Restoration Shaman Glyphs

This post is going to focus mainly on the glyphs (mainly major) that are beneficial for restoration shaman and why they are all so delicious and it's not fair to only be able to get 3 of them.

Please keep in mind that all numbers given are numbers based off of Karika, who is only level 74 and has only a little over 1k bonus healing.

Major

Glyph of Chain Heal

• There are plenty of times when you're Riptiding/Chain Healing like a mad-goat! Those snarky AoE attacks, times when everyone seems to be taking tons of damage all at once. (Or DPS going craaaaazy and everyone pulling a different mob while the tank rips out his or her hair or fur...) With Chain Healing being our only 'group heal', besides our Healing Stream Totem, this is an interesting one to consider. However, the things to consider about Chain Heal... that it decreases by 50% per person as it bounces.
• Let's consider those numbers? I'm level 74, so I don't know what a level 80 would do, but right now I'm doing about 3k primary heal (a little over 1k bonus healing)... second person gets healed for 1500, third person for 750... a fourth person would be healed for only 375.
• With Riptide, which gives your chain heals a boost of 25%, that's 3.6 to 1.8 to 0.9 to a whopping 450 health by the fourth person.
• Any health is better than no health, and with chain healing now being intelligent, it should heal the person who needs the health most with the larger jumps and so on down the line.

Glyph of Earthliving Weapon

• Earthliving Weapon increases your healing by 110. It carries a natural 20% chance to proc on any healing spell and causes 456 health over 12 seconds.
• The glyph will cause this to proc 5% more often. So a 25% chance to proc.
• Instead of proccing once every 5 casts (or so), it will happen once every 4 casts (or so).
• If I'm doing the math right (and this may not be the case!), every 20 casts unglyphed you'll have Earthliving Weapon doing 2000 healing. Glyphed and that number jumps up to 2500 healing. Woopee, right? 500 more healing. Extend that out please. Try 200 casts of a healing spell. Those numbers become 20,000 and 25,000. Now you're talking about a 5,000 hit point difference.

Glyph of Healing Stream Totem

• Base Healing Stream Totem heals for 20 health per five seconds.
• The glyph makes it heal for 24 health per five seconds.
• Over 1 minute, base heals for 240 hit points, glyphed for 288.
• Over 5 minutes, base heals for 1200 hit points, glyphed for 1440.
• Over 10 minutes, base heals for 2400, glyphed for 2880.
• imnsho, this has limited use for things other than possibly PvP and long boss fights where people take small amounts of splash damage. (Please comment if you disagree or see a utility for this glyph/totem that I am not seeing.)

Glyph of Healing Wave

• Healing Wave heals for 2162-2465 (tooltip). When I cast it on myself, my numbers range from 4k to start, then as Healing Way takes over, an additional 6%, 12% and 18% up to 8k criticals.
• The glyph will heal me for 20% of my heal when I heal someone else.
• An 8k crit will heal me for 1600. A 4k heal will heal me for 800. 5k for 1000, 6k for 1200 and 7k for 1400. I'm sure you can figure out the trend.
• This glyph, imnsho, appears highly situational. Where most of the time you aren't going to need the effect and very few times when you will. Again, PvP, high splash damaging fights, etc.

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave

• Lesser Healing Wave does 1392-1588 (tooltip), in my hands, that comes out to about 2.5k
• The glyph causes this to do 20% more healing if the target has Earth Shield on them. (And how often do you not have Earth Shield on your tank, who is getting a vast majority of your heals anyway, I ask you!)
• A 2500 heal becomes a 3000 heal, a 2700 heal becomes 3240, a 3000 becomes a 3600. I'm sure you can also see the trend in this.
• In my opinion, given the loss of downranking, I tend to use LHW more than HW, since I don't want to overheal with a big HW, but I don't want to stand there not casting for an hour. Thus I wind up doing a fair amount of LHW between sometimes needing to boost them with a HW.
• Useful for PvP as well, given that most shaman that I've seen there go for the fast heals of LHW rather than the more hefty but longer casting time HW.

