[WotLK Classic] Restoration Shaman PvE Guide

Welcome to my restoration shaman pve guide for the wrath of the lich king expansion based on the patch 3.3.5.

If you are watching this video you are probably interested in or considering playing resto shaman this will be a comprehensive and in-depth guide on what it means to play resto shaman in which i will cover many of the things you can see in the table of contents.

Everything from race selection, talents, stats, spells and abilities, glyphs and so on to gearing in some tips on how to improve your healing as a shaman in this guide, I'll also go into some of the theorycrafting math so let's get started!

First is the race selection:

The horde has three races: troll, orc, and tauren where the best one for pve resto shaman is troll.

Troll gives you several unique advantages berserking cooldown which increases your attack and spell casting speed by 20% percent for ten seconds and has a cooldown of three minutes, this is by far the best racial trait of all available races the resto shaman can take advantage of in pve regeneration allows trolls to regenerate health 10% faster than other races, it also allows 10 percent of health regeneration to continue during combat.

The passive has application in both pve and especially pvp and we have da voodoo shuffle which reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%, this troll racial trait has more application in pvp and is extremely rare in pve.

Orc is good for pvp thanks to the passive ability hardiness which reduces the duration of stun effects by 15% blood fury is a two minute cooldown with a 15 second duration that increases your melee attack power and spell bonus damage as the increase scales with your level so at level 80 blood fury provides 322 attack power and 163 spell damage as resto shaman, blood fury has negligible effect in pve as the cooldown has no effect on your healing but can be used in combination with fire elemental totem.

For additional damage fire elemental snapshots your stats the moment you activate it meaning it does not scale dynamically with your stats so the fire elemental will benefit from blood fury for the full two minute duration.

The orc is also a good choice if you plan on playing a dps shaman, enhancement shaman benefits from axe specialization by carrying axes and fist weapons that give him five expertise, command is another orc racial trait that increases your pet's damage by five percent which basically only affects feral spirits.

And finally for the horde we have tauren, tauren is strong in pvp and the weakest race in pve, endurance increases base health by five percent and war stomp is a two minute cooldown that allows you to stun up to five enemies within eight yards for two seconds

For the alliance we only have one choice and that is draenei, gift of the naaru is a heel that ticks 5 times over 15 seconds and has a 3 minutes cooldown the heel scales with your level and spell or attack power whichever is higher, in the case of resto shaman the formula takes into account your bonus healing which is higher than your bonus damage due to the nature's blessing talent and earth-living weapon imbue, heroic presence is another passive ability that increases you and your party members chance to hit with spells and attacks by one percent within 30 yards.

You can always choose the race you like the best, only troll offers a good pve cooldown for resto shaman, with orc and tauren being better suited for pvp so it depends on what content you mainly want to play and enjoy.

The next on the table of contents is the selection of talents, the traditional and basic spec contains talents that includes all available healing modifiers and multipliers as well as talents that affect your mana regeneration, these talents are considered the best in terms of optimizing healing and mana return and should potentially serve you throughout your progression from pre-raid to endgame, i'll cover the talents briefly as I'll go into more detail on some of them later in the video.

Ancestral knowledge increases your intellect by 10 and nature's blessing increases bonus healing spell power by 15 of your total intellect.

Tide mastery, thundering strikes and blessing of the eternals give you a total critical spell chance of 14 the latter of which also increases the chance of earth living HoT being applied on a target with or below 35 total health by 80%, the proc chance stacks additively with the 20% chance of earth living weapon imbue for a total of 100 improved healing wave and healing way reduce the base cast time of healing wave from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds and increases the amount of healing by 25 percent.

Improved chain heal increases the amount of healing from chain heal by 20.

Restorative totems increase the effectiveness of your mana spring and healing stream totems by 20 and 45 respectively.

Improved earth shield and improved shields stack additively and both talents increase earthshield's healing by 25 percent additionally improved earth shield increases the number of charges of the spell from 6 to 8 which would increase the duration of earth's shield on the target saving you mana and additional global cooldowns to refresh the spell, three points in improved shields also increases the amount of mana gain from 428 to 492 when the talent improves.

Water shield is triggered or a water shield orb is consumed by damage taken purification increases the effectiveness of your healing sources by ten percent, this includes items with healing effects such as trauma and gts chained heal from four pieces, tier 10 and glyph of healing wave are not affected and does not double dip with the talent.

Tidal focus reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by five percent and mana tide totem as your mana cooldown, restoring 24 percent of total mana to each party member within 30 yards over 12 seconds.

Ancestral healing is an important talent that mitigates 10 physical damage after you critically hit with chain heal, riptide, healing wave or lesser healing wave. The buff itself is called ancestral fortitude and you should always have it on your tanks especially on bosses like lich king where tanks take a high amount of physical damage, disc and holy priest have a similar talent called inspiration ancestral fortitude and inspiration buffs do not stack but override each other.

Cleanse spirit allows you to dispel one curse, one poison and one disease effect.

Ancestral awakening is our sunlight talent whenever you critically hit with riptide healing wave or lesser healing wave the talent triggers and immediately heals the most injured party or raid member within 40 yards, in that regard ancestral awakening can proc on the same target you critically hit with one of your spells as long as he'd remain the most injured member in the raid, although the tooltip states that the proc is 30 of the amount healed the base coefficient of ancestral awakening is actually 27 additionally ancestral awakening double dips with healing buffs and multipliers such as purification talent tree of life or improved devotion aura and icc buff.

And finally we have the talent title waves which is one of the most important talents in our kit and makes us extremely reactive and flexible healers, whenever you cast chain heal or riptide you get two charges of the tidal waves buff and each charge can be used to reduce the cast time of healing wave by 30 percent or increase the chance to critically hit with lesser healing wave by 25 percent, tidal waves talent also additively increases the spell power coefficients of healing wave and lesser healing wave by 20 and 10 percent respectively.

The second talenting option is one that will not be used by very many resto shamans it is related to specking into enhancing totems by sacrificing 3 percent critical chance from title mastery, this spec is only viable if there are no enhancement or even elemental shamans to bring this buff and also if you are a single shaman in the raid.

Enhancing totem's talent is only worth it for some bosses that would allow you to play around by switching your stone skin with the strength of earth totems and vice versa.

If you have or choose to have enhancing totems the talent should float you between dungeons to tier 7 and into tier 8 at best as the gain from the talent is more significant in the early to mid game in terms of percentage damage increase.

Enhancing totems is also preferable if you want to do some speed runs to maximize raid damage, the talent itself provides 26 more agility and strength for the raid as the gain is further increased for some classes that have additional talent multipliers for their strength or agility and while i am on the subject of optional talents let's analyze:

Guardian totems for pve two points increases your stoneskin totem's armor by an additional 230 which equates to about 0.2 percent more damage reduction from armor for tanks against level 83 bosses in tier 7 gear and also the bonus armor by the totem diminishing returns onward in process of gearing with approaching the armor cap like an end game, the benefit drops to about double or 0.1 percent, the talent really is not worth two points for resto shaman and additionally the bonus stats from enhancing totems increases armor dodge and block value anyway.

Depending on the number of shamans in the raid and how you get along with each other guardian totems can still be picked during tier 7 and 8 content.

Now i want to discuss some of the mistakes shamans make when selecting talents: the first and most common mistake is sacrificing tidal force cooldown for one point of elemental weapons, elemental weapons for resto shaman increases the bonus healing spell power on your earth living weapon imbue by 10 per point, that's basically 15 spell power per point, the talent is not a direct multiplier nor does it increase the spell power coefficient of your earth living proc there's really nothing you can sacrifice as a talent point for point to make elemental weapons truly valuable and you should avoid this talent at all times.

On the other hand tide force is a wonderful ability that has three minutes cooldown and gives you three charges that start with a 60 critical chance increase each time you critically hit with healing wave, lesser healing wave or chain heal a stack is consumed in the critical bonus drops by 20 percent when used with chain heal each bounce that is critical hit will consume a stack so it is possible to consume all three charges with just one cast, this is a good cool down if you need a healing burst and in the end game you can proc additional HoT called chained heal with four pieces tier 10 bonus if tidal force is used with healing wave or lesser healing wave that would proc your ancestral awakening talent.

Also tidal force would potentially give you extra mana back thanks to the improved water shield talent and proc ancestral fortitude for additional physical damage mitigation.

The other common mistake which is actually bigger and resto shamans do is transferring x points from tidal mastery or thundering strikes into x points elemental weapons or in simple terms sacrificing one percent critical chance for 15 spell power one percent crit is equal 45.91 crit rating and in the case of resto shaman about 13 mp5 but more on that later.

