New Guest Post!

This week I have a new guest post up at World of Matticus. Swing by, take a look and leave some comment love.

"I know what you're thinking, but Naxxramas was merely a setback"

Thank you everyone for all the kind emails and kind words. Services have been concluded and now it's time to way of the totem to be updated once more.

Today we'll take a quick look at the last two bosses in this zone. Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. Sapphiron is one of the best fights from the 40 man era you'll ever get to see. As you port up to the room you first see a pile of bones strewn about. As you cross the threshold you will be treated to an amazing boss animation as Sapphiron rises to full height. The fight itself is easy in concept. It's a dragon with a 180 degree cleave. Avoid the head, avoid the tail. And spread out. On 10 man you will NOT need any Frost resist, his aura will only hit for a couple hundred at a time. As a healer you have two duties here. First, Stay out of the damn blizzard! I mean, seriously, stay out of it, avoid it, run away. Secondly, Decurse decurse decurse! Soon as you see Life Drain active, start dispelling. This is incredibly important as if left unchecked will heal Sapph for a noticeable amount. That's all phase 1 is, dodge falling ice, decurse, heal. Not bad really. Phase 2 is the interesting part. In phase 2 you need to stay spread out, Sapphiron takes to the air, and beings to rain death upon you. Eventually Sapph will target two people and cast Icebolt on them, encasing them in an iceblock. After two raid members are encased you need to gang pile up behind the blocks. Literally on top of each other. You cannot be exposed at all. Sapph will then cast Frost Breath which is literally an ice bomb. Now while you are behind the blocks, please keep healing. Once the bomb goes off, the blocks will break and you resume phase 1. That's it. That's the entire fight in a nutshell.

As a Resto Shaman you're going to be using a lot of Lesser Healing Waves and Riptides by default. I would however like to take this chance to point out an alternative. If you're like me and you've been stacking haste, the recent patch made a change that will see a very attractive option to us. Healing Way got buffed to apply the full talent bonus on first cast. So, you cast one Healing Wave and you get the full 18% bonus to yours (and all other shamans) Healing Waves on that target. Now when you combine that with a health dose of haste (we'll say 400 which brings the cast time down to 2 seconds with raid buffs and talents) and a Healing Wave Glpyh which heals you for a percentage of your heals. Now this doesn't seem like a lot, but your average Healing Wave crit will be somewhere between 12-15k (based on a sp healing of 1800). That's a return to yourself 2400- 3000 healing on yourself alone. So you can top off the lowest raid member and help keep yourself up at the same time. Think about it. Without trying you more then likely have close to 20% crit. That's not included any boomkins in the raid or any mages kindly enough to give you a bit more crit. I think this should be cosidered as an option for this fight. I will discuss the patch and healing changes / options more in depth in my next post.

Here's a video of the Sapphiron fight.



Sapphiron loves casters. loves them so much that his loot table is chalk full of goodness. Helmet of Innner Sanctum is incredible for dps and healing. Circle of Life gives us all our lovely delicious stats for healing we could want and like the helmet, the Shroud of the Citadel can pull double duty for us. Saph also drops the Key to the Focus Iris Which is your attunement to go play with Malygos. It also starts a quest who's reward is a neck piece, for us casters it's Torque of the Red Dragonflight decent stats and a socket to boot. If you can get it you might as well =)

Now wipe the dragon bits off your armor, time for the main event.

Kel'Thuzad isn't a bad fight at all. He's a bit of an emo child with some really good lore behind him. For us as healers there's a couple things of note that we'll need to watch for.

First up is Detonate Mana. This ability can see us drained pretty quickly. Make sure your mp5 is good and make sure you keep your cooldowns on your Mana Tide and Mana potions ready for when you are getting super low.

Second is Shadow Fissure. This, like most of BC raiding, requires raiders pay attention and move out of the affected area. However as has been and always will be true... Someone will always stand in the fire... ! This one hits between 6-8 k damage on normal. Be aware and have your Nature Swiftness + Healing Wave ready. Most importantly... make sure you're not the one in the fissure!

Next up is Frost Blast. This ability deals damage to someone while encasing them in a block of ice. You need to be aware of this and snap heals on that person ASAP. Toss a riptide to give you a couple seconds of breathing room and don't let the target die. It's easy to heal through, so make sure you don't fail! =P

Lastly is Chains of Kel'Thuzad. This mind control cannot be dispelled, so the person must be trapped / poly'd. This is where Hex comes in incredibly handy. Hexing the person gives time for the raid to move away and for more cc to get into position to keep them occupied. I suggest Hex as the opening cc for two reasons. 1 is the cooldown. 45 Seconds is a long time. 2 it doesn't break on damage. This means that accidental AE wont break it.

