Kyrian- 暮钟图腾 - 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.
极乐挽歌 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.
召唤执事者 - summons a follower that can give you a few bonuses, for example talent changes. Most importantly, he gives you
静谧之瓶 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- 始源之潮 - 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, 激流 in this case, activate 始源之潮 and your next 治疗波 will cause a heal on all targets that have your 激流. That heal is a slightly tuned down 治疗波 (currently at 60% of a real 治疗波) and doesn't depend on your casted 治疗波. The copy-治疗波s have their own scaling (Crit, Vers, Mastery and other effects) per target.
The 激流 applied by it does work with 洪流, but that doesn't really improve 洪流s current situation sadly.
You can activate 始源之潮 either offensively, causing a bit of damage and applying a 烈焰震击, or on a friendly target for a little bit of healing and applying a 激流 - but you will always only get the buff for 治疗波 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:
始源之潮核心 allows you to have 1-2 more 激流 active for 始源之潮, which means 1-2 more 治疗波 copies each use which is very strong. The 激流 applied by 始源之潮 does count towards the count of this legendary.
约纳特的自然专注 also receives stacks from the copied 治疗波s of 始源之潮, which means that if you have at least 4 激流s out, you'll instantly receive 5 stacks of the 约纳特的自然专注 buff.
始源之潮 also works with 洪水 by increasing the healing done by the copied 治疗波s while 元素回响 allows you to get 1 more 激流 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 始源之潮 you are able to get AoE healing out no matter how spread people are, as long as you're able to apply a 激流 to each one. Even during stacked fights you'll still get lots of value from 始源之潮, as its very cheap and efficient healing, and with how strong 激流 currently is, you will be casting it on cooldown either way.
翻腾之潮 Conduit - gives you a chance to reset 始源之潮 when used, which allows you to cast it again (don't forget to 治疗波 first to use up the buff or you will overwrite it) and use another 治疗波 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 治疗波 are likely to already be pretty healthy, and that it could mess up your timings on 始源之潮. Great potential but great RNG.
血肉铸造 - 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- 法夜输灵 - 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 精通:深度治疗 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 治疗之雨.
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.
精粹提取 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.
灵魂变形 - This ability is just fantastic. It might sound like an off-brand
幽魂之狼 but its actually much quicker and includes a few jumps. Great for quick repositioning during raids in particular.
Venthyr- 收割链 - This class ability is quite simple, as it combines 治疗链 and 闪电链 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 生命释放 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 倾盆大雨 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.
华丽收割 Conduit - Quite straightforward, it just increases the critical strike chance of 收割链 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.
暗影之门 - Another mobility option like
灵魂变形, 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.