It is important to understand that there is no scenario in early mid or late game where 15 spell power would be better than three times more crit rating and almost the same amount of mp5 either for your healing or if you do a direct stat comparison via the healing equivalency point system.

There are two primary stats that affect resto shaman's healing and mana regeneration: intellect and spirit as the second has a negligible effect on your mana regeneration.

There are also four secondary stats: spell power, haste rating, critical rating and mp5, one point of intellect gives the player 15 mana, five points in ancestral knowledge and blessing of kings from paladin increase it to 18.15 mana, intellect also increases the player's bonus healing by 15 of the total intellect pool with three points in nature's blessing, this means that one intellect also provides 1,18 spell power into your bonus healing intellect, also gives spell crit as the amount needed to gain one percent as 166.67 intellect at level 80.

Spirit is one of the factors that affects your mana regeneration outside of the five second rule unlike resto druid and discipline priest, resto shaman has no productive relationship with your mp5 while not casting as the class has no talents that allow mana regeneration outside of the 5 second rule to continue while casting the 5 second rule is the name given to the mechanic that dictates no mana will be regenerated naturally via base regeneration plus spirit modifier for five seconds after a spell is cast.

While under the effect of the five-second rule you regenerate an amount of mana displayed by the in-game character sheet as mana regenerated while casting which is the sum of mana restored from mp5 items plus any passive mana regeneration granted from talents or abilities like water shield, this amount is always on and will regenerate its value regardless of whether or not you are casting your full natural regeneration combined with your mana regen while casting is referred to in-game character sheet as mana regenerated,  while not casting it is critical to note that the 5-second rule is disrupted only when mana is spent channeled spells.

For example, it will spend its mana whether or not you cancel the cast before the end while normal spells will not spend its mana until the end of the cast.

Spirit is only one of the stats that affect your mana regeneration while you are not casting intellect and base regeneration also has an impact as base regeneration depends on character level you can see the formula that converts spirit and intellect into mp5 as well as base regeneration at level 80.

In the video the exact conversion of spirit to mp5 is not always the same as it is a multiplier of the square root of your intellect if we assume an endgame gear with around 2000 intellect while fully raid buffed we can easily calculate that every 20 points of spirit from the gear gives you an additional 17 mp5 while not casting, that means the gain per minute spent outside of the 5 second rule is about 204 mana.

As you understand resto shaman has no real benefit from spirit and you should avoid this stat on your gear unless the item is a huge upgrade for you at the moment but even then keep in mind to replace it as soon as possible.

Moving on to secondary stats we have spell power the plus healing you get per point of spell power is different for each spell proc and ability and depends on the spell power coefficient talent modifiers and multipliers and additional buffs that directly increase a spell's healing output, the talent modifiers an additional healing increasing effects are applied and calculated after the spell power and base healing of the spell to calculate how much actual raw healing your spells do you can follow the formulas in the video.

The product of the spell power coefficient of the spell and the player's total bonus healing is added into the average of spell's base minimum and maximum if you want to factor in crit, multiply this equation by one plus the player's total crit chance multiplied by the crits bonus value which is an additional 150 percent.

Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond meta gem increases the crits bonus value to 154.5 percent, this is important to know if you want to calculate your raw healing.

Looking at the equations we can easily see that a point of spell power always adds the same amount of extra healing to a given spell, while this is true each additional point of spell power actually becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the total healing and the benefit decreases in terms of healing percentage increase reaching a certain amount of spell power makes haste and crit even more valuable.

Spell haste is an exceptionally good stat for resto shaman and will be your most sought after secondary stats, at level 80 one percent spell haste equals 32.79 haste rating, one percent haste means you do not cast one percent faster but instead you will cast one additional spell in the time it would normally take you to cast.

The soft spell haste cap is fifty percent which is required to reduce your global cooldown and lesser healing wave from one point five to one second, this value requires 1269 haste rating with only wrath of air totem and swift retribution or improved moon.

Conform haste soft cap is achievable in tier 9 with approaching bis gear, the other goal of haste rating is to reduce the cast time of chain heal as is your main source of healing in almost every fight, this means that stacking haste beyond the soft cap is perfectly fine in the late game, this is because haste makes us more flexible and provides more consistent and frequent healing for the raid.

In the video you can see a table of the haste values needed to reduce the cast time of chain heal when additionally buffed with only wrath of air totem and swift retribution or improved moon conform the target.

I consider as a best and most optimized in terms of stats balance and overall healing productivity is 1.6 ish seconds and that number requires about 1450 haste rating, this amount of haste is possible with near tier 10 bis gear considering you do not carry dps items, four pieces to your tier bonus reduces the base cast time of chain heal to 2.3 seconds allowing you to get sub 1.7 seconds cast time with about 850 haste rating.

The other spell affected by haste over the gcd cap is healing wave, although you will cast healing wave most of the time when you are buffed with tidal waves it still requires over 2000 haste rating outside of bloodlust and or berserking to get its cast time down to one second, two pieces tier 10 also called rapid currents gives you an additional 20 spell haste for one spell cast allowing you to reach the one second cast time of healing wave but this is technically only possible if you cast the spell after riptide which is not always the case.

To calculate your cast time you simply need to divide base cast time by one plus spell haste divided by 100, to determine how much total spell haste is needed for one second gcd cap of any spell from here simply follow the equation: base cast time minus one and the result is multiplied by one hundred.

There are two factors when it comes to calculating your spell haste: haste rating and additional buffs that increase your spell haste by x percent, haste rating stacks additively with itself as the formula is pretty simple -  haste rating divided by 32.79.

On the other hand, if you add plus five percent spell haste by wrath of air totem for example it stacks multiplicatively, you can see the formula in the video the only spell that suffers greatly by stacking haste over gcd cap is lesser healing wave, although the global cooldown restricts you from casting lesser healing waves more than once per second additional spell haste still reduces the actual time spent casting the spell which can be beneficial in some situations where you need really fast healing while riptide or nature's swiftness are on cooldown.

For last, receiving a direct damaging attack while casting will push back your casts by 0.5 seconds, this is visible from the casting bar flinching away from completion, three points in healing focus talent of resto shaman reduces the amount of pushback by 70, the reduction is additive to a paladin's concentration aura which will negate spell pushback.

Critical strike rating increases your chance to crit with your spells as the bonus is 150 percent upon critical hit or 154.5 percent with revitalizing skyflare diamond metagem at level 80, one percent critical chance equals 45.91 critical rating.

To calculate your total spell crit you have intellect divided by 166.67 plus crit rating divided by 45.91 and all of this is added to the shaman's base spell crit chance plus additional spell crit from talents and raid buffs, the shaman's base spell crit chance before intellect is 2.2 percent at level 80 and aside from that spell crit chance plays a big role in increasing the proc chance of your ancestral awakening talent and 4 pieces tier 10 chain heal.

The other point about crit is ancestral healing talent, the 10 physical damage reduction buff is extremely important to keep up on tanks and can provide good raid mitigation for bosses like deathbringer saurfang or empowered shock vortex of blood princess council, spell crit chance also has an impact on your mana regeneration thanks to the talent improved water shield, the way it does work is that the more spell crit you have in the more you cast more mana regeneration it will provide, this means that mana gain by crit is very fight dependent.

To calculate how much mp5 each point of crit rating gives you you need to know how many times you cast each of your heals per minute, this is calculated by knowing your total casts and the length of the fight, you have a 100 chance of gaining mana if a water shield orb is consumed by a spell, melee or range damage taken.

You crit with riptide and healing wave a 60 chance, if you crit with lesser healing wave and a 30 chance for chain heals crit, each critical hit from chain heals bounce can gain mana so keep that in mind to consider total number of chain heals, targets and not casts while calculating mp5 by the talent.

A water shield orb can be consumed by direct damage taken, cleave, frontal cones, tail swipes and aoe cannot be consumed more than once each 3.5 seconds, this internal cooldown of water shield does not apply to your mana gain by improved water shield talent and since patch 3.2 the charges of water shield are no longer consumed by the talent according to a dozen analyzed logs from early to late game.

One crit rating is worth about 0.23 to 0.37 mp5 so we can assume 0.3 mp5 on average as a generalized value or 3 to 4 points of critical rating is worth 1 mp5, this is important information to keep in mind when building and calculating your gear in the value of those two stats, water shield also provides an additional 100 mp5 overall.

