RESTO SHAMAN HEALING COURSE

RESTO SHAMAN PLAYSTYLE

Welcome to our Resto Shaman healing course for The War Within, which is custom designed to equip you with all of the essential knowledge that's needed to really excel in PvP.

Now, in this introductory video, we're going to be explaining how the spec plays and how a few things have changed from Dragonflight into The War Within. Now, first up, if you're brand new to the spec, let's explain where Resto Shaman falls on the healer spectrum, so to speak.

Shaman is a textbook proactive healer, which means truly excelling on this spec requires us to really plan in advance. We're not doing anything on the fly.

We're not like Holy Priests or Holy Paladins, jam-packed with those bursty reactive cooldowns and strong life-saving cooldowns. Instead, we need to really focus on preparing for incoming damage before it happens, relying on our routine maintenance in order to keep up.

Falling behind is extremely punishing, which means we really need to constantly stay on track with our routine heals. Earthshield, Riptide, and Healing Stream are all of our central abilities for our healing maintenance, and they really need to be up and rolling before damage even starts happening.

Some of our cooldowns are even proactive, too. Both Earthen Wall and Healing Tide Totem are abilities that get more value by using them right before big damage comes in and not when damage has already happened.

In here, we really need to dispel a common myth that Resto Shaman is a, quote, easy healer.

People make the mistake of simply looking at details, seeing Riptide, Healing Stream, and sometimes even Earthen Wall at the top of the meters, and assuming because all of these buttons are instant that Shaman must be an absolute breeze to play.

And what these players fail to see, is everything else Resto Shamans do in order to win. Our healing toolkit only represents a literal fraction of what we're capable of, and in order to truly excel in Arena, we really need to master the art of disruption.

In the words of three-time BlizzCon champion SwapSee, the entire Shaman class is GCD capped, which means alongside our heals, we need to be constantly pressing abilities, becoming highly disruptive, and having a wide-open view of the entire Arena.

Now to be successful as Resto Shaman, we need to be using our Wind Shears, our Roots, our Knocks, Stuns, and so on, in order to disrupt every player on the enemy team from start to finish.

Now if you rolled Shaman expecting to just simply heal, well, you're really gonna have to think again, or maybe just go to a different spec. Resto Shaman is a healing spec that requires constant multitasking, especially at the highest level.

If you're not ready to Wind Shear one target, Lasso another, and land frame-perfect grounding totems, well, you're really just gonna have a bad time. Now, with all of this disruptive tech, Resto Shaman can play an offensive support role in Arena.

Gone are the days of needing to camp at a pillar with your healing stream. The modern Resto Shaman needs to play with their team, assisting with kills whenever possible.

Resto is kind of a jack-of-all-trades, not by choice, but by nature. It's a game of choice, and it's a game of necessity.

Going into the War Within, we've picked up some new tech. The expansion brings with it brand new hero talents, including the Farseer, which empowers our healing by summoning ancestors to mimic our moves.

We've also been blessed with a redesigned talent tree, even including the return of Stone Bulwark Totem, granting us a powerful shield and filling a defensive void we've really been missing for far too long. And with buffs to both Healing Tide and Spirit Link Totem, our cooldowns are now even better.

So, if you're up for a bit of a challenge, well, you're in the right place. Resto Shaman is definitely going to be rewarding, only if you are willing to put in the effort and the practice.

And throughout this course, we're really going to guide you from start to finish on that path to playing just like a Rank 1 Resto Shaman.

RESTO SHAMAN GOALS

Alright, you've made it this far. Welcome back to our healing course for Restoration Shaman in the War Within.

In this video, we're going to be giving you five simple goals that you need to stick to in every single arena game. Now, as a healer, there's only one goal you absolutely need to stick to no matter what, and that is do not neglect your maintenance.

Now, while it might be fun to make high-risk, high-reward plays, nothing feels worse than losing when trying to be flashy. Remember that Resto Shaman is a very proactive healer.

