Mythic Keystone Dungeons

In this article I’m going to go over talents, legendaries, and general tips for Restoration Shamans to do in mythic+ dungeons. I’m not going to go in-depth over every dungeon but I will make note of certain times where talents or legendaries are much better due in a particular dungeon.

To begin, a quick rundown of how to heal in Mythic+ dungeons for a beginner.

  • Single target healing spells are going to be your predominant way of healing people.  Typically you will want to use Healing Surge as your main source of healing and generate tidal waves using riptide. Chain Heal is usually not a good button to press.
  • You’ll have multiple times to use cooldowns so space them out and use them as needed.  Currently in Legion we have many cooldowns that can be rotated through on trash or used simultaneously on dangerous packs of mobs.
  • Try to use T21 4 set bonus and use it well.  This means keep Healing Rain down as much as possible on targets that will be taking damage and make sure people understand your throughput is massively increased by standing in it.  This being said, make sure you are putting Healing Rain in good places for your group members to stand in.
  • DPS as much as possible during healing downtime,  your damage matters quite a bit as you push higher levels.  Don’t be afraid to use trinkets that enhance your ability to do damage if you can afford to and remember that your first priority is to heal, then damage.
  • We have a ton of utility available to us including an AoE stun, an interrupt, and massive amounts of health increases and damage reductions.  Lightning Surge totem and Wind Shear have most of their use on trash while most survivability increases are more useful on bosses

Talents

For most people talents are pretty rigid since we are focusing more on single target healing. Typical talent builds include these talents.

15

99.9% of the time you want to go with Undulation. The only time you should swap off this talent is if you are doing keys that are far below the difficulty your group is capable of.

30

Anything in this row works. A good choice is usually Gust of Wind since it can be used to access certain routes in dungeons that allow you to skip harder trash pulls or to dodge projectile mechanics.

45

Lightning Surge Totem is the default choice here since a 5 second AoE stun is very useful in almost any dungeon.  You can also use Earthgrab Totem if your group wants an AoE root.

60

This row causes a lot of debate among Shamans. Crashing Waves is quite effective in Mythic+ due to the number of casts of riptides and maintaining high uptime on Tidal Waves. This will give you high output when single target healing. On the other hand, Ancestral Guidance is very strong when used in combination with Ascendance. You can easily top your group in 1-2 globals. Even when used alone, it still does a decent amount of healing and can allow you to DPS to heal.

75

Ancestral Vigor is the most widely used talent in this row since it is quite easy to apply it to all 5 group members before a large burst of damage as well as it having no cooldown when compared to Ancestral Protection Totem. On the other hand with the changes to Mythic+ in 7.3.5 with the battlerez timer change, Ancestral Protection Totem can be very useful if you can predict someone dying.

90

Echo of the Elements is almost mandatory in Mythic+ since it not only allows us to bank up charges of Riptide and Healing Stream Totem, but is the only talent we can take to improve our DPS. If choosing to use the Soul of the Farseer legendary, take Cloudburst Totem to go alongside with Echo.

100

Ascendance is really the only choice in this tier due to High Tide and Wellspring not being useful at all in dungeons. This also allows us to have an extra healing cooldown for when things go poorly.

Affixes

Now, let’s go over what affixes are going to affect us while healing in mythic plus dungeons. The only things that alter our playstyle are the level 4+ and level 7+ affixes as Tyrannical and Fortified are just damage and health multipliers for bosses and trash respectively.

For this category the two notable affixes are Raging and Bursting.

When Raging is applied to the key be sure to keep a close eye on the tank as well as any other damage that the group can take once mobs are enraged. This means saving Capacitor Totem as well as having Wind Shear available for mobs that need to be cc’d or interrupted. 

Bursting can be very easy to deal with, or a nightmare if your group decides to constantly refresh the debuff. There are a few ways you can counter high stacks of bursting. First is using Spirit Link Totem in combination with Ascendance and/or Ancestral Guidance and healing the lowest maximum health person in your group. This is because Bursting does % max health damage and Spirit Link redistributes based on % of health pools. Another way is to use damage reductions as a group and rotate through the group single target healing group members to conserve healing cooldowns for another point in the near future.

These affixes are a bit more tricky. The ones that affect us most in this category are Necrotic, Quaking and Grievous. 

Quaking is by far the easiest of these, but you need to make sure you don’t cast healing spells as quake is going off, since being locked out of casting nature spells for a prolonged period of time can easily cause deaths. 

Necrotic is a tricky affix to deal with since your tank will be taking reduced healing. Past 33 stacks of necrotic the tank will be unhealable. One way to still be able to heal your tank through high necrotic stacks is using Spirit Link Totem and healing other members of your group stood inside the Spirit Link. The health redistribution of the totem ignores the healing reduction caused by necrotic. 

Grievous can be the hardest affix to deal with or the easiest if handled properly. The most important thing to do when healing targets bleeding out from Grievous is to focus on getting one target out of Grievous range then working on the next player. If you try to continuously fight against 5 stack group wide Grievous stacks, you will not have a good time. If using the Soul of the Farseer legendary, make sure you are using Cloudburst Totem to help burst heal the group back to full. Don’t be afraid to use group wide healing cooldowns to mitigate Grievous stacks out of combat while you are working your way through topping off your group.

Legendaries

25% more health against burst damage sources. Many bosses on high tyrannical keys will require you to use Prydaz to soak unavoidable damage.

This allows you to take both Cloudburst Totem and Echo of the Elements. Cloudburst has many uses in instances with regular periodic spikes of damage as well as affixes like bursting and grievous where your group will be taking damage constantly after combat.

