Welcome to Skill Capped’s Overview of the Best Talents for Restoration Shaman in PvP in Dragonflight 10.2.6
In this article, we will go over the biggest change that came with Dragonflight – talent system. We will cover the best talents for Restoration Shaman in PvP, including the Class tree, the Spec tree, as well as PvP talents themselves.
Every new expansion brings about a learning curve that could get in the way of you achieving your arena goals. We are here to help you on that journey with specialized Premium courses. We consult with the best arena players in the world with years of competitive experience. They will teach you how to master every aspect of your class and get ahead of your competition. Sign up today to get a 10% discount and jumpstart your Dragonflight PvP climb with a +400 rating guarantee.
Table of Contents
Restoration Shaman Talents Overview
Since the talent system received a huge revamp going into Dragonflight, we will cover both the class and the spec tree. They both have some mandatory and some optional talents.
Shaman Class Talents
We need to pick up Spiritwalker’s Grace and Spiritwalker’s Aegis. This gives us access to our version of Aura Mastery, which we need in order to recover reliably.
We also pick up Nature’s Swiftness. Once again, it is an additional cooldown we can use in case of emergency.
Going back to the top of the tree, we start with Astral Shift and go down the middle to pick up some familiar tools in the form of Wind Shear, Tremor Totem and Earthgrab Totem can be flexed with Improved Purified Spirit as not every comp will see value from Earthgrab such as double caster. For example, against Rogue and Mage Earthgrab can be useful to prevent the rogue from escaping or getting them out of stealth. Improved Purified Spirit can be great into Warlocks.
Doing so will allow us to get Nature’s Guardian. Ideally, we will be spending 2 points into it as a form of life insurance. There is almost no reason to play without this, unless you are 100% sure you will not be attacked.
This will let us pick Totemic Focus, which is amazing for healing output. That’s because the increased Healing Stream duration will synergize with Living Stream on the spec tree.
We also want to select the branch to the bottom right side of the tree in order to pick up Totemic Recall. This ability is crucial since it allows us to completely reset the cooldown of Earthen Wall Totem. It gives us more cooldowns to offset our relatively weak healing output.
Finally, of all the remaining required talents, we have the selection between Purge and Greater Purge. For the meantime, we will take Greater Purge as baseline. We typically don’t have enough GCDs to constantly spam Purge, making the double dispel much more valuable.
We then have quite a few optional talents scattered throughout the tree that could be useful in certain situations. At the top, we have some defensive options including Planes Traveler and Spirit Wolf that we can use to get increased tankiness prior to getting stunned or while kiting away.
You can also swap Planes Traveler for Astral Bulwark if you don’t expect to be targeted often.
We could combine both of these with Earth Elemental in order to get as much HP as possible. It will help us survive lethal swaps from bursty comps like Rogue + Mage. The HP increase from Earth Elemental also increases the strength of Earthen Wall Totem, making it a useful talent even if you’re not being targeted.
At the bottom of the tree, we have Stoneskin Totem, which we can combine with other defensive talents to give our team increased tankiness against teams with a lot of physical damage. This should only be played if you are not using Improved Purified Spirit or Earthgrab Totem.
Altogether, this makes up your standard build. However those looking for a more offensive build, especially on smaller scale or Z-axis maps like Blade’s Edge can drop Totemic Focus, Earth Elemental and Planes Traveler in order to pick up Thunderstorm and Lightning Lasso.
In addition to this, if you’re not being targeted, you can swap Planes Traveler for Astral Bulwark and can even drop 1 point in Nature’s Guardian to pick up Call of the Elements which lets you reset the cooldown of important totems like Earthen Wall Totem, allowing you to use it three times in the first two minutes of a game.
Restoration Spec Talents
Our goal is to reach three out of four capstone talents. We will be getting Ascendance for an additional healing cooldown, Continuous Waves reduces the cooldown of Primordial Wave and the talent path provides several key talents that buff healing wave. Deeply Rooted Elements allows you to proc Ascendance when using Riptide. While this is not always reliable, it does help add to your sustain healing and can save the game when it procs at critical moments where you are behind on healing. All three of these talents will be crucial for maximizing our total healing output.
At the same time, we want to pick up some other core Resto Shaman talents like Spirit Link Totem, Healing Tide Totem, Unleash Life for a huge modifier on some core heals and Primordial Wave, which will give us more instant cast healing on a different spell school that we can use to manage interrupts when needed.
Restoration Shaman PvP Talents
Our first core PvP talent is Living Tide. It simply increases the effectiveness of one of our healing cooldowns.
For your second PvP talent, in most matchups we will want to have Grounding Totem. This is especially true when playing against casters. This ability is even good into some melee, like Ret Paladins and Survival Hunters, since it can be used to immune CC like Hammer of Justice or Freezing Trap.
Static Field Totem is a solid third pick. This is a versatile talent that can be used both offensively and defensively. You can use it to bring someone back into LoS when they are trying to escape or set up a go. It can also be used to move the enemy healer out of LoS and prevent them from healing their team.
In other cases, you could also use the third slot for Unleash Shield, which actually allows you to add an AoE healing and damage reduction combined with a root effect thanks to Elemental Orbit. Unleash Shield is a great option into Fistweaver.
Burrow is a new addition to 10.1. This is a solid defensive option into Rogue + Mage and where you are likely to be the kill target especially Melee Cleaves as that tends to be shaman’s weak point.
When there is nothing to ground, Skyfury Totem is a good pick. This will typically be picked when playing with two casters to buff your team’s crits. Otherwise, Unleash Shield can be considered to apply a 50% damage or healing debuff against melee or immobile casters.
Sign up now with a special 10% discount to gain access to our heal, defensive play and crowd control courses where we show you how to maximize healing, teach you how to become a livelord and master your CC.