Welcome to the Cataclysm discussion and theorycrafting thread. The goal of this thread is to provide a centralized place for discussion of the Shaman Restoration spec and serve as a one-stop reference for any and all changes thereto. Please keep all WOTLK discussion to the relevant threads and use this thread for discussion of Cataclysm only. Please PM Philondra if you notice any spelling errors or factual mistakes.

Beta Testers: There is a lot of information that needs testing. Any and all data that you can provide is greatly appreciated. If you have logs but don't have the time to parse the data, PM Philondra.
Non-beta testers: As Cataclysm is still in Beta, talent trees and spell mechanics are not yet finalized, so any mathematical data provided in this thread is subject to change. Certain information, such as glyphs and mana costs at level 85, will not be available until later in the beta.
Everyone: Please keep the conversation constructive.

Spec-specific bonuses

Learned at level 10 upon choosing restoration as your specialization

• Earth Shield
• Purification (+healing)
• Healing Focus (pushback resistance; decreases casting time of Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave by 0.5s)
• Meditation (mana regen from spirit while in combat)

Talent Changes

Removed Talents

• Improved Healing Wave (changed to a spec-specific bonus learned at level 10)
• Healing Grace
• Improved Reincarnation
• Healing Focus
• Tidal Mastery
• Healing Way
• Focused Mind
• Purification (changed to a spec-specific bonus learned at level 10)
• Cleanse Spirit (now baseline; cures curses only)
• Earth Shield (changed to a spec-specific ability learned at level 10)
• Improved Earth Shield
• Tidal Force
• Improved Chain Heal

Talents with Altered Functionality

These talents have been changed in significant ways beyond just number tweaks.

• Nature’s Blessing – Now increases the effectiveness of your direct heals on Earth Shielded targets (3.3.5: Increases your healing spellpower by a percentage of your intellect)
• Tidal Waves – No longer gives a passive bonus to the coefficients of Healing Wave and Healing Surge
• Totemic Focus -- reduced to two points, and also increases the duration of your totems by 20/40%. (Tier 2; 2 points)
• Blessing of the Eternals -- No longer grants a static buff to critical strike chance.
• Restorative Totems no longer improves the effect of Mana Spring Totem and instead improves the effect of Healing Rain by 15/30%.
• Mana Tide Totem no longer restores 6% to total mana every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. Instead, it increases the spirit of all party members by 200% for the duration. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. *Sept. 29*

New Talents

• Ancestral Resolve (Tier 1; 2 points) – Reduces damage taken while casting spells by 5/10%
• Spark of Life (Tier 1; 3 points) – Increases your healing done by 2/4/6% and your healing received by 5/10/15%
• Focused Insight (Tier 2; 3 points) After casting any Shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by 25/50/75% of the cost of the Shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 10/20/30%.
• Improved Cleanse Spirit (Tier 5; 1 point) Empowers your Cleanse Spirit spell to also remove a magic effect from a friendly target.
• Telluric Currents (Tier 6; 2 points) Your attunement to natural energies causes your Lightning Bolt spell to restore mana equal to 20/40% of damage dealt.
• Cleansing Waters (Tier 4; 2 points; requires Improved Cleanse Spirit) When your Cleanse Spirit successfully removes a harmful effect, you also heal the target for X.

Notable Non-restoration talent changes/additions

• Ancestral Swiftness (Tier 2 Enhancement)
• Improved Shields moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1
• Ancestral Knowledge removed.
• Acuity (Tier 1 enhancement; 3 points) Increases the critical strike chance of all spells and attacks by 1/2/3%.

In-depth talent analysis *Sept. 22*

Legend:

* Required - This talent is one of the core building blocks of any effective Restoration Shaman build. It should not be skipped under any circumstances, as doing so would cripple your effectiveness.
* Recommended - This talent will be very useful to nearly all Restoration Shamans, but there are some edge cases in which it might be skipped. This assessment is mostly reserved for raid healing talents that a dedicated tank healer shaman could consider skipping in certain situations.
* Optional - This talent will be useful in some situations, but there are generally better places to spend points. This assessment is also given for tank healing talents that a dedicated raid healer shaman could consider skipping.
* Skip - Under no circumstances is this talent worth taking in a raid centric build.