Water shield is your main and strongest source of mana gain so this is something you should have up at all times and you should consider refreshing it on one or two stacks remaining or whenever you enter a high intensity period of damage taken where you will not be able to use a global cd to refresh water shield, you should never drop water shield as the mana gain per spell critical or damage taken is 492 with three points in improved shields, two pieces tier seven bonus stacks additively with the talent for a total 25 percent increase are 535 mana.

Here I'd like to point out that the improved shields talent does not increase the passive mp5 provided by water shield, while two pieces tier seven bonus increases it to 110 you can see the formula that converts crit to mp5 in the video aside from what i have already said, the equation takes in the determination of the crit chance added per point of crit rating in decimal form in the amount of mp5 ticks in a minute in decimal form, we also need to consider the difference between intellect and mp5, both stats provide mana but in opposite ways.

Intellect provides a static amount of mana increasing your overall mana pool to work with while mp5 contributes more and more the longer the fight goes on because of this the value of mp5 increases the longer the encounter lasts.

Mana from intellect is available on demand where you have to wait for your mp5, for this reason you have to understand the difference between your static and effective mana gain, the static mana pool is the resource available to you at the start of an encounter before any passive or active regeneration occurs, effective mana is the total amount of mana available to you during an encounter.

To calculate your total mana gain and mana spend for a given encounter simply set a time length and use it to find how much mana you would spend from casts and how much mana you would get from all available sources, your own and externals that may be applied to you.

You can use my calculator as a tool to get the most out of your effective mana regeneration, you should never let your monitor cap during any period of combat if this happens then you are wasting your mp5 and potentially delaying or wasting any further application of additional mana gains.

All this information is important for your gearing choices and decisions, swap your items from fight to fight to maximize your static and effective mana and healing.

The stats priorities I have given are based on the healing equivalence point system, HEP for short and these are what I consider to be the traditional values for the average resto shaman.

Covering the standard environmental factors this means that additional changes such as playing heavily buffed content or using a lower or higher number of healers for a given content can significantly change the value of your stats,  these HEP values are not based on stats ratio but on the value of each stat on your gear keep, also in mind that HEP system is relative in value if you are in progression content meaning your gear is at or below the level of difficulty of the content.

Mp5 and intellect for example shift in value during early to late game, mana that you do not use at the end of a combat window is wasted and accordingly pure mana stats like mp5 and intellect quickly lose value the more you have on the other hand, the duration of a given encounter has a big impact and the longer the fight is the more value intellect and especially mp5 have in and vice versa.

The other factors that also play a big role are external mana gains effects like replenishment, revitalize, rapture, manatide and their uptime during an encounter affect the value of intellect the more you have the more mana these effects will contribute innervate or mana potions.

An insightful earth siege diamond metagem are other sources of mana regeneration that should also be considered when calculating your mana longevity, critical rating has a big impact on both healing and mana return making it one of our coveted secondary stats, on the other hand haste follows the general rule that the more you have the more casts you'll make per time and thus the more mana you'll spend.

The pure spell power stat does not really have a direct relationship to your mana regeneration aside from calculating hpm in hpt or healing per mana and healing per time, in tbc for example the plus bonus healing stat affected your mana by using a more effectively downranking spell system so that With enough plus healing lower ranked spells become relatively to a higher rank but that's no longer the case with wrath of the lich king.

As you understand you should optimize and calculate your static and effective mana in the first place use these HEP values as a starting point to build your gear remember that the value of mp5 in intellect depends largely on the duration of an encounter while the value of rest of the stats revolve around the role you fill or are assigned the healing roster you are part of and the general mechanics of each encounter.

Prioritizing your stats depends also on your level of experience. The shaman on a learning curve always tends to make more mistakes in a waste of mana where an experienced shaman will optimize their hpm more effectively.

Chain heal is our main source of aoe healing and in this regard the most efficient in our arsenal of spells, in addition chain heal gives you the best chance to proc your improved water shield talent if the spell is glyphed and fully utilized by hitting four targets, this basically means that the spell provides the most mp5 from crit conversion.

Chain heal is equally strong in party and raid healing and can be used to do both effective tank and melee healing simultaneously,  in some bosses like blood queen lanthal and professor putricide spell's critical strikes also applies ancestral fortitude buff to the raid which is extremely useful in some scenarios, for example in deathbringer saurfang if two or more melees get mark of the fallen champion the most efficient way to deal with this situation is to spam chain heal among the tanks and injured melees or alternating chain heal with your single target healing spells thus optimizing the healing from the spell as well as the chance to simultaneously proc ancestral fortitude in the hot from four pieces tier 10 bonus on those members.

In this instance tidal force can be really helpful cooldown especially when the boss drops under 30 health and goes into frenzy, there are some important mechanics you should be aware of how chain heel works, the maximum jump range of the spell is 12.5 yards chain heal cannot jump to a target at

full health and this mechanic would also prevent resto shamans from getting extra mana back from improved water shield talent as well as additional procs from earth living chained heal HoT and ancestral fortitude the spell is smart meaning that the spell always jumps to the eligible target with the largest health deficit in range.

Chain heal cannot jump back to heal the same target more than once since the spell has a separate chance to crit for each target and the amount of healing for the next target is based on the previous target's non-critical healing meaning the crit modifier is not carried over through the chains and does not double dip.

Your earth and fire elemental totems do not count as party or raid members, this means that if you cast chain heal on a player in your raid the spell will not jump on your elemental friends but if you heal the elemental first it can jump to nearby party or raid members, the same rule applies to valythia dreamwalker in icecrown citadel,  and lastly any jump of chain heal is considered a direct heal.

If a trinket or an effect is based on direct healing spells then each target of your chain heal has a chance to cause or trigger the effect, if the effect is based on each spell cast then only the primary target of your chain heal counts towards the proc or trigger.

While chain heal is our bread and butter spell do not mindlessly spam it all the time outside of pure aoe fights where chain heal spam will be the way to go, think about what kind of mechanics the

encounter involves and where the spell will be most valuable and effective, use it as a pre-cast when aoe damage goes out, the perfect example that comes to my mind is infest from lich king, use chain heal on tanks when you are sure that the spell will hit the raid as well although sometimes there will be a situation where you need to cast a spell on the main tank while riptide is on cooldown just to trigger the tidal waves buff on yourself in preparation for the next wave of incoming damage.

Overall you should try not to use chain heal as your main source of tank healing all the time it's completely inefficient and on top of that you are wasting any more potential mana regeneration from the improved water shield talent.

Here in the video you can see tables of the base spell power coefficient in base healing of chain heal as well as multipliers that modify the spell from talents and set bonuses to relics and interactions and by interactions understand riptide and 4 pieces tier 10 bonus.

There are some important mechanics you should know about riptide and chain heal, chain heal only consumes riptide when you cast the spell on a target affected by your riptide and not when chain heal jumps on such a target, in this context consuming riptide applies the 25 healing bonus to the entire spell not just to the primary target of your chain heal four pieces.

Tier 10 bonus is not a direct multiplier but the bonus modifies chain heal so that each critical hit applies a HoT on the target called chained heal, the HoT ticks three times over nine seconds for a total of twenty-five percent of the amount healed, the HoT occurs every six three and zero seconds remaining and can be stacked with itself.

Additively with this in mind remember that every time you critically hit a target with chain heal spell the duration of your chain heals HoT on that target is refreshed there are two methods by which the HoT can be stacked on a target.

The first refers to when you critically hit a target with chain heal spell and that target has already existing chained heals HoT from you and before the first tic of the existing HoT has occurred, in this case the HoT stacks completely additive as the amount of healing for the chained heals tic is equal to 25 percent of the spell's combined amount of crits divided by three.

The second method is a bit more complicated and refers to when at least one of the three ticks of the existing chain heals HoT on the target has already occurred, in this case multiply the critical value of the new chain heal spell by 0.25 minus the amount of the heal of the chained heals tic that has already occurred and divide the whole by 3, the result is added to the amount of the chained heals tic that has already occurred.

Riptide is our only instant spell besides macro nature's swiftness and provides great emergency healing, riptide's initial and HoT heals are independent in this regard meaning they have separate spell power coefficients and base healings, the HoT tics five times over fifteen seconds.

Riptide has a cool down of six seconds which can be reduced to five seconds with two pieces tier eight bonus, riptide can be modified by purification talent and two pieces tier nine bonus which Increase the spell's healing by 10 and 20 percent respectively the initial heal of the spell can also trigger all of the following events:

ancestral awakening, ancestral fortitude, earth living, tidal waves and finally rapid currents from two pieces tier 10 bonus healing wave.