Between Earthshield, Riptide, and Healing Stream Totem, we have three vital rotational abilities to maintain at literally all times, and most of our healing cooldowns are small and humble compared to the huge life-saving abilities of other healers.

So, in order to have good maintenance, we're going to need to make sure that we're keeping our healing cool.

We're going to aim to keep Earthshield on the kill target at all times, applying Riptide to targets taking damage, having a Healing Stream rolling as often as we can, and then even keeping Watershield applied to ourselves.

Our shields become less of a priority if you're running Therizane's Resilience, as it keeps Earthshield and Watershield at full charges automatically. In this case, your main focus shifts to watching for Earthshield getting purged.

If that happens, you'll want to reapply it immediately. Now, the best healers, like Lontar, make sure all of their maintenance boxes are checked before making any high-risk plays.

He understands that his role as a healer is to be a safety net for his team, which requires him to avoid reckless plays. Keyword there, avoid.

Our second major goal is to try and press an ability almost every single global. Now, this sounds exhausting, we understand that, but it's very, very important.

At some, point in every single game, you are going to run out of healing buttons to press. Riptide is going to be on cooldown, Earthshield is already up, and Healing Stream is rolling.

Does this mean you just sit around and AFK? Well, no, of course it doesn't.

You need to fill these dead spaces with everything your toolkit has to offer, like using your roots on enemy melee or static field to help your teammates create distance. Even the simple act of purging a key buff can help bring your team back to normal.

If you're not sure what to do, you can use your tool kit to do that. It's a great way to bring you inches closer towards that win.

What many healers fail to realize is that using CC can be just as important as healing, since by stopping damage, it means less healing that you actually have to press. Now, one of the absolute best things you can do is get value out of Windshear.

As the only healer in the game with a magical ranged kick, Resto Shamans have enormous power to dictate momentum. Whether it's shutting down damage from an enemy caster, harassing, or even killing an enemy, they can do it all.

While we're on the topic here, our next goal is to proactively avoid CC. Now, as a tempo-based healer, we can't afford to fall behind, and every single CC chain can feel brutal to recover from, since it means falling behind on maintenance.

But luckily, between Windshear, Grounded, and Windshear, we can't afford to fall behind on CC. So, let's get into the details.

Now, we have more than enough tools to avoid CC. Well, as long as we're using them often.

Now, later in this course, we're going to be teaching you some tips on how to master all your CC avoidance tools, but for now, just have the mindset of proactively avoiding crowd control and really being just highly disruptive.

Anyone who has played Shaman and Solo Shuffle, they already know how frustrating it is when your teammates walk directly, and they're not even aware of the fact that you're using CC. So, let's get into the details.

Now, there are some ways to make this less common, though, like making macros that include pings and slash yell lines. But at the end of the day, you're going to have to deal with players who don't even know you or your totem exist in the game.

So, before you immediately just throw down your Earthen Wall, consider where the fight is actually going to take place. If you're playing in a melee-heavy lobby, it's going to be pretty obvious since all DPS will pretty much stay stacked the entire time.

But if you're playing with Caster, you're going to have to be very careful.

If you're playing with a player with high mobility or hunters that really like to kite just all over the map, you're going to need to be a lot more careful, either by placing Earthen when you know they won't move, or being ready to move it with Totemic Projection once they kite out.

Now, look at where they might be heading and then just place your Earthen Wall accordingly. We need to be honest with ourselves here.

It's not 2012 anymore. God, that was 12 years ago.

Our fifth and final goal is to protect your healing tide. These days, players are equipped with an arsenal of weak auras and nameplay add-ons ready to snipe down our poor little totems.

Now, what this means is that we need to be diligent when using healing tide totem, especially now as it's really stronger than ever, giving bonus healing to lower targets and increasing its healing done the longer it stays up. But none of this really matters if you aren't willing to protect it.

This starts with where you place it. Chucking it out in the open is like leading a sheep straight into a trap.

If you're not willing to protect it, you're not going to be able to protect it. You're going to be able to protect it.

You're going to be able to protect it. Don't let those lions eat.

