WotLK Resto Shaman stuff!

Someone already did some good writeups on Thunderstorm from the Elemental Shaman tree, so I'd like to talk to y'all about a little thing called rest-o-ration.

I only got one beta key (I'm not done QQing about it either), so I went resto and grouped with 4 Death Knights over and over and over. So resto shamans have this new top-tier called Spirit Link, right?
It's so perfect for what we do. Here's how it goes down:

Spirit Link 1 rank, requires 50 points in restoration talents and 1 in Improved Chain Heal
1) You target a group member and hit your instant-cast "spirit link" button. The targetting is exactly as controllable as Chain Heal. Same graphic for now, too; the yellowish laser beam.
2) 50% of the damage that would have happened to the target of spirit link now does not happen to them. It happens to the person or people with whom your target was linked. They have little green glowy rings (flat, like Saturn) around them while the 60-second buff lasts.
3) Whomever receives the link now caused that damage to their teammates. This will probably make for some hilarious butt-hurt DPS classes as prot warriors will be doing 10000k DPS in some fights (it'll be going to the other two with whom they're linked instead of hitting them). That's just a theory, but what you do see if Mcbooty is tanking and taking damage, while linked to the offtank Sheniqua, is "Mcbooty's spirit link hits Sheniqua for 200 physical". Spirit link lasts 60 seconds or until an attack takes one member of the link below 30%, or one attack would have been strong enough to take a member down to 20%. I know that doesn't make sense, but when it fades you'll know.

So imagine your 4 shaman group; it might be time to make #4 (the one with the crappy damage gear who always seems to get lost on the way) and make them resto. Then they can just spam Chain Heal on the other three, whom have all been spirit linked, and everyone stays upright. The rest of the Shaman talents are just gravy.
Caveats: It works on pets! MUA HA HA have a nice death, Succ. Also it's a little buggy at the moment in beta, in that it sometimes affects you so that you get 50% of the damage the target would have gotten. But you like that anyway.

Ancestral Awakening Requires 40 points in Restoration talents. 3 ranks.
What else... there's the ancestral awakening. That's just funny. Any time you land a crit heal, an ancestral spirit shows up and heals whomever in your party has the lowest HPs, for 20/40/60% of the amount you just critted for. Pretty sweet free heal, makes you look like you're on top of things. I haven't tried this, because I couldn't fit it in my low-level build yet, but I did see it in a few combat logs. One guy jumped off of the windrider tower in Org and healed himself (As we do), and crit healed so he got the extra 40% from his ancestor showing up too.

Cleanse Spirit 1 rank. Requires 30 points in Restoration Talents. Requries 5 points in purification.
SHUT UP! (The Princess Diaries-style shut up) For 7% of your base mana, you cleanse one poison, one disease and one curse off of your target.
Bring it on, 3v3 DK/Rogue/Lock! I ain't scurred.

Improved Earth Shield 2 ranks. Requires 40 points in restoration talents and 1 point in Earth Shield. Increases the amount healed by Earth Shield by 5%/10%, and increases the number of charges per Earth Shield by 1/2. I love this so much. It brings us closer to what made us originally fall in love with Earth Shield for the first time. The math of this is so good: Increase my already awesome Earth Shield by 10% healing, then add on 2 charges to the 6? So another 33%ish? Let's say each was hitting for 100 health before (ha!). Now for the same amount of mana, the spell will last 48 seconds instead of 36, each ball will heal for 110 instead of 100, and there will be 8 balls of... brown stuff instead of six. So Earth Shield 1 would heal for a total of 600 over 36 seconds, but the improved Earth Shield x2 would heal for 880 over 48 seconds for the same amount of mana. YES PLEASE.

Tidal Force 1 rank. Requires 10 points in Restoration Talents. Increases the critical effect chance of your next Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, and Chain Heal spell by 60%. Each crit reduces the chance by 20%.
It's a much watered down (don't envy my wit) version of Elemental Mastery for heals. But it persists until you get a few crits off. I keep forgetting to try this out, so I don't know if it's working yet or not. Sorry about the repair bills, folks.

Tidal Waves 5 ranks. Requires 45 points in Restoration talents. You have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance after casting Chain Heal to lower the casting time of your next three Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spells by 30%, and your Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave gain an additional 5/10/15/20/25% of your bonus healing effects.
Oh my. What does that mean? You now heal harder, better, faster and stronger than a certain-class-that-shall-remain-unnamed's flashing Flash of Light. 30% faster than pretty fast is JIFFY-QUICK

I have two more changes to discuss, then I swear I'll let you go. Healing Focus used to be some weird number... 13% or something chance to avoid interruption when casting any shaman heal spell. There were 5 ranks. Now it's 3 ranks, and breaks down to a 23%/46%/70% chance to avoid interruption while casting any shaman heal spell (Sorry Naaru... we don't want your gift). Then, there's something in the not-resto tree over there on the left: Eye of the Storm from Elemental. Gives a 23/46/70% chance to avoid interruption when casting Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst and Hex.
I think a PvE/PvP/Solo Grind spec you're going to start seeing a lot of is a 18/0/43 (i.e. Eye of the storm/Earth Shield) build from level 71+. I'm finding that spells are more than twice as effective against the PvE northrend enemies than trying to melee them. So it's great they've finally given us some pushback resistance.
Incidentally it'll be possible to do an 18/0/51 build and get spirit link with that.

I hope these talents remain, and hope I've given you some food for thought, theoretical theory-crafters!
-Robin McBooty

Resto looks amazing. I'll probably do my BG grind as restos and even finish out a resto set after my dps set. Linking just got a major buff and shaman look to be the best healers in the game come wotlk imo.

my solo leveled shammy is resto, can't wait to sink my teeth into these new abilities. Looks like they have taken some of the weaknesses shammy healers had and made them less of a problem.