To preface my feedback, I myself am a novice at Restoration Shaman, so this was compiled with the help of a veteran 3.5k-rated Resto Shaman player who observed me throughout my testing and helped me word the comparison to its playstyle in TWW.
At its core, Restoration Shaman in Alpha feels like a day and night difference compared to its retail iteration. The specialization has been heavily pruned, with many spells removed in an effort to balance the overall “number of active abilities,” as mentioned in the Midnight patch notes. After a full week of Alpha testing, I believe this pruning has gone too far. The end result has negatively impacted the spec, not only in terms of gameplay flow but also its spec identity.
Good Changes
Starting with what I feel have been positive changes for Restoration Shaman, I’d say that moving away from certain auras and spell modifiers is a healthy direction. It never felt good that Restoration’s basic casts were largely meaningless unless they were buffed by multiple talents, leaving us in an awkward, helpless spot whenever those effects weren’t active.
While it is not ideal to see them go out of the sheer attachment that many Restoration players have to them since Legion, abilities like Tidebringer (specifically the cast time reduction), High Tide, and Tidal Waves have all felt frustrating to manage to varying degrees.
Mixed Changes
The choice between Ascendance and Healing Tide Totem really stings. While turning these abilities into a choice node is the correct choice for the raiding scene, I believe it will ultimately hurt the spec in Mythic+, especially as players begin tackling higher keys.
I understand that limiting cooldowns aligns with the upcoming Midnight encounter philosophy, but it might be better to keep both abilities and simply tune their strength instead. For instance, a talent modifier could empower one to act as your primary cooldown while keeping the other as a weaker but still serviceable option.
Either way, I think this is worth revisiting to preserve Restoration’s flexibility and identity, especially considering that we lack other external defensive tools such as single-target damage reduction or emergency shielding abilities like Life Cocoon, Pain Suppression, or Time Dilation.
Poor Changes
Now, for the elephant in the room, whether Restoration is considered a spec with true depth or not can be argued both ways. However, with the current alpha iteration, I feel that debate no longer matters. The spec been stripped of rotational complexity and spec identity, reduced to what is essentially a three button rotation.
The build diversity of Restoration has also narrowed significantly, with Whispering Waves and Healing Rain/Downpour spam emerging as the go-to talent setup. As a result, much of the specialization’s healing now feels automated (even more so if you pick Healing Tide), leaving its impact on encounters minimal, often just placing Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem and hoping for the best. It’s disappointingly similar to how the spec was played back in Mists of Pandaria, a 13 year old game.
This could be addressed by reintroducing Cloudburst Totem, an ability many players found genuinely fun and engaging. Keeping it as a choice node with Healing Stream Totem would maintain flexibility for those who prefer simpler gameplay, after all, more options are always better.
Another issue lies with Riptide, which has become not just uninspired, but outright frustrating to play. You have to monitor its uptime on allies, as Whispering Waves is practically mandatory, and with Tidal Waves removed and Stormstream Totem as the new Apex talent, you’re forced to spam Riptide on cooldown, hoping for an extremely rare proc from SST. This doesn’t feel exciting or powerful as it’s essentially just another Healing Stream Totem with a new name.
On top of that, Restoration is being severely hindered by the removal of certain auras and modifiers, most notably Tidebringer’s range increase for Chain Heal. This change has proven especially punishing in dungeons, where allies often spread out (whether for comfort, player choice or due to encounter design) severely limiting the effectiveness of both Chain Heal and Healing Rain (not to mention HR has an increased cooldown that punishes mobility now), two of the spec’s very few tools for keeping the group alive within an already overly simplified kit.
Lastly on healing, the modifier contradiction: currently on the alpha, a sizable portion of the spec tree is filled with modifiers, making it feel as though we have to spend a decent number of points just to make our baseline spells perform adequately. This feels strikingly similar to the issues currently faced on live (one that was supposedly being addressed) though now it’s simply less obvious and less impactful.
Many of our talent points end up going into small numerical bonuses like “Healing Wave gains X% more critical chance” or “Chain Heal costs X% less mana.” This problem extends beyond the spec tree itself and into the new Hero spec and class talents, which are largely flat percentage stat gains or basic buffs to core abilities. In my opinion, this is a missed opportunity and, frankly, a waste of talent space for a spec that, in this alpha build, suffers from limited build diversity and depth. It effectively reduces Restoration’s identity to Riptide spamming and maintenance, and drop-and-forget spells, both which are neither engaging nor enjoyable gameplay.
As a last point of frustration: all of this feedback is only the healing side of the problem. Restoration has, at times, been capable of contributing meaningful DPS to a group composition, especially during dungeons, but those options have now vanished. Master of the Elements is gone, there is no way to spread Flame Shock, and Ancestor summoning is now awkwardly tied to Healing Stream Totem. Even Thunderstorm, a versatile tool for interrupting enemies or creating breathing room to heal has been made exclusive to Elemental, which really hurts the utility parity between shaman specs.
Conclusion
To summarize these thoughts: while I believe the overall aura and modifier pruning, along with some defensive adjustments, is a step in the right direction, there’s still room to reintroduce certain abilities to give the spec more build diversity and depth during gameplay.
Bringing back partial aspects of the removed auras could also help smooth out gameplay and make the experience far more engaging. For example, Tidebringer’s range bonus could return without the cast time reduction, or Master of the Elements could make a comeback to enable Flame Shock spreading without reintroducing the Healing Surge (now Wave) buff.
I myself am relatively new to directly playing Restoration Shaman, but even from a brief comparison of gameplay between TWW and Midnight, the spec feels far less engaging to play on the Alpha, with far less places to reward skilled cooldown management. Hopefully, the overall goal of rotational simplification can be achieved without dulling down what makes Restoration Shaman such a unique totem-centric healer.