In this article, we present you with various talent trees for Restoration Shamans (WoW 4.3) that you can use in specific situations. We also give you pointers for customising your talent tree and adapting it to a particular boss. The other articles of our Restoration Shaman guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the left.

1. Standard Talent Build↑top

For most purposes, we advise you to take the following build, which gives you all the healing tools that you will need, as well as some utility talents. Note that if you want to increase your mana regeneration, you can replace Glyph of Earth Shield with Glyph of Water Shield. This build can be customised in many ways, as we explain in the next section.

2. Customising Your Build↑top

There are many ways in which you can customise your build, mostly through your choice of optional talents, as we will see below.

2.1. Talents

In the following image, the fixed talents have been hightlighted in green, while the optional talents have been hightlighted in red:

As you can see, there are many optional talents.

• Restoration Tree
  • 1/2 or 2/2 Ancestral Resolve reduces the damage you take while casting by up to 10%.
  • 3/3 Focused Insight causes your shock spells to grant you the Focused Insight buff (even if they miss their target), increasing your next heal's effectiveness by 30%. This talent is best used with Healing Rain, so if, for any reason, you will not be relying much on Healing Rain, you should skip this talent. For spells other than Healing Rain, Unleash Life (granted by Unleash Elements) provides a similar increase to your single-target spells' effectiveness.
  • Improved Cleanse Spirit and 1/2 or 2/2 in Cleansing Waters improves your Cleanse Spirit spell. You should consider taking these talents only if no other healer in your raid is going to be dispelling debuffs.
  • 2/3 or 3/3 in Ancestral Awakening is a very useful talent that causes your single-target critical heals to instantly heal the lowest health player in range for up to 30% of the amount healed. Even though this talent is more useful in 10-man raiding, where you will get to cast a lot more single-target heals, we believe that it is still very beneficial in 25-man. Indeed, Ancestral Awakening will almost never overheal, so you will almost always get the full benefit of it.
  • Telluric Currents is a useful means of regenerating your mana. It is mandatory if you are going to rely a lot on Healing Rain or Greater Healing Wave.
• Enhancement Tree
  • Improved Shields increases the mana regeneration of your Water Shield by 15%. If you are fine with your mana regeneration, you can skip this talent, unless you want to take Ancestral Swiftness in the next tier.
  • Ancestral Swiftness is a survival talent that causes your Ghost Wolf spell to be an instant cast.
• Elemental Tree
  • 1/3 or 2/3 Acuity increases your chance to critically hit with spells (including heals).
  • 3/3 Concussion and 2/3 Elemental Precision should only be taken if
    • you have also taken Telluric Currents in the Restoration Tree and
    • you are going to spend so much mana on expensive spells (such as Healing Rain and Greater Healing Wave) that sacrificing 5 talent points just to increase your mana regeneration is worth it (by ensuring that Lightning Bolt never misses its target).

2.2. Glyphs

Choosing your glyphs as a Restoration Shaman is very straightforward.

2.2.1. Prime Glyphs

Your Prime Glyphs should be the following:

• Glyph of Earth Shield, which increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%;
• Glyph of Earthliving Weapon, which makes the passive heal of your Earthliving Weapon more powerful;
• Glyph of Riptide, which increases the duration of Riptide by 40%.

If you want more mana regeneration, you can replace Glyph of Earth Shield by Glyph of Water Shield.

2.2.2. Major Glyphs

Your Major Glyphs should be the following:

• Glyph of Chain Heal, which increases the total healing of your Chain Heal spell;
• Glyph of Healing Stream Totem, which improves your Healing Stream Totem by granting it the same powers as Elemental Resistance Totem;
• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem, which transforms Stoneclaw Totem into a powerful survival cooldown.

If you do not need the resistance buff provided by Glyph of Healing Stream Totem, you can replace this glyph with Glyph of Healing Wave. This happens when there is no Fire, Frost, or Nature damage in the fight, or if someone else is already providing a resistance buff for the type(s) of damage that you will face during the fight.

2.2.3. Minor Glyphs

We advise you to take the two following minor glyphs:

• Glyph of Renewed Life;
• Glyph of Water Walking.

They save you from carrying reagents with you.

For the same reason, you can take Glyph of Water Breathing as your third minor glyph, but Glyph of Astral Recall is also possible, depending on what you find more convenient.