful Abilities