How the build works
This Restoration Shaman build is built around Healing Wave and mana. Improved Healing Wave cuts half a second from its cast, so your main heal lands faster. Mindfulness lets 50% of your mana regeneration continue while casting, and Tidal Focus makes healing spells 3% cheaper.
Water Shield is the centerpiece. It surrounds you with 3 globes, and each one restores 2% of your maximum mana when you are hit or when one of your spells crits. That makes crit a mana stat. Tidal Mastery adds 4% crit to your heals, and Ancestral Healing gives the target 25% more armor for 15 seconds after a heal crit, which helps the tank.
Mana Tide Totem restores 88 mana every 3 seconds to group members within 30 yards for 12 seconds, on a 5-minute cooldown. Nature’s Swiftness, the level-30 point, makes your next Nature spell under 10 seconds instant. Pair it with Healing Wave when someone is about to die.
Leveling tips
Improved Healing Wave comes first, and it also speeds up the heals you cast on yourself while questing. Mindfulness and Water Shield arrive around 20 and fix most of your mana problems. Mana Tide Totem comes at 25 and Nature’s Swiftness at 30.
Solo, keep Water Shield up, drop Searing Totem, apply Flame Shock and use Lightning Bolt for the pull and as filler. It is slow, so Restoration makes most sense if you heal dungeons. The level-30 Call of Air quest offers a Restoration weapon.
Changes in WoW Forever
Water Shield, Mindfulness and Riptide are new shaman talents. Mana Tide Totem moved to row 4, and Healing Way now simply adds 25% to Healing Wave. Tidal Mastery no longer affects Lightning spells. Totems now cover the whole raid, and the totem global cooldown is 1 second. Talent text here comes from client build 70630 without later hotfixes; our research cross-checked it against a hotfixed calculator.
Toward level 60
The most-planned endgame build is close to 0/10/41: Healing Way, Restorative Totems, Purification and Riptide in Restoration, with Thundering Strikes and Ancestral Knowledge from Enhancement. Riptide becomes the first heal you cast on the tank. This has not been played at 60 yet, so treat it as provisional.
