Some Great Changes for the Spec - Restoration Shaman Review in Midnight Season 2
tream Totem](https://www.wowhead.com/ptr/spell=1304671/stormstream-totem) casts to maximize the extension is a fun puzzle to solve. It also has a lot of synergy with the Riptide changes we will cover next.
Riptide Is A Real Boy Now
- Riptide direct healing increased by 25% and its periodic healing increased by 100%.
This is the change I am most excited about. Riptide has been a weird spell for a while now. It is the main spell that defines the Restoration Shaman playstyle, it is the spell that enables a lot of your other spells and talents, and yet the actual healing it does has been pretty mediocre for a long time. You cast it because you have to, not because it heals a lot.
The periodic healing being doubled is a massive change. The heal over time component of Riptide was so weak that it barely registered as meaningful healing. Doubling it makes it actually contribute to keeping people alive rather than just being a buff applicator. Combined with Swelling Tides extending the duration, you now have a reason to care about maintaining Riptide on people beyond just enabling your other spells.
The direct healing increase of 25% is also welcome, though less dramatic. It makes the initial cast feel more impactful and less like you are just applying a weak HoT to someone.
This change also has a cascading effect on everything that interacts with Riptide. Wavespeaker's Blessing, Undercurrent, Tidewaters, Deeply Rooted Elements — all of these get better because the thing they interact with is now actually doing meaningful healing. The whole Riptide-centric playstyle of Restoration Shaman becomes much more rewarding when the core spell of that playstyle is actually strong.
The Healing Rain Adjustment
- Healing Rain now heals up to 6 targets in its area (was 5).
This is a smaller change but a meaningful one. Healing Rain has always been a spell that suffers in larger groups because the cap on how many targets it can hit limits its effectiveness. Going from 5 to 6 targets is a 20% increase in its maximum throughput in situations where you have more than 5 people stacked, which in raid content is basically always.
It is also worth noting the tier set adjustment here. The Venomous Abyss 2-set bonus Healing Rains now last 8 seconds instead of 10 seconds. This is a nerf to the tier set but it makes sense in the context of the overall tuning pass. The 4-set Condensation absorb reduction of 30% is more significant and suggests the tier set was overtuned in that direction.
Helping Out Farseer
- Chain Heal from Farseer Ancestors now bounces to up to 5 targets (was 3), loses 10% healing per target jump (was 30%), and had its jump distance increased to 20 yards (was 15 yards).
- Chain Heal from Farseer Ancestors healing increased by 50%.
Farseer has been in a rough spot. The hero talent tree has a lot of identity and flavor but the actual healing output from the Ancestors has been underwhelming. The Chain Heal from Ancestors in particular was almost a joke — it bounced to 3 targets and lost 30% per jump, meaning by the third target it was doing less than half the healing of the first hit.
The new version is dramatically better. Bouncing to 5 targets with only 10% falloff per jump means the fifth target still receives about 60% of the original healing. Combined with the 50% base healing increase and the increased jump distance of 20 yards, the Ancestor Chain Heals are now going to be a meaningful contribution to your healing output rather than a token gesture.
The jump distance increase to 20 yards is also practically important. In raid encounters people are often spread out, and the old 15 yard range meant the Chain Heal would frequently fail to find additional targets to bounce to. 20 yards gives it much better coverage in realistic raid positioning.
This is a big deal for Farseer specifically because the Ancestor healing was the main payoff of the hero tree. If the payoff is weak, the whole tree feels weak. Making the Ancestor Chain Heals actually threatening is a significant quality of life improvement for anyone who wants to play Farseer.
What Problems Still Remain
Mana Issues
Restoration Shaman has had mana problems for a while, and these changes don't fully address them. The Current Control change helps by reducing Chain Heal's mana cost by 15%, which is meaningful since Chain Heal is one of your most mana-intensive spells. But the underlying issue is that Restoration Shaman's mana economy in long fights is still tighter than it should be compared to other healers.