Other then that, it's really just keep the tank / raid up and topped off as much as possible. Last all three phases and he turns into a little black ball.

Here's a video of the fight.



After you're done bagging up the pile of bones you can sift through the remnants and hope for your Protector Helmet token but he also drops a pretty slick little mace. The Hammer of the Astral Plane has all the right stats (minus mp5) to make a shaman drool. This again is a great piece to heal and dps with. With those same stats in mind he also drops a cloak that we can use as well.

That's it for Naxx! I hope you found the tips I've provided useful. Happy healing and good luck on Phat lootz!

~ Lodur.


Next post we'll deal with a hotly debated topic among Resto Shamans. Crit vs. Haste.

New Guest Post!

Firstly I want to thank everyone for the kind emails and messages I received.

Secondly I have a new guest post up at

World of Matticus

If you haven't checked it out yet, please hop on over and take a look, leave comments and tell me what you think.

also, post for the last wing of naxx will be up tuesday.

Thanks for reading

~Lodur

Appologies

Sorry for the lack of an update this week. We had a loss from our gaming circle this week. I will return to posting once services have completed.

"This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for fighting the other for fun"

Welcome back to way of the totem. This week we will be discussing the 4th wing of Naxxramas, The Military Quarter. This training ground for future Death Knights of the Lich King and home of many sharp pointy sticks, this is your last zone before going to for the head chief of the monolith.

First up, Instructor Razuvious There's not much to know about him. For us, our main function will be Topping off the raid after Disrupting Shout With some hastened Chain Heals and healing the target of Jagged Knife With a quick Riptide and a couple Lesser Healing Waves. Mind the people on the controlling obelisks and be sure to heal the understudies as you can, keeping Earth Shield up on whichever one is tanking R. Lee Ermey. Other then that, for healers, its a simple enough fight. Heal Heal Heal. Blow Heroism / Bloodlust at the 50% mark and let your raid burn him down.

Here's a video of the fight



He drops a couple nice things, the Iron Ring of Endurance is a very nice set of bracers that has almost all the stats a shaman can want. The Scepter of Murmuring Sprits is a pretty decent offhand if you can bear to be without a shield and if you don't mind cloth the Mantle of Extensive Mind is a very nice set of shoulders.


Next up on the list is Gothik the Harvester. He's a very easy fight in all honesty. He has two sides of a room in which adds spawn for just under 5 minutes. As a healer your job is unchanged. In a 10 man you'll generally be running with 3 healers. My suggestion to you is put yourself and another healer on the dead side (side with all the bones on the floor) and stick a single healer on live side. You separate your healing because once the gate between the two close, you cannot heal through it. Roll your Riptides and your chain heals and keep dead side alive. In my experience dead side gets overrun a bit easier then live side. After 4 minutes and some change, the big man himself ports into the room. After he ports in, he'll start on Live side, live side does damage until he ports over to dead side, then dead side dps's him down until the door seperating the two sides open. When he lands he stops spawning adds so its just him, and to be honest, he's a tank and spank. ES the main tank and just burn him down.

Here's a video for this boss



after you wreck him, you can sift through his pockets for a chance at the Heinous Mail Chestguard and if you don't mind a little spirit, the Veiled Amulet of Life is a good pickup as well.

Once your done with him and his pointy hat you can move on to the emo foursome of the Horsemen. The horsemen for a healer is interesting. you're going to have three healers positioned pretty far away from each other. You'll have one healer on the tanks at the front of the room and then one in the back taking care of the ranged tank. My suggestion for you as restoration shaman would be stick to the front, mainly on Thane Korth'azz. His Meteor ability lends itself to group healing very well, so you'll do the most good on any tank with him as his charge. When your target dies, move to the back of the room to help the healer out back there, switch over to strong single target heals to top the tank and then roll as needed. I hate to say it but this wing is kind of easy compared to the others.

Here's a video for the fight for you for reference.



Once you mob up the floor with these guys you can go ahead and cross your fingers for Chestguard of the Protector and then go get your phat loot!.

Like I said this is a very straight forward and easy wing compared to the others, there's not a lot of gimmicks going on, heal, decurse, heal more, ???, profit! that's about it.

Next week I'll explain the last stop on our trip through Naxxramas, the Frost Wyrm Lair.

Happy Healing.

~Lodur

"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

"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.