Healing wave is our biggest single target healing spell and one of the strongest in the game, in that regard healing wave costs a lot of mana which really makes the spell not mana efficient, spamming or using the spell frequently will deplete your mana quickly, utilizing an optimizing healing wave can be a challenge at times, the spell is highly dependent on your tide waves buff so you can be maximally efficient with its use which makes the spell not suitable for spamming on tanks all the time unless the damage taken is really high.

While healing wave provides a huge amount of raw healing, most of that healing goes into overheal when the spell is used on light to medium damage taken.

Healing wave is perfectly suitable for pre-casting when large predictable incoming damage is imminent and generally for medium to high damage taken, in some situations with high intensity aoe damage switching an alternating chain heals with healing waves might be the way to go if there are members taking additional damage from other sources.

The amount of healing of the spell can be modified in several ways: tidal waves which additively increases the spell's coefficient by 20 percent then we have the talents purification and healing way which increase the healing done from the spell by 10 and 25, respectively and finally we have 4 pieces tier 7 bonus which increases the healing from healing wave by 5.

Additionally, healing wave is able to proc ancestral awakening, ancestral fortitude and earth living.

Lesser healing wave is our medium single target healing good for light to medium damage taken and when glyphed the spell is perfectly suited for spamming on the main tank and because of its fast cast time lesser healing wave provides frequent and more consistent healing.

Lesser healing wave is less prone to overheal compared to healing wave making the spell more efficient, in this regard the spell also costs significantly less mana than its bigger brother when buffed

With tidal waves, lesser healing wave gains a 25 percent higher chance to critically hit which also increases ancestral awakenings proc rate, this is of great benefit because if the tank takes a larger amount of damage ancestral awakening would proc on him.

Lesser healing wave benefits from purification talent for 10 percent more healing and tidal waves talent which additively increases its spell power coefficient by 10 percent, glyph of lesser healing wave increases the healing from the spell on targets affected by earth shield by 20 percent.

Here I would like to point out that the glyph will also increase the healing by the spell on a target that is affected by earth shield from another resto shaman and not only if a target is affected by your own earth shield similar to healing wave.

Lesser healing wave can trigger ancestral awakening, ancestral fortitude and earth living.

Earth shield is an instant cast which heals its target upon receiving damage, most of the time you will use it on main tank and you should keep it active at all times, you can only put earth shield on one target at a time in addition to two or more earth shields do not stack on one target but instead override each other.

The spell's proc has an internal cooldown of 3.5 seconds and will trigger and instantly heal its target when they take damage, this puts the spell in the category of smart heals and due to its mode of action earth's shield is less likely to fully overheal and it's not surprising to see sometimes earth shield in top 3 healing sources on your recount.

The spell benefits from purification, improved shields and improved earth shield, talents as well as glyph of earth shield.

In general earth shield is a very important ability from our arsenal of spells that gives your tank a decent amount of free healing and can potentially save him from death, i have seen a lot of shamans who do not use earth shield at all or do not maintain it on a target and if you are one of them you are a below average resto shaman and should fix this mistake in your gameplay.

Earth living is a HoT that has a 20% chance to proc from one of your direct healing spells, if the target of your heal is at or below 35 health the chances increases to 100% thanks to your blessing of the eternal's talent glyph of earth living weapon, further increases proc chance to 25%.

The earth living's HoT ticks four times over 12 seconds and it's independent of the amount of heal that had triggered it, meaning earth living has its own spell power coefficient and base healing, in addition if you proc earth living on a target that already has earth living from you they do not stack but the new earth living will refresh the duration.

The only talent that modifies the healing from earth living is purification which increases it by 10 percent, you should also consider that your earth shield, earth living in the heart by riptide do scale with your spell power at time of casting only or procking in case of earth living meaning that the changes in your stats after do not affect their amount of healing.

One trick you can use here is to pre-buff your first cast of earth shield before each fight using trinkets that give you spell power on use, here in the video are trinkets that you can use that are available to you depending on the tier that is currently open, simply swap out one of your trinkets for one of these activate it and cast your earth shield on the tank then you can switch back to your regular trinket, note that equipping a trinket triggers a 30 second cooldown that you must wait out first.

Unlike a dps, resto shaman and healers generally have no rotation but there is a spell priority where each healing spell fits a particular situation when paired with its ideal use.

Case in this context we can talk about efficiency, in world of warcraft almost every viable strategy is based on some sort of efficiency generally minimizing or maximizing some value or concept, this complicates the issue of efficiency as any given process can be optimized in more than one way, what is efficient in one sense may not be efficient in another.

In general efficiency refers to one of the following: firstly mana efficiency which is the net healing effect achieved meaning excluding the overhealing factor for a given mana expenditure and secondly minimizing downtime meaning behavior that allows you to continue casting without interruption.

The two aspects are related because a subset of both is healing efficiency and this is arguably the area where efficiency matters most if a healer is not mana efficient they are likely to run out of mana before the fight is over and be unable to continue healing likely leading to player deaths and possibly wipes.

Also there are several ways healing can be determined as efficient, the two that are most accurate are hit points healed per mana point are hpm and hit points healed per second are hps for short, when you think about actual experience the healing game is ultimately more about using the right tool for the job.

If someone is taking a little damage but probably not going to die riptide is a good idea, if someone is about to die you might need a very fast spell or even a cooldown and that's where your lesser healing wave or healing wave combined with nature's swiftness cooldown or tidal waves if a lot of players in proximity are taking damage at once, chain heal is the way to go, if you know you cannot cast for a while because you might be moving then again riptide or nature swiftness and even earth shield in some scenarios are your only options if mana does not matter or it's not an issue then either your highest healing spell per second or your fastest spell depending on the situation is always the best choice.

Lesser healing wave for example as the fastest spell in our inventory becomes extremely efficient spell that provides consistent healing output on tanks due to the nature of the incoming damage in the way the spell interacts with tidal waves resulting in an increase in proc rate of ancestral awakening as well as making lesser healing wave the best healing source for maintaining ancestral fortitude on tanks.

On the other hand healing wave is perfect for predictable incoming damage like soul reaper where it is very likely that the tank will receive a large amount of damage or if some member is at low health.

As a healer you should be concerned with all aspects of efficiency not just one of them especially if you are in progression content learn to systematize and combine your spells, skills and talents to achieve a higher hps while increasing your hpm as well.

With wrath of the lich king blizzard added a new totem ui abilities to the game: call of the elements, call of the ancestors, and call of the spirits.

These new abilities allow you to place up to four different totems on one global cooldown as you can only use one totem from each of the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air.

The mana cost of call of the element's ancestors and spirits depends on the combined mana cost of all the totems you customize for each of these three abilities and you can customize up to three sets of totems.

Totemic recall is an ability that destroys all of your totems that are on the ground giving you back 25 percent of their combined mana, try to use this ability whenever your totems are about to expire or you need to change their location.

Most of our totems are raid wide but there are some exceptions that only affect your party: manatide, healing stream, cleansing and tremor totems.

The shaman offers the raid 3 unique buffs via totems: first and foremost is the wrath of air totem which increases the raid's spell haste by 5, then we have stoneskin totem which increases armor by 1150 and 1380 respectively if you are specked into two points guardian totems, the uniqueness of the stoneskin totem is that it does stack with the devotion aura of paladin.

The last of the three totems is the strength of earth totem which is only unique and superior if you have enhancing totem's talent as it cancels out the horn of winter from death knights due to the higher stats the totem would provide.

As a resto shaman your most used totem set should be stone skin, flame tongue, healing stream - manatide and wrath of air totems.

The shaman has also several resistance totems specifically fire, frost and nature resistance totems, they do not stack with the paladin's resistance auras or the hunter's aspect of the wild so these totems are situational and their use depends on raid composition and current needs, same applies to our windfury totem which does not stack with improved icy talons, aura of death knight and mana spring totem which does not stack with blessing of wisdom of paladin.

The healing stream totem is our only healing totem it's party wide and ticks each two seconds, the healing is increased by 45 and 10 percent by the talent's restorative totems in purification respectively and can be further modified with the glyph of healing stream totem which increases its healing by an additional 20 percent.

The shaman also has utility totems that can be used for specific bosses mechanics are generally any pve scenario that is appropriate for the totem's specific use.

The tremor totem removes fear, charm and sleep effects from your party as the totem checks for these debuffs every 3 seconds, note that tremor totem does not take effect immediately after summoning but after three seconds, for example the totem is useful for blood queen lana'thel when she uses her fear ability just before she rises into the air, the right moment to drop the tremor totem is when she starts moving to the center of the arena.

Earthbind totem slows the movement speed of enemies allowing you to kite mobs more easily.