Glyph of Mana Tide Totem

• Mana Tide Totem gives 6% max.mana every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. This equates to 24% mana return.
• Glyphed Mana Tide Totem gives 7% max/mana every 3 seconds for 12 seconds. This equates to 28% mana return.
• At 10,000 mana, this equates to 600mp3 to a total of 2400 mana gained and 700mp3 to a total of 2800 mana gained.
• At 15,000 mana, that's 900/3600 and 1050/4200.
• Given that your Mana Tide Totem is often an 'oh sh....t' button for when the healing has to go out fast and heavy and your mana is getting way too low, this is a nice little boost. The 5 minute cooldown makes us cry.

Glyph of Water Mastery

• Water Shield gives a base 65 mp5 at my level. Each charge gives 246-247 (tooltip) mana returned. Most restoration shamans that are not soloing run Water Shield on themselves and Earth Shield on their tank.
• This returns 780 mana per minute when active. With 3 charges used, that's an additional 738 mana returned.
• The glyph causes 30% passive mana regen to our water shield. Our 65 mp5 becomes 84.5 mp5. This causes our 780 mana per minute to become 1014 mana per minute.
  

Minor

In my opinion, the minor glyphs for shaman are neat little perks, but only one really gives me tingles. So I'm not going to spend nearly as much time on them.

Glyph of Astral Recall

• Reduces the cooldown of Astral Recall by 2.5 minutes. From 15 minutes to 12.5 minutes.

Glyph of Ghost Wolf

• While in Ghost Wolf form, health regen increased by 1% hp5. This is nice because most of us use Ghost Wolf when we're running away from a fight because we're low on mana (and thus likely low on health). However, not all that useful since you can't use Ghost Wolf in an indoor instance.

Glyph of Renewed Life

• After reincarnating (who does this anyway!), all stats increased by 5% for one minute. This is a nice glyph, especially when you're reincarnating less as a raid/party save and more as a 'oh crap, need a healer NOW to try to kill this boss so we don't have to have a raid/party save!'. And how many times do we do that and wind up dying again right away?
• So we go from 20% health and mana (for arguments sake, we'll use my stats, 9500 and 12000), which is 1900 and 2400. By increasing our stats by 5%, our top ends go to 9975 and 12600... which gives us 1995 health and 2520 mana. Frankly, that doesn't impress me. That's still low enough a sneeze by an elite will take me out.
• Okay, so maybe a level 74 shaman isn't the best to take numbers from! Okay then, let's just boost those numbers up a bit? 15000 and 15000! A little more accurate probably? Possibly? That's 3000 at 20% and 3150 at 25%. Still not good odds imnsho.
• Boon just pointed out that this, combined with Mana Tide Totem, will actually increase your rate of mana regen if you have to reincarnate and pop Mana Tide Totem. Which I had not considered. So, our 15000 max mana becomes 15750 max mana... so Mana Tide Totem would return (unglyphed) 945 mp3, total of 3780 and (glyphed) 1102.5 mp3, total of 4410.
• For comparison, without this glyph, with 15000 mana, Mana Tide would return 900/3600 and 1050/4200.
• Still not good odds, imnsho. :)
• And ANOTHER thing, apparently resto shaman can get improved reincarnation (really! Who needs this!) that at ranks 1/2 gives an additional 10/20%. I'm too tired to do the math. You do it.
• (I do not have improved reincarnation on my resto shaman. It is something I will consider. But really, how often do you need to reincarnate? I rarely have to!)

Glyph of Water Breathing/Glyph of Water Walking

• No reagents! @whee!

Glyph of Water Shield

• One additional charge on your water shield. Instead of 3 charges, that brings it up to 4 charges.
• 3 charges gives you 738 mana. 4 charges raises that to 984 mana before the shield dissipates and you need to burn your GCD activating another one.
• GCD on shocks, healing spells, purge, totems and cleanse spirit.
• imnsho, this is the best of the minor glyphs, besides the no reagents to the water breathing and water walking!

I am certain that there will be people out there, shaman among them!, who will disagree with some (or all! Who knows?) of what I say. Which is great! Post why you disagree! Let's chat. :)

(And yes, I do realize some of the linked abilities/spells are at rank 1. I'm too lazy to go and figure out if I should get the rank I currently have, or at rank 80 or... bleh. I can't do ALL the work people! Geeze.)