Instead, place your healing tide away from your opponents behind pillars down a Z-axis, just really anything to confuse their weak aura brains. And if a pillar isn't near, then use Totemic Projection to just chuck it like a grenade behind some LOS.

Now, of course, none of these methods will guarantee your healing tide lives its full duration. But at the very least, they both guarantee that you will get some value out of it.

One of our most important CDs. Anyway, guys, for now, that wraps up our five biggest goals when playing Restoration Shaman in Arena.

But be sure to stick around because in the next video, we're going to be teaching you step by step on how to maximize healing.

RESTO SHAMAN MAINTENANCE HEALING PRIORITY

Now that you know your healing goals, let's dive into how you need to prioritize your maintenance heals. Here, we're going to break down how you deal with passive sources of damage, teaching you exactly how you can keep health bars stable at any stage of the game when there isn't much damage happening.

Note that this isn't a rotation, but instead, it's a priority system, meaning spells at the top of this list should be used over any spell below it. Our number one priority is going to be keeping Earth Shield on the main kill target at all times.

Not only is this going to be one of your strongest sources of passive healing, but it's also going to reduce the target's damage taken, and it'll even heal for more as the target's health decreases.

If you also happen to be playing with the reactive warding talent, you're going to want to be refreshing Earth Shield before it completely expires.

Doing so is going to grant the target a bonus burst heal, and it's going to allow you to get maxed out on the target, and you'll be able to get maximum value out of Earth Shield.

If you're running Therizane's Resilience, you don't need to constantly watch the stacks, but you should keep an eye on whether the buff gets purged. Maintaining Earth Shield is still crucial, and you'll want to swap it around based on who's taken the most damage on your team.

If we're playing Totemic, then Surging Totem is next in line on our priority list. If mana's not going to be an issue, you're going to want to press this on cooldown, as it's not only going to provide direct healing benefits, but will also allow us to massively buff our Riptide, with Coalescing Waters.

Next up on our priority list is to keep Riptide applied to the kill target at all times, and then use it to pad any minor damage on off targets as needed. Now, of course, Riptide will provide a burst heal and a heal over time effect, but what we also care about is how much it buffs our downstream healing.

That's because every cast of Riptide will grant us the Tidal Waves buff, which we'll then use later on to empower our casted heals. And on top of this, Riptide being active will also increase the healing done by our casted heals on the target too, and even duplicate the healing we do when playing Whispering Waves.

Put simply, what this means is that before we invest any time hard casting spells, we're going to want to use Riptide first in order to get some big healing multipliers. Next up on our priority list is going to come from Healing Stream Totem, which has two charges.

We're going to want to keep at least one charge on CD, and we're going to want to keep at least one charge on CD at all times. Healing Stream is even better in the War Within, as it now provides stacking magical damage reduction on our entire team with every tick.

Now, this is surprisingly strong even into some melee, as there are very few pure physical damage classes left in the game. Now, when using Healing Stream Totem, you're going to want to give it some protection with LOS whenever possible, since it'll do more healing at the start of its duration.

Avoid placing it in wide open areas, since better players are going to be quick to snipe it down. Our next priority will be using Unleash Life on CD, but we need to specify that this ability is also crucial for our main spot healing combo, which is Nature's Swiftness, Unleash Life, and Healing Wave.

Now, at this point, we're basically out of our healing maintenance, which means now it's time to weave in our utility. Here, we want to prioritize stopping damage.

So, if we're playing against a melee-heavy team, this can mean using our Roots, Knocks, or even Static Field Totem to peel damage off of our teammates. And against casters, we're going to want to look for important spells to interrupt, with Windshear, or completely deny them with Grounding Totem.

There's also going to be times where our defensive utility will be our number one priority. For instance, if we have to make the choice between refreshing Riptide or using Grounding Totem on a vital cast, then Grounding is going to take precedence.

Finally, last up on our maintenance priority is assisting our team with offensive utility.

Again, the goal is to make sure we don't have any dead Globals, so if there's no damage to heal or defensive utility to press, we can then think about assisting our team offensively, either with aggressive Windshears and Hexes, or even the simple act of purging a key buff.