The problem is compounded by the fact that a lot of your healing comes from spells that cost mana rather than from passive or proc-based healing. When you are the healer that has to actively cast to keep people alive, you burn through mana faster than a healer who can rely more on passive effects or cheaper spells.
This isn't a dealbreaker but it is something that will continue to require management and will likely be a point of frustration in progression content where fights go long and mana becomes a real constraint.
Secondary Stat Imbalance
Restoration Shaman has a somewhat awkward relationship with secondary stats. The spec benefits from Mastery in a way that can feel mandatory, which limits gearing flexibility. When one stat is so dominant that you feel punished for not stacking it, it reduces the fun of gearing and makes itemization feel more like a chore than a reward.
This is a systemic issue that is hard to fix with a simple tuning pass and likely requires more fundamental changes to how some of the spec's talents and abilities scale. It wasn't addressed in this patch and probably won't be until there is a more deliberate redesign pass on the spec's scaling.
The Totemic Problem
Totemic as a hero talent tree continues to have a somewhat awkward relationship with the rest of the Restoration kit. As mentioned earlier, Totemic can drop Unleash Life entirely and spend those GCDs on more valuable spells, while Farseer is locked into casting it to summon Ancestors. The Unleash Life buffs help close this gap somewhat but the fundamental asymmetry remains.
Totemic also has some issues with its totem management feeling more like busywork than engaging gameplay in certain scenarios. The fantasy of the hero tree is compelling but the execution can feel clunky when you are juggling multiple totems while also trying to respond to raid damage.
These are not new problems and they are not catastrophic, but they are worth noting as ongoing friction points that the spec will carry into Season 2.
Is Restoration Shaman Weak?
Where Restoration Currently Stands
Based on the PTR testing that has been done so far, Restoration Shaman is in a much better position than it was heading into Season 1. The combination of the Riptide buffs, the Unleash Life fixes, the Farseer improvements, and the talent tree cleanup adds up to a meaningful increase in both throughput and gameplay feel.
The spec is not going to be the undisputed best healer in Season 2. There are other healers that have strong kits and will likely compete well. But Restoration Shaman should be a fully viable and competitive option rather than a spec you bring despite its weaknesses.
The changes also address some of the feel issues that made the spec frustrating to play even when the numbers were acceptable. Having Riptide actually heal for meaningful amounts, having Unleash Life feel like a complete spell rather than half a spell, having the Ancestor Chain Heals actually contribute — these are quality of life improvements that make the spec more enjoyable to play regardless of where it lands on a tier list.
You Can't Know Everything
It is worth being honest about the limits of PTR analysis. Tuning continues to change, the actual raid encounters in Season 2 will favor certain healing styles over others in ways that are hard to predict, and the interaction between all these changes and the full gear set of Season 2 will take time to fully understand.
What we can say with confidence is that the direction of these changes is correct. The developers identified real problems with the spec — underperforming talents, spells that felt like homework rather than healing, a hero tree whose payoff wasn't landing — and addressed them in ways that make sense. That is a good sign for the health of the spec going forward even if the exact numbers continue to be refined.
Conclusions
These are genuinely exciting changes for Restoration Shaman. The combination of fixing Unleash Life's baseline power, making Riptide's heal over time actually meaningful, dramatically improving the Farseer Ancestor Chain Heals, cleaning up the talent tree, and adding the fun new Swelling Tides talent adds up to a spec that should feel much better to play in Season 2 than it did in Season 1.
The remaining issues — mana management, secondary stat imbalance, some Totemic awkwardness — are real but manageable. They are the kind of weaknesses that skilled players can work around and that give the spec some character rather than simply being frustrating limitations.
Overall, if you enjoy the Restoration Shaman playstyle, Season 2 is shaping up to be a much more rewarding time to play the spec. The core fantasy of a reactive, direct healer who maintains Riptides and responds to damage with powerful targeted heals is finally being supported by numbers that make that playstyle feel impactful. That is worth being excited about.
