Totem Talk: Cataclysm raiding as a restoration shaman, part 5
Special thanks to @gotowell for this weeks lovely shaman image!
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the Raid Warning podcast), shows you how.
Over the last few weeks we've been going over the various tier 11 bosses and how to combat them with our various tools. In week one we covered the entry level bosses to get your feet wet into raiding and in week two we kicked it up a notched and played with some dragons. Week three found us flying on gusts of wind and dealing with very disappointing minions. Last week we dealt with blind dragons, combining elementals and a really angry multi-headed abomination.
This week we take on the final three bosses of the tier. The big nasties that are waiting for us at the end of the Throne of the Four Winds, The Bastion of Twilight and Blackwing Descent. Elementals lords, two headed ogres and undead dragons await!
As with the previous installments of this guide, this is not intended to be an all-inclusive raid boss guide. Please check out Ready Check and the WoW Insider Guide to Cataclysm for more detailed information. We will do a brief overview of the bosses, as well as some tips and tricks for restoration shaman.
Cho'gall
The encounter If you've beaten the four stooges that bar your path from the dream of every optometrist, you should honestly have little in the way of trouble with this boss. The fight itself is divided into two phases, and introduces a corruption bar very similar to the sound bar in the Atramedes fight. For each point of Corruption a players has, they will suffer 3% additional damage from Cho'gall's Corruption of the Old God ability. Phase one lasts until he reaches 25% health, and this phase is all about handling adds, and add damage. Keep Healing Rain down, and roll Riptides as you can. Keep Earth Shield on whichever tank is handling Cho'gall at the time. Alternate between Chain Heals and single target heals as appropriate when people are spread out or bunched up. There are a couple things to watch out for, such as when Cho'gall casts Fester Blood. When you see this go off, expect many little oozes to come running towards you and other members of the raid. Stay away from them as range handles them. My suggestion is to throw down Earthbind Totem to help slow them down. The other thing to watch for is Conversion, where several players will get mind controlled. Keep a Hex handy and then the MC is over be sure to Cleanse Spirit it off to get the person back into the fight. The rest of this phase is just to avoid damage, so don't stand in the bad and you'll make it to phase 2.
The second phase is the burn phase, Save your Hero/Lust for this phase as it will be healing intense. Remember that corruption bar? Well like we mention earlier every point of corruption a player has increases the damage they take in this phase. Some players who maybe like to stand in fire and have an almost full bar of corruption can be nearly impossible to heal. Save Spirit Link Totem for these occasions, as it will give those players a few more precious seconds of life to DPS down the boss. Also keep an eye on your own corruption, when you hit about 50% you'll start to vomit causing damage to anyone in front of you. Make your own job easier and face away from the raid when this happens. Remember, healing is 360 degrees so you don't have to face your target to heal them! Overall, not a bad fight, and a ton easier overall than some of the others.
The reward Poking this vile villain of vagrancy right in his eye gets you a chance at some pretty nice loot.
Al'Akir
The encounter This giant bag of hot air is a three phase encounter so full of RNG you wont want to even see a set of dice for a long time. In phase 1 the raid will be spread around the platform in order to minimize the damage from Lightning Strike. He will also randomly target an area with Ice Storm, which will then move in a line leaving a patch of frost on the ground very similar to Nezir. Standing in the frost causes constant damage every 0.5 seconds, and slows you down, two things you do not want in this fight. The last two abilities to really watch out for here is Squall Line and Wind Burst. Squall Line will summon a series of tornadoes that will travel around the platform. There is space for seven tornadoes but only six will spawn at a time. The trick is to find the gap and stand in the gap as they pass on by, if you get picked up it will carry you around from your position and will deal constant damage potentially killing you. Wind Burst will knock every player in the raid back towards the edge of the platform, and if you're too close to the edge it will knock you off the platform. The way to avoid getting tossed off the edge is to get in close to the boss, so when he knocks you back you don't fly off the edge. The best part about this phase is you get to deal with all three of these at once! The combination of them can make for a very hectic phase. Ghost Wolf with Ancestral Swiftness is your best friend here. The phase ends when Al'Akir reaches 80% health.
Phase 2 is much easier in terms of RNG, but can be the hardest phase for healers. Squall Line stays around to annoy you, but he drops the Wind Burst and Ice Storm. He instead replaces it with Acid Rain and summoning Stormlings. Acid Rain is really the thing to watch for here, as it deals 500 damage per second to every member of the raid. While that doesn't sound so bad on it's own, every 15 seconds it goes up by an additional 500 damage per second. Stay in this phase long enough and you'll be running out of health before you run out of mana. If the damage becomes too great and you need a little breathing room, you can pop SLT for the damage reduction to buy you a couple extra seconds to push the phase. Try to get as many people to stand close enough to use HR and CH to maximum effect. This phase ends when the boss reaches 25% health.
Phase 3 starts with Al'Akir shattering the platform sending everyone into the air. Luckily for you the winds other than the boss seem to like you and you can now fly! This phase is pretty straight forward, move up and down out of Lightning Cloud and switch to single target heals. If you get the Lightning Rod debuff just stay away from the raid. This is also the best phase to use Hero/Lust and just watch his health shed away.
The reward For a bag of wind he sure has some deep pockets! The only problem is that it's mostly all random enchant
