Talent specialization

Well before Cataclysm, our talent pools were cleaned up. In the new system, many passive talents were either removed or added as a specialization bonus for choosing restoration. Along with consolidation, we have also received several new talents. Once you choose a specialization, you are locked in and cannot spend any points in any other tree until you have spent 31 points in your primary choice.

Specialization bonuses

• Earth Shield
• Purification
• Meditation
• Mastery: Deep Healing

Earth Shield is has been an iconic spell of our tool kit for quite some time; now, instead of having to spend a talent point on it, we get it for free. Purification increases our healing effectiveness by 10 percent and decreases the cast time of our Healing Wave and Greater Healing wave by 0.5 seconds.

Talents

Tier 1 restoration talents are Ancestral Resolve, Tidal Focus and Spark of Life. Ancestral Resolve reduces the amount of damage you take while casting by 10 percent at maximum rank, while Tidal Focus makes your healing spells cheaper by 6 percent. Spark of Life increases your healing done by 6 percent and healing received by 12 percent. These are foundation for your healing.

Tier 2 are Improved Water Shield, Totemic Focus, Focused Insight and Nature's Guardian. Improved Water Shield is still important for your mana regeneration and continues to be useful throughout leveling and endgame. Totemic Focus makes your totems cheaper to cast but also increases their duration. This affects all of your totems without exception. Focused Insight rewards you for casting any shock spell by reducing your next healing spell cost and increasing its effectiveness. Nature's Guardian remains mainly a PvP talent.

At tier 3 and 4, we have Ancestral Healing, Nature's Swiftness, Nature's Blessing, Soothing Rains, Improved Cleanse Spirit and Cleansing Waters. Ancestral Healing gives an armor bonus to targets of your critical heals, and Nature's Swiftness allows you to make any spell instant-cast once every 2 minutes. Nature's Blessing increases healing done on targets of Earth Shield, and Soothing Rains increases your Healing Stream Totem and our new spell, Healing Rain. Improved Cleanse Spirit allows you to remove magical effects like Polymorph from friendly targets, and Cleansing Waters gives you a free heal whenever you remove a harmful effect from a friendly target.

The fifth, sixth and seventh tier of talents contain Ancestral Awakening, Mana Tide Totem, Telluric Currents, Tidal Waves, Blessing of the Eternals and finally Riptide. Ancestral Awakening gives you a free heal on a low health party member every time you critically heal, and our new talent Telluric Currents lets you regain mana based on what damage you do when casting Lightning Bolt. Tidal Waves gives you a haste boost when you cast Riptide and Chain Heal, and Blessing of the Eternals increases your change to proc Earthliving Weapon on low-health targets. Two of our most important spells come from these talents. Mana Tide Totem is a major source of mana regeneration for shaman, especially when in the thick of battle. Recently, it has changed to increase our spirit totals by 350 percent every 3 minutes. Riptide gives you an instant-cast heal and one of our only heal over time effects.

Glyphs and gems

The choices in glyphs have become more about role and personal choice in Cataclysm. Now, we've covered the glyphs available already, so now it's all about choosing the right ones for the right roles. Glyphs really allow you to augment your abilities and plug gaps in your healing. There are no real best choices, just best choices are for you at the time. Take time and choose glyphs that fit into your style of healing.

When it comes to gems, gemming for intellect is a good way to go at first, as it has a direct effect on your spellpower and mana pools. When you get to a point at which your mana seems to be stable and you aren't struggling to heal in a fight, you can move on to gemming crit and haste. Spirit is a good to help any mana concerns as well, and you can always gem for mastery, but we will get enough of that from our gear. My suggestion is to gem for intellect and spirit until your mana and healing are stable, and then move onto crit and haste.

New spells

From 80 to 85, we gain three new spells, Unleash Elements, Healing Rain and Spiritwalker's Grace. Unleash Elements allows you to release the energy of our various shaman weapon imbues. For restoration, this gives us access to Unleash Life. This gives us an instant-cast heal and boosts the effectiveness of our next direct healing spell by 20 percent. Healing Rain gives us an area of effect heal that we can choose where to place. It has a 2-second cast time and a 10-second duration. It also has a target cap; any players over six in the affected area will reduce the amount of healing done to everyone inside the effect. Spiritwalker's Grace is our new cooldown that allows us to cast any spells while on the move without interruptions. Learning to use this spell is quite important and something you should spend time getting used to at level 85. Check out our previous articles to learn more about them.

Next week we will be diving right in to healing through the new Cataclysm instances. Are you ready to heal the new 5-mans?

---

Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Sarah Nichol's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Josh Meyers' enhancement edition, WoW Insider's shaman experts have you covered.

---