Velens is an extra micro cooldown to increase your throughput. Typically this is not needed as you push the upper end of mythic+ since most mechanics will result in one-shot deaths if anyone gets hit by them.

Roots can be very helpful against bosses like Dresaron (Darkheart Thicket) and Talixae Flamewreath (Court of Stars) on weeks with Grievous since you will have to focus less healing on yourself and heal your group members easier.

Since we have Wind Shear as well as Lightning Surge Totem you are almost always going to proc Sephuz’s Secret on a trash pull. This helps in DPSing as well as gives some extra throughput. If you are using any kind of invis pot skips make sure you are wearing this for the extra movement speed.

This has the exact same stats as Velen’s Future Sight except provides a large AoE damage nuke which we are lacking since our only AoE spell is Chain Lightning.

The elemental belt in combination with Echo of the Elements can do some serious damage on single targets if you are able to maintain the debuff provided from this belt. Optimal rotation for this is to wait to Lava Burst until there is 2.5 sec left on the belt debuff. Distance from the target also has an impact since the belt debuff is applied once the Lava Burst projectile hits the target.

On tyrannical bosses sometimes it is best to have extra bloodlust uptime. Remember this also extends the duration of Sense of Urgency as well.

Trinkets

The following is a list of trinkets that are useful in Mythic+ dungeons.  All of these trinkets can be used to great effectiveness in the right situations but can be completely useless in others.  Having a good mix of these trinkets will provide you with multiple combinations that excel in various situations.

This enables you to provide a shield to yourself or your allies to live through a burst of damage. The damage provided by the explosion of this is also decent to use as a DPS trinket.

A decent alternative to Ishkar’s to provide an absorb shield to deal with burst mechanics.

A decent replacement for Ishkar’s. Slightly worse than Archive of Faith and Ishkar’s because the absorb will only proc when the target falls below 35%.  Thus a one shot will still kill the target with DGD on them.

Just like in raiding, this trinket provides a big throughput of healing when people are consistently getting to low health. This is mostly a set and forget trinket during trash and can be useful during skittish weeks or against mobs that deal area of effect damage that is unavoidable.

The item level of this trinket makes it alright to use in M+ but not desirable due to the lack of utility it provides.

This is also true for Aman’Thul’s Vision.

The strongest single target DPS trinket available for us as Resto Shamans. It is definitely worth trying to pick up from DPS members who will likely not want it after a DHT run.

The second best single target DPS trinket available. The mana return isn’t too useful during dungeons but can help on Tyrannical bosses.

This trinket is our only real option for a ranged AoE trinket.  It’s not super great considering our only AoE is 3 target Chain Lightning or spreading Flame Shocks.

The on use effect of this trinket is great for burst AoE. Combo this with AG for insane healing at the same time.

Much like the Terminus Signaling Beacon, this provides massive AoE damage on demand. Using this with AG provides good healing output as well.

Tyrannical bosses at high enough levels will one shot you through all your DRs and health increases. This trinket directly counters those abilities when timed properly.  The damage provided is negligible since the whole purpose of this trinket is to survive one spell cast from a boss.

Stats

Much like raiding (Raiding Stats Article), mastery is going to fall behind in high mythic+ dungeons. This is because most mechanics will likely one shot people without heavy damage reductions. There is also a lot of downtime in dungeons where mastery will have no use. Therefore we feel that it is better to go for versatility, critical strike and haste as they will impact both healing and damage throughput. Versatility has the added benefit of providing damage reduction which is incredibly valuable some weeks. Critical Strike is always good since one of your primary healing sources will be Healing Surge which can be easily crit capped with Tidal Waves. Haste is also a very valuable stat since it will allow you to dump your mana quicker with little punishment since you are able to drink after each pack. If you are looking to push as much damage as possible, look into pieces with versatility and haste as they are our highest DPS stats.

Dungeon Specifics

  • Agronox
  • Thrashbite the Scornful
  • Domatrax
  • Mephistroth
    • Save all cooldowns for the shadow phase.
    • Space out your cooldowns during the shadow phase (hits harder the longer it goes on so HTT first then Asc later).
  • Ymiron, the Fallen King
    • Once skeletons spawn your tank will need a ton of healing.  These adds cannot be CC’d.
  • Harbaron
  • Helya
    • Keep Healing Rain on the Destructor Tentacles in phase 1 since the tank will need a ton of healing.
  • Rokmora
  • Ularogg Cragshaper
    • The intermission is the only healing intensive phase.
    • Wear a DPS set for this boss.
  • Naraxas
  • Dargrul the Underking
    • Try to not CC the Molten Charskin unless it is low and you need the pillar it is about to walk into.
  • Tirathon Saltheril
  • Inquisitor Tormentorum
    • Dispel one member of your group to remove Sap Soul from yourself and them.
  • Glazer
    • Save cooldowns for the Mirror phase.
  • Ash’golm
    • Stand near one of the owl statues and instantly freeze the boss.
    • DPS the boss as much as possible.
  • Cordana Felsong
  • Opera
  • Maiden of Virtue
  • Moroes
    • Use Wind Shear to kick the mini bosses with Moroes.
    • Try to have everyone stack in Healing Rain later in the fight.
    • You don’t have to kill all the mini bosses if Moroes dies before them.
  • Attumen the Huntsman
  • Zuraal the Ascended
    • Wear DPS gear and burn the boss when he gets stunned.
  • Saprish
  • Viceroy Nezhar
  • L’ura
    • Rotate through cooldowns effectively to deal with the group damage caused by Naaru’s Lament.

Useful Links

Further Reading and Information

Addons

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Fish by day, shaman by night. Innervate connoisseur. Twitter - Twitch - Armory
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