General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent and glyph choices forRestoration Shamans in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4. We detail what each of the talents andglyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Restoration Shaman guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.
1. Talent Choices↑top
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- Performance-enhancing
- Survival
- Crowd Control
- Movement
- Utility
- Situational
There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents arenow viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to 
Dust of Disappearance(and 
Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90).You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs betweenencounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics.Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does andhow they affect your play style.
2. Tier 1 Talents↑top
Tier 1 talents have been designed with your own survival in mind.
Nature's Guardian will proc every time you receive a damaging attackthat brings you below 30% health (although not more often than every 30 seconds).When Nature's Guardian procs, it immediately reduces your threat towards yourattacker and increases your maximum health by 25% for 10 seconds (when theeffect ends, your health percentage is preserved).
Stone Bulwark Totem is an Earth totem on a 1-minute cooldown that grants you an absorption shield for 30 seconds.
Astral Shift reduces damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds. It has a90-second cooldown.
Astral Shift usually is the talent of choice here. Stone Bulwark Totemis viable when you need to absorb small amounts of damage for 30 seconds and Nature's Guardian can be quite powerful in fights where you often take damagethat brings you below 30% health, but its effect has the downside of not beingcontrollable.
3. Tier 2 Talents↑top
Tier 2 talents have been designed with crowd control and utility in mind.
Frozen Power causes your 
Frost Shock to also root thetarget for 5 seconds.
Earthgrab Totem summons a totem that remains in place for 20 seconds,rooting every enemy within 10 yards for 5 seconds, after which time their movementspeed is reduced by 50% (for as long as the totem is up and the enemies are within10 yards).
Windwalk Totem grants immunity to movement-impairing effects to all party and raid members within 40 yards. The effect lasts 6 seconds. Notethat it also removes movement-impairing effects that are already appliedon players.
Earthgrab Totem and Windwalk Totem are the best choices,depending on which one will be the most useful to your raid. Windwalk Totemis basically a raid-wide version of 
Hand of Freedom and can be usefulon many encounters. There often are other classes that can do a betterjob than Earthgrab Totem, so the opportunities to use it are ratherlimited.
Frozen Powersuffers from only being useful on a single target, but in that particularcase (rooting a single enemy) the short cooldown of Frost Shockmakes Frozen Power better than Earthgrab Totem.
4. Tier 3 Talents↑top
Tier 3 talents have been designed with totem cooldown and mobility in mind.
Call of the Elements, which does not trigger the global cooldown, resetsthe cooldown of your totems that have a base cooldown shorter than 3 minutes:
Totemic Persistence allows you to summon a second totem of thesame kind, without destroying the first. It does not work with Fire totemsand you can only have the effect active on a single kind of totemat a time. This means, that you cannot have, at the same time, two Earth totemsand two Water totems.
Totemic Projection enables you to relocate your totems to a new location. Casting this spell does not trigger the global cooldown.
Call of the Elements is your default choice here, especially sincePatch 5.4 introduced 
Rushing Streams as a new Tier 5 talent that you willmost likely be taking. Call of the Elements will not work on totems that havea 3-minute cooldown. So you will mostly cast it for 
Tremor Totem,and Healing Stream Totem, or Windwalk Totem, in order to usethem twice in a row.
Totemic Projection is very useful for dropping your totems ata different location than where you are standing or when you have tomove all the time. For example, if the raid is spreadout, you can place 
Stormlash Totem, Healing Stream Totem, or
Healing Tide Totem in the middle so that everyone benefitsfrom it.
Totemic Persistence can be very useful whenyou are struggling to find good opportunities to use 
Mana Tide Totemwithout losing out on Healing Stream Totem ticks or when youwant to have both Healing Tide Totem and Healing Stream Totemup at the same time.
5. Tier 4 Talents↑top
Tier 4 talents have been designed to improve your performance.
Elemental Mastery increases your haste by 30% for 20 seconds. Ithas a 90-second cooldown.
Ancestral Swiftness gives your next Nature spell an instant cast. It hasa 1-minute cooldown. Ancestral Swiftness also passively increases your spell haste by 5% and your melee haste by 10%.