Restoration Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Ancestral Resolve	Optional	Can be useful as filler. Value increases in encounters with heavy raid damage.
Tidal Focus	Required	Mana efficiency matters much more in Cataclysm than it did in LK. The large efficiency boost is difficult to overlook.
Spark of Life	Required	A straight 6% boost to healing without any difficult conditions to meet. The additional healing received stacks multiplicatively (with 3 points, self heals are increased by 21.9%.)
Improved Water Shield	Required	Our staple mana regeneration talent for all PvE content. Provides much more mana over the course of a typical fight than Mana Tide Totem by allowing mana regeneration to scale with crit rating.
Totemic Focus	Optional	The only reason to take this talent is to increase the duration of Mana Tide Totem (nd perhaps Fire Elemental Totem, but with the recent change to Mana Tide Totem the additional mana gain may not be worth the talent points; check you own mana regen and ask yourself whether the talent points are best spent here or elsewhere. Benefits to totems other than Mana Tide and Fire Elemental can be ignored.
Focused Insight	Optional	Don't think of this as strictly a DPS talent -- it's actually an incredibly powerful healing tool that happens to provide some damage. Helps handle burst damage if you are able to anticipate when the burst will come and have a GCD to spare beforehand. Use with Flame Shock for optimal mana efficiency. Note that the shock must actually hit for damage for the talent to proc, so try to shock a low-level add if possible. A strong talent, but it requires some work and luck to utilize it.
Nature's Guardian	Skip	Mainly a PvP talent. Too situational to fit in a raid-centric build.
Ancestral Healing	Required	Mainly useful for reducing incoming tank damage, but also situationally useful on the raid. Chain heal will often bounce to or be chained through tanks, making this pickup a no-brainer. Ancestral Healing and the Priest version (Inspiration) will overwrite each other, thereby allowing for maximum coverage.
Nature's Swiftness	Required	Required to provide clutch healing to targets at critical health. Can also be used to cast a spell while moving and Spiritwalker's Grace is on cooldown.
Nature's Blessing	Optional	This talent is mainly useful if you are casting Chain Heal through the tank or are otherwise filling a tank healer role. This talent drops off in effectiveness dramatically if you are assigned to heal the raid - the most common role for a Resto Shaman. This talent is, however, a good place to spend points if you need to get further down into the tree.
Soothing Rains	Recommended	Highly Recommended for any shaman filling a raid healer role; has very little use for a shaman who is tank healing. Keep in mind the role you generally fill when choosing to take or skip this talent.
Improved Cleanse Spirit	Recommended	If your raid leader never, ever assigns you to handle dispels, then you can conceivably consider skipping this talent. For 99% of Shaman out there, however, this is a mandatory pickup.
Cleansing Waters	Optional	Requires Improved Cleanse Spirit. Generally more of a PvP talent, but can be useful on cleansing-heavy PvE encounters or if you are often your guild's designated cleanser. With two points, the heal is slightly stronger than the direct heal portion of Riptide, and scales accordingly. The decrease in mana cost is another nice benefit.
Ancestral Awakening	Required	Requires 2 points in Ancestral Healing. A staple of our single target healing. Very versatile and not worth skipping under any circumstance.
Mana Tide Totem	Required	Our main means of burst mana regen. Note that the mana regen effect only works on party members (not raid members), so make sure that you raid leader places you in a group with other mana users.
Telluric Currents	Optional	In the current build, this talent may actually be a net mana gain; however, GC has stated this is not intended to be the case and final tuning will make Lightning Bolts mana neutral or only a slight mana loss. As such, this talent can be picked up if you overgear the content or on specific fights in which healers may be required to DPS for part of the encounter.
Tidal Waves	Required	This talent is the cornerstone of Shaman healing, providing a solid HPS and HPM boost to Healing Surge and greatly increasing the HPS and general usability of Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave.
Blessing of the Eternals	Recommended	With two talent points, the Earthliving HoT will always apply on targets below 35% health. This talent is one of the weaker healing talents in the tree, as even on raid damage-heavy encounters with this talent Earthliving rarely surpasses ~10% effective healing. Still, the throughput boost is worth the talent point investment and skipping it should only be considered if you generally heal tanks rather than the raid.
Riptide	Required	A single target, instant cast heal on a short cooldown (six seconds) that also sets up a more powerful Chain Heal to better handle incoming burst damage. Riptide is an incredibly versatile spell and there is never a good reason to skip it.

