Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.

Restoration shaman in Mist of Pandaria.

I think we are far enough into the expansion to take a look at how the restoration shaman performs and competes against other classes.

From Beta to Live there has been a tremendous improvement, and I do think our whine on the forums have helped since it appears that quite a few of the points that we made have been noticed, which is very good. 

In this expansion we got a throughput CD which we have been waiting for, and it is amazing Ascendance is a very, very powerful CD when used properly. Our talents is more or less okay, and there is room for some personal preferences e.g. Astral Shift vs. Stone Bulwark Totem. Furthermore, we also got the option to take another CD Healing Tide Totem, or well I say option but in reality it is mandatory since it is so good.

So that is two new CDs, and if you feel that you wants more CDs you can put your last talent in Primal Elementalist and bam you got two more.

So we went from 0 CDs to 4 that is quite a leap, but I think it is awesome and Primal Elementalist is gold during intensive healing phases with massive raid dmg. with the 10% increased healing and 20% dmg. reduction which lasts for 60 seconds !

Stat change.

Since we no longer gain a larger mana pool from Intellect we rely on spirit to gain the required regn. to sustain our raid, and so an assumption must be that spirit is something that we must stack beyond everything since we need to dish out more spells. Yes, spirit is a good stat, but hold your horses and let us take a quick peek at our spell usage. If we take a look at my Feng HC kill the healing done is:
30% Healing Rain, 14% Chain Heal, 12% Healing Stream Totem, 12% Earth Living, 11% Healing Tide Totem, 7% Riptide, 7% Restorative Mists and Healing Wave, Unleash Life, Earth Shield, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge amounts to around 7%.

Now this is by no means a perfect log or kill, but in reality the only "extra" heals I would be able to gain from a lot more spirit would be more CHs since I cannot cast much more Healing Rains since I already do it more or less on CD, and the same goes for HST, Earth Living is something I am not in control of, or well the more spells I cast the higher chance of EL proccing, but I would argue that it isn't really worth overspamming for that.

So how good is spirit then ? Spirit is still good, and is one of the strongest stats, but there is no point in sacrificing all your throughput in order to gain more regn. unless you have just dinged.  

For myself I am currently rolling with 9700 spirit, which might seem odd since I just said that spirit isn't that amazing, but the majority comes from gear, and you still need the required regn. in order to do the task you got in the raid, and that is keeping people alive.

When sockets your new gear take a look at the socket bonus and ask yourself "Is it worth going for the socket bonus?" because sometimes it is.

Secondary stats - Haste vs. Crit. vs. Mastery - What should you pick ?

For haste you want to get 871 (441 goblin) in order to get a tick more on Earth Living, and that is with Ancestral Swiftness which is a flat 5% haste increase. Now, why wouldn't I want more haste? Because outside the breakpoints the only thing haste contributes to is burning your mana pool faster, and that is not even that effective since the majority of your single target heals should be under the influence of Tidal Waves anyway, so you are only really boosting your CHs cast time from 0,2 with stacking haste.

So haste is out - Crit or mastery ?

I personally went for crit, and that is on the idea that the more crits the more mana I gain from Resurgence, and I am able to push ever so slight higher damage on damage intensive fights such as e.g. Gara'Jal the Spiritbinder where damage is tight. Furthermore, since crit doesn't go up or down in its usefulness compared on ppls. HP it will, or that is my claim, be of more use if you play as a team player since your throughput will be more steady, and higher for the majority of the fight which I think means that your fellow healers have to spend less mana because you heal more, and thereby reach the "hard" last 20-30% of a boss with more mana, which should be better than your mastery becoming amazing when everyone is oom and dying. 

And shamans are great atm., forget the throughput of the monks they are in my opinion not that good since they lack throughput CDs, big heals and only can do Uplift spam on the raid, and while they look good on the meter they rely on everyone else does the jobs of e.g. keeping tanks alive, they are a bit like restoration druids in the start of Cata - Great throughput, but worthless since they didn't bring anything else to the table.
For those disc priests out there who think that they are garbage since they aren't pulling 60-70k HPs you are wrong,  disc is great more than great amazing since with Atonement you dish out 15-20k DPs, shielding tanks for large hits, and is capable of pre-shielding the raid with Spirit Shell (Which is AMAZING). Absorbs is always better than pure throughput.