Earth elemental totem summons a tank add that lasts two minutes and you can use it to kite mobs and hold their aggro if cast in time, greater earth elemental can be used to soak a specific damage source such as soul reaper from lich king.

Cleansing totem dispels one disease and one poison effect from party members and similar to tremor totem the cleansing totem triggers its effect every three seconds.

Flametongue totem, totem of wrath and demonic pact do not stack and override each other as the buff that gives the raid the most spell power always takes the lead, in this instance the flametongue totem gives the least amount of spell power and if you have a demonology warlock or an elemental shaman in the raid.

The fire elemental totem is a sort of an additional free damage for us that we can use the totem summons ad for two minutes that has multiple abilities and all of its attack types are from the fire school, in aoe wise greater fire elemental has fire shield which pulses every 3 seconds and deals damage to all nearby targets within melee range, fire nova which hits all nearby targets within 10 yards of the attacker in which he uses approximately every 7 seconds against single target, greater fire elemental uses melee attacks that deal fire damage and fire blast ability, greater fire elemental is also immune to all fire damage attacks and gets a passive 90 damage reduction to all aoe effects, the add benefits from our spell power bonus damage attack power and intellect.

Greater fire and earth elementals also benefit from our hit rating and expertise but as a healer we should not have any on the gear, i would like to point out that you cannot have both fire and earth elemental totems at same time which means if you use one of the totems the other will trigger a two-minute cooldown, in addition both totems have a 10-minute cooldown and if the totem is destroyed the add dies as well.

Bloodlust or heroism is a core shaman ability that grants 30 melee ranged and spell casting speed to party and raid members for 40 seconds, bloodlust has a cooldown of five minutes but after this effect ends affected members receive stated debuff which prevents them from benefiting from bloodlust again for the next 10 minutes sated, however will also be removed from a player when he dies.

The most common use for bloodlust is during bosses in raids, it is usually a good idea for the raid to combine bloodlust with other offensive cds at the same time because in many cases it will result in higher overall damage than using the cooldown separately, when soloing bloodlust can be useful for

tough situations or tougher mobs such as targets for group quests or dungeons.

Glyphs are an unique innovation in wrath of the lich king and an important part of healer's journey, glyphs allow you to boost one or more aspects of your gameplay and often you'll find yourself swapping them from fight to fight to get the maximum benefit for yourself in the raid.

There are two types of glyphs: major and minor, here I have split major glyphs into three groups.

The first of which are glyphs that have to do with aoe healing: glyph of chain heal is your most valuable glyph allowing your chain healed to hit one additional target, the extra healing suffers from the 40 jump penalty, due to the mechanics of the spell glyph of chain heal is more valuable in 25 man content and less effective in 10 man content due to the mechanics of some bosses that require the raid to be spread, the glyph also increases your chance for your improved water shield talent to proc as well as earth living chained heal or ancestral fortitude to be applied to one additional target as long as your chain heal casts keep jumping on a fourth target.

Glyph of earth living weapon: the glyph value varies from fight to fight and increases the chance that earth living will be applied on a target by five percent, the glyph is only worthwhile for 25 man content and for encounters with high intensity aoe damage like blood queen lana'thel or professor putricide where your primary spell is chain heal, when combined with the glyph of chain heal glyph of earth living weapon increases your chance of at least one proc occurring per cast of chain heal by 20 meaning you have an average chance of 100 as long as your spell hits four targets.

There are examples with bosses that at first glance seem perfectly suited for the use of the glyph of earth living but in reality the glyph would be wasted.

If we take the final stage of a anub'arak in TOGC, the essential mechanics and tactics of the boss require keeping the raid at low health to prevent the boss from healing too much, in this case earth living would have a 100 chance of being applied on targets due to your blessing of the eternal's talent,  another example is the second phase of lady deathwhisper where short bursts of aoe damage periodically happen by frostbolt volleys or possible triggering of shadeful spirits, in this situation healers should quickly overheal the damage and there is a great chance that most of your earth living hot on the targets will be wasted in overheal.

Glyph of healing stream totem: the glyph modifies your healing stream totem increasing its healing by 20 per tick, it's important to keep in mind that the glyph additively increases the effectiveness of your restorative totem's talent as i already mentioned so the gain that the glyph of healing stream totem brings in diminishing returns to 13.8 healing increase, the most valuable use of the glyph is in dungeons and 10 man raids, in 10 man content your totem heals half of your raid and this makes the glyph one of your possible choices in aoe fights.

Moving on to second group we have glyphs for single target healing, here we have glyphs of earth shield and lesser healing wave, these glyphs are the best for tank healing and a must for encounters where tanks take a lot of damage such as lich king, additionally the glyph of earth shield is great for any type of content and should be an irreplaceable part of your kit.

Glyph of riptide increases the duration of the hop by additional six seconds or two more ticks most of the time you will use up riptide for 25 percent more boost to your chain heal or recast the spell on a target already affected by riptide before the duration expires which makes glyph of riptide really not worth it and you should avoid it at all times.

Glyph of healing wave: this glyph heals you for 20 of the healing effect when you heal someone else with healing wave, the glyph will not trigger if you cast the spell on yourself the heal, the glyph can crit but it does not double dip with additional healing modifiers from talents or raid buffs, on paper glyph of healing wave looks really good but in reality it doesn't help the raid but you in general.

The glyph requires frequent use of healing wave while you receive consistently medium to high amount of damage with normal raid composition including four or five healers, there is a big chance that you will be healed by another healer before the heal by the glyph even occurs, the only real use of glyph of healing wave is if you decide to solo heal or to heal some aoe bosses in 25 man raids where depending on the difficulty of the encounter switching between chain heal and healing waves might be the way to go, in this case the glyph would save you additional global cooldowns needed to heal yourself.

Outside of such a challenge glyph of healing wave is not worth it and will contribute to a large amount of overheal.

The last group is for the glyphs related to mana gain:

Glyph of water mastery increases the passive mana regeneration of your water shield by 30 percent,

this makes it worth 30 mp5, the glyph stacks additively with 2 pieces tier 7 bonus for a total of 40 mp5, basically glyph of water mastery gives you 360 mana per minute, the benefit is really not worth it and you should avoid this glyph at all times, even in early game it's always better to swap items for extra mp5 when needed than wasting a glyph slot on water mastery, as a healer you should use glyphs that have more raid utility.

The same goes for the glyph of mana tide totem: mana tide restores 24 percent of total mana over 12 seconds to each party member, the glyph increases the gain to 28 percent, the glyph of mana tide is equal to the total mana tide multiplied by 0.04 per use of the totem, in the video you can see a table of the average mp5, the glyph provides at different amounts of mana gain so you can better see how the glyph scales from early to late game.

The thing is in wrath of the lich king there are really many sources of mana gains and that extra mana provided by glyphs of mana tide totem and water mastery is not necessary for you and the rest of the healers especially at the expense of the much better healing glyphs you can use.

For minor glyphs we have only one important thing and this is the glyph of water shield.

The glyph increases the number of charges on your water shield from 3 to 4 saving you additional global cooldowns needed to refresh the spell on yourself.

Another glyph that is optional is the glyph of renewed life, this glyph saves you some bag slots and prevents you from getting into a situation where you might forget to buy reagents for your reincarnation ability.

Professions give you unique benefits in the form of extra stats, abilities, procs or crafting that help you maximize your gameplay or focus, on the economic aspect of the game or simply earn gold, for the sake of this vide, I will be looking at professions that have more to do with increasing your healing productivity.

Here are the top four professions that I consider to be best for resto shaman as I will rank them from best to worst.

The first on the list is engineering: engineering is by far the best profession for almost all classes and resto shaman is no exception, engineering is also the only profession that technically gives you all four secondary stats that resto shaman can benefit from simultaneously.

Hyperspeed accelerators is an enchant for your gloves that provides you with 340 haste rating with one minute cooldown and 12 seconds duration, haste is our most coveted stat making the enchant perfectly suited to resto shamans gameplay, the advantage of this enchant is that hyperspeed accelerators is on used type allowing you to have control over it and activate it when needed, hyper speed accelerators is equal 68 haste on average when used on cooldown, the enchant is available at 400 skill of engineering.

Next is nitro boosts, this is an enchant on your boots that allows you to greatly increase your run speed for 5 seconds, nitro boosts has a cool down of 3 minutes additionally the enchant provides you with 24 crit rating, the requirement is 405 engineering skill to be able to craft this enchant, nitro boosts is a great additional ability that allows you to more easily avoid or handle certain bosses mechanics such as defile, another benefit from the enchant is that you can greatly reduce the time it takes you to run a certain distance allowing you to optimize your healing or dps more effectively.

