With the arrival of Cataclysm, the talent system received a massive overhaul, changing from the 71 talent points system to a more compact 41 points system. As such, many of the old talents were either completely removed or changed, resulting in fewer possible build variations. One key aspect of the new system is that you must use at least 31 points in your main specialization to use the remaining 10 points in a secondary specialization.
Talent Builds
Restoration Shamans have a lot of options for ways to customize their build based on the content they’ll be facing, their group composition, and their own preferences. The build above is a good starting point, but here are some talents that you could consider adding or dropping from the Restoration tree:
- Ancestral Resolve is a nice survivability bonus if you don’t need the points elsewhere.
- Focused Insight can give you a way to buff a big heal, but at the cost of some extra mana as well as an extra global cooldown. This should generally be used to buff Healing Rain. You won’t get enough out of your other spells for it to be worth the trade-off.
- Improved Cleanse Spirit can be skipped if you don’t expect to need a magic cleanse (if it’s covered by other healers or if an encounter doesn’t require it). It’s a good talent to have in your standard build, however.
- Cleansing Waters requires taking the above talent, and is great to have if you expect to be using Cleanse Spirit a lot. It will make the spell a lot cheaper to cast and also allow it to double as a small heal.
- Ancestral Awakening can be a great talent if you’re going to be doing a lot of single-target healing, but that won’t usually be the case in raids.
You can also choose to allocate your points a little differently in your secondary trees:
- Improved Shields buffs both your Water Shield‘s mana regeneration and your Earth Shield‘s healing by 15%. The only reason you’d give this up is if you want to move the points to the Elemental tree (see below).
- Ancestral Swiftness offers a 15% bonus to your movement speed and makes your Ghost Wolf instant, both of which make you much more mobile. You could drop this if you don’t need the mobility or if you are going for the next two talents instead. Note that the movement speed increase from this talent doesn’t stack with other effects such as Enchant Boots – Lavawalker.
- Convection makes your Lightning Bolt cheaper which lets your Telluric Currents effect return even more mana when you cast it. But this is only worth taking if you are actually able to find windows to squeeze in some DPS.
- Elemental Precision is also very valuable if you’re going to be casting a lot of Lightning Bolts, since it will ensure that they hit. Unfortunately you’d have to sacrifice the mana and healing benefits of Improved Shields to get it, and Hit capping your Lightning Bolt is rarely going to be worth that.
Glyphs
Prime Glyphs
- Glyph of Riptide
Extending the duration of your Riptide HoT is a significant buff to its healing and also allows you to have it active on more targets at once. Consider this a must-have glyph.
- Glyph of Earth Shield
This glyph buffs your Earth Shield and is strong enough that you will almost always want to have it active.
- Glyph of Earthliving Weapon
This one buffs the effect of your Earthliving Weapon and is another very strong glyph for healing. Typically you’ll use this glyph and the two above as your default set.
- Glyph of Water Shield
If you’re really struggling for mana, you can opt to swap out one of the two glyphs above for this bonus to your regeneration from Water Shield.
- Glyph of Unleashed Lightning
This one is a bit out there, but it’s possible you may find it useful for dealing some damage and getting some mana back with your Lightning Bolt on movement-heavy fights. Unlikely, but possible.
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Chain Heal
This glyph makes your Chain Heal more effective as an AoE heal and should always be used if you’re raid healing. If you’re tank healing you’ll be using different spells anyway, so there isn’t much of a downside to keeping this glyph active.
- Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem
With this glyph you can drop your Stoneclaw Totem to give yourself a nice big shield. This is highly recommended due to your shortage of personal defensive options otherwise.
- Glyph of Healing Wave
Turns your Healing Wave into a very small Binding Heal. This can be a nice little trickle of healing on your character if you are using the spell often, allowing you to focus your attention on other targets.
- Glyph of Healing Stream Totem
You normally won’t need this in raids since magic resistance is already covered by other raid buffs like Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild, and they don’t stack. But it can be crucial for smaller group content where these buffs aren’t present. In that case, you can use this glyph in place of either of the two glyphs above.
Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of Renewed Life
The only Minor Glyph that offers a useful effect for raiding. You don’t want to need Reincarnation and discover that you’re out of Ankhs.
- Glyph of Astral Recall
This is a great option even though it doesn’t offer any raid benefits. Being able to use Astral Recall every 7.5 minutes can be extremely useful for all of the solo questing and farming you have to do outside of raids.
- Glyph of Water Walking
This glyph will free up some space in your bags while still allowing you to use Water Walking, which can be useful in any dungeon or zone that has water.
- Glyph of Water Breathing
This works just like the glyph above except it does it for Water Breathing. Between the two, this spell is probably going to be used a bit less often.
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About the Author
Luxrah
I've been playing World of Warcraft on and off since vanilla, usually as a healer or caster and often as a guild leader. I play both retail and classic. I also love RPGs, sandboxes, and sims.