Enhancement Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Elemental Weapons	Recommended	The passive benefits do not scale with gear, but the improved Unleased Life portion does. Required to get down to Tier 2.
Focused Strikes	Skip	Restoration will never use Primal Strike in a raid situation. Skip.
Improved Shields	Required	Improves both our mana regeneration and the efficacy of Earth Shield. Even those rare Shaman who choose to go down the elemental tree should pick up this talent.
Elemental Devastation	Skip	Intended for Enhancement Shaman. Skip.
Flurry	Skip	Intended for Enhancement Shaman. Skip.
Ancestral Swiftness	Recommended	Virtually mandatory for serious Restoration Shaman. The run speed offered by this talent is stronger than that offered by boot enchants and can help you avoid raid-wide damage quicker and easier. It also reduces the totel amount of time spent moving, letting you get back to healing ASAP. Note that this talent makes Ghost Wolf instant cast; now that Ghost Wolf is usable indoors, this talent gives all shaman a powerful escape mechanism. You need an extremely good reason not to put 7 points in enhancement for this talent.
Totemic Reach	Optional	If you find your totems are often just out of range of the raid members, this talent could help; then again, why not just learn to place your totems better?

Elemental Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Acuity	Recommended	Provides a flat throughput and mana regeneration bonus (due to Improved Water Shield. Generally useful in both raid and tank-healing focused builds.
Convection	Optional	Can help to provide better mana returns from Telluric Currents and lessen the impact of proccing Focused Insight. In the vast majority of cases, however, you'll see better use out of throughput-oriented talents.
Concussion	Skip	Conceivably useful if there are fights where the healers have to DPS, but in almost no circumstances is this better than Acuity or worth giving up Ancestral Swiftness for. Skip.
Call of Flame	Skip	Very rarely will Restoration be casting Lava Burst or Fire Nova in a raid situation. Leave this talent to the DPS Shaman. Skip.
Elemental Warding	Skip	If you're down this far in the elemental tree, you're probably going for some Telluric Currents/Elemental Precision build for a theoretical fight in which healers need to DPS. This is a strong talent, but you don't have the points to go this far down into the elemental tree without missing something even more important. Skip.
Reverberation	Skip	Can be useful if you like to abuse Focused Insight, but as with Elemental Warding you simply don't have the points to go down this far without missing something better. Skip.
Elemental Precision	Optional/Skip	Again, in a theoretical fight in which you have to DPS, this talent can be useful. However, unless you are able to stand still the entire fight, you'll be better off going down the Enhancement tree for Ancestral Swiftness instead. Skip this talent and throw on some +hit trinkets/jewelry.

Talent Calculators

MMO-Champion: WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie
Wowhead: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Recommended Builds (a work in progress)

* Raid healing (3/7/31 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) -- A useful all-purpose raid healing build. Grabs all raid healing talents on the way down to Riptide. 2/2 Totemic Focus is taken for the boost to Mana Tide. 2/3 Nature's Blessing is filler -- this can be replaced with Cleansing Waters or Ancestral Resolve as you see fit. Focused Insight is taken for its utility as a powerful burst healing cooldown on a short timer. Ancestral Swiftness is non-negotiable for any serious raider. Acuity in the elemental tree is filler and can be replaced with utility in the resto tree if desired.
* Tank Healing (3/7/31 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) -- Very similar to the above build, switching out one point in Blessing of the Eternals for the third point in Nature's Blessing. 3/3 Nature's blessing is a definite requirement for a tank healing build; if you want utility talents such as Ancestral Resolve, drop 2/2 Soothing Rains (a very poor tank healing talent) before you drop Acuity.