Springy arachnoid is an enchant for your cloak that gives you 27 extra spell power and requires 380 skill for its crafting, although most resto shamans prefer the plus 23 haste enchant springy arachnoid also allows you to turn your cloak into a parachute to fall slowly for 30 seconds the enchant has one minute cooldown, although the parachute does not have much application in pve it still has its uses in the open world, the enchant can be beneficial when questing or gathering materials for your crafting, for example if you are on top of a mountain and want to descend quickly the parachute might be your fastest way.

Runic mana injectors: with engineering you can craft mana injectors which provide 25 percent more mana than runic mana potions for engineers only or 1075 mana on average for three minutes, the additional gain is equal 30 mp5.

Lastly as an engineer you can craft different types of bombs and explosions that can also be used as a small additional damage boost.

The second best profession on the list is jewelcrafting.

Jewelcrafting allows you to cut special gems at 370 skill points that have stat bonuses that exceed the standard gems, these gems are different cuts of the dragon's eye and only three such gems can be equipped at a time.

I am specifically talking about quick and rune dragon's eye which depending on the stats you are looking for at the moment will be your choice to optimize.

You gearing a single gem of quick dragon's eye gives you 34 haste rating and a single gem of rune dragon's eye gives you 39 spell power, jewelcrafting is a very suitable profession that gives you a wide range of options to maximize your stats more efficiently when building different gear setups or simply swapping items.

The next profession is blacksmithing: similar to jewelcrafting blacksmithing provides you with additional pure stats via two additional gems:

At level 400 you can permanently add a socket to your bracers and gloves as you cannot add more than one socket to an item meaning you can have two extra sockets at a time that are of the prism type and count as red, yellow and blue.

At level 415 blacksmiths can also craft eternal belt buckle which can be traded to non-blacksmiths and are purchased from auction house, the eternal belt buckle allows you to add an extra socket to your belt and then you do not need to have blacksmithing to use it, overall blacksmithing gives you two less stats compared to jewelcrafting which is why this profession is third on my list.

And finally we have tailoring: at 420 skill tailoring allows you to craft and use lightweave embroidery enchant which has an internal cooldown of one minute a duration of 15 seconds and approximately

35 chance of procking, the enchant itself gives you 295 spell power making live weave worth an average of 70 spell power, the thing is that healers like resto shaman who play with direct healing spells suffer from the situation that lightweave can proc during the time when there is nothing to heal or the damage is low which will contribute all this bonus spell power to overheal, for example if we compare resto shaman to resto druid a large part of druid's gameplay is closely tied to the use of HoTs, as we know all of the HoTs from resto druid including rejuvenation, regrowth, wild growth and lifebloom do not scale dynamically with spell power, this means that any remaining HoTs on targets that have been cast during the lightweave proc will continue to scale with the additional bonus spell power, even after the effect of the enchant expires this greatly increases the value of lightweave embroidery for resto druid and tailoring is basically one of his best professions.

In the case of the shaman we only have three healing sources that do not scale dynamically with spell power as i mentioned earlier in the video those are earth shield, earth living and the HoT from riptide, only earth shield is worth mentioning here but the main problem is that in order to maximize the

bonus spell power from lightweave you need to cast earth's shield when your lightweave procs and immediately again before the buff expires regardless of the charges remaining on your earth shield it kind of does not feel right to waste extra mana and global cooldowns just to slightly increase the healing from a single spell.

Tailoring however is advantageous if you and the raid suffer severe damage that lasts throughout the encounter or if you plan on playing dps as a secondary spec but if you want to get the most out of a profession is resto shaman tailoring should not be your first choice.

In the next minutes I am going to systematize some of the information about gearing, in that time you will be able to see in the video an overview of the various items available to the resto shaman, their hep values, the source from which you can obtain these items and the best in slot setups i am considering for each tier, if you are planning on starting a fresh resto shaman on any progressive wrath of the lich king server most of our pre-raid bisque gear comes from professions, reputations and items that can be purchased with emblem of heroism.

If you are an engineer you can craft and wear the electroflux sight enhancers helmet or one of its leather or cloth equivalents which is our absolute best in slot pre-raid helmet, there are other alternatives from heroic dungeons as well as forged ring male helm of salvation that you can purchase with 40 wintergrasp mark of honor emblems this helmet is also the only one pre-raid at item level 200 that has haste rating but all of these helmets have significantly lower hep values than the helmet from engineering tier 7.

Chest and gloves can be purchased from the vendor for 80 and 60 emblems of heroism respectively although tier 7 gloves are not our BiS as we use non-set gloves as a best option in hep value since it will take you some time to collect enough emblems for chest and other items, there are other alternatives: revenant's breastplate from leatherworking or robes of crackling flame from kirin tor reputation for which you need to be exalted.

As for the gloves we have fiery obelisk handguards which drops in ahn'kahet dungeon heroic and give crit rating or traditionally dyed handguards which drops in halls of lightning heroic and give haste rating, instead almost all available pre-raid gloves have very similar hep values so it's a matter of rng factor which of them will drop your absolute pre-raid bis.

Cloak is from tailoring and that is death chill cloak.

All available crafting items except for the engineer helmet are of the binds when equipped type.

Sandals of crimson fury from the wyrmrest accord reputation and revenant treads that can be crafted with leatherworking have basically the same hep values and both boots can be considered best options for your feet.

Your best shoulder is dark runic mantle which is only dropped by trash mobs in halls of stone dungeon heroic, this shoulder is bound when equipped and can also be purchased at auction house.

One of your pre-raid rings is signet of the kirin tor which can be obtained with gold from the vendor harold winston.

You have a choice of two weapons titan steel guardian crafted by the blacksmith or the war mace which is dropped in nexus heroic, the differences between the two is that the first mace offers more spell power and crit rating but no intellect while the second mace offers intellect less spell power and mp5 instead of crit as stats.

Your bis belt is the breadwork belt of shamanic vision which you can purchase for 40 emblems of heroism. This belt counts as your third bis and is very close to your second bis belt during tier 7.

Your bis pre-raid necklace and shield are also attainable with emblems of heroism an alternative option for your necklace and ring can be titanium spell shock necklace and ring from jewelcrafting spellweave robe and spellweave gloves crafted with tailoring have also high hep values but both items have no stamina this is why i don't consider them as a good option and did not included them into my spreadsheet, keep in mind that hep system is not an accurate way to compare trinkets as their values will vary based on current gear situation and play style.

Many gear setups rely on trinkets for additional mp5 trinkets like the egg of mortal essence and 4-jimber for example are calculated on base their maximum raw hep value, some procs may occur at times when there is nothing to heal or damage as low resulting in a waste of those procs.

On the other hand trinkets like jitsi's bell or spark of life are perfectly fine as the mp5 on proc are never wasted whenever they proc.

As you can see collecting your pre-raid best in slot gear can be very expensive and time consuming which is basically never worth it, it really depends on the server you are playing on and how quickly the developers release new content, the xp rates of the server and whether you'll have a prep period before the release of naxxramas, eye of eternity and the obsidian sanctum or if all content will be available on day one.

For this reason I have introduced an additional bis pre-raid gear setup where you can get all your gear from heroic dungeons.

Alone in tier 7 we have some items that will remain our first or second best in slot in ulduar bands of mutual respect bracers, pennant cloak which is also our absolute best cape in tier 8, signet of manifested pain ring, illustration of dragon soul trinket which is one of our possible best trinkets in tier 8 and tier 9 before solace trinkets.

As i mentioned earlier we use helmet, chest, pants and shoulder from tier 7 and gloves from non-tier set as our best in slot or winter spectacle gloves from malygos 25 man, an alternative option is the benefactor's gauntlets which are our second bis dropped from thaddeus and gluth in naxxramas 25 man and they are bound when equipped type meaning you can also buy them at auction house.

We have some interesting trinkets here like jazi's bell or spark of life which are our best trinkets pre-raid and will be a lasting option for some bosses, in tier 7 the soul of the dead trinket dropped by sapphire 25 procs about once per minute and provides us with 900 mana which is about 75 mp5, on average soul of the dead also gives 95 critical rating which is nice but not as good as spell power or haste.

Our best trinkets to swap out as needed are illustrations of the dragon soul, soul of the dead, jazi’s bell and spark of life.

Moving on to tier 8 here we use helmet, pants, shoulder and gloves from tier 8, in offset chest as the best is the robe of the umbral brute dropped by coligarn in 25 man ulduar, an alternative option is chestguard of the fallen god from yogg saron 25 as both chests are very close in hep values.

