Totem Talk: Healing Stone Guard and Feng the Accursed

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 content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how.

Anyone who has followed me on Twitter or happened to look at my streams will have likely read some choice words flow from my finger tips based on the first two fights in the current tier of raiding. It's not that they are particularly hard fights, but they are a test of your coordination as a group. There are a ton of elements to the fights, multiple sources of damage at any given point of time, and of course some pretty high damage spikes built in because we just love those.

The good news is that these first two fights in the Mogu'shan Vaults are in reality quite shaman healer friendly. Despite the damage, and the multiple mechanics, our toolkit makes us go-to healers on these first two fights. There are some tricks and helpful hints I can offer you to help squeeze all the healing juice you can in the fight.

Chipping away at the Stone Guard

The first thing that you will notice is that this is a boss encounter involving not one, not two but four boss mobs to contend with! You will notice that there are some similarities between this fight and some other multiple boss mob fights, I'm looking at you here Omnomnom defense force! There are some things to note here that will make the fight a little easier for you. First off all, the fight is very mastery friendly. One of the major damage points is whenever one of the statues Overloads. It deals a massive amount of damage raid wide, and it gets people low enough that your mastery will kick in and cover the healing spread quite a bit. For this reason you may want to make sure that you enter this fight with a healthy helping of mastery to make sure you can get some turbo charged Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem happening. It sounds like a goofy point to make but most raid strats call for the raid group to be fairly close together because of all the mob switching and taunting that has to go on. This presents a perfect opportunity to let loose the ridiculousness that is resto shaman AoE healing. If you position it correctly you can catch melee and ranged and really push out the healing and to help stabilize the raid after an overload.

Using a Glyph of Riptide is also really handy in this fight. There will be a ton of things that people will have to make minor adjustments to navigate around, this includes yourself. Having that Riptide have no cooldown whatsoever lets you pre-hot if you see any raiders about to stick their feet in bad, and that's a good thing, and something I would highly recommend utilizing. Another tool that I found surprisingly useful in this fight was Totemic Projection. I was really surprised about this, as I've been struggling to find a spot where this talent was useful and I finally found it. There will wind up being quite a number of things on the ground at any given point in time. In more than one occasion I personally found myself cut off from the group due to mechanics and out of position for Spirit Link Totem. With projection however, I was able to drop and move the totem on the fly to save a tank and several DPS from biting it. I was pretty surprised when that talent popped up with a check mark in the useful column, but there you have it. Another surprise MVP is Glyph of Chaining. That 4 second cooldown isn't actually all that bad, but the 100% extra jump distance can be a life safer if you're cut off from your group, or you have a straggler in the raid that you need to keep from visiting the graveyard. Try it out and you'll have a pile of rubble at your feet in no time.

Taking the bite out of Feng

Feng the Accursed just loves to pour out the damage. More than anything else though he is an execution fight, but more so on the tank end of the raider spectrum. Positioning, taunt swapping and using the built in fight mechanics of the Shroud of Reversal and the Nullification Barrier. Your tanks will have their work cut out for them, but even when they execute properly there is a ton of damage to go around. This is another fight that mastery and spirit are in my opinion the best choices for your primary stats. Mastery will help throughout the fight as there are several raid wide damage mechanics that dish out a ton of damage, and spirit because it's a long fight that will have you casting quite frequently making longevity incredibly important. Because Feng is a bit of a long fight, it makes it one where Mana Tide Totem will be welcomed by all healers. If you time it at the end of the first phase, you should have it up again just in time for the third phase, and by then you will likely be needing that extra mana for every one.

In phase one, the Epicenter ability will deal massive amounts of damage to the entire raid when it goes off. The good news is that most raid strats will call for your raid to group up if one of these goes off, making it rime time for an unglyphed Chain Heal and Healing Rain. It's also great to keep your SLT handy just in case you need to throw it down for an epicenter. The good news is that if you have to use your SLT, it will be up again by the time phase 3 rolls around. In phase two, Feng likes to party with fire. He will randomly target a member in the raid and put Wildfire Spark on them, giving them a debuff that when it ticks to zero, drops a bit of fire wherever that player was standing. If you happen to be the lucky recipient of this, instant cast Ghost Wolf will be your best friend. Draw Flame, just like epicenter, will let you take full advantage of your AoE healing and mastery. Phase two is also an awesome time to break out the Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. While it only give the damage reduction to one target, it's still handy.

Phase three is by far my favorite, and the Arcane Velocity he uses is just a metric ton of damage. This phase is the time I suggest activating super shaman healing mode, or combining three of our cooldowns for some massive healing. First, taking our top tier talent choice and using it for Primal Elementalist. Not only are your elementals bigger and meaner, they also get an ability that buffs your healing done by a percentage for as long as they are alive. Extra healing power is always welcome in a high damage phase. Second is to activate Ascendance, which turns us into an elemental lord and lets us replicate and distribute any heal we cast throughout the raid. Spreading that healing love during a velocity is a very good thing. Thirdly is to use Healing Tide Totem. While it only heals the 5 most injured targets, if ascendance is active it still redistributes the healing done copied throughout the entire raid. Combine that with mastery and the buff from your elemental and for the duration of the cooldowns you become a mad god of healing. It works, and it's a great way to anger any paladin healer with you in the phase. Try it out if you haven't already, it is really awesome.

Totem Talk: Restoration lends you advice on healing groups, DK tanks and heroics and mana concerns in today's endgame -- or take a break and look back at the rise of the resto shaman. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!