Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

There's been some large changes to healing for some of the classes in recent builds. This week, we'll recap and go through the classes to see what's new. You might be interested to know that at level 89, my priest has 250k mana. Who wants to wager that 300k mana is the maximum cap at level 90? Remember with the new intellect and mana system coming in with the expansion, intellect stats no longer raise the mana pool anymore. Your mana regeneration is governed strictly by your spirit levels.

Priest

Lightwell receives a few tweaks to the healing numbers. More importantly, it now has a glyph that completely changes the functionality of the spell. Glyph of Lightspring turns Lightwell into an automatic healing ability with a catch. Lightwell will only heal players with health lower than 50%. It will only perform the check once every 5 seconds. That is a fair compromise to me. I've never been truly satisfied with Lightwell since my experience has shown me that most players never click on it when it really matters. At least this glyph helps remove control from them and I gain the knowledge of my Lightwell kicking in when it'll be needed.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Mists of Pandaria

Kun-Lai Summit is host to the Shado-pan Monastery. In Mists of Pandaria, you'll undoubtedly get a chance to experience and help rid the instance of Sha influence. Megan and I decided to check the place out and see what the deal is. We teamed up before when she carried me kindly tanked for me in the Stormstout Brewery. Like last time, I healed on my holy priest, Megan tanked on her druid, and we were accompanied with two hunters and an enhancement shaman. Your group needs to be at minimum level 87 in order to queue.

The video above is a little under 50 minutes long. We would've been able to move quicker if I hadn't been in combat all the time.

Yeesh. Even the Matticus needs a drink from time to time.

Gu Cloudstrike

Cloudstrike is the first boss your group will challenge. You'll run into Cloudstrike outside on a plateau just as you leave the first chamber. It's a three-phase encounter involving Cloudstrike and a flying serpent.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Townlong Steppes opened up in one of the recent builds of the Mists of Pandaria beta. Normally, the Great Wall of Pandaria separates this zone from the rest of the continent, but the pandaren are investigating what's on the other side due to the attacks from the Mantids. The opposition in Townlong Steppes consists of mobs and quests for players who are 88+.

Adventurers won't find any shortage of activities in this zone.

• Assist the Shado-Pan, who are checking out strange, jeweled camps near their garrison.
• Fend off the mogu, who are commandeering cloud serpents in the islands north of the Temple of Niuzao.
• Engage the yaungol and mantid alongside your pandaren allies in the Shallowstep Pass.

Head on over to Wowhead to preview the screenshots and backstory of all the different areas.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Totemic Projection, obtainable at level 45, gives you the ability to launch your currently placed totems to any location around you within 40 yards. Fairly straightforward, really easy to use. Those of you who like setting up macros may want to start planning a little about creative uses with your totems and Totemic Projection.

• Capacitor Totem Drop this totem and count to three, then Totemically Project it toward your target. Voilà! Instant stun!
• Earthbind Totem Perhaps best used in PvP, you can setup Earthbind to root and slow down players as they're busy running away from you, allowing you to close the gap and Chain Lightning their faces.

Those are just some of the ideas I had off the top of my head. The other talents add extra functionality to your totems. Call of the Elements lets you finish off any totem cooldowns that are active, allowing you to use them again. The catch is that the cooldown of the totem needs to be shorter than 5 minutes. Sadly, this means you cannot use your Fire Elemental Totem, Earth Elemental Totem, or Stormlash Totem back-to-back. Totem Restoration is a passive ability that lets totems respawn if they keep getting destroyed. I'd say that's useful in PvP, more than anything else.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Filed under: Shaman, Mists of Pandaria

One of the early shaman survival cooldowns that you can get at level 15 is called Astral Shift. It isn't flashy or super awesome or anything. But an emergency damage reducer on a 2-minute cooldown could be just what you need to stay alive and continue DPSing (or healing).

It doesn't reduce only magic damage.

Nor does it reduce only physical damage.

It reduces any damage!

