Spirit Link Totem - share the love... err hp

Spirit Link Totem: This totem reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. Every 1 sec, the health of all affected players is redistributed, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. Lasts 6 sec. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3 minute cooldown.

In other words, two things happen when you drop Spirit Link, the first is that everyone within your totem's area of effect get's a 10% damage reduction. Not a bad thing for times of heavy damage. The second thing is that everyone within the 10 yard radius of the totem has their health averaged out. If you have someone at 75% HP and another at 25% HP they will both end up at 50% when the totem is in place.

One of the most important things about using Spirit Link, which is constantly overlooked, is not so much when to use it but HOW. I've seen plenty of shaman's that don't understand it's ability and just use it at the wrong time. However my pet peeve is when they don't even know where it drops! They seem to just cross their fingers and hope that it lands where there's people taking damage.

Here's Rhyannon with a simple diagram showing where your Spirit Link appears when you drop it. Because it's an Air Totem it will always be to your left hand side and behind you.

Here's another example of how it would work in a group setting: Let's pretend that the target dummy is the tank, and the boss is between the tank and the melee group. For it to affect everyone in your melee group you want to position yourself so that IT lands roughly in the middle of the melee group. If you try to position yourself in the middle you are very likely to miss some people and not get as much benefit out of your totem as you should.

As healers we're always told to stay ranged, as Izzy usually likes to point out to me, but shamans are allowed to get down and dirty with the melee every now and then. I usually like to remind him that my shield alone has more armor than all his holy priest's gear put together. Besides I've been known to block an attack or two from a boss before :P So don't be scared to get in there, but as with everything, make sure you know what the melee role is. If they have to move, you must be able to follow. And whatever you do, don't get between a boss and his tank, or the boss just might be tempted to high-five you... really hard... in the face.

Use your Spirit Link with caution. Make sure you know the boss encounter, when the heaviest amount of damage happens, how long the fight lasts and if you should or shouldn't try to include the tank. There are some fights where the tank needs to be topped off at all times and you dropping a Spirit Link on him and the melee group could in fact wipe the raid.

As a healer you should always anticipate incoming damage, so I usually set up by being in the correct position for totem placement, I then use Unleash Elements which gives me a temporary buff of Unleash Life, then I put down a Healing Rain just before dropping a Spirit Link Totem and follow up by Chain Heal spamming.

Practice makes perfect, so while you're sitting there waiting for a queue to pop, drop your Spirit Link a few times and test out you're placement. It's only a 3 minutes cooldown, it'll be up before you actually need to use it and it's well worth it when you can execute it perfectly in a raid.