This concludes our section on maintenance healing. In the next video, we're going to be covering how to handle a team with Windshear, and how to handle spot healing.

So, what's your priority when the target is low on health, and you need to immediately recover? Stay tuned!

RESTO HERO TALENTS: FARSEER

Hey everyone, welcome to the next video in our Restoration Shaman healing course. In this video, we're going to be covering the hero spec which is shared between Resto and Elemental.

It's called the Farseer, whose signature perk includes summoning ancestors to mimic your spells. If you cast a single target healing spell, your ancestor is going to cast one too.

If you AoE, they're going to AoE. If you cast damage, well, you guessed it, so will your ancestor.

Ancestors can be summoned in two main ways, including Unleashed Life and Ancestral Swiftness, which will not only summon one on its own, but will also automatically summon an extra ancestor with the Season 3 tier set bonus.

Additionally, there's a talent on the Farseer tree that can cause an ancestor to proc from Riptide, though this talent isn't always taken in PvP. You'll even gain an extra charge of Riptide with the Farseer tree, making it easier to use more often.

Depending on your RNG, it's even possible to have multiple ancestors out at once if you get lucky, and each time one is summoned, the cooldown on Riptide is going to be reduced.

Having ancestors out provides a pretty big boost to your healing output, but what's even better with this is what happens when they expire, because with the final calling talent, they're going to leave behind a powerful shield on an injured ally.

Summoning ancestors is just half of the benefit provided by the Farseer tree, though. Summoning ancestors is just half of the benefit provided by the Farseer tree, though.

The other half comes from the capstone ability, Ancestral Swiftness. This spell replaces Nature Swiftness, making the next healing spell instant, zero mana cost, and 10% stronger, but with only a 30-second cooldown.

If that wasn't enough, it's even going to summon an ancestor. Now, what this means is that we have a powerful healing combo available to us every 30 seconds, which we already covered in our spot healing guide.

But as a refresher, every 30 seconds, our goal will be to make sure Earthshield and Riptide are on the target. Then, we unleash life, summoning an ancestor.

And then, send our Ancestral Swiftness on Healing Wave, which will summon a second ancestor. For the next few seconds, we'll have increased healing output, and when both ancestors expire, they're going to leave shields on the most injured target, which, I'm going to be honest here, is pretty damn good.

The Farseer tree also allows you to slightly modify your healings, and you can use it to increase your healing rotation, allowing Tidal Waves to now stack up to four.

Now, what this means is that instead of needing to Riptide, and then consume each stack with a casted heal, you can now potentially Riptide twice in a row without overcapping on Tidal Waves.

Defensively, Farseer is a pretty good pick too, as it's going to give you stronger Nature's Guardian procs or more Earthshield healing. If you don't expect to be attacked much, you're pretty safe to play Earthen Communion, for more pad healing on yourself.

But if you are likely to be the kill target in any given matchup, we'd probably recommend a stronger Nature's Guardian, especially against teams with high burst damage.

Now, as a final, somewhat niche perk here, the Farseer tree even allows you to extend the duration of Spirit Walker's Grace and its Interrupt Immunity, when using a spell with a cast time.

This includes any heals, or even offensive spells like Hex, encouraging you to cast often during your Spirit Walker, to extend the Aura Mastery effect. Overall, the Farseer tree does seem to be the number one pick for PvP in The War Within.

Not only does it passively buff your standard healing rotation, but it also gives you a strong healing combo every single 30 seconds, which allows you to keep up with the pace of high damage in Arena.

RESTO SHAMAN SPOT HEALING PRIORITY: FARSEER

Now that we have covered our healing maintenance, let's move on to spot healing combos. These are the spell sequences that you're going to be using to recover and top your ally through larger amounts of damage.

Now in this section, we're going to be going over a few different combos you can use to heal damage efficiently. Now before we start, what's at the core of our spot healing is one key buff, Tidal Waves, which we're going to get two stacks of every time we Riptide, empowering our next two healing surges or healing waves.

