Kyrian- Vesper Totem - A versatile Totem that gives you lots of control in how you're able to use it. In real gameplay however this turns out to almost be a press-and-forget button unless you're very mindful of the damage part. It has 3 damage charges and 3 healing charges which you can use separately, so you could cast it on friendly targets, cast 3 healing spells, move it to the boss and use the 3 damage charges for a little bit of extra damage. Moving the totem does not invoke the GCD.
The 8 yard range isn't fantastic, even if you can move it around, as getting 6 targets inside of that isn't always easy so this naturally will be worse when people or enemies are spread. Throughput wise its powerful and you won't be held back by this ability.
Elysian Dirge Conduit - Improves the healing or damage to the closest target of the totem a little. Most of the time this will just go on random targets as you can't really control who stands closest, but is decent for Mythic+ to get a bit more healing out on the tank in particular, or if you want to get more single target damage out.
Summon Steward - summons a follower that can give you a few bonuses, for example talent changes. Most importantly, he gives you
Phial of Serenity which is a great ability. It can be used to save your life in various ways, be it due to the heal or via the removal of dangerous effects.
Necrolord- Primordial Wave - From all the feedback about this spell that I've heard so far, people either love it or hate it. It is the only one that really impacts your gameplay in a significant fashion, and the only one that interacts with our toolkit, so its quite invasive.
Similar to the old monk ability Uplift back in the day, you apply hots, Riptide in this case, activate Primordial Wave and your next Healing Wave will cause a heal on all targets that have your Riptide. That heal is a slightly tuned down Healing Wave (currently at 60% of a real Healing Wave) and doesn't depend on your casted Healing Wave. The copy-Healing Waves have their own scaling (Crit, Vers, Mastery and other effects) per target.
The Riptide applied by it does work with Torrent, but that doesn't really improve Torrents current situation sadly.
You can activate Primordial Wave either offensively, causing a bit of damage and applying a Flame Shock, or on a friendly target for a little bit of healing and applying a Riptide - but you will always only get the buff for Healing Wave to cleave, there is no further damage part to this covenant ability which makes it quite low impact damage wise.
There are cool interactions with the new Legendaries in Shadowlands:
Primal Tide Core allows you to have 1-2 more Riptide active for Primordial Wave, which means 1-2 more Healing Wave copies each use which is very strong. The Riptide applied by Primordial Wave does count towards the count of this legendary.
Jonat's Natural Focus also receives stacks from the copied Healing Waves of Primordial Wave, which means that if you have at least 4 Riptides out, you'll instantly receive 5 stacks of the Jonat's Natural Focus buff.
Primordial Wave also works with Deluge by increasing the healing done by the copied Healing Waves while Echo of the Elements allows you to get 1 more Riptide out for an extra copy. Overall that increases the value of both talents by about the same amount, so you want to pick the one that you would have picked anyway!
This ability helps with one of the main issues Restoration Shamans face: We're not great when it comes to healing spread out targets. With Primordial Wave you are able to get AoE healing out no matter how spread people are, as long as you're able to apply a Riptide to each one. Even during stacked fights you'll still get lots of value from Primordial Wave, as its very cheap and efficient healing, and with how strong Riptide currently is, you will be casting it on cooldown either way.
Tumbling Waves Conduit - gives you a chance to reset Primordial Wave when used, which allows you to cast it again (don't forget to Healing Wave first to use up the buff or you will overwrite it) and use another Healing Wave on even more targets. Due to the relatively high reset chance this is actually really potent, but you have to factor in that the targets you just healed with Healing Wave are likely to already be pretty healthy, and that it could mess up your timings on Primordial Wave. Great potential but great RNG.
Fleshcraft - is a decent shield which can be combined with damage reductions to counter heavy damage. A general good survivability option with the drawback of having to channel it for 4 seconds, although you can usually fit that in somewhere.
Night Fae- Fae Transfusion - A standalone spell that has no real interactions. You're required to use the damage channel on an enemy to be able to get any healing out, as the healing is based on the damage you're doing with it, which isn't always ideal. Compared to other covenants its great for single target damage but weak when it comes to AoE as the spell doesn't scale up, which means that the heal part also doesn't scale up with the amount of enemies. The amount of healing you can get out of this is quite underwhelming, not to mention that it does not scale with our Mastery: Deep Healing for unknown reasons, as all other covenants do that just fine. Another drawback of the healing part is that its 8 yards around your character, meaning you'll have to be aware of your own positioning as well, maybe even run into the melee camp - overall not a fan of that mechanic, I would have preferred a way to select an area similar to Healing Rain.
Splitting the damage and healing has a positive part in theory, as you could charge up and save the healing for later use, but its just too little to really matter.
Essential Extraction Conduit - Cooldown reduction helps the ability overall as the cooldown is really long - but this also means that you'll be standing around channeling it even more.
Soulshape - This ability is just fantastic. It might sound like an off-brand
Ghost Wolf but its actually much quicker and includes a few jumps. Great for quick repositioning during raids in particular.
Venthyr- Chain Harvest - This class ability is quite simple, as it combines Chain Heal and Chain Lightning into the same spell. It doesn't matter if you target a friendly or an enemy target, it will always hit (up to) 5 friendly and (up to) 5 enemy targets at the same time, so up to 10 targets total each cast. In general use this is a large AoE heal with some off-damage if there happens to be any enemies close to whoever you casted the spell on, and as its buffed by Unleash Life you always want to be doing that.
The naming and visuals of this spell are a bit misleading though, as its not actually a chained spell but simply a 20 yard radius around your target, similar to what a Downpour does - so definitely don't target anything on the edge as that will just fizzle out the spell. If you can deal with the targeting, it does have the numbers to not hold you back.
Lavish Harvest Conduit - Quite straightforward, it just increases the critical strike chance of Chain Harvest which improves the healing and cooldown reduction a little. It's probably not going to be the go-to conduit considering the other choices we have.
Door of Shadows - Another mobility option like
Soulshape, but this one its a simple teleport. The cast time makes this a little more awkward to use, but can be just as great if you plan it against incoming movement mechanics to get the most of your casts.