Battleground totems: Stoneclaw Totem

A lot of shaman totems are super-useful in the battlegrounds. One of these is the Stoneclaw Totem.

One thing I have noticed in the battlegrounds is that, as a healer, a lot of times hunters and/or warlocks will send a pet after me, throw up a DoT or two, and then switch their own targeting to someone else.

DO NOT ATTACK.

Unless your earth totem is needed for something else, you can throw down a Stoneclaw Totem here. In most cases, the pet will switch focus to the totem and, because it has more health, you have time to run away. This is doubly handy if it happens to stun them. If you get far enough away and the hunter or 'lock doesn't retarget you, they're likely to get AOE'd or "distracted" by the nearest target once the totem wears off. That is, of course, if their master survives the encounter.

If they do retarget you, then just call it out and run by a melee class, and hopefully, if you've been healing, they will take care of it for you out of gratitude. When I had Ahami in the 59 bracket for two weeks, a lot of the regulars and twinks got to know me and vice versa — if you get a rep as a good healer and get recognized in the battlegrounds by the regulars for it, they will take care of anyone or anything that attacks you, no worries. I know that there are a couple of good healers in the 70s I recognize on Ideale, and I try to keep an eye on them and pull attackers off when I can.

An additional benefit of this totem is that it looks similar to the Earthbind totem for the uninitiated, which means many melee classes will attack it reflexively so as not to get slowed down — and even if they realize it's not, they might not know what it does. Shamans are the most underplayed class in WoW, so it's quite likely that most of your opponents will not realize what the totem does (considering how few know to attack the totem rather than the fire or earth elemental and so on). If you get a melee class taking down totems, there's a good chance they'll keep attacking the Stoneclaw totem, unsure why it's not dying immediately, while your side's DPS takes them down. Or that they will get stunned and maybe panic and blow their trinket.

Either way, it's good stuff.