Two pieces tier 8 bonus that reduces riptide's cooldown from six to five seconds is really mediocre,

this mediocrity however comes at the expense of the four pieces tier 8 bonus which is really strong and reduces the base cast time of chain heal from 2.5 to 2.3 seconds, the best advice i can give you here is to keep your tier 7 set bonuses until you have all four pieces of tier 8, two tier seven plus two tier eight pieces are basically not worth it, the slight gain in raw stats cannot outweigh the five percent increased healing for your chain heal and healing wave from four pieces tier seven.

Belt of the fallen worm is our best in slot belt as the item will remain our second bis in trial of the crusader, similarly is the situations with treads of the false oracle boots dropped in 25 man hard mode from yogg saron and which will remain our third bis right after the heroic and normal version of sabatons of tremoring earth from toc 25.

Although we use tier 8 gloves ferrous gloves from algalon 25 are also our second best in slot during tier 9 so it should be good if you can get your hands on them.

The charm of meticulous timing and the pendant of the shallow grave have very close hep values as the main difference between the two is that the first gives mp5 and more stats overall due to its higher item level while the second necklace gives us crit rating.

Our bis rings are nebula band and starshine circle from algalon 10 and 25 respectively as the signet of manifested pain ring from kel'thuzad in naxxramas 25 is still a very strong third option.

Eye of the broodmother and illustration of the dragon soul are our best in slot trinkets for healing throughput, scale of fates is also a good option the trinket gives a solid amount of spell power and haste on use and the item is situational and can be used for certain bosses where healing burst is needed.

Show of faith and sif's remembrance trinkets are best for mana regeneration for resto shaman although the meteorite crystal and soul of the dead provide more mp5, overall these trinkets are not perfect for resto shaman due to the lack of spell power at this stage of the game.

Val'anyr is our absolute best in slot weapon up to tier 10 where only the heroic mace from lich king 25 can fight the legendary fairly but more on that later.

In progression and from a tactical standpoint i personally think that holy paladins and restoration druids are better suited for the legendary mace as the extra absorption on tanks from a holy paladin can be a game changer especially later in a progression in icecrown citadel and lich king 25 heroic zero buff where a resto druid can better spread absorption across the raid via hots, in general it all depends on the guild roster, how many runs they can make per week and how the guild can split up

their best healers over the week so that as many of them as possible can farm fragments of val'anyr at the same time.

Aside from val'anyr we have the constellis mace dropped by algalon 25 and hodor 25 hard mode and the asuka mace dropped by general vezak's 10 hard mode, both weapons are pretty good for resto shaman as constellis takes the lead and offers more intellect and spell power due to the higher item level as well as mp5 where asuga gives more critical rating points in a small amount of haste rating.

With tier 9 we only use two pieces from the restoration set as the bonus of four pieces is basically worthless and only increases your chance to critically hit with chain heal by five percent, the best set items are chest and shoulder.

Our best in slot helmet is the tier 9 from the elemental set, a second option is helm of the crypt lord dropped by a anub'arak 10 heroic, in the video you can see the hep in the stat comparison between the two pieces in four pieces tier 9 with only chest and shoulder from the set we get 152 solid amount of haste rating and 50 critical rating while with four pieces we only get 43 spell power in 84 mp5, considering the huge amount of mp5, that two solas trinkets plus some best in slot items provide this additional mp5 extra gain is basically worthless.

Keep your four pieces tier eight until you significantly increase your haste rating with the new items, try to keep your chain heal cast time while raid buffed at around 1.7 ish seconds during the transition from four pieces tier 8 to two pieces tier 9.

Our bis cloak is etha's intensity which can only be dropped if you complete the entire instance in 25 heroic mode without a single wipe, the same goes for drape of the sin reverse which is its lower item level equivalent and our second bis from toc 10 heroic.

Hand wraps of the lifeless touch and leggings of the awakening are our best in slot gloves and pants dropped by anub'arak 25 man heroic.

For trinkets we have solace of the fallen heroic and normal versions which are dropped by lord jaraxxus 25, these trinkets are our absolute best in slot and will remain during icecrown citadel 25 heroic mode 0 buff progression especially on lich king as the longest boss fight in the expansion.

For rings we have the circle of the darkmender from lord jaraxxus 25 heroic which will replace starshine circle and nebula band which is still one of our best rings in tier 9 as well.

If you have not gotten val'anyr yet suffering's end mace is the second best option dropped by anub'arak 25 heroic.

And finally we reach the end game with tier 10 set, here we use offset gloves as the best for healing throughput are changing gloves from haley and 10 man heroic in the ruby sanctum and we have unclean surgical gloves from fester gut 25 heroic and icc which are best for mana regeneration.

When transitioning from tier 9 to tier 10 the best set combination you can use is chest and gloves from tier 9 and helmet and shoulders from tier 10.

Leggings from woven deathcrafted with tailoring are our best pants before tier 10 ones and there are also alternative options that are very close in stats and hep values, lightning infused leggings crafted with leatherworking, rippling flesh kilt dropped from professor putricide 10-man heroic and kilt of untreated wounds dropped from festergut 10-man heroic.

After the release of icecrown citadel you can get the ashen band of wisdom ring from the ashen verdict reputation inside icc, with each level you advance towards reputation you can upgrade this ring, with the last two upgrades from revered and exalted the ring grants you 285 spell power at proc,

The proc averages about 47 spell power and you can only have one ashen ring at a time.

Ashen band from endless wisdom counts is our second bis ring pre-ruby sanctum where it's going to be replaced by the heroic version of ring of phased regeneration, the logic is similar to tailoring in lightweight embroidery enchant, resto shaman does not like spell power on proc since we have no control over it also if you are playing a dps as a secondary spec you may want to use your ashen ring there.

Our first best in slot is the ring of rapid ascent which drops from gunship battle in heroic 25 man mode, against lich king you may want to use two mp5 rings and there you have the choice between ashen band of endless wisdom ring of phased regeneration and meroger's frigid eye.

Bracers of fiery knight and phase and shifters bracers have similar hep values, personally i prefer the leather ones because of the higher critical rating and the yellow socket that allows me to get a plus 5 spell power socket bonus with a 20 haste gem, at the end of the day go with what drops first and you are able to take the differences between the two bracers are negligible.

Our best trinkets for healing throughput are glowing twilight scale and althor's abacus from halion and gunship battle respectively in 25 man heroic.

Val'anyr is still a very strong weapon in icc as the proc scales pretty well with the gear as i mentioned already, the heroic version of royal scepter of torina's mace dropped by lich king 25 is a good replacement for the legendary mace as both weapons can be used and swapped from fight to fight depending on the situation boss's mechanics and the number of val'anyr in the raid, the legendary mace for the resto shaman is more effective with chain heal spam as chain heal gives val'anyr the best chance for procking and is the easiest way to spread absorbs among the raid.

The proc itself is called blessing of ancient kings has a duration of 15 seconds in a 10 chance to proc,

The proc also has an internal cooldown of 45 seconds, blessing of ancient kings allows you to place a stackable shield on a target called protection of ancient kings for 15 percent of the amount healed, the shield has a cap of 20000.

Val'anyr cannot proc on fully overhealing but once the effect activates the overhealing is counted towards the shield, if two or more val'anyr proc simultaneously they all contribute to one shield on a target with an upper limit of 20000, because of this protection of ancient kings often do not show up correctly in healing meter add-ons and logs when there is more than one healer with val'anyr in the raid due to poorly scripted mechanic.

The thing is whichever val'anyr procks the shield first on a target takes all the absorption into his account regardless of how many val'anyr were counted for that shield.

Although the icc buff also increases absorption effects this does not include absorption caused by items, in this regard protection of ancient kings does not double dip with the icc buff, also gts cannot proc val'anyr nor does it contribute to the shield.

Another healing oriented weapon is trauma which is dropped by rotface 25 man, trauma acts like a minor gts except that the weapon has no cooldown and instead has a one percent chance to proc.

The proc is called fountain of light, for resto shaman's trauma can proc from any healing source but healing stream totem and earth shield, this includes HoTs, direct healing spells and even it can proc from all forms of overhealing.

According to dozens of logs analyzed and some logs provided by old elitist jerk trauma contributes between 0.5 and 3 percent effective healing on average for resto shamans which is basically unimpressive, the weapon does provide a solid amount of spell power especially the heroic version of trauma but the lack of additional secondary stats does not really make the weapon to shine for resto shaman.

