Welcome to our Ny’alotha tips and tricks guide for Restoration Shaman. Please remember that the suggested talent and essence builds are meant to provide the best assistance to the raid team during mythic progression. These are not the only viable talents, and various talent combinations work for many of these fights. Also, remember that the talents are selected to maximize the potential for success on progression, not for parsing. Finally, many talents are situational and are better for different raid teams, strategies, and healing compositions. Do not take these talent suggestions as law, they can be changed based on the individual situation. If you have any further questions please comment below or shoot us a tweet!
Wrathion, The Black Emperor
Important Talents
Spirit Wolf, Earthen Wall Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
With a fight with large periods of movement, Spirit Wolf is a good pick up here. It helps you get to safe spots faster. Furthermore, on mythic difficulty, it leads to keeping your stacks lower than otherwise. Using Earthen Wall Totem once you raid is stacked up in the safe spot is also the best time during the fight to use it, as the ticking raid wide damage ensures that the damage absorb is fully utilized. Pre-casting and building up your cloudbursts are also decent ways to help deal with the bursts of damage through out the fight. Lastly, using Spirit Link right at the end of Gale Blast is generally a good place to pop it, as melee will generally be running out into the range, increasing how many people you can get into your SLT.
Maut
Important Talents
Earthen Wall Totem or Ancestral Protection Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
This is another fight where you can reliably get full use out of Earthen Wall Totem. Dropping it at the start of phase 2, before the healing buff goes onto the raid helps keep people stable. Alternatively, if you find that raid members are dying during phase 2, Ancestral Protection Totem is a great tool both with its raid wide health buff, and its free battle resurrection for DPS players who may accidentally one-shot themselves with corruption mechanics. Make sure you have two charges of Cloudburst Totem going into phase 2, as the healing buff you receive makes Cloudburst effect even more efficient. Note that on mythic difficulty, Ancient Curse is something you can dispel, this is helpful for your tanks or allows you to dispel yourself, saving you from the extra movement needed to clear your stacks with a puddle.
The Prophet Skitra
Important Talents
Earthgrab Totem, Earthen Wall Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
Throughout the fight, Prophet Skitra will spawn a wall of adds the deal major damage to anyone underneath them, walking in a line from one side of the room to the other. These adds can be rooted with Earthgrab Totem and allows for you to make an opening for your raid to safely maneuver around them. During her second phase, the raid takes ticking damage that increases the longer you stay in the phase. Use Spiritwalker’s Grace while running towards the correct illusion and Earthen Wall Totem once the raid is stacked up.
Dark Inquisitor Xanesh
Important Talents
Earthen Wall Totem, Graceful Spirit
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
This is a straightforward fight to heal. Constant raid wide damage makes using Healing Rain and Earthen Wall Totem on cooldown recommended. You should almost always be getting full use out of them. Spiritwalker’s Grace is also very helpful while Torment is going out. Since this happens frequently, and there isn’t usually any need for Wind Rush Totem, having a 1 minute cooldodwn on Spiritwalker’s Grace is very valuable. Outside of that, using Cloudburst on cooldown, and keeping Riptides on debuffed raid members is also recommended.
The Hivemind
Important Talents
Earthen Wall Totem or Ancestral Protection Totem, Graceful Spirit
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
Earthen Wall Totem’s cooldown lines up perfectly with phase transitions. Each time the phase changes (bosses pulled together or apart) there is a large amount of ticking raid damage that goes out which is perfect for Earthen Wall Totem. However, during progression, there may be an add explosion and potentially a lack of cooldowns to deal with it. If this is the case, Ancestral Protection Totem is a great talent to pick. This will help get you past that last bump. It is also recommended to try and have your raid loosely stack right before Volatile Eruption, as Spirit Link with Sprouting Spirits Azerite is the perfect cooldown to deal with this. If playing with Sprouting Spirits, you want to make sure that you wait until the cast time has less than 1 second remaining before dropping your totem. This allows for the raid to have their health stabilized and receive the damage reduction before the burst of damage, but also allows for you to get a Revival-like burst of healing immediately after.
Shad’har the Insatiable
Important Talents
Spirit Wolf, Ancestral Protection Totem, Graceful Spirit
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
Given then constant damage and the raid being loosely stacked, make sure you have healing raid down at all times. When getting fixated by an add, Ghost Wolf will help counter the slow. Spirit Wolf helps you get out faster, and keep incoming damage down when the add hits you. Although this is a decent fight for Earthen Wall Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem will come in very handy towards the end of the fight while progressing.
Drest’agath
Important Talents
Ancestral Protection Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
This is a “dance fight”, meaning that you will be moving around on a set pattern thoughout the encounter. It is important to keep track of these moments to ensure proper use of Healing Rain. Throughout the fight, various tentacles of Drest’agath will spawn. These have a cloud around them which prevents line of sight. It is important to note though that you can still cast a healing rain into it from the outside, as well as raid wide healing like Healing Stream Totem or Cloudburst will still hit targets withing the cloud. Saving Ancestral Protection Totem for the end is also important, as during progression its very common to get a dangerous Entropic Crashes bringing your raid dangerously low, often killing people in the process.
Il’gynoth, Corruption Reborn
Il’gynoth is a fight that has several different strategies that can greatly alter the play style needed to heal this fight well. Due to this, I will include highlights for both the “Spread Strategy” (stays the same for dispel or no dispel strategy) and “Stack Strategy”. When dispelling on mythic, it is important to make sure that your targets circle is as small as it can get. Dispelling someone when their circle is big can very easily cause a chain reaction and instantly wipe your raid.
