Most shamans have become accustomed to the high (and somewhat unpredictable) burst damage they enjoyed while leveling and in PvP. When they spec resto for instancing or general group utility, they tend to continue to think with that burst damage mentality. This can lead to a lot of frustration as well as missing out on some interesting options and play styles available to the resto shammie. The 2.0 patch, with the 41 point talents, opened up a whole new play style for this spec.

This guide assumes you have learned all the basic of being a shaman - pulling with Lightning Bolt and spell interruption with Earthshock - using Grounding totem to snare runners and Chain Lightning to AoE a pack of enemies. It assumes you’re familiar with all of the totems and are reasonably good at multi-tasking and context-switching - two important traits for a shaman. 

But, if you take one thing away from this guide it should be that a resto shaman’s best assets are patience and a cool head.

General

The defining characteristics of a resto shaman are automatic and uninterrupted heals. Every resto shaman must have as part of their toolkit:

1. •Healing Focus: 70% chance to avoid interruption
   

2. •Nature’s Guardian: 50% chance to auto-heal 10% of your total health when an attack drops you below 30% health. Also wipes some threat, but this is more of a PvP talent.
   

3. •Earth Shield: Poo-shield will automatically heal the target every few seconds when damage is taken. Lasts for 10 minutes or 10 charges. Takes advantage of +heal gear and can crit. Also provides an additional 30% chance to avoid casting interruption. When multiplied with the Healing Focus talent, this is a 90% chance to avoid interruption when casting healing spells. Unlike the shaman’s other shields this can be cast on any single target. Note that it can be cast on your elementals and others’ pets (and NPCs in escort quests).
   

NOTE: Earth shield has always been dispellable, but with the changes to arcane shot in 2.3 hunters can now purge the shield as part of their regular rotation. Blizzard has acknowledged this is a problem; but, until it is fixed, it makes PvP much more difficult than before. The old counter of charging the hunter to get too close for ranged has also been removed. Get used to dying a lot more until balance is restored. Some of the tactics in this guide will not work as well (or at all) with a hunter in the mix.

The key to success with resto is outlasting your opponents - NOT out-damaging them. Because of how stats are combined on gear and how the talents are distributed, you will not see those big damage spikes you grew up with. Instead, a resto shaman should focus on consistent, highly mana-efficient damage - and there are a number of talents, spells and tactics that maximize this. Fights will last longer, be patient. Your tactics should involve a lot of self-healing and letting your opponents blow their cooldowns and mana pool, while you spend most of the fight outside of the 5-second casting window regenerating mana.

The Basics

First, say bye bye to Rockbiter & Windfury. The low Strength, Agility and Attack Power of the gear you’ll be equipping makes these bad choices for melee damage. Use Flametongue instead. This damage is improved by your +spell damage and can crit. It also ignores armor.

Second, use your flame totems. They are very mana-efficient, particularly Searing totem. They also take advantage of +spell damage gear as well as being enhanced by the underrated Call of Flame talent. They don’t give the big numbers Elemental shamans like to see (and CoF is worthless in just about any build except deep resto), but stacked with +400-600 spell damage the fire totems are incredibly efficient - and the damage adds up over long fights. Remember, a resto shaman outlasts his opponents. The longer the fight the more efficient the totem. If a fight ends early, you can always recover some of the mana with Totemic Call.

Third, use Flameshock. It has good damage and the DoT effect causes minor casting interrupts and prevents a rogue from going into stealth. It takes the largest benefit of all the shocks from +spell damage gear.

By themselves, each of these tactics don’t do a lot of damage. But, when you stack them you’ll see a stream of damage pouring out in your scrolling combat text.

Keep Earth shield up on yourself. It minimizes how much you need to cast healing spells. When stacked with the three techniques above, you spend the maximum time possible outside the 5 second window regenerating mana.

By the time your enemies have exhausted their resources, you will still have almost full life and mana and can slowly grind them down.

Group Healing (instance or raid)

Gear priority: +heal, +INT, MP5, shield (I don’t like healing off-hands. Shamans have no escapes or aggro wipes, so the additional damage mitigation of a shield is essential). Don’t hold out for +heal mail pieces. Some of the best healing pieces I have found are leather. Between a +50 spell damage/healing mail piece and a +75 healing-only leather piece, I will wear the leather. Note that I don’t include +crit here. High crit heals can be a life-saver, but they can also lead to over-healing and generating too much threat. It’s nice if it’s there, but given a choice between the above stats and +crit I would pass on the crit.

