Season of Discovery Restoration Shaman Healer Stat Priority

Gear in WoW Classic tends to have useful stats mixed in with non-useful stats, making it hard to evaluate on a pure item level basis. Thus, while knowing about each stat is important, make sure to check our best in slot list as well in order to know about specific items!

1. Intellect (grants spell critical strike and increases your maximum Mana);
2. Spell Healing (lower benefit if you run out of Mana before fights end);
3. Mana every 5 seconds (excellent for Mana regeneration while you are casting, but loses priority if you end fights with Mana to spare);
4. Spell Critical Strike (chance to heal for a much larger amount than usual, procs Ancestral Healing);
5. Spirit (Mana and health regeneration outside combat).

• Stamina (more health per point);
• Resistance (strongly reduces Magic damage taken of a specific element);
• Spell Hit Rating (16% is needed to cap hit against Molten Core bosses, see below for details).

Intellect is the best stat for Restoration Shamans due to Shamanistic Rage, as its Mana return scales with Mana pool size and Intellect is the best way to increase your total Mana pool. Stacking Intellect will allow you to use your high power maximum rank spells much more often, especially in long fights.

Spell Healing is applied to each spell based on its casting time.

The coefficient is calculated by dividing the cast time of a spell by 3.5. This is because a 3.5 second cast benefits from 100% of your gear's Spell Healing. For example, if you have 20 additional Spell Healing from gear, then this will simply affect your spells as follows:

• Healing Increase per spell cast = n * 20
• n = spell's coefficient

Instant single-target spells typically only get around 43% of the benefit, while a cast-time spell gets a benefit proportional to its cast time, with maximum benefit at 3.5 seconds cast time.

This means that 100 Spell Healing on your gear would cause Healing Wave (3-second cast) to heal for 85.71 more but spells with lower cast times would be further penalized. A table with the exact coefficients for all spells in WoW Classic can be found in this Reddit thread, by u/RobertVests.

Mana every 5 seconds, or simply Mp5, is a common stat found on healing gear. This is the best stat for getting more Mana during a fight because it works constantly, even if you cast something in the last 5 seconds (contrary to Spirit) and should thus be taken whenever possible, until you feel comfortable with your Mana sustainability.

For Restoration Shamans, Spirit provides Mana regeneration, as long as you are outside the 5-second rule only, making it weaker than it is for Priests or Druids.

Spell Critical Strike allows your direct spells to occasionally heal for more. For Restoration Shaman is also activates Ancestral Healing on the target, which is an important buff to have good uptime on, and directly affects how much healing you can get from the new Ancestral Awakening rune.

Stamina is the only stat that will help you survive all types of attacks, and as such, should always be valued highly, especially in PvP.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.

Spell Hit allows your spells to land more often, which is of particular importance when trying to interrupt with Earth Shock.

Keep in mind that you will always have at least a 1% chance to miss with spells. Depending on the level of your enemy, you might need more, or less Spell Hit to reach this 1% cap:

• For an enemy of the same level as you, 3% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 1 level higher than you, 4% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 2 levels higher than you, 5% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 3 levels higher than you, which is the case of raid bosses, 16% Spell Hit is needed to cap.

Restoration at Level 60 has access to Nature Specialization and Fire Specialization (also Nature's Guidance but usually not worth taking) which lower the Spell Hit required against Molten Core bosses from 16% to a more manageable 10%.