3.1 is upon us and it’s free respec time. Here’s my suggestion feel free to edit it as you see fit. I’m going to quote matt here from his post previous to mine
WoW Insider has a great roundup toeverything 3.1 related.
No Stock UI has a great list of updated and compatible 3.1 addons for you to peruse.
Restoration Shamans were largely untouched in this patch (yay) but some things have shifted around allowing use to move some talent points and gather up our talents.
Restorative Totems: Increases the effect of your Mana Spring Totem by 20%, and increases the amount healed by your Healing Stream Totem by 45%
This is still a must have, if for nothing else with mana spring totem no longer staking with Blessing of Wisdom, you’ll be using healing stream totem a lot more.
Healing Way: Your Healing Wave spells have a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 18% for 15 sec.
With the talent points being freed up, there is no good reason not to take this
Thundering Strikes: Improves your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 5%.
More crit is always good
Elemental Weapons: Increases the damage caused by your Windfury Weapon effect by 40%  increases the spell damage on your Flametongue Weapon by 30% and increases the bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon by 30%
People may scoff at this one, but with the points floating around, taking this with it’s full 3 points is a great way to give your spell power a bit of a boost.
The spec lets you get everything and the kitchen sink, foregoing the more pvp centric ones. The movement of the talents to different tiers and just a couple point changes really give us everything we need.
As far as glyphs go it might be time to change it up a bit, I’ll list the ones I feel are the great contenders
Water Mastery
Healing Stream Totem – With the change to restorative totems this is worth a second look.
Mana Tide Totem
Earth Shield – NEW 20% increase in the healing done by your Earth Shield is always a good thing.
Riptide – NEW while it might not seem like much, increasing the duration of riptide makes it more into a true HoT instead of just a Chain Heal buffer.
Chain Heal
Now as far as totem mods go, I will make an endorsement here. Totem Timers worked for me on the PTR’s latest build when Yata and Flototem failed me. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out. Tracks Earth Shield charges, water shield, lightning shield, all totem schools, has a totemic recall option and is pretty light weight.
Good luck in Ulduar!
As always feel free to follow on twitter http://twitter.com/LodurZJ And don’t be afraid to ask questions using direct message there or the contact form here on the site!
I’d switch out Elemental Weapons for Healing Focus. +45 Spellpower is just nothing at our gear level. Spellpushback might be reduced by paladin aura, but especially when getting into a new instance, every bit of pushback reduction can save lives.
Glyphs in 25 man raid: ES and CH, third glyph is still free choice in my books.
drugs last blog post..3.1 LIVE this week. End of WoWMatrix?
Interesting that you suggest sinking all those points into Healing Way. I know we may be using it more just because damage will be taken in such big hits, and I haven’t been on the PTR but if, as other bloggers say, raid wide damage is gonna be an issue, maybe we should also consider a point or two in the pushback “Healing Focus” talent? I guess the choice is between bigger heals to plug the leaks, and making the heals we have hit when they have to.
@Valkure I agree with the points in healing way – if it was me I wouldn’t waste the points in elemental weapons when there’s so much more worthwhile utility wise still in the resto tree. For the first few weeks in Ulduar I’ll consider improved reincarnation or maybe healing focus rather than having that, what, 45 sp?
Would be nice to have a bit more information on the glyphs and just how much of a benefit they have over the old ones. Personally I’ll try the riptide one rather than LHW as I’ve become a fan of it as a spell – if mana regen turns out to be less of a problem than thought I’ll probably drop water mastery for either ES or Healing Stream but I will be keeping my Chain Heal glyph for now.
/hug
Auriks last blog post..Tiers of Achievement
@aurik:
I wouldn’t take the Riptide glyph.
Reason 1) Riptide is inferior in terms of HPS and HPM to chainheal. Riptide should be used when we are on the move or whenever we think that insta-heal might save lives. Riptide should not be used every time it comes off cooldown. Whenever you have the time to cast chainheal at there is the possibilty of CH hitting 1+ targets, do so.
Reason 2) Riptide’s HoT portion is extremly prone to overhealing. This won’t show in your recount, because HoTs that would overheal don’t tick at all. Shamans aren’t a HoT class and will never be. The riptide HoT part is ok-ish but extremly weak compared to all other hots flying around, especially because we have no talents that improve Riptide. And the glyph sadly improves the HoT part of Riptide and not the insta heal part, which would have been awesome.
Why I’d advise everyone on taking ES glyph: Fantastic synergy with our talent tree will lead to huge earthshield ticks. ES has nearly 100% uptime on a target and it helps us with our mobility issues as well, as it heals when needed, even if we’re running around at this point.
Earthliving glyph vs. Healing stream glyph: the math is on EJ, basically HST glyph will offer more HPS but of course has group and position issues.
HW and LHW are both still great glyphs if you’re playstyle makes good use of those spells.
Mana Tide is fantastic as well, not only for healing classes but for some dps classes as well (hello arcane mage!) and in my opinion far better than water mastery.
drugs last blog post..3.1 LIVE this week. End of WoWMatrix?
ok. I posted this at 4:20 am my time, let me try to clarify a bit in some of the choices. With all the testing I did (which was a bit had lodur copied over multiple times on the ptr) Push back was never really an issue, Spikes in damage were. Taking Healing way is a good way to even out those spikes. I also found that the 45 spellpower was more valuable to me then imp reincarnate and healing focus, as it let those big heals hit for just a bit more. Again this is just what I found that worked best for me, and I do hope everyone finds their own sweet spec. Just wanted to explain my choices a bit there.
As far as glyphs, I forgot to toss in chain heal up there, it’s still king of shaman glyphs so I’ll edit that in the list in a second. When it comes to the water glyphs, I honestly would say either or. Mana isn’t too bad like I said in my previous post at
https://worldofmatticus.com/2009/04/06/lodurs-final-thoughts-before-31/
I will probably juggle between Riptide and Earthshiled. I can see Riptide glyph being pretty useful when you start getting your tier 8 set bonuses. I agree with Aurik though, I’ve grown to love that spell, I use it quite a bit, and it has yet to fail me. Anything that helps augment it’s abilities a bit more is ok in my book.