You’re primary job is to keep the main tank up (unless otherwise assigned). Poo-shield him using a trinket to generate the highest possible +heal. Learning to use the Empowered Poo-shield is critical. Using two trinkets my +heal is close to 2000. This makes Earth Shield proc for about 900 and crit for about 1800 - and those procs last for the duration of the shield (not for the duration of the trinket bonus). With two trinkets to alternate, I can generally keep an Empowered Poo-shield up on the MT for the entire run. Note that there is currently a bug where Purification does not apply when Earth Shield is cast on others, so heal procs may be 10% lower on others than on yourself.

Sometimes, if the MT has good damage mitigation, I will poo-shield an off-tank or the pesky rogue (or mage) who keeps pulling aggro. ALWAYS keep your teammates selected and in healing range. Your eyes should be on their health bars and positions.

Only target an enemy if your teammates are topped off and are in no imminent danger of burst damage. In general, the only reason to target a MoB is for an Earthshock casting interrupt (this can be accomplished for some spells with Grounding totem - and you don’t need to target a MoB), Frostshawking a runner (or just use Earthbind), or Purging a shield or buff. Leave these tasks to another player if at all possible.

You do not need to be as mobile as other healing classes. Since shamans have no real escapes or active aggro wipes, there is no point in doing a lot of running around. I pretty much stay rooted at max range except to get in range of a teammate or to get out of an AoE. Some boss fights require more mobility too.

Use whatever utility totems your group wants, but if you are the main healer totems take a back seat to healing. Keep Mana Spring down - Mana Tide when your group gets low. Long fights may require you to trade some +heal for mp5.

NOTE: The mana efficiency changes in 2.3 are awesome. Mana shield now costs no mana and will proc any unused charges after 60 seconds. This is another 5 mp5 minimum. Mana spring has also been improved and will now pulse 25 per tick (or 50 mp5 ) with talents.

Explore Grounding totem, it absorbs a surprising number of enemy abilities and can save healing mana. Drop Disease and/or Poison Cleansing as needed. You may want to consider the Totemic Mastery talent to help keep your group in range. Now that the Wrath of Air also buffs healing, it is usually the totem of choice if there are 2 or more casters in the group. If possible, leave the other totems to another shaman.

Chain Heal rocks for spot-healing. Especially with Improved Chain Heal, it is very efficient for 5-mans and some of the AoE-heavy fights in BC. Improved Healing Wave is pretty much required for heroics and Healing Way is helpful.

Save Elementals and Bloodlust for o-shits and boss fights.

Group healing is your bread and butter. If you don’t like it you should probably respec (although most builds would still do well to drop 20-21 points into resto).

Solo Grinding

Gear: +spell damage, +INT, +crit rating, shield. In general I prefer a 1-hand with high spell damage. Most of these are around 41 DPS with low top-end. Most of your damage output will come from flametongue procs, flame shock ticks and searing totem pulses.

While resto is primarily a grouping spec, you can solo effectively - much more so than other healing-spec classes - especially with the right gear. Again, be patient. Don’t try to burn MoBs down too fast - slow and steady is the resto way. Occasionally, you can string shocks together to speed things up, but otherwise the Poo-shield/Flametongue/Searing totem/Flameshock/melee-and-regen combo is the way to go. This damage output, especially when bolstered by good +spell damage gear, is not as bad as commonly thought. Just don’t expect to see many four-figure numbers scroll by. Instead, look for lots and lots of 2 and 3 figure numbers.

If you get an add or adds, use Stoneclaw totem + Fire Nova totem, followed by Magma totem. Keep a Flameshock up on each of the MoBs. If it gets worse, pop bloodlust and an elemental. Throw in a Nature’s Swiftness/Chain Lightning. Make liberal use of your Mana Tide and Mana Spring totems. I have gotten through some incredibly bad situations where I was able to survive 5-6 high-60s adds by using all of my cooldowns, a potion or two and by not panicking.

Staying out of the 5-second window and occasionally using Water Shield + bandages keeps your downtime to a minimum. I much prefer this to nuke, drink, nuke, drink. Also, by over-nuking you give up any kind of ability to deal with adds. However, if you want to drop something quickly, alternating Flameshock with Earthshock or Frostshawk will speed things up nicely. Using Grounding totem instead of Earthshock as a spell interrupt helps mana efficiency as well.

DivX Movie “Grinding with fire”

DivX Movie “Grinding without fire”

Group PvP

Gear: +STA, Resilience, +heal, +INT, +spell damage, AC, shield.

The job of resto shamans in Group PvP is to Heal, Absorb and Annoy.

