Restoration Shaman Healing Stat Priority — 12.0.5

This stat priority will serve you well in most scenarios:

Haste should be taken for comfort in Mythic+, at your own discretion.

Take note that Mastery is especially valuable when doing difficult content where players are more likely to drop to low health, such as progression raiding and rated PvP. It can be considered to be almost on par with the best stats in these types of content.

Also, Haste has more value if you are focused on damage dealing and being a Battle Shaman, for soloing and in Mythic+ keys where Mana is a much smaller issue since fights are shorter and drinking is possible in between.

The first priority for your gearing should be to use your highest Item Level gear pieces. These come with a lot of Intellect, which scales your spells the best on a point-by-point basis.

Having said that, there will be a few situations where item-level upgrades will not be actual upgrades. Sockets are usually worth a few item levels, Leech on the first 2-3 pieces is also worth a handful of item levels, Avoidance can also be worth lowering your overall item level for, but only in encounters where you take dangerous area of effect damage.

When healing, you want to use your Mana pool flexibly to counteract deadly damage throughout a long fight. Thus, efficient Mana usage is paramount, and Haste loses a bit of value.

When healing high Mythic+ dungeons, the damage reduction of Versatility is very important, as it allows you to survive things you usually cannot in the highest Mythic keystone dungeons and generally reduces the stress to self-heal during high damage periods.

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

While a generalized stat priority will assist new players, there really is no substitute for simming your character. Learn more with this guide!

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Intellect is your primary stat. You should look for this stat in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the power of your heals.

Critical Strike increases your throughput and gives some Mana regeneration boost through Resurgence. It is one of the strongest stats for pure healing throughput, as it scales well and improves nearly all of your healing spells, and also Lava Burst's critical damage since it is a guaranteed crit when Flame Shock is on the target.

Versatility is a direct throughput increase that also reduces damage taken. It improves nearly all of your abilities but does not scale as well as Critical Strike for pure throughput. This is balanced by its damage reduction component and better DPS scaling than Critical Strike, making them close in power. In PvP, due to its defensive properties, it is generally the best stat in all situations.

Mastery, represented by Mastery: Deep Healing, allows you to heal for more when targeting low-health allies. It starts off at a high value and does not scale well, which tends to make it perform worse as item level rises. Still, it does have good value on difficult content where your allies are likely to be at low health when you heal them, and we recommend valuing it on par with the top stats for progression raiding, high Mythic+, and rated PvP.

Haste lowers the cast time of your spells and the duration of your global cooldown. Haste also causes your healing over time and damage over time effects to tick faster, as well as increasing the tick rate of your healing totems. When Mana is not an issue, Haste is the best throughput stat and is always a great stat for dealing damage due to its great scaling. However, in prolonged fights where you need to stop casting healing spells to conserve Mana, you gain more from having more powerful spells, as you cannot make full use of your Haste as is.

Leech allows you to passively self-heal for a percentage of the healing or damage of each spell you cast. Due to the prevalence of enemy mechanics that hurt everyone in the group, it ends up doing a lot of free healing that would, otherwise, need to be covered by Mana from yourself or the other healers in your group.

Avoidance's exact power depends on the encounter mechanics but is often the decider on living or dying against extreme damage abilities in very high keystones. The damage it prevents is also very helpful in a raid setting.

Speed slightly increases the speed at which your character moves. This can be useful when trying to dodge encounter mechanics or when repositioning with your group, but is not as noticeable as other stats.

Every stat has a limit where they will begin to offer less increase per point gained, which are known as the points of diminishing return. Once you have reached these amounts, stats will become progressively less valuable and may fall behind other options. The current breakpoints are:

Itemization

Gearing and Enchants

Your stat priority extends to enchants, consumables, and gear. Take what you learned on this page and apply it to your gameplay with these two guides!

GearEnchants

Seksixeny

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Seksi, member of Cursed Gifts and healing aficionado. You can find him answering questions and discussing Restoration Shaman gameplay on the Ancestral Guidance and Earthshrine Discords.