"Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA? IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME? "

Welcome back to way of the totem. Today I'd like to talk about the next wing in Naxxramas, The Construct Quarter.

The Construct Quarter is the second wing you should be looking at after the Arachnid Quarter just based on it's difficulty. This wing contains four bosses as opposed to the three bosses in the other quarters. The trash leading up to the first boss is a series of Abominations, Slimes and Giants. There's nothing really special to note here on the 10 man versions, just simply heal heal heal.

The first boss up is the infamous Patchwerk This cuddly ball of joy and sunshine is going to be your best friend, and by that I mean you'll hate this fight. He hits like a truck and not only smacks the main tank around, but hits another member of the raid for an obscene amount using his Hateful Strike. the target will be the person in the raid with the most health who is not the Main Tank. He is a healing and dps check. My suggestions for you are as follows. Firstly, don't worry about any other totems besides Wrath of Air and Mana Spring. Keep Earth Shield on the Hateful Strike tank. Keep Riptide up at all times on the Hateful tank, and hopefully you have your Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave in, because making that hit like Healing Wave on your ES target, combined with Riptide and liberal use of Tidal Force will keep the Hateful tank alive. Damage on the main tank is a lot more even, so as long as you keep the OT topped off, you should be fine. Patchy does have an enrage timer, and you do not want to let him get there, so after the main tank has established aggro, blow your Heroism / Bloodlust and let the raid burn him down like so much firewood.

Here's a vid of the fight / strategy



After the lug topples over, you can start poking through Patch's pockets. He's actually got a fair amount in the way of viable healing pieces. The mail shoulders are a solid piece, giving you all the necessary shaman stats while adding in some haste. If you are looking for crit, These Leather Gloves or Cloth Boots will server you well (despite having spirit, but we'll forgive them for now). Lastly he drops a really nice dagger. Good spell power, decent stats, crit and haste. It would make a solid pickup.

Next on the hit list is Grobbulus. First question on the list, and one I've been trying to figure out since naxx was released... HOW THE HELL DOES HE SEE???... well, right, anyways. He's a fairly straightforward boss in theory, but execution will more then likely need practice. The things you need to be aware of as a healer are only a few in number. Firstly make sure you are behind Grobby so you don't spawn a slime. Damage on the tank may spike as slimes get to them before
an OT an pick it up. The ability of Mutating Injection has two main points for you as a healer. Firstly this places a debuff that shows up as a disease on the target, it can be removed, however under NO circumstances should you cleanse it. After 10 seconds it spawns a poison cloud, if you dispel it the cloud will spawn immediately and bork the placement, and cause your raid to suffer. This means if you are running Decursive, turn it off. The second point to be aware of is when the cloud spawns. The person spawning the cloud will take a decent chunk of damage, they should be topped off before they go running off and topped back off when they run back in. Other then that move with the raid, top off the cloud people, pop Heroism / Bloodlust at the 50% mark and collect loot.

Here's a video of the fight and strategy.


Grob drops a couple really nice pieces for us. He has a nice set of Gloves, they are cloth, but are still very nice as far as stats are concerned. If you need crit raiting he has a decent Neck Piece as long as you don't mind a little spirit. Now the item you've all been waiting for (I know I still want it =P) This lovely Mace. Great stats, haste, MP5 and goooood spell power. This is a nifty little item to pick up and if it drops, you'll probably want to clean up your drool then bid =)

Next batter in the line-up is Gluth. I have a love hate relationship with this fight. In theory he's a simple fight. You will see three grates on the floor after you run through the pipe. Zombie Chow will spawn from them and start eating people's faces until someone assigned to kite them grabs them. You will most likely have to drop an Earthbind Totem in front of one of the grates to help slow down the chow while a hunter hits up Frost Trap on another. Paladins make great kiters for Gluth's adds and can lay down a consecrate between the middle grate and the raid. You will have to make sure that not only are the tanks getting healed, but so is the kiter. The zombie chow stacks a debuf that increases the physical damage taken. Making sure they don't hit the tank and keeping the kitting tank alive and topped off. Every minute and a half or so Gluth will cast Decimate reducing everyone's life to 5% of their total and summoning all zombies to him. Your first priority as a healer is to top those tanks off! The zombie's drop aggro so you should have enough time to top the tanks off. After your tanks are good switch immediately to the raid, Chain Heal as if your life depends on it. My trick here, is I center my first few chain heals on the healers. The raid is going to be clumped up so you should have an easy time geting 4 targets per cast. When the raid is good, toss down a magma totem to clean up the zombie chow and then proceed until Gluth is a smear on the floor. I love this fight because it's fun when you are trying to get everything set and learn the encounter. I hate the fight because it makes my mana cry big man tears. Conserve your mana, watch your heal targets and make sure you have all your consumable.s

Here's a vid on that fight.


Once he's down for the count, you can rummage through the corpse for some really happy fun loot. First of all, he drops your tier pieces, and not just one, he has a chance at one of three! Your Shoulders, Chest, and Legs. Secondly he drops one heck of a Ring, Neck, Cape and Belt. Chances are you're getting something off this undead puppy.

Now on to our last boss of the wing Thaddius

Thad the man is a Flesh titan, and the first one introduced to the game way back in vanilla and is where fights like Mechano lord in Mechanar draw their inspiration from. Thad has two adds in phase 1, Stalagg and Feugen Listen for the raid healer to assign out sides, normally melee one side, casters another. You should stick with melee so you can use your chain heal. Be advised that these adds every 20 seconds or so will trade tanks between platforms, so be ready to switch out your Earth Shield between both tanks. Treat the tweedle dee and tweedle dumb like romeo and juliet try to down them at the same time, but conserve your cooldowns for the big guy, you'll need him. There's really not much to healing this fight, in theory you shouldn't be tossing out too too much healing so your mana should be fine, My suggestion to help alleviate your healing some is make sure you keep Healing Stream Totem down. I wouldn't bother with Earth Shield on the tank Riptide and Chain heal will do the trick. Other then that just be prepared to move around a bit.

Here's the Thaddius strat video



It's a pretty easy fight. Once the flesh titan is no more, you can rummage through his pockets in hope of finding your Legs if Gluth didn't have them or a pretty decent Helm.

That's it for the construct wing. All in all its a pretty easy wing, just a couple healing and dps checks, but a decent amount of shaman healer loot to be had. Happy healing and good hunting.