Echo of the Elements gives you a chance to duplicate your spells that dodirect damage or healing.
Ancestral Swiftness is one of two possible choices for RestorationShamans, as you can combine it with 
Greater Healing Wave to create anemergency heal (see our AncestralSwiftness macro). Also, it greatly helps with reaching thehigher haste caps.
If you are going for the 12.5% haste cap,you can forsake Ancestral Swiftness and choose Elemental Mastery.Elemental Mastery can be used to give you an additional tick of Healing Tide Totem if you macrothose two abilities together. The same applies if you can easily reach the30% haste cap without the 5% haste from Ancestral Swiftness.
Echo of the Elements does not give you enough control over theadditional healing that it provides and should therefore be avoided.
6. Tier 5 Talents↑top
Tier 5 talents give you a new healing cooldown or a new healing mechanics.
- Rushing Streams causes your Healing Stream Totem to heal two targetsat once for 15% additional healing.
Ancestral Guidance causes you to heal up to 3 nearby injured party orraid members for 40% of the direct damage or 60% of the direct healing you do for 10 seconds. Thisability has a 2-minute cooldown.
Conductivity is a passive ability that causes you to increase the durationof 
Healing Rain when you cast direct healing and damaging spells. However,this cannot cause Healing Rain to last longer than 40 seconds.
Rushing Streams is the default choice here.
Ancestral Guidance should be used when you need atemporary increase to your healing throughput, for exampleon Malkorok whereburst healing is very useful.
Conductivity should be used when the raid is stackedand takes constant, moderate or high raid-wide damage, but there areno fights that require this in the Siege of Orgrimmar.
7. Tier 6 Talents↑top
Tier 6 talents have been designed to give you a choice betweendoing more healing or contributing more DPS to your raid.
Unleashed Fury upgrades your 
Unleash Elements by makingit further increase the effectiveness of your next single-target heal by 50%.Technically, it applies a buff on yourself, 
Unleashed Fury,which increases the efficiency of your next single-target heal by 50%. Itis different than Unleash Life, which Unleash Elements applieson yourself. If you combine the two effects (i.e., if you cast your next single-targetspell on the same target as Unleash Elements), your next single-targetheal will be 95% more powerful.
Primal Elementalist causes your 
Earth Elemental Totem and
Fire Elemental Totem to deal 80% more damage. They become regular pets(although they are not permanent) with abilities. - The Earth Elemental automatically casts
Angered Earth, 
Pulverize, and 
Harden Skin. If you instruct it to, it will channel 
Reinforce on you, which will decrease the damage you take by 20% and increase the healing you do by 10%. - The Fire Elemental automatically casts
Fire Blast, 
Fire Nova, and 
Immolate. If you instruct it to, it will channel 
Empower on you, which will increase the damage you deal by 5% and increase the healing you do by 10%.
Elemental Blast is on a 12-second cooldown and will enable youto maintain a 66% uptime on a buff that changes randomly each time you refreshit: +3500 Critical Strike Rating, +3500 Haste Rating, or +3500 Mastery Rating.For Enhancement Shamans, the buff can also be +3500 Agility.The ability also deals a bit of damage every time you use it.
Primal Elementalist is the only real choice here. The Reinforce and Empowerbuffs are extremely good. Make sure to usemacros to ensure highuptime on these buffs.
8. Major Glyphs↑top
Glyph of Healing Stream Totem adds a damage reduction componentto your Healing Stream Totem spell, which can be useful if your raidwill be taking Fire, Frost, or Nature damage when you need touse Healing Stream Totem. This glyph is recommended for so many fightsthat it could be considered to be a mandatory glyph.
For your other glyphs, you will most often choose from the following list.
In addition, there are several major glyphs that can improve your healingthroughput (or your DPS) in very specific situations.
- Glyph of Cleansing Waters causes you to also heal the targetfor 4% of your maximum health after dispelling a harmful Magic or Curseeffect. This glyph will be useful when you have to decurse or dispelplayers.
- Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem reduces the cooldown and duration of your Fire Elemental Totem by 50%. This means that your Fire Elemental Totem willhave a duration of 30 seconds (down from 1 minute) and a cooldown of 2 minutes and30 seconds (down from 5 minutes). This glyph may be situationally useful ina fight that does not allow you to DPS uninterrupted for 1 minute. Prior to Patch 5.4,this glyph was more potent, because it gave your Fire Elemental Totem a 3-minutecooldown, allowing you to line it up with other cooldowns.
- Glyph of Grounding Totem turns
Grounding Toteminto a damaging ability that reflects a harmful spell back to itscaster. - Glyph of Healing Wave causes your casts of
Healing Wave toalso heal you for 20% of the healing they do. This glyph might be useful earlyon in the expansion when your mana regeneration will too low to enable youto spam anything else than Healing Wave. - Glyph of Telluric Currents restores 2% of your mana when youcast
Lightning Bolt. Note that thanks to your
Spiritual Insight passive ability, your Lightning Boltwill never miss. This glyph is mostly useful when you want to deal a lotof damage on the boss. - Glyph of Totemic Recall causes
Totemic Recall to return the fullmana cost of any recalled totems. This can be very useful to recall your Healing Stream Totem for a free totem. It is also good practiceto use this glyph to call and recall your Fire Elemental Totem and Earth Elemental Totem. Finally, if your legendary meta gem procswhile there is nothing to heal, you can use 
Magma Totem andlater recall it for a free 12,660 mana.
Finally, there are major glyphs that bring more utility to your spells.
- Glyph of Capacitor Totem reduces the charging time of your
Capacitor Totem by 2 seconds. This means that it will stun allenemies within 8 yards after 3 seconds (instead of 5 seconds, without theglyph). This can be useful if a pack of enemies needs to be controlledrapidly. - Glyph of Ghost Wolf makes you less susceptible to movement-hinderingeffects while in
Ghost Wolf form. This glyph can be useful in fightswhere you have to travel through areas that slow your movement speed. - Glyph of Healing Stream Totem adds a damage reduction componentto your Healing Stream Totem spell, which can be useful if your raidwill be taking Fire, Frost, or Nature damage when you need touse Healing Stream Totem.
- Glyph of Hex reduces the cooldown of
Hex by 10 seconds,which can be useful if you are assigned to crowd-controlling adds. - Glyph of Purge causes your
Purge spell to remove1 additional Magic effect from an enemy target, but adds a 6-secondcooldown. It can come in handy ifyour raid ever needs to simultaneously remove 2 Magic effects from a boss.Note that in most cases, it may be better to just let Mages 
Spellstealthe effects. - Glyph of Wind Shear increases the cooldown of
Wind Shearby 3 seconds, but increases the school lockout duration it causeson the target. This glyph can be useful if having a 15-second cooldownon Wind Shear will not hinder your interrupting duties.
9. Minor Glyphs↑top
Minor glyphs are mostly cosmetic. Only 
Glyph of the Lakestrider mightcome in handy, as it enables you to walk on water while you are in Ghost Wolf form.
10. Changelog↑top
- 01 Oct. 2013: With T16 gear, using Glyph of Riptide is possiblebecause of mana regeneration levels (and also because of the buff to
Chain Heal), so we moved the glyph to the list of advised glyphs.Also, Glyph of Totemic Recall is not being used much this tier, so we moved it down. - 18 Sep. 2013: More updates from Sonie.
- 10 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
- 19 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: nothing to change.
- 22 Apr. 2013: Greatly improved the page following reviews from Zetian and Sonie.
- Improved the advice for choosing your talents for almost every tier.
- Improved the advice for choosing your major glyphs. We now recommend 3 glyphs that you should use in most situations and 2 other that will be situationally useful. We still list the other glyphs that have very very situational uses, for completeness' sake.
- 04 Apr. 2013: Update following Purge's review of our Enhancement Shaman guide.
- 27 Mar. 2013: Updated description of Nature's Guardian to properly reflect the Patch 5.2 change.
- 09 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
