Ten Ton Hammer's Class Guides - Shaman

Restoration Talent Guide

This Restoration talent guide goes over each of the talents in the Shaman's restoration talent tree. The restoration talent tree is for Shaman that want to spend their time healing. The tree is very effective early on in the game, however as you get later in the game a shamans healing power is overshadowed by the Druid, Paladin and Priests. The Restoration tree allows you to heal more effectively especially single target healing. It also contains some very nice add on's for both the elemental and enhancement shaman.

Return to the Shaman Talent Guide. The Shaman Talent guide contains links to information on all three trees: Restoration, Enhancement and Elemental.

Tier 1

Tier 1 is available at level ten, when your first talents open up.

Improved Healing Wave

This reduces the casting time of your healing wave spell by up to 0.5 seconds, while keeping the spell coefficient the same (meaning it keeps the same +healing efficiency from gear).

Healing wave is more efficient mana wise than your lesser healing wave by almost 10% so by reducing its casting time it should ensure it gets more use.

Recommended for healers

Tidal Focus

Tidal focus reduces the mana cost of all your healing spells by up to 5%. This is huge at end game levels where you will be casting heals essentially non-stop.

Must have talent.

Tier 2

Improved Reincarnation

This talent reduces the cooldown on your reincarnation by up to 20 minutes and lets you come back with additional health and mana.

Not a very popular talent though as generally reincarnate is saved to prevent wipes in raids or instances or to recover from wipes. The time savings is not really needed in these cases.

Can be useful in some PvP situations to get that last little bit of health off an opponent even if they drop you.

Skip it

Ancestral Healing

Increases the armor on your target by up to 25% after a critical heal for 15 seconds.

This is an awesome talent for healers as it will heal and prevent a small amount of damage from coming in in the near future against that target. If you spend lots of time healing the tank in a group, this talent pays for itself over and over again. If you spot heal, it doesn't end up helping a whole ton.

Recommended if you main heal in groups.

Totemic Focus

Reduces the mana cost of all your totems by up to 25%! This is a huge talent as you will constantly be placing totems and they cost a significant amount of mana. Being able to replace totems and still have more mana for other abilities is a must.

Highly Recommended.

Tier 3

Natures Guidance

Increases your chance to hit with all spells and melee attacks by up to 3%.

While not really a great healing talent, since you can't miss with a heal. Many enhancement shaman come into restoration though to get it for their builds.

Healing Focus

Provides up to a 70% chance to avoid interruption from damage when healing.

This is a great talent for healers as there are many times you will be hit by damage when trying to cast, whether by direct attack or AoE attacks.

Recommended

Totemic Mastery

This talent for just one point raises the radius of effect on your totems to 30 yards (from 20). This allows the party to spread out more and still have the benefits of your totems.

I always take this talent for its usefulness if I am into the restoration tree anyway.

Recommended

Healing Grace

Reduces the thread you generate by up to 15% on all your healing spells.

I believe this is another mush have talent for healers, as you will be generating allot of threat in most cases, and don't want to draw aggro. Many shaman skip this talent though unless they are constantly drawing aggro away from the group as they feel it is a waste of talent points unless they need to spend it.

My thought is once you draw aggro in a few groups and wipe, its too late, your reputation as a healer if already going downhill. Get the talent up front.

Recommended

Tier 4

Restorative Totems

This talent increases the effect of your healing stream and mana spring totems by 25%. Neither is very significant though at only a 2.5 mana per second increase for mana spring and 3.5 health per second increase from healing stream.

By itself this talent would be a big Must Skip talent, however it is required for Mana Tide totem later in the tree, therefore you need to take it.

Recommended due to being a prerequisite for Mana Tide Totem.

Tidal Mastery

Increases the critical effect chance of your healing and lightning spells by up to 5%.

This is a very good talent for healers, and a great talent for elemental shaman. Most elemental shaman will come in to the restoration tree just to grab this talent.

Recommended, especially for Elemental Shaman.

Tier 5

Healing Way

This talent provides some real power to single target healing for the shaman. It allows up to a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent healing waves cast on the same target by 6% for 15 seconds. Better yet, it stacks up to 3 times. That's a 18% increase in healing effect when against the same target repetitively.

If you spend any time healing, you need this talent. almost 20% healing increase for 3 points? Duh!

Must have Healing Talent

Natures Swiftness

Allows you to instant cast one nature spell every 3 minutes.

Think of the options... Healing wave, lightning, chain lightning, etc. There are many ways to use this ability and all of them are great for you. This should be the 21'st point you spend in the tree, always.

Strongly Recommended!

Focused Mind

Reduces any silence or interrupt effect against the shaman by up to 15%.

In another three this may be great, but here it's only ok. If you are PvPing then this talent is really good as there are many silence and interrupt effects, but in PvE most can be avoided.

Get it if you PvP

Tier 6

Purification

Purification adds up to 10% effectiveness to all your healing abilities. For 5 simple points your get 10% better at what you are doing most of the time (since your this far into restoration, you better be healing).

No way around it, this is a Must for healing shaman.

Must have Talent

Tier 7

Mana Tide Totem

This talent gives you the ability to cast a mana tide totem, which restores 6% of everyone's mana each 3 seconds for 12 seconds. That's 24% of their mana bar over 12 seconds, which is amazing.

It has a 5 min cooldown, which allows you to use it almost every fight while pulling trash MOBs in raids. 24% of their mana is a huge difference in almost all raid fights and bosses in instances.

Must have talent for raiding shaman

Nature's Guardian

This talent is a passive one that provides up to a 50% chance to heal 10% of your total health anytime you are damaged from an attack that takes you below 30% health.

Some players are confused by this at first as it doesn't seem to be that good by the exact definition. In actual fact it works any time you take damage that takes you below 30% even if you are already below 30%. You could be at 15%, take a hit and get healed to 25%. Then after the 5 second cool down still be at 25% and take another hit and get healed to 35%.

This is a great ability, the only issue is that this far into the restoration tree, you are not likely to be attacked directly that often. It should be amazing in the enhancement tree, but here, its only a good talent.

In PvP it's great as it makes you hard to kill, however in PvP most group healing is done by Paladins with plate, or Priests with shields and fear.

Tier 8

Nature's Blessing

Simply an amazing talent, gives you up to 30% of your intellect added to your +damage and +healing! This gives you a huge boost at end game level where it could easily be over +100 to each stat.

There is no way you can come this far down into the tree and not grab this talent.

Must have Talent

Improved Chain Heal

This improves your chain heal power by up to 20%, which is on top of any other healing bonuses (such as purification) and can make chain healing a very powerful spell.

Allows you to get much more use out of chain heal (which is already useful) since it will heal for so much more.

Must have talent for healers.

Tier 9

Earth Shield

This talent protects the target with an earthen shield, providing a 30% chance to ignore spell interruption and causing melee attacks to heal the target by 270. The shield lasts 10 minutes or 10 charges and can only be in effect on one person at a time.

It is a great protection based talent and the healing that is caused is effected by all your +healing so can be substantially more.

This ability can give yourself or anyone else it is cast on a huge survivability boost and allows you to keep going when normally you couldn't. Also very useful on other casters in PvE and PvP situations.

The biggest downside is the huge mana cost at almost 1,000 mana per cast.

Recommended


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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