A Restoration Shaman spends a mana bar on Healing Wave (Rank 10). Forever turned Healing Way into a flat bonus on every Healing Wave, and Improved Healing Wave still cuts the cast to 2.5 seconds. Water Shield hands back 2 % of your maximum mana when one of your heals crits, and Riptide, the new 31-point talent, is an instant heal with a heal over time behind it on a 6-second cooldown.

This is the single-target build. You keep Riptide on yourself, cast rank 10 while your mana is ahead of the clock, and drop to a cheap low rank when it isn't. That adds up to 1,443.8 HPS on a one-minute single-boss fight: 1st of 5 single-target healers. The Party switch above turns the guide to group healing.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• The biggest single heal. Healing Way adds 25 % to Healing Wave and Purification another 10 %. Healing Way alone is worth 15.6 % on a three-minute single-boss fight, the most of any talent.

• Mana from your own crits. Each critical heal can spend a Water Shield globe for 2 % of your maximum mana, one every 3.5 seconds. Over a three-minute single-boss fight the shield is worth 7.5 %.

• First on every fight. The single-target build tops the healers on all six fights, from one minute to three, one boss or three.

• Mana Tide Totem. Once a fight it gives everyone in your party 290 mana every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. On a one-minute single-boss fight, where your mana only just lasts, the talent is worth 8.7 % to you alone.

Weaknesses

• Mana runs out even on one minute. These sets carry just enough mana for their fight. On a one-minute single-boss fight losing the flask costs 15.2 % of your healing.

• Your cheap heal could get weaker. Healing Wave (Rank 5) is 36 levels below you. Blizzard's 1 October notes promise less healing power for ranks that far down but don't say how much, and our model gives rank 5 its full share. A cut would lower the two- and three-minute scores.

How healers are measured

The score is healing per second across the fight, and it has to be paid for out of that fight's mana: what's in your bar, what regenerates, mana potions and Demonic Runes, and your own Water Shield and Mana Tide. Every target stays at full health and nothing hits you, so every heal counts in full and Water Shield's globes come only from your critical heals.

This build heals one target, itself. Chain Heal has nobody to jump to, so it counts as one heal and the rotations never cast it.

Your party's Mana Spring, Strength of Earth and Grace of Air come from another Shaman in the simulated group, so your own totem talents read zero. The engine has no shaman heals of its own, so ours are built on top of it from the client's spell data, and every rotation comes from one rule about mana. Not modelled: Healing Stream Totem, Ancestral Healing, Chain Heal's bonus on a Riptide target, Riptide's ticks critting and healer set bonuses. More on the Method page.

On every fight

The build places 1st on every fight. Fight length changes what carries it. On one minute you cast rank 10 nearly all fight, so Improved Healing Wave's faster cast is worth 16.1 %. On two and three minutes the bar runs short, the cheap filler comes in, and Water Shield joins the build. Three bosses change nothing for a healer. The fight you pick in this table carries over to every other page.

Races

The five shaman races finish within about 2 % of each other on every fight, so pick the one you like.

On the Horde side, Windshaper takes the two- and three-minute fights through Wind Blessed, a flat 1 % casting speed, by less than 2 HPS over Orc and Troll. Orcs take the one-minute fights: Blood Fury adds 10 % to your spell power, healing included, for 15 seconds at the pull, a quarter of the fight.

Tauren come last or near it, because Endurance's health and hit do nothing for a healer.

Alliance shamans are all Dwarves, the one Alliance race the class allows. Mace Specialization gives 1 % crit, spells included, but only with a mace in hand.

The pre-raid sets hold a dagger, so the Dwarf's racials add nothing here.

What a Shaman brings to the raid

Mana Tide Totem is the part a Restoration Shaman adds to its party. The table shows what it, Strength of Earth and a Mana Spring with Restorative Totems are worth to the damage specs that gain from them on this fight. In the simulated raid another Shaman already provides the last two, which is why your own totem talents score nothing.

Changes

Each update to the simulator or Forever's data re-runs this build on this fight, and the table keeps the results. Why each one moved is on the Updates page.

The healer fix of 10 October, which made Water Shield return mana on critical heals, didn't move the one-minute builds: they keep no shield.