Important Talents (Spread)
Undulation, Echo of the Elements, Ancestral Protection Totem, Graceful Spirit, Cloudburst Totem, Ascendance
Essences (Spread)
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Ever-Rising Tide, Spirit of Preservation
Healing Strategy (Spread)
The Spread strategy, regardless of dispel or no dispel, leaves your chain heal to be incredibly unreliable for jumping to targets. Due to this, a single target focus build is a much better option. Very different from our normal chain heal spam play-style, with this set up you want to utilize your Tidal Wave stacks, and focusing on Riptide, Healing Wave and Healing Surge spam. Always make sure that when you use Ascendance, you are dropping a Cloudburst right before you pop Ascendance. This allows you to stack a very large Cloudburst by spamming Healing Surge. Its not worth dropping Healing Rain when you can only get 2-3 players in it, so there is no need to worry about casting it. As usual, Ancestral Protection Totem is very helpful towards the end of the fight when things are getting hectic, and people are struggling to stay alive. Please note that the strength this time comes from the 10% HP increase, and you should not attempt to utilize the resurrection from the totem if you are doing the no dispel strategy because it will wipe your raid.
Important Talents (Stack)
Unleash Life, Echo of the Elements, Earthgrab Totem, Earthen Wall Totem, Graceful Spirit, Cloudburst Totem, High Tide
Essences (Stack)
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy (Stack)
Healing in a stacked strategy puts us back into our normal Chain Heal spamming play-style. The fight will end up looking a lot like it does on heroic, but with dispels. Your raid will be loosely stacked and rotate around the room as the fight goes on. There should be enough people clumped together to justify keeping Healing Rain down, and Chain Heals should be able to jump fully as normal.
Vexiona
Important Talents
Spirit Wolf, Ancestral Protection Totem, Graceful Spirit
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
The damage patterns on this fight can take time to get used to. Luckily, this is a mostly stacked encounter with moments of large movement needed while Vexiona is up in the air. During these phases are perfect timing to use Spiritwalker’s Grace. Timing you cloudbursts with burst of damage will also help with healing a lot on this fight. Ideal Spirit Link placement doesn’t happen until near the end of the fight, so often you can use it either for a tank, or as just extra mitigation on the raid early on in the fight.
Ra-den the Despoiled
Important Talents
Ancestral Protection Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
The healing required during the first phase of the fight is moderate with good AoE healing opportunities. Phase two is when you really have to focus. During this phase some members of your raid will get Corrupted Existence. Healing these targets to full while this is active on them will instantly kill them. A safe way heal this phase as a Shaman is to play almost the same way you normally would. Generally on other fights you want to be chain healing off the lowest target you can. This is not always the case on this encounter. It’s best to continue to cast Chain Heals but you will want to make sure you never cast Chain Heal directly onto a target with Corrupted Existence. Always prioritize those without the debuff, as it’s likely that Chain Heal will still get to them, but at a reduced and more safe amount of healing. Also, avoid pairing Unleash Life/High Tide procs together and you can very easily have a big Chain Heal jump to someone with the debuff and kill them.
Carapace of N’Zoth
Important Talents
Spirit Wolf, Earthen Wall Totem, Wind Rush Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
This fight will test how well you can manage your mana while progressing. Most strategies for this boss utilize speed potions during the 3rd phase. This means that you will be unable to use a mana potion throughout the fight. Though it is still very possible to do this fight without Lucid Dream, don’t hesitate to pick it up if you feel you are struggling with mana. Each phase requires more healing, so plan out your mana accordingly. There are lots of opportunities for AoE healing throughout the fight, so as usual, Healing Rain placements will be important. Spirit Wolf can be very helpful during phase 2 when maneuvering through Mycelial Cysts. There are also several different times throughout the fight that Wind Rush Totem can be useful, so odds are there is a slot which youf raid will want it at. The last important thing to note is that the fears from Madness Bomb can be removed with Tremor Totem. This can be helpful during transitioning from P1 to P2, P2 to P3, or for a raid wide set of bombs in P3 right before an Infinite Darkness.
N’Zoth the Corruptor
Important Talents
Spirit Wolf, Earthen Wall Totem or Ancestral Protection Totem, Graceful Spirit or Wind Rush Totem
Essences
Vision of Perfection, Conflict and Strife, The Formless Void, The Ever-Rising Tide
Healing Strategy
This fight is another “dance” fight with periods of movement. As such, there is less emphasis on Healing Rain than on other fights. You want to make sure you are only casting Healing Rain when you know there wont be any movement for a while. This is also a fight that requires all of your raid CDs being predetermined during progression. Earthen Wall Totem is a great choice on this boss as there is always damage going out and you can fairly reliably get full use out of each cast. However, depending on your guilds strategy, you may find yourself utilizing Ancestral Protection Totem to sacrifice a raider for later Harvester soaks. Wind Rush Totem can also be a great piece of utility for your raid, but if your raid does not have a need for it, Graceful Spirit will help tremendously with healing since there is so much movement throughout the fight. Spirit Link Totem is also best used with either Harvester raid soak, or right as an Anguish is coming out. They are both mechanics that you can time Sprouting Spirits for great value. Lastly, it should be noted that fear caused by the beams (Stupefying Glare) can be removed with Tremor Totem, this can be helpful if someone get hit by a beam but manages to live through the damage.
Conclusion
Thank you for checking out our Tips & Tricks guide for Restoration Shaman progressing through Ny’alotha! If you want even more Restoration Shaman information, click here for our full 8.3 guide. Also, feel free to comment below or interact with us on twitter. Happy Healing!
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