Resto Shaman Arena Strategy Guide

Restoration Shaman Arena Specs:

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  le=”53 Resto 18 Enhancement” href=”http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0gghoZVcfushstkbIRt”>Resto/Enhancement

This spec is the most popular spec for Resto Shaman right now. It provides a lot of healing output and is a pretty solid spec that will work for every team set up.

• Resto/Toughness

This is the spec I use on my shaman when I play with tanking class like DK’s. It’s good for playing against teams where you are getting focused the majority of the games. It has less healing output but more survivability, it is a good spec for 5s where you can drop in a global.

Restoration Shaman Glyphs:

Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem- This is one of the new glyphs put out last patch, it is probably the best for any specs of shaman in PvP.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave- With so many talents to improve Earth Shield it will usually be up on the target they are killing, this helps for healing through the burst.

Glyph of Earth Shield- Having this glyph along with all the other improved Earth Shield talents will really make Earth Shield amazing.

Restoration Shaman Gear:

MP5 vs Crit- This is one of the biggest debates and it basically comes down to playstyle. From tests, the difference is that MP5 gear will end up being more mana and the crit gear will be more healing per second. Depending on what comps you play generally the increased healing output will be more effective in arena. From my experience, the MP5 is more beneficial in 2s but the crit helps out a lot in 3s and 5s. Again, it’s all personal preference but my gear is currently set up for all crit.

2 piece 3 piece- Depending on what comp setup you run you usually wont need this. Although 1.5 second less cooldown on grounding is rarely life saving, the reduced cooldown is probably better this season with the resiliance buff on gear. Unless you are planning on playing a double healer comp or something you are expecting to get focused almost every game, getting 5 piece of one set is definatly better this season.

Shaman Macros:

Focus Shocks -

#showtooltip Wind Shock
/cast [target=focus] Wind Shock

This is the only macro I use on my shaman. You can also use a Nature’s Swiftness macro (below) but they don’t always work perfectly. Focus shocking allows you to interrupt a healer or prevent CC’s without changing target from healing or DPSing.

Nature’s Swiftness Healing Wave (with Tidal Force)-

/cast Tidal Force
/stopcasting
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast Healing Wave

Simple macro, just uses all your cooldowns with healing wave.

Shaman Arena Strategy

2v2 (healer/dps)- This bracket requires a lot of work from a Shaman. At the start of the game, set your focus shock on a healer or someone that will try to CC a lot. At the start, try to get purges on the kill target and coordinate your Hex to try to force a trinket early on and make them blow defensive cooldowns. After they have blown enough cooldowns, work with your partner and coordinate heroism with a Hex or any other CC. At this point, cast a Lava Burst or get some offensive purges in to try to get a kill attempt. If this fails, they will usually have no defensive cooldowns for the next hex and since shamans don’t have a lot of long

cooldowns its pretty easy to set up another kill attempt. During kill attempts, make sure to save Shock cooldown for interrupts on a heal or more importantly for a CC on your partner. Between bursts or during periods of down time always try to get drinks in. I usually use about 5-10 water each game just to make sure I never go oom. If you are ever in combat but aren’t healing spam water shield for the 100 mana each time it’s cast.

2v2 (double dps)- This set up is a lot harder for shaman because they are vulnerable to CC. Open with a Heroism and stay out of line of sight to avoid CC’s. Coordinate with your partner when they are using their cooldowns so that you don’t overlap trinket with something like shield wall or deterence. Other then that, fake cast when counterspell is off cooldown and they usually use it the first heal.

3v3- A lot of shaman misplay this bracket cialis online and I feel that people think the shaman class is weak because of it. In 3v3 your priority is to heal. Stay back, play defensive during the games and don’t even worry about going to shock the heals because usually it will put you in a bad position to get switched on. Stay back, interrupts CC’s and wait till your are going for a kill and have the other team playing defensive to play aggressively. If you get switched on, have your teammates control the other team and land as much CC on them as they can until you can get back behind a pillar and out of line of sight. Usually using heroism early works better because it allows you to play offensive earlier. Most Shaman 3v3 teams are burst comps anyway so heroism can usually kill something.

5v5- This bracket is the most populated by Shaman because Heroism is the most powerful buff in the game for 5v5. In this bracket you are there for your heals and heroism. Running in and shocking will usually result in you getting switched to and dieing in under 5 seconds. Stay back, heal and dispel fears with tremor (better then shocking because it starts DR in case you get feared and can’t tremor). Keep Earth Shield on the target they are focusing and stay back far enough you won’t get CC’d.

Upcoming Mana Regen Redesign

If you’ve raided in any capacity as a healer in WotLK then you are already fully aware how trivial mana regeneration has become for the vast majority of boss encounters. This of course dramatically reduces the overall complexity involved in the healer process. Managing your mana and healing efficiently has always been a large part of the healing game, but not any more.

It’s a large enough problem that blizzard has formally acknowledged it and they are apparently working on a redesign solution to be implemented in a future patch.