Now because of this, we want to be spot healing with a pattern, using Riptide first in order to get Tidal Waves and buff our downstream healing. Having Riptide on targets will also allow us to benefit from Whispering Waves, which will help duplicate more healing with our main spot healing combos.

First up, let's go over our main healing combo, designed to top any of our main spot healing combos. Now before we do any burst healing here, we'll want to make sure Earth Shield and Riptide are already applied to the target.

Following this, we'll then use Unleash Life for a big healing modifier. Finally, we'll use Ancestral Swiftness or Nature Swiftness immediately into a healing wave.

This will heal the target for a large amount, and then splashing over some additional heals to any target with Riptide if we're playing Whispering Waves. If our 30 second combo is down, we're going to need to find a way to heal the target.

We'll also need to find other ways to spot heal. No matter what though, we're always going to make sure Earth Shield and Riptide are active on the main target.

Then we'll cast Unleash Life, and if we can free cast, then we're going to healing surge, otherwise we'll Riptide, giving us a minor instant burst heal and a stronger hot.

When spot healing, what we want to avoid is being in a situation where we're spamming healing surge without Tidal Waves already active, which means weaving Riptide into our main target.

We'll also want to keep Riptide in between our cast, since this is going to give us increased crit chance on our cast, and will even help reset the cooldown of our major totems.

RESTO HERO TALENTS: TOTEMIC

Welcome back! In this video we're going to be covering the Totemic Hero build which, you guessed it, is all about a sweet new Totem.

It's called Surging Totem, which replaces Healing Rain entirely with a new ability that provides tons of downstream healing benefits.

But just to be clear here, just like Healing Rain, the Totem will automatically heal any allies within its radius and because of its high mana cost, we highly recommend playing with the Rain Dance PvP talent.

Anyway, once Surging Totem is summoned, you're going to get three unique buffs thanks to the in-cap talent Whirling Elements. The first of these will increase the effectiveness of the next healing wave or healing surge on any ally within the Totem's radius.

The next will double down by also reducing the cast time of your next healing spell. And the final benefit will cause your next Chain Heal to apply Earth Living at increased effectiveness.

Now here's where you might be asking, wait a second, Chain Heal? I thought that was never used in PvP.

Well, fear not, because the true perk of Totemic comes from the Lively Totems passive, which causes any Water Totem to automatically cast Chain Heal for free.

Water Totems include Healing Tide, Healing Stream, Mana Tide Totem, Spirit Link Totem, and Cloudburst, which you don't really play, but hey, it's technically a Water Totem too.

The reason these auto-chain heals are so important, aside from applying Earth Living, is that they're going to give you up to two stacks of Coalescing Water, which provides up to 150% increased healing to Riptide. That is a huge modifier.

This creates a simple gameplay loop. Whenever we need big instant healing, we want to then ideally press one or even two Water Totems in a row first.

That way, we can generate Coalescing Water stacks in order to get out a big instant Riptide. On top of surging Totem, Totemic also provides numerous quality of life perks, including Oversized Totem.

Totemic also gives you a total of 50% healing to your opponent's healing, which increases the HP of, well, our Totems. Now, this doesn't mean you can suddenly get lazy with hiding your Healing Stream and Healing Tide.

You should still aim to protect them with LOS, but at least now, they're going to be slightly more inconvenient to kill. Totemic also allows our Healing Stream Totem to heal an additional target at 50% effectiveness, bolstering one of our top healing spells.

It also grants an entirely new imbuement called Tidecaller's Guard. This is a very useful skill, which, unlike our Earth Living, will actually go on our shield, allowing us to have both up at the same time.

And speaking of Earth Living, along with Earthen Wall Totem, it's going to cause all affected allies to take 15% more healing. Now, this isn't a modifier we necessarily need to play around, but it is quite nice, especially with the imbuement mastery passive, which increases the duration of Earth Living.

Finally, like many hero specs, we do get a very minor defensive buff from Totemic, which is a Tidecaller's Guard. This is a very small buff, but it's going to be a very useful skill, especially with the imbuement mastery passive, which increases the duration of Earth Living.