In case you feel two minutes is too long, you have some alternatives. Nature's Guardian is an effect that can kick in once every 30 seconds, which might potentially save you (although the next hit you take could be lethal). Stone Bulwark totem is another alternative that places a shield on you which refreshes and adds additional absorb amounts every five seconds after.

The theme of the level 15 shaman talents revolves around survival and damage mitigation. Raiders may lean more toward Astral Shift, but I'm using the Stone Bulwark totem for the purposes of questing and leveling.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Filed under: Shaman, Mists of Pandaria

New loot frames! No more having to stare at your chat frames and scroll up and down to see which player won what item. Loot rolls are now condensed into a loot roll frame that appears in your screen. It lists the results of all the items that went up for grabs in the instance and who won them.

If you look at the screenshot above, you can see the roll numbers next to each player and what roll types were used. The player who won the item is listed at the top. You can expand or collapse the menu to see the list of players who rolled and what roll type they used, such as need or greed.

The only downside to this new feature is that I couldn't find a way to move the frame around. But hey, I'll take these new loot roll frames any day. What about you?

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

After covering monks, priests, paladins, and druids, there is one class left to review: shaman. How are they going to fare entering Mists of Pandaria?

Totems ... gone!

Just kidding!

They're not really gone. They've switched to more of a utility focus now. Looking at the entire list of totems available, not a single one provides any type of stat increase. Totems that provided passive buffs like Flametongue Totem, Mana Spring Totem, and Stoneskin Totem have been removed. Healing Stream took a nerf cannon to the face, now only affecting a player now instead of whole groups.

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Filed under: Shaman, Raid Rx (Raid Healing), Mists of Pandaria

The Stormstout Brewery opened its doors for business last week. Megan and I, both avid brewery enthusiasts, decided to pay a visit. You can find the brewery entrance in the Valley of the Four Winds. As you adventure through the valley, you'll be assisting Chen Stormstout, and your adventures will take you inside the brewery, where you have to assist him in retaking and restoring the brewery to its former glory.

Our brewery testing composition consisted of myself healing (on a priest, naturally), Megan on her druid (the tank), a balance druid, and two mages. Our character levels were all over the place, from freshly transferred 85s to level 87s.

Ook-Ook

Not exactly Donkey Kong, but Ook-Ook is a giant banana-chucking monkey. Ook-Ook has a pretty fun mechanic that enables players to jump on top of barrels and direct where they go. He has a few friends that are busy. If the barrels make contact with you, you'll explode and take some damage (Brew Explosion). Don't worry -- it's not lethal. Ook-Ook Goes Bananas at 90%, 60%, and 30% intervals. He starts throwing some bananas around; they're harmless. His attack speed goes up, and he hits a touch harder. You'll see a wave of barrels coming in, so either dodge them or jump on them.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Getting tired of your Shadowfiend, priests? After having served us faithfully over multiple expansions, your Shadowfiend will be able to be talented into an upgraded Shadowfiend. Enter the Mindbender!

The Mindbender is a floating, squid-like creature that'll leech mana off opponents just like the original Shadowfiend --not just that, but the Mindbender hits harder and you get more mana back. Mindbender can be talented into at level 45. (That spot used to be blank before.) At level 87, my little minion was doing around 12,000 damage with possible crits up to 30,000 against the raider training dummies while I was in a healing spec.

Pretty cool facelift for the little guy! It'll be an interesting choice between Mindbender, Archangel, and From Darkness, Comes Light.

Too bad we can't give these pets names. I'd name mine Zoidberg.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.

You know, after reading through and playing around with a holy paladin on the Mists of Pandaria beta, it looks like paladins didn't get a ton groundbreaking class changes. In a way, though, that's a good thing! You still get to keep the same style of play, except you have a few new spells and abilities to really augment your healing even further. You don't even have to learn any new playstyles.

If you're an awesome healer now, then you should have no problems moving into the next expansion at all. The additional AoE helpers are a bonus. Even though Holy Radiance is awesome, it'd be nice to have a few other AoE healing spells for a change.

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Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Mists of Pandaria