Totem Talk: Restoration and the Throne of Thunder, Part 4
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
Turtles and Hyrdas have a special place in the sewers of the Isle of Thunder. Their existence does sort of answer the question about what happens when turtles and snakes find their ways into the refuse of an empire full of magic and chemical experimentation. I mean, I know that was a burning question for me before this raid tier started. But now that you've stomped shells and knocked out a few one eyed monsters tentacle things, I'm sure you think you've done it all. Well, there's more to do still.
As you dive deeper into the sewers looking for a way back into the main castle, there is still a great number of horrors that await you. Well, rather, they're waiting for you so that they can try to eat you whole. The good news at least is that they mark the midpoint on the way to the final encounter with the Thunder King himself.
This will not be a comprehensive boss guide, instead this will be a quick run down on things that you, as a resto shaman, should be aware of or tips to help make your healing of the encounter easier.
Ji-Kun
This giant bird is one bad mother, I mean she literally is because she just leaves her eggs all around waiting for players to come by and make omelettes out of them on normal mode. The bird is also a colossal pain and deals a ton of damage. The fight is really divided into two parts, the main platform and the nests. There are some abilities that we will have to pay attention to regardless of our location in the fight. The first ability to take note of is Feed Young, where Ji-Kun will spit up globs of food to attempt to feed any of her hatchlings that have called out for food. This is an important ability for multiple reasons. When in the air, players who have gathered the ability to fly from the smaller platforms can intercept the feed before it can reach the young. These are giant green blobs that fire straight out of the bird's mouth. Catching them will give you the Primal Nutriment buff. The buff gives you increased healing and damage when you catch it.
As a healer, if you can manage to snag this you are doing nothing but helping yourself and your raid team for the entire 30 seconds that the buff lasts by increasing the healing you do. The other thing to note is that whenever a feed glob is missed, a Feed Pool will land on the ground around the main platform. Standing in the pool will deal damage over time, but if someone stands in the pool for 3 seconds, they will absorb the pool and gain the debuff Slimed which is a stacking debuff that deals damage over time. This is important to note because as a shaman you can use your cooldowns to absorb the pool and the subsequent DoT it leaves on you so someone else doesn't have to. Stone Bulwark Totem is amazing in this regard and if you combine it with Call of the Elements you can double dip on the totem and survive quite well.
Quills is an ability that deals high raid-wide damage every second for 8 seconds when Ji-Kun uses it. This is where you're going to need to use your Healing Tide Totem and your Spirit Link Totem. My suggestion on this is that you use HTT if you're on the main platform and SLT if you're on one of the egg platforms combined with Healing Rain. The last two things to really know are Caw and Down Draft. Caw is a small 8 yard AoE that targets a random player in the raid. For this reason your group will be spread out to minimize damage. As a result you will rely more on Riptide, Healing Surge, Greater Healing Wave and Healing Stream Totem. Down draft is where the boss will attempt to push you off the edge of the platform, this one is easy to avoid if you keep your Ghost Wolf on your bars in easy reach. Move in towards the center of the platform, pop ghost wolf and run. The fight isn't too terribly bad for us, it is just a fight in which we have to mind the fact that yet again we can't rely on our group healing to see us through. Managing cooldowns is key, and absorbing damage when we can so others don't have to makes us strong in this fight.
Durumu the Forgotten
This is actually the fight where I started making all sorts of comparisons between Throne of Thunder and Big Trouble in Little China. He's a giant eyeball monster that was created with the sole purpose of looking into the hearts of the Thunder King's Followers and seeing if they would betray him. Now, however, he lives in a sewer with only Mist Lurkers as his friend. The good news about this fight is that there will be a lot of times that you can stay stacked up and make full use of your Chain Heal and your Healing Rain. There are a few things to really pay attention to as a resto shaman.
The first is going to be the Light Spectrum, in which Infrared Light, Bright Light and Blue Rays will spawn. These are damage effects that split the damage taken evenly between the people standing in it. As time goes on, and the longer people stand in the beams, the damage taken increases. With these you have to watch how long people have been standing in them, and when the beams cross each other. These persist until all the Fog adds are revealed and killed. Try to save any big cooldowns like HTT or SLT until the damage either starts to stack way too fast, or when the beams are crossing each other. You can also utilize stone bulwark totem to mitigate some of your incoming damage. Otherwise, simply heal as normal through them while your DPS handles the adds. I recommend not using your Spiritwalker's Grace on this, because you're going to need it for another ability boss ability.
The second, and probably the most iconic part of this fight, is the maze phase. It starts with the casting of Disintegration Beam, where he will focus on a point with his gaze. Any players caught by it will instantly die. This is important to pay attention to where this beam is because it will rotate and follow the group. While staring intently at the group, his Cross-Eye will create a maze of Eye Sores around the platform. The trick here is that an opening will, well, open in the maze for you to follow at ranged and near melee. You have to run through the maze to stay ahead of the beam. There is still however damage being dealt as you go around so you will still have to heal while running. Make liberal use of your riptide and this is where you want to save your SWG for. Pop that, and just go to town while running. Use HST on cooldown and CotE to pop it back up if you need a little extra punch to make it through. You may want to consider picking up Echo of the Elements for this fight as well just to give you a little more healing when you're using SWG and running, it has served me well on this fight.
Both fights aren't too terribly bad compared to some others in here, though Durumu can often times be attributed to a whole lot of pain due to maze phase, they are not the worst, nor the best fights for us in this tier of raiding. I suspect you should not have too much trouble breaking through and getting closer to the king of the castle.
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!