New Abilities

• Greater Healing Wave (Level 68)
• Bind Elemental (Level 68)
• Totem of Tranquil Mind (Level (Level 74)
• Unleash Elements (Level 81)
  ** See Unleashed Life for the Earthliving Weapon version.
• Healing Rain (Level 83)
• Spiritwalker's Grace (Level 85)

Altered Abilities

• Chain Heal - Now hits 4 targets baseline (up from 3) and each bounce is 30% less effective (down from 40% less effective).
• Lesser Healing Wave has been renamed to Healing Surge.

Mastery (Learned at level 75) *Sept. 22*

Deep Healing – Increases the potency of your direct healing spells by up to 20%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Each point of mastery rating further increases the bonus by up to 2.5%.

* Mastery increases in effect linearly, from a 0% boost at full health to the full value listed at 0% health. See the full post by ThoSenk for details. *Sept. 22*


Glyphs

Characters may equip 3 Prime Glyphs, 3 Major Glyphs, and 3 Minor Glyphs. As always, further information is greatly appreciated. Only those Glyphs which are potentially viable in a raid-centric Restoration build are listed.

Prime Glyphs

• Earthliving Weapon - Increases the effectiveness of your Earthliving weapon's periodic healing by 20%. (Old: Increases the chance for your Earthliving weapon to trigger by 5%.)
• Earth Shield - Increases the healing of your Earth Shield by 20%
• Riptide - Increases the duration of your Riptide by 40%.
• Water Shield - Increases the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield by 50% (Old: 30% increase)

Major Glyphs

• Chain Heal - Increases healing done by your Chain Heal spell to targets beyond the first by 15%, but decreases the amount received by the initial target by 10%. (Old: Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.)
• Ghost Wolf - Your Ghost Wolf spell form grants an additional 10% movement speed.
• Healing Stream Totem - Your Healing Stream Totem also increases the Fire, Frost, and Nature resistance of party and raid members within 30 yards by 150. (Old: Your Healing Stream Totem heals for an additional 20%.)
• Healing Wave - Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.

Minor Glyphs

• Arctic Wolf - Alters the appearance of your Ghost Wolf transformation, causing it to resemble an arctic wolf.
• Astral Recall - Cooldown of your Astral Recall spell reduced by 7.5 minutes.
• Renewed Life - Your Reincarnation spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Water Breathing - Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Water Walking - Your Water Walking spell no longer requires a reagent.

Miscellaneous Information

Tier 11 Set Bonuses

• 2-piece: Increases the critical strike chance of your Healing Wave spell by 5%.
• 4-piece: Whenever you cast Riptide, you gain 540 Spirit for 6 sec.

Healing Spell Costs and Coefficients*Oct. 13*

Costs include 3/3 Tidal Focus.

Spell	Cost	Coefficient
Healing Surge	5946	0.604
Healing Wave	1981	0.302
Greater Healing Wave	6607	0.806
Chain Heal (initial heal)	3744	0.320
Earth Shield (per charge)	4183	0.152 (1.37 total)
Riptide (direct heal)	2202	0.234
Riptide (HoT)	-	0.075
Earthliving Weapon (HoT)	-	0.058
Healing Stream Totem (per tick)	-	0.083
Cleansing Waters (2/2)	3280	0.282
Healing Rain (per tick)	10130	0.083
Unleashed Life	1640	TBD

Miscellaneous Mechanics Information (a work in progress) *Sept. 22*



Ancestral Awakening *Sept. 29*

* The heal continues to have a slight delay of ~0.5-1 seconds.
* Unlike indicated by the tooltip, only heals for 27% of the initial crit.
* Double dips from Spark of Life. At 3/3 Spark of life, will heal you for 32.91% of the original heal or someone else for 28.6% of the original heal.
* Still incapable of critting or proccing Earthliving.
* Does not proc off Unleashed Life.

Cleansing Waters

* The heal takes place immediately as the effect is removed; there is no delay as with Ancestral Awakening.
* Can crit, but does not proc Ancestral Healing, Ancestral Awakening, or Earthliving.


Earthliving *Oct. 13*

* As of the latest build, is properly affected by both haste and crit.