RESTO SHAMAN SPOT HEALING PRIORITY: TOTEMIC

In this guide, we're going to cover some of the burst healing sequences you can do while playing Totemic in order to recover your partners at low HP. This first sequence focuses exclusively on instant cast spells and is ideal when healing is needed while interrupts are available.

First up, we're going to want Earthshield already on the target. Then we'll use Surging Totem on top of our teammates.

Now in order to build our Coalescing Water, we're going to aim to use two Water Totems. Here we're using both our healing stream charges.

Now we're going to unleash into a Riptide, which will spend our Coalescing Water stacks for a massive up-front heal. Next up, we have a healing combo using Nature's Swiftness for both single target and a little bit of AoE healing.

Just like before, we're going to want Earthshield already applied to the target, but this time we're going to also want Riptide up first for an additional multiplier. Then we'll use Surging Totem on top of our target.

This will increase the amount of healing they'll take. Then we'll unleash life into a massive Nature's Swiftness healing wave, which will do massive burst healing to our target.

Finally, we have a simple sequence that isn't as exciting, but it's going to be your bread and butter combo when you need healing in a pinch. Just like before, we'll make sure Earthshield is up, and then we'll Riptide for a Tidal Waves buff.

Then we'll use Surging Totem on our teammates. Following this, we'll unleash.

Then cast Healing Surge to consume our Tidal Waves.

RESTO SHAMAN OPENER

So let's move past all this theory and just get to the practical stuff. We've heard your cries for it, and here we go.

In this next part of our Restoration Shaman Healing course, we're going to be guiding you through the best strategies for how to approach openers.

We're going to cover the goals, the thought processes, we're going to cover the decision making, and we're also going to draw some insights from Lontar, the 2024 AWC Champion.

The first thing we're going to do in every game before the gates open is do some housekeeping, making sure we buff Earth Shield and Water Shield on ourselves, and making sure we have Earth Living Weapon applied.

And then we need to think who is most likely to be the kill target on our team and buff them with Earth Shield too. Finally, we need to make sure we're using our new buff, Sky Fury, which will be applied to everyone in the group.

In almost every solo matchup, we're always going to be doing two things in the opener. Number one is prepare for the impasse, which is the enemy team's big burst with our Earth Shield, Riptide, Healing Stream, and then most importantly, Earthen Wall Totem.

And number two, we're going to be looking to use our utility, including our CC, to either slow damage down or support our team as needed. And chances are we're going to be doing both at the same time.

Once the gates open, your first few globals are always going to be the same. You're going to Riptide the target you expect to take damage first, and then Riptide your second DPT.

If we expect the fight to start immediately, we could instead unleash before our first Riptide for some extra healing. Anyway, once that's all done, our next global will be to use Healing Stream.

Notice here that Lontar has dropped his Healing Stream out of line of sight and has now positioned himself to avoid taking any immediate damage from the enemy DKs. You want to prevent yourself from being a target if you can.

Definitely note that here. Then once the fight starts, he immediately drops his Earthen Wall Totem on top of the initial clash, and then he proceeds to go into Ghost Wolf as he crosses the map in order to build stacks of Spirit Wolf, which will give him damage reduction in case he gets gripped in.

So now, by pre-placing Earthen and having some damage reduction rolling, he has protected himself from an early game swap. Now, it's time to use some utility.

Here, we can see Lontar get huge value out of his Earthgrab Totem. He's going to use it to get a bunch of DK pets to stall some early game damage.

Now, he's going to help pad even more damage by resetting his Earthen Wall with Totemic Recall, and then placing a second Earthen below his DPS.

And as we can see, he'll have to adjust the position of his Totems with Totemic Projection, but we're still not safe yet because the enemy team still has CDs up for a few more seconds. In order to deal with this, Lontar is going to go behind the pillar to drop Healing Tide.

Which he manages to do right before getting gripped. Note here that this team did so much damage, they actually managed to kill the Earthen, emphasizing its value way more.

