Healing has been a pretty tricky subject in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm since the release of patch 4.0. The problems come from the lack of mana regeneration, high cost of spells, and a new focus in dungeons & raids on working together as a team versus relying on the healers to overheal everything. As the hotfixes and patches come, healing has been refined into a somewhat more lenient form. However, with patch 4.1 restoration Shamans are seeing a new healing cooldown that’s on the level of Shadow Word: Barrier.

The description of the cooldown reads:

• Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.

That’s a pretty complicated way to say everything. Basically this totem at the start prevents 10% of all incoming damage. Then every second the totem equalizes everyone’s health that’s within the small 10 yard range of it. So if one person is at 75% health and another is at 25% health then both will come to an equal 50% health. This is both a huge boon for restoration Shamans and yet another skill that can be highly misused in raids.

This totem can come in handy if you’re in a raid and the tank is taking major damage. Throw the totem down near him and his health will equalize out with the nearby party members while receiving that damage reduction. Then you throw in an AoE heal on everyone and you’re seeing a lot of healing efficiency out of an AoE heal with almost no overhealing.

On the other hand, this can have huge consequences. If the tank has a lot of health and everyone else is severely wounded then the tank would equalize out with everyone else and his health would drop drastically. This means that the totem has to be used effectively, obviously on stacks of players or in situations where it’s beneficial.

The big advantage of this totem is that it makes every AoE heal a very efficient heal because there should be almost no overhealing when the totem is used right. Spells like Healing Rain, Prayer of Mending, Chain Heal, and Circle of Healing become very powerful and a lot more efficient with the targets of the spell all are lacking health and all incoming damage is spread evenly.

The only big issues, other than timing when to use this totem, are its short duration and range. Its range is only 10 yards, but that can be extended to 13 through talents (for a 26 yard diameter) and the duration is by default six seconds but with Totemic Focus the duration is increased to eight seconds. That’s a lot better!

As for PvP, I don’t see much use. The only thing I can think of is using it in the arena when behind a column to equalize the health of someone in range. However, having a total of 5 health and such a short duration it might not see a huge use in the arenas or the battlegrounds.

Of course, these changes are located currently on the PTR and can change at any minute. Who knows what the final product will be, but currently this looks to be an interesting new ability that may or may not be the best thing for Shamans since sliced cheese. Keep your eyes here to Ten Ton Hammer as we follow all of the latest news coming from WoW’s patch 4.1.