Focused Insight

* Does not proc from Wind Shear.
* Requires the shock to actually hit the target for damage. Misses will not proc Focused Insight, nor will shocking immune targets.


Glyph of Healing Wave *Sept. 29*

* Remains capable of critting
* Crits do not proc AA or Ancestral Healing (Unchanged from WOTLK).

Healing Rain

* Affected by both crit and haste.
* Crits will proc Ancestral Healing.
* Each tick has a chance to proc Earthliving.


Riptide *Sept. 29*

* The HoT portion now benefits from haste and crit.
* HoT crits do not proc AA or Ancestral Healing. This is likely by design.


To Be Tested/Confirmed

• Does Wind Shear count as a shock spell for the purposes of Focused Insight? (probably not, but still worth checking out)
• Base Mana pool at 85
• Cost of all relevant spells at level 85
• Spirit regeneration formula at level 85
• Does Ancestral Awakening continue to double dip from percentage-based healing modifiers?
• [soDoes Ancestral Awakening proc off Unleashed Life crits?[/so]
• The wording of Nature’s Blessing implies that it works on targets with any Earth Shield, not just your own. Is this the case?
• How do our percentage based healing modifiers (Spark of Life, Focus Insight, and Unleash Life) interact with each other? Are they multiplicative or additive? How do they interact with Ancestral Awakening?
• How does Healing Rain work (i.e. max number of targets before falloff, cap on total healing done per tick, radius of the ability, etc.)
• Are Healing Wave and Greater Healing wave 3.0s cast for Restoration, or did the cast time reduction from Improved Healing Wave get rolled into the Restoration Shaman specialization bonuses?
• Does the new Totemic Focus give Mana Tide Totem an extra tick?

Update Log

July 16 –- Thread started
July 17 -- Added information learned from the July 16 Twitter Q&A
July 21 -- Added changes from the latest build (12539)
July 23 -- Added changes from the latest build (12604)
Aug. 2 -- Updated Mastery description, added miscellaneous information, and provided a sample raiding build. Thanks to everyone who sent PMs with information.
Aug. 5 -- Added changes from the latest build (12694)
Aug. 8 -- Added miscellaneous information.
Sept. 2 -- Added new glyphs, Totem of Tranquil Minds, and several minor talent changes.
Sept. 10 -- Added changes from the latest build (12942)
Sept. 12 -- Added preliminary talent analysis, added several recommended talent builds, and updated our Deep Healing mastery with scaling information.
Sept. 22 -- Added ThoSenk's mastery testing, updated Mana Tide Totem,updated analysis for several optional/recommended talents in the Restoration tree, and added a new section for miscellaneous mechanics information.
Sept. 29 -- Added changes from the latest build (13066). Updated crit/haste scaling for Riptide (Earthliving still untouched).
Oct. 13 -- Added info on spell costs and coefficients. Updated Earthliving to note that it now properly scales from haste and crit. Thanks to everyone who posted and sent information.

Spirit Link had similar problems in the WOTLK Beta during those few builds in which it was doing anything at all. It was replaced with Riptide very, very late in the process when it became clear that it just wasn't a fixable problem.

I agree that we lack a healing cooldown, whether survivability-centric ability like Guardian Spirit/Pain Suppression or sustained throughput-centric like Avenging Wrath/Tree of Life. Tidal Force currently doesn't adequately fill that role, especially with the 50%+ crit we are typically running in raids today, but some kind of tweak to the ability could give it a similar niche. I wonder if Tidal Force's removal was intentional or if it was a data bug like the unintentional removal of Power Infusion and Typhoon.

Looking at the talent trees a bit closer, I wouldn't be surprised to see Restorative Totems removed/replaced because of the "no talents that buff a buff" philosophy.

Something I noticed that hasn't been covered in the listed changes is what has happened to the elemental resistance totems?

Currently there is a spell listed on mmo-champion.com "Elemental resistance totem" but only lists fire resistance on the current tooltip. I am curious as to whether all resistance totems will be rolled into this or will it be merely a substitute for the resistance currently associated with mark of the wild/blessing of kings.

I guess this must be an inconsistency in the tooltip.
I've tested this on the european Beta Server and the Totem increases nature- fire- and frost resistance.