We think mana regen is too trivial at the moment in PvE and just right or too difficult in PvP (depending on the class). Now part of that is because the content is easy. Part of it is because we’ve given players a lot of reasons to avoid having to worry about the FSR. Part of it is just generous talents (like Illumination). Part of it was the change to let Int scale regen to some degree. The whole package is something we’re looking at. Mana regen is supposed to be part of the game – you aren’t supposed to graduate out of it with enough gear.

It’s hard to say if the current system is fundamentally broken or if it’s a problem compounded by over simplistic instances. Either way, I don’t think there’s any denying that spirit based regeneration is far and away superior to MP5. This in effect causes a rift in the way healing and itemization is handled by paladin / shamans vs. druids / priests. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a negative, but it’s something that needs a serious look by the developers.

The underlying  problem is simple…healing is too easy. Quite frankly there is no “mana management” any longer for healers. As a shaman or a paladin you are essentially spamming start to finish, where mana gain talents and insanely large mana pools suffice in lieu of spirit based regeneration. As a priest or druid  the spamming is marked with brief periods of standing around while insane not casting regeneration allows for incredible amounts of regeneration.

It’s great to see the developer’s are at least acknowledging there’s a problem, but more importantly I’m excited to see what type of solutions Blizzard has planned.

For more information on these recent changes I highly recommend checking out Phaelia’s recent post regarding this topic, it’s a great write up from the druid’s perspective and gives a complete break down of these issues. Highly recommend reading!

Upcoming Shaman Changes

More pretty big changes for the shaman class this morning. On the elemental front we’re looking at some pretty nice buffs to riptide, which had been looking sub par. Now that riptide can proc tidal waves there should be no question about the rotational significance of the new spell.

Tidal Waves: You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing WAve spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects.

This change in addition to the increase on initial healing should make the spell an absolute must for restoration shamans.

Some interesting changes on the elemental / enhancement front as well. I like the theory on Blizzard’s reasoning for trying to buff fire for elemental, but it’s a delicate balancing act. Currently an elemental shaman really does nothing in PvE accept drop totems and cast lightning bolt. So adding some sort of situational spells and abilities would be a nice addition. If the devs can work the new lava burst ability into the rotation it would be a job well done.

A small victory for enhancement shamans, initially it was looking like Maelstrom weapon was going to be nerfed to the point it was worthless, but in a last minute change Blizzard have decided to set it aside for the moment. It will certainly make for some very interesting PvP and PvE moments if it makes it all the way through till expansion.

Tidal Waves — Riptide now also procs this effect.

Riptide — We’re going to increase the initial healing component.

Storm Reach — now called “Elemental Reach” and includes Lava Burst.

Improved Fire Nova Totem – Increases the damage done by your Fire Nova Totem by 10/20%, and your Fire Nova totem has a 50/100% chance to stun all targets damaged by your Fire Nova Totem for 2 sec.

Thunderstorm — We will probably boost the mana return to 8% of total mana. That seems more in line with similar effects. We talked a lot about buffing its damage, but decided that may not be a good idea. With its short range, it isn’t a great rotational spell for a raiding Elemental shamans, and making you run up to hit a boss and run back is giving up a lot of cast time. Instead we’re going to try to keep the damage and knockback more situational (in PvP it will get used a lot) and make the mana return the big PvE raiding focus.

Maelstrom Weapon — We have a concern that the proc per minute frequency is too often. According to our numbers, it’s balanced for a two-handed weapon and a bit generous for a dual-wielder. However, this would be a nerf to Enhancement dps overall that we’d have to make up elsewhere, and it seems to be a fun change shamans are enjoying. So we’re going to let this ride for now. It’s something to keep an eye on, but we aren’t going to change it yet.

Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt — And now for a few words on Elemental damage. One of the things we were trying to do to make Elemental dps more interesting was to have a Lava Burst + Flameshock variant. We also themed some new deep talents to support this play style. The problem is that lightning still seems to do more damage than fire, which in turn makes the new talents feel lame because they benefit fire and not lightning.


Now we think that Lava Burst is doing appropriate damage for its cost and if anything Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning are a little too good. (Remember they benefit from Curse of the Elements and similar spells now.) However, nerfing lightning would make it harder to level as well as making 3.0.2 kind of brutal for Elemental shamans, since Lava Burst is level 75. Hurting lightning would feel like a flat out nerf, and even though you’d partially make up for it at higher level, overall we think this would feel, um, yucky. So no big changes to lightning spells.

We talked a lot about just buffing Lava Burst and a deep fire-based talent or two. This will make Lava Burst too good on paper, but it might work out okay in the game itself. We’ll just have to see. We aren’t 100% sold on this course of action, so I’ll update when we decide for sure.

Once again, these decisions were the consensus of our design team, so please don’t give me the credit. In fact, if there are any changes you specifically don’t like — those I had nothing to do with