"A plague o' both your houses!”

Welcome back to this weeks Way of the Totem. Been busy trying to secure a permanent domain and build a real website, so been quite the busy healer.

Today I'd like to talk about our next stop in Naxxrammas.The Plague Quarter

All in all this isn't a very difficult zone for us of the healer persuasion. The fights are pretty straight forward. First on the list is my man Noth. Noth was one of the greatest wizards and alchemists of the Kirin Tor. Now, he's an emo necromancer with some loot to be had! This is a cleanse fight more then anything else. His Curse needs to be removed asap. If you fail to remove it, he will set his Wrath upon the raid, most likely causing in a bunch of dead folk. Other then that, just heal, cleanse as quickly as possible, heal some more.

Here's a video of the fight.



After you supply him with the razor blade to cut himself, you can gorge on the loot pinata for casters that he is. First up these rather awesome Handgrips of the Foredoomed Great stat distribution if your mp5 is already healthy. The crit and haste make this a loveable choice for both DPS and Healing. In the same vein you'll also find Ring of the Fated No mp5, but comes loaded with crit and haste. If you don't mind wearing cloth you can look for Robes of Hoarse Breaths Amazing stats for us, you just might have to fight off the priests as they learn mp5 pulls slightly ahead of spirit now >.< Thats really the only things I can see you wanting unless you are gun-ho about stacking Spirit.

Next up on the list is Mr. shuffle himself. Heigan the Unclean

Stap on your blue suede shoes because its dancing time! Heigan is a very very easy fight. Phase one stand on the platform. Heal heal heal cleanse heal cleanse cleanse heal. That's it, no seriously that's it. Phase 1 melee will be moving on the floor between eruptions so just cleanse and heal them and get ready for phase 2. Phase 2 he teleports to the platform, so everyone has to run. Stay with the marked people, use Riptide as much as possible and you can even drop a Healing Stream Totem in the middle of the running path so people can still be healed while running. After phase 2 is over, phase 1 begins again and you can make your way back up to the platform. Here's a video of the fight for you.



He doesn't have much in the way of interesting loot for us, but he does have Necrogenic Belt. Lets face it, that's a damn attractive belt.

After the unclean one is dead, and you are done parsing out loot, you can head through the gauntlet and make your way through arguably, the roughest fight in the game. Loatheb (his name is an anagram of Healbot btw =P) This. Fight. Stinks. This is a healers nightmare. Necrotic Aura makes this fight annoying, but gives me justification for haste! This ability gives you 3 seconds to heal. That's all you get. If you heal while the debuff is active it will have 0 effect. My suggestion to you is as follows. If you are stacking haste and have your chain heal around 2 seconds, you won't mind this fight nearly as much. Just wait for the debuff timer to hit 2 seconds and begin your cast. when the debuff wears off you should have chain heal cast and can be ready to start another one. If you have just enough haste to push 2 second chain heals, you can get 2 heals off in the time you have before the debuff is applied again. Haste lets you pile on the heals in this 3 second window, and for fights like this, it's well worth having a healthy chunk. In between the healing you should be helping out on dps, Put up Flame Shock early and keep it refreshed and throw in a Lava Burst before Flame Shock wears off. Earth Shield is pretty much useless here, so I wouldn't even bother with it to be honest. Mana Spring Totem is the way to go here too, since Healing Stream Totem is fairly worthless in this fight. Once the tank has established aggro, I would pop your Heroism / Bloodlust early so that when the debuff timer is off at 5 minutes into the fight you can blow another one (if there's a second shaman) and really go to town on this guy. Watch when Deathbloom goes off and note who is lower then others so you know who to start your chain heal on. When Inevitable Doom is cast, just be aware, soon as the healing debuff wears off you may need to pop a potion / lock health stone on your self as your healing. Lastly healers, avoid getting the Fungal Creep buff. Save this for dps as the more dps they can dish out, the shorter the fight lasts.

So remember, Fast efficient heals in that 3 second window, and light dps when the healing debuff is active.

Here's a movie for the fight to explain the rest of the ecnounter a bit more.



Once he's down, after what will be a test of your nerves as a healer, you get a shot at the Protector Shoulders and if you don't mind a little spirit Fungi-Stained Coverings can be yours for the taking.

Loatheb will try your patience as a healer but if you can make it past him you can make it past anything. That's it for this weeks way of the totem. Happy New year and Happy Healing!

~Lodur