How to Resto Shaman in Patch 5.0
This is part of a series on the changes coming in the pre-mop patch 5.0 next week in World of Warcraft. I started this series with my own how to guide for Holy Paladin. But, I will also be diving into each healing class thanks to my dear friends and healbots!
Thanks to my the shaman extraordinaire on my raid team, Eezer, here’s the Resto Shaman one!
Introducing Our Guest – Eezer
This article’s guest writer is a guildie, Eezer.  He started playing WoW in late BC, originally as a tank but saw the light in Naxx and started healing.  First as a twig, then a Priest, and now settled happily as a Shammy since late Wrath.  Now a total altoholic and gold hoarder and looking forward to adding a Panda to his WoW family.
He offered to add his take on the Resto Shammy class :-) Thanks Eezzer!
Major Changes:
- New talent system is here (with suggestions to follow)
- New Glyphs!
- Our heals and abilities have changed a fair bit (more to follow)
- Set amount of mana now @85. 100k regardless of intellect :(
- Ancestral Awakening, Resurgence and Tidal Waves are all now passive.
- Battle.net account wide Mounts, Pets and Achievements!! :D
- The totem forest is no more /cry
First things first….
The New Talents!!!!
First you will see your class choices, which give you your ‘signature’ spells
Followed by your sexy slimmed down talents! YAY! We now get 1 option per 15 levels, eventually in MoP you will be able to change these easily using some form of Scribe trickery called ‘Tomes of the Clear Mind’ (Dust of disappearance  for talents) but until MoP launch, its still off to the trainer to reset.
My choices/recommendations
Tier 1 -Â
As you can see, all really self survival skills, my personal choice is Stone Bulwark Totem as its only a 1min cd and I can think of a number of times a self shield will come in handy, questing or raiding. Â I think though this one is probably more of a personal choice.
Tier 2 -
Windwalk totem in my opinion is the most ‘raid useful’ talent
in this Tier, especially with only a 1 min CD.
Tier 3 -
A few options to this one too, non as good as they seem unfortunately.
Call of the Elements isn’t that great, as our most sexy totems (SLT/HTT/MTT) have a base cooldown of 3mins.  So these don’t get refreshed.
Totemic Restoration is good, but not really for us, as our totems now have a short duration anyway.
Totemic Projection. I was so excited to be able to throw my totems at the tank, or was that near the tank… but it just doesn’t work right.  You have to drop the totem, hit the ‘launcher’ then select where to throw it.  eg. SLT ticks for 8 seconds. It would have ticked 1 or 2 times before you got it to the tanks.
Call of the Elements seems the winner, more by default though :(
Tier 4 -
A clear winner. Â Insta cast spell on a 1 min CD plus passive 5% haste. Â No question there really.
Tier 5 -
Choices choices choices…
I am torn with this one, they are both kinda awesome in their own way. Â A raid cd like HTT is something we have wanted for a long time, but Conductivity just looks such a nice passive!
I premade a shammy on Beta to look at the boring numbers, with ilvl378, full gems and enchants, looking at the tooltip figures, if you cast a GHW on a tank with ES who was standing in HR, anyone in the rain will share a heal of around 7.7k.  Situational though, as it shares healing, so if the 10 man raid were stacked they would get healed for 774.
My choice would be the raid CD. Â I can think of a lot more uses for it at the moment.
Glyph changes!!
My major Glyphs will be Telluric Currents Healing Wave and a choice of either Spiritwalker’s Grace orRiptide depending on how the RT spam works out.
Other situational ones -
Chaining - Depending on how much we end up spreading out on fights, could be useful
Healing Stream - Depends on what situations you will need the cd for.
Just for FUN!
Deluge - changes our old animation for Chain Heal
OLD……Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
 
Yup, we gots WATER!!! The chain heal is Blue too!!!
Spectral Wolf - Cos it looks coooool!!!
EXCELLENT NEWS!
Maybe. Â Unless things change before launch, our heals have changed. And on the whole, they are even BETTER!!!!
I wasn’t going to get into numbers and mana costs etc, but our heals are soo much better, I thought I would spread the love some!
I made up the following simple chart to highlight the changes. Â Bear in mind on live my ilvl is 397 with 7323int. Â On beta its ilvl378 with 5696int. Â Thats 1627 less int on beta.
Notice I have put all the improvements in italics.  That’s right, ALL our heals now heal more, with less intellect. AND 3/6 cost less mana.  How cool is that!!!!!  Cast times all seem very similar too!
Also mastery seems buffed somewhat.  Without getting into more boring numbers, I have half the mastery on beta than live, but my +healing ‘buff’ is bigger by 10%.
Have fun in the new patch, I will be busy deciding which mount to use and which title to display!!
And don’t forget, your talents and main heals will be gone when you log in, remember to pick your talents!!!
*Thanks Eezer!*
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Oh wow, thank you so much for this guide- how does our mana feel with the patch, though? I’m really worried about that. I may be reforging away a good deal of my haste and mastery to spirit, because I have been incredibly reliant on our present incarnation of TC to gain back all the mana I use!
I’d love to know what kind of spirit levels you’re sitting at, and whether or not you’re oom-ing!
Thanks for your comment! At the moment without raiding on the PTR its hard to tell how mana will pan out, but from what I can see (which I forgot to include above) is the Water Shield seems buffed too by about 100mp5 and the mana returns from resurgence have been buffed too, looking at the numbers around 10-15%.
Spirit wise, on live I have 3181, with 3978mp5 in combat.
On Beta its 2052 spirit with 3794mp5 in combat. Both with WS active.
All in all, at lvl85 I shouldn’t think it will be a problem, but wouldn’t be afraid to reforge some mastery into spirit, as that has been buffed too :)
Im just changing from resto druid to resto shaman. Figure now is better time than ever with the changes to relearn a class. Curious noob question…. Are we losing sprit link totem? I see the new HTT is like a tranquility. So will we have both in our arsenal? Any info would be great help.
Not noobish at all, so many changes, especially with totems.
We do keep SLT, its now given when you select Resto as a spec, and from what I can see it works the exact same way. HTT is similar to both tranq and Divine Hymn for priests, plus we also get a different version of Healing Stream Totem, which ‘for 15 sec heals the most injured party or raid member within 40 yards’
Very nice. Thank you. Shamans are in a decent place from what i can see. Awesome post and thaks for keeping up on it.
No worries Wood2004, thanks for the compliment :)
Shammys do seem a in a good place, next week and certainly MoP should be fun :)
I chose echo of elements because the only non direct spell you have is chain heal…and healing rain… Right now I am using it and its making life so simple I rarely need chain heal.
I know patch has only been live for few days. But as for some talents. I took Ancestrial Swiftness. The 5% passive haste is nuts. I went with a haste no spirit cap build. Sitting at 37% haste 20% crit 4k mp5 and 58% mastery. Im pulling around 39k hps in BH 10 man. Havent done my DS Heroic yet. But i solo healed BH with no mana issues. Is any1 goin with a different reforge style and getting better results? If so any input would be great.
Echo of the elements did sound good, its just the number of times I used the old Ancestral Swiftness in an ‘oh sh1t’ moment combined with 5% spell haste, it seemed to good to turn down.
Haven’t played with reforging that much yet, decided to test out what I had in LFR last night instead. Seemed to go ok, using the new HST on CD seems awesome, my output seemed lower than normal, but after the first fight I got my mana to last through the fights :)