For comparison trauma can contribute up to eight to nine percent of the effective healing for resto druid especially on aoe bosses, just for resto shaman trauma has significantly lower proc rate comparing with resto druid, if you do not currently have a better weapon trauma is still a good option for resto shaman and i consider it as our fifth best weapon right after the normal and heroic versions of royal scepter of torina's, val'anyr and the heroic version of tel'thos dagger of the blood king.

Meta gems match meta-sockets which can be found always only in helmet, these gems have special requirements that must be met for the gems bonus to activate for example in order to gain the benefits of insightful earth siege diamond there must be a minimum of one gem of each color red, yellow and blue between all the items currently equipped on the character.

Nightmare tear and its lower equivalents are prismatic types of gems and count towards all meta gem color requirements, you can have only one of these gems equipped at a time and a single prismatic gem can activate a meta gem that requires one of each color.

It should be noted that gems which match multiple socket colors can fulfill meta gem requirements for each and any color they match, for example if a meta gem needs two red gems to activate which is the case with revitalizing sky flare diamond then two orange or two purple gems can activate this metagem, also a gem does not have to match its socket to contribute to a meta gem this means that you may choose to lose an item's gem bonus in order to activate the meta gems bonus.

As a restoration shaman in tier 7, tier 8 and up to tier 9 until you get at least one solace trinket you will focus primarily on insightful earth siege diamond metagem, insightful provides 21 intellect and a chance to restore 600 mana on spellcast, the metagem has a 15 second internal cooldown and a 5 chance to proc per cast.

Insightful earth siege diamond can be triggered by literally anything: healing and damaging spells, dropping totems, mounting, crafting and even switching your specialization.

The metagem scales with your haste and casting speed, the more global cooldowns you spend in the faster you cast the more procs will occur since you cannot lower your global cooldown below one second.

Insightful earth siege diamond will proc once per 20 casts on average which equates to a mana gain of 30 per cast or global cooldown spend, in the video you can see a table showing how the gem scales with haste and roughly how much mp5 it provides at different casting times.

After getting one or two solace trinkets from trial of the crusader 25 and later in tier 10 the mana gain by insightful earth siege diamond should not always be necessary for some shorter encounters and this is where revitalizing sky flare diamond becomes a superior option as healing throughput metagem revitalizing metagem provides 11 mp5 and a 3 increased critical healing effect that increases the critical multiplier of our spells from 150 to 154.5 percent.

While most of this extra healing goes into overhealing, revitalizing metagem also indirectly increases the healing of ancestral awakening and chained heal HoT from four pieces tier 10, insightful earth siege diamond however is still useful for encounters that require a lot of mana such as lich king 25 heroic zero buff.

During tier 7 and tier 8 the best gems you have access to are rare gems, in red sockets use reckless monarch topaz which provides 9 spell power and 8 haste and yellow sockets use quick autumn's glow which provides 16 haste and for blue we have energized forest emerald which provides 8 haste and 4 mp5.

When using rare types of gems it's usually better to follow and match your gem sockets but if the item has a blue socket and provides spirit stamina or mp5 as a socket bonus you can ignore this and go for haste gems in that item.

In tier 9 and tier 10 as resto shaman you will primarily focus on gemming haste, quick king's amber in yellow and blue sockets which provides 20 haste and reckless ametrine in red sockets which provides 12 spell power and 10 haste, if the item has more than one gem socket and one or more of them are blue then you can completely ignore the socket bonus in gem 20 haste.

Note that if you are equipped with insightful earth siege diamond one blue gem is required to activate this metagem, the best gem to use here is energized eye of zul which gives 10 haste and 5 mp5, you should always use the energized gem in a blue socket and in items that provide a socket bonus of 9 or 7 spell.

Power enchants are a type of augmentation to your items that give you additional stats, for the helmet use arcanum of burning mysteries which requires revered with kirin tor reputation.

For the shoulders use greater inscription of the storm which requires you to be exalted with the sons of hodor.

For the chest we have two options: greater mana restoration which is the better option in tier 7 and tier 8, and from tier 9 onwards you can consider powerful stats as slightly superior as the enchant provides a small amount of spell crit and spell power.

For cloak we have light weave embroidery if you have tailoring, springy arachnoid for engineers or greater speed.

For gloves go with hyper speed accelerators or exceptional spell power if you are not an engineer.

For boots use nitro boosts if you are an engineer, otherwise there are three options ice walker, greater vitality or to scars vitality, i would recommend ice walker though as this enchant provides healing and mana return through crit rating

For bracers use superior spell power.

For pants again there are two options: sapphire spell thread or brilliant spell thread, personally I prefer sapphire spell thread as it offers slightly more survivability than 20 spirit. I explained the minor benefit of spirit for the resto shaman earlier in the video.

For the main hand use mighty spell power and for the shield use greater intellect.

Lastly, if you have enchanting greater spell power on both rings.

Consumables are used to further improve the player's performance, as resto shaman your primary focus will be to increase your spell power and haste rating using consumables.

First and foremost are the flasks, the best one is the flask of the frost wyrm which gives you 125 spell power, alternatively if you lack haste rating you can use two elixirs and you can have one battle and one guardian elixir.

At a time the best battle elixir is elixir of lightning speed which gives you 45 haste rating and for guardian we have elixir of mighty thoughts which gives you 45 intellect or elixir of mighty mage blood which gives you 30 mp5, remember that flasks do not expire upon death but elixirs do.

If you are an alchemist this profession also has the benefit of doubling the duration of all flasks and elixirs and increasing their stats.

For food use imperial manta stake or very burnt worg which give 40 haste, if the boss primarily requires single target healing and you have already reached the soft haste cap you can use food for 46 spell power like fish feast, firecracker salmon or tender several tusk steak.

For potion we will primarily use runic mana potions or injectors for engineers, while in combat you can only use one potion as the cooldown of the potion will trigger when you leave the combat, pre-potting can be used as a method immediately before the engage of the boss and here we have potion of speed or wild magic which can be beneficial if the boss requires burst healing at the beginning which is the case with valithia dreamwalker.

The healer's ui is crucial when it comes to quickly adapting to a raid environment, i would advise you to spend hours and even days playing around and thinking carefully about the structure of your ui, a compact and manageable interface is a must for any self-respecting healer

It is important that you have a focally centered ui, i recommend placing your raid frame in the bottom center of your screen and arranging all of your important cooldowns and tracks around it sorted by category so you can easily see what you have available at any given time, this way you'll have a central focus point for your eyes to rest on while also having a larger unobstructed viewing area to keep the entire screen clear in your peripheral vision during an encounter.

While there are many raid frames add-ons i personally recommend grid or vudu, both add-ons have a variety of settings and features to help you organize your game track, everything that matters on your

raid frame keeping it as clean and organized as possible, buffs like riptide, earth shield, ancestral fortitude and inspiration, defensive class and raid cooldowns, priests power world shield and etc.

This will help you optimize your healing better and more effectively, add-ons like deadly boss mods, big wigs and weak auras i consider mandatory and you should have them in your add-on set keep track of boss's cooldowns and spellbars, this will help you better timing your precasts for certain bosses mechanics along with your ui.

Keybinds can greatly improve your reaction time and decrease wasted time, when utilizing your abilities keybinds also allow you to subconsciously react to situations with muscle memory if you've formatted your binds well, it is a must that you have keybinded all important and even some less important abilities.

In the second category goes usually abilities with very long cooldown such as fire and earth elemental totems.

When organizing your keybinds keep in mind to consider the importance and frequency with which your abilities are used, in this instance keybind your most important and frequently used spells to buttons that you can reach easily and quickly and are less likely to misclick.

For final of this video as a healer you must anticipate incoming damage, prioritize the healing of multiple targets and make split-second decisions using a range of healing options, as a healer you must keep a close eye on the health of multiple targets, losing focus even for a moment can often mean the death of a player.

In pve the healer's attentions is mostly focused on the tank who should be taking the majority of all incoming damage, some careless dps and numerous combat mechanics can cause the tide to turn quickly so the healer must focus at all times and be ready to switch targets on.

By far the biggest challenge for a healer is usually not simple skill but efficiency and longevity, most experienced healers are able to heal targets even during the heaviest damage but doing so without quickly depleting their limited mana reserves requires forethought anticipation and a thorough knowledge of their skills in cooldowns.

Healers also have the unenviable task of triage deciding in a split second: who will survive and who must die, sometimes it's not possible to save all members of the raid and even the most experienced healer must sometimes allow one of his raid mates to die in order to save the others, in this sense the healers are the ones who stand between each player and their impending death for this and many other reasons the role of healer can be the most stressful, unpopular and least appreciated of all.

Thanks for watching, stay safe and until next time!