Not sure if this is the right place, apologies if not.

I know most current thoughts are to put points in enhance tree. but i guess there is still potential unknowns about gameplay in cata e.g. how important is resto CC, DPS (for mana, boost)

so just in case a quick question, if a resto specs elemental precision do they get BOTH the hit and the mana regen from the resto baseline?

The spirit-based hit rating granted by Elemental Precision does not "turn off" meditation-based spirit regen, if that's what you're asking. Mechanically, it's identical to Enhance's Mental Quickness talent on live - just substitute "spirit" and "hit" for "AP" and "SP".

Put another way, if you are a Restoration shaman who has spent 3 points in Elemental Precision, you will gain spirit-based in-combat regen from Restoration's Mediation passive as well as 100% of your spirit as hit rating due to Elemental Precision.

No max level content is available on live so it's not possible to say with 100% certainty, but it's very difficult to think of a scenario where getting 3/3 Elemental Precision would be worth losing 2/2 Elemental Weapons and the sheer utility of 2/2 Ancestral Swiftness. It's possible that we'll see some Leotheras the Blind-style encounter in which healers have to DPS, but unless such an encounter requires zero movement we'd be better off swapping in some +hit rings/trinkets.

Given Ghostcrawler's posts on the official forums it's safe to say that the intent of Telluric Currents is for us to be able to put out some DPS during a lull in the action, in heroics, or on farm fights, not for us to use the talent as a mana regen mechanic. I wouldn't be worried about our regen being balanced around throwing lightning bolts.

I have updated the OP with some of the changes from the latest build (12694), However, I left out one change that is most likely a datamining error -- MMO Champion's talent calculator is showing that Ancestral Knowledge (5/10/15% maximum mana) has been replaced with a talent called Acuity, which increases the critical strike chance of all spells and attacks by 5/10/15%. This talent is very over budget and goes against the Cataclysm design philosophy, so I have purposely left it out.

The new Totemic Focus may see some use in a raiding build if it lets Mana Tide get an additional tick, otherwise it remains weak. Again, we will have to see what a typical mana pool will be at level 85 before we can do any quantitative analysis, but it's something to keep on the radar. Somewhat related to this, I expect that in the next couple patches we will see a rework of Restorative Totems, as the boost to Mana Spring feels very outdated.

Was testing this on the beta, with 2/2 in totemic focus mana tide ticks 6 times instead of 4.

Confirmed, Totemic Focus grants extra ticks to Mana Tide. You also get a 2:48 duration Fire Elemental, which could be fun!

Acuity works just like Thundering Strikes on live so could be a nice point dump for early resto when 3% extra crit is a significant amount of mana regen.

Speaking of mana regen, at level 80 on the beta my regen is 2000 mp5 while casting and self-buffed - a massive increase of over 1500 over live. I'll be checking this as I level because at the moment it is possible to chain cast Chain Heal and never go oom - especially with Mana Tide returning 2000 mana per tick for a total of 12k mana with 2/2 Totemic Focus.

Oh, and the answer to your question "Are Healing Wave and Greater Healing wave 3.0s cast for Restoration, or did the cast time reduction from Improved Healing Wave get rolled into the Restoration Shaman specialization bonuses?" is that the first Restoration specialisation bonus (Healing Focus) is 70% less pushback and reduces cast time of Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave by 0.5 secs (resulting in them having a 2.5 secs base cast time). On beta at 80 I am getting 1.7 secs cast time unbuffed, 1.19 secs with Tidal Waves and 0.991 secs with Riptide T10 bonus + Tidal Waves (all with Wrath of Air down and 40%/1300 haste). Basically cast times are broadly comparable to live at level 80.

The mana regen seems to be a bug tied into Int. Swapping out my weapon with 56 spirit lost me 11 mp5, swapping out my shield with 80 int and 56 spirit lost me 82 mp5.

Since cleansing spirit has a healing coefficient, should it be added to the table at the top?

Also, is it possible for people on Cataclysm to put gear on/off and try to get a feel for how the coeff's there compare to the ones on live?


Thanks to everyone for their testing and reports thus far! Great stuff!