Heal: The rules for group PvP are pretty similar to healing in an instance. You are a healer, not DPS. Your job is to keep your teammates up. Focus on them, not whacking on other players. This can be through chaining Lesser Healing Waves, a well-timed Nature’s Swiftness/Greater Healing Wave (you have macroed this, right?) or by pumping a Chain Heal into crowds of allies. 

Absorb: You should poo-shield yourself in PvP. When possible, temporarily swap into healing gear (use Item Rack) and cast an Empowered Poo-shield - especially before Arena matches. That orbiting asteroid will make you a target. That’s a good thing. You want the enemy players to focus on you. The longer they try to kill you the more frustrated they will get and they will hopefully forget strategy and start button mashing. This happens a lot with high DPS classes. Simply use your 90% uninterruptible heals and Poo-shield (if they purge just recast) to keep yourself alive. A resto shaman self-healing is VERY hard to kill. Meanwhile, the rest of your team should be picking them off. Soak up the enemy’s damage and attention. DivX Movie “Absorb”

See 1st note above...

Annoy: Always keep Grounding totem down. This is important enough that it is the 4pc set bonus on the resto Gladiator set. Mages like to ice lance this so I tend to use it as an “interrupt” - dropping it mid cast if Earth Shock is cooling down. If you have the mana, drop a fire totem of some sort. Drop Earthbind. Drop Tremor. Drop Mana Tide and Mana Spring. Keeping a forest of totems down annoys and distracts the enemy players. If you have the luxury throw in a Chain Lightning or Frostshawk. Your goal is to harass and annoy - not so much to do damage. DivX Movie “Annoy”

Other tactics vary depending on the scale of PvP.

Large-scale / Alterac Valley

You are probably one of several healers standing at the back of a pack. Or, find someone who seems to know what they’re doing and become their pet healer. Chain heal in Alterac Valley is very efficient. It can keep large groups of allies up and fighting in confusing melees and is an honor sponge. I use Shift-V to put friendly health bars over my teammates’ heads. It’s ugly and they move around a lot, but it helps to target the most egregiously injured person in a group and let Chain Heal hop from there. The jump logic for this spell was improved greatly several patches ago. Keep as many people up as possible. Unlike instance healing, I tend to favor the high DPS classes over the kamikaze tank. Keeping a sniping hunter or mage up can lead to much faster victory.

Note: DEFENSE MATTERS in the 2.3 AV. Making it a DPS race can work, but having one competent group back-capping towers and mines will always beat a straight DPS team.

Medium Scale / AB, EotS

You might be the only healer in an area and more subject to focus fire. You’ll use your single-target healing spells more and might have to do some damage. You may want to trade some +heal for +spell damage.

Small Scale / Arena

Depending on the size and breakdown of your team you may have to do a lot more fighting. Oh, and pop Bloodlust as soon as you engage.

1-on-1 PvP

Unlike group PvP you will obviously need to do damage. You will also need to be more mobile. Combine all you have learned. Use mana-efficient tactics to wear them down and outlast them. Annoy them with totems. Master the jump-spinning Frostshawk. Purge their shields. Absorb their big crits with Grounding totems. Earthshock their spells. Wait until they are out of mana and out of cooldowns and grind them down. The great thing about the shaman’s passive healing is it works when you’re stunned or feared. Use it. Self-heal. Conserve mana. Win.

Further notes

1. •A good enhancement shaman is almost impossible to take one on one. Bring a friend or do your best to kite.
   

2. •Hunters are incredibly annoying as of 2.3 - you may as well be wearing cloth.
   

3. •Rogues will have a tough time against you.
   

4. •So will mages.
   

5. •Taking on a holy pally one on one is high comedy.
   

6. •In general, I don’t believe in downranking spells. Running through the equation that Blizzard posted shows it is never more efficient for healing. For totems and damage spells, a shock with damage is always better than a straight interrupt. I still have not seen a downranking strategy that isn’t just busywork. Spend your time learning good timing (of healing spells, shocks, totems) and positioning - as well as how to switch roles (healing, DPS, etc). Don’t waste time with non-strategies like downranking.
   

7. •Healing stream totem benefits from +heal and can pulse for a lot in the right gear. Combined with a stoneskin totem and chain heal you can keep your group up when assigned as a spot healer.
   

Talent Builds

I am not going to go into great detail on builds. You obviously have at least 41 points in resto. I mentioned some specific talents that I like already and everyone has their favorites. Putting 15-20 points in Elemental will make solo grinding much easier. Putting those same points in the Enhancement defensive talents will help survivability. YMMV.

You can always find my profile on the armory and see what I am playing with these days.