Luckily, with Healing Tide rolling, we're still protected though. Of course, our cooldowns aren't always enough, and Lontar is still forced to use his 30-second Burst combo to top the Warrior.

But look at what our team was able to do in the process here, forcing Trinket from the healer and both from the DKs. By being careful and being proactive, we were able to survive a brutal opener and get ahead at the same time.

Now while this video is definitely designed to give you a cookie-cutter opener that works in almost every matchup, just keep in mind that the chaos of Solo Shuffle might force you to make on-the-fly adaptations.

Things don't always go as planned, but as long as you play safe and you do all your early game maintenance, drop an early Earthen Wall Totem, and then get your first game. And try and slow damage down with utility, you're already on the right track.

RESTO SHAMAN COOLDOWN ROTATION

Alright, in this guide we're going to be guiding you through different stages of the average solo shuffle game, breaking down how each individual cooldown was pressed to stay ahead on tempo. To do this, we're going to be following AWC champion Lontar in a matchup against other Rank 1 players.

Notice here that one of Lontar's first globals in the opener is an Earthgrab on the Warrior, which doesn't seem like much, but it's going to help slow down some damage. And because damage is about to start trickling in, Lontar places a Healing Stream Totem, giving his team some magic damage reduction.

He then recognizes that his DK is doing a go, which he contributes to with a Cap Stun on the Warrior and a Lightning Lasso on the Shaman, making sure to stay out of Thunderstorm range.

Normally at this stage of the opener, we would have ideally pressed Earthen Wall, but since our teammates' positioning has been so sporadic, Lontar instead makes his first cooldown trade with Healing Tide Totem, which he places behind LOS to avoid getting sniped down quickly.

He'll then use his 30-second burst healing combo with Ancestral Swiftness to recover his Hunter's HP while the Tide buff is active. And to wrap up the opener, once positioning is more established, he presses Earthen Wall Totem to help pad out some damage as we go into the midgame.

Throughout the midgame, Lontar is going to take a few hits, and then he's going to take a few hits, and then he's going to take a few hits, and then he's going to try and stick to his 30-second Ancestral Swiftness combo, using it to recover as needed.

Meanwhile, he'll be checking the cooldown of Earthen Wall, and once it's up, he's going to look for an opportunity to use it. And here, just moments later, he recognizes that his team is stacked, giving him a perfect opportunity to press it again for its maximum value.

At this point, though, there is one cooldown that we have yet to discuss, and that cooldown is Ascendance. This can be a pretty tricky CD to use in solo, but since it provides a healing increase, we're going to get more value by using it before the late game when Dampening is stacked.

Here, Lontar uses Ascendance once he recognizes his team is under AoE pressure. Now, our goal is going to be to use the healing increase of Ascendance to try and stabilize our team going into the two-minute mark of the round, where pressure is really going to start to ramp up.

Now, we're entering the late game, where our normal healing output will struggle to be enough. Ideally, by this point here, we're still going to have Spirit Link available, because now is where it's going to get the most value.

Despite the fact that our Hunter is in Turtle, Lontar can't afford to sit a big CC chain, which is why he uses Trinket Link. And to close out the game, we're aiming to use all remaining cooldowns as they come up in order to stay ahead on tempo.

And here, our decision to use Earthen in the early game will pay off, as now, in the late game, we're able to double Earthen, which even allows Lontar to sit CC deep into Dampening.

Lontar is going to finish this game with Healing Tide Totem, which again, comes back off CD, just in case this game were to drag on any longer.

So, just to recap, as a general cooldown cadence that can work in most solo shuffle lobbies, we're going to aim to use our big Ancestral Swiftness combo every 30 seconds to spot heal as needed.

In the early game, we're aiming to use at least a few of our early cooldowns, and at least one Earthen Wall Totem and Healing Tide, protecting it with LOS. Then, in the mid game, we want to squeeze some value out of Ascendance, and aim to use Earthen Wall again when it comes back.

And finally, in the late game, we're going to have the ability to double Earthen once again, and use Healing Tide once more, then using Spirit Link as a last resort.