Back before they were removed we had a bunch of totems. And blizzard gave us one ability to choose 1 of the four types yes we had 4 different types of totems. Water, fire, earth and air. We had multiple per element. We could choose what we wanted and select it then with one ability drop all 4 at once. Totems were our utility… We had an armor totem, we had a taunting totem we had lots of different totems… People who played Shamans back then want that back. We also had healing totems and of course windfury totem.
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Eh, idk
I think being a supporty-dps is fun, especially an offensive support. I would be perfectly okay with doing less personal DPS if I buffed my buds. I recognize that’s also a pretty unpopular design decision for most players, but it doesn’t bother me that much.
Pretty unlikely they’ll ever really lean into it though. They’ve moved pretty far away from that over the course of the expansions, and as a result I’m not sure Windfury Totem’s ever gonna be particularly good or good enough to outweigh the drawbacks like being unable to move it and stuff.
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I played Shaman back then. I don’t want it back. I’ve been a Shaman since Vanilla. I tanked a lot. I was crazy. 
I don’t particularly want the mechanic back. I’m glad you’re getting it back because you want it, but it’s a little disappointing on pretty much every level to me.
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Well you do not have to use them if you dont want to. What made us different were our totems, windfury and shocks…Those 3 different abilities made us fun especially when you had 2 shamans I remember groups where I would talk with the other shaman about the totems to drop. There were not just static totems that you would just keep dropping… I am going to say it and it might upset you but you are playing a class that was known for having totems. So you had to realize they might come back. Personally if i had any power I would revert us to mop version of shamans.
That’s the thing. I do have to use them - it’s not really a choice. There’s no way to spec out of them. Players who don’t drop them will get yelled at or booted, like in the old days (for reference, I dropped them just fine back then. I honestly wasn’t really happy to see them go until they were gone, then I realized how much better life felt without them). If you don’t drop your Windfury Totem in a group now and keep it near the melee at all times, even when the tank’s running in wide circles, you’ll just get referred to as a “bad Shaman” no matter what else you do.
For sure, I remember the totem bar. Setting your 4 Totems (1 per element) and dropping them with a single GCD, and needing another key to pick them up so you didn’t accidentally pull wanderers. I remember that they could be swapped out, but doing so was time consuming, or required the absurd macros that I had built. (Earth macro on 9, water macro on 10, air macro on -, fire macro on =; each macro built so that having memorized the right meta combination let me drop whatever totem I wanted).
When I say the totems were static, I mean 2 things. 1) They don’t move - they sit in a badly built cloverleaf of space. Someone standing in the wrong position might receive only 1 of the 4 buffs, and they were so easy to outpace during an active fight. In fact, you needed to ensure you re-dropped them everywhere you went, or you needed to have multiple Shamans dropping totems in different areas to ensure you had maximum coverage for a spread out fight. 2) The buffs, at least as I recall them, were static. They may have changed later, and maybe I’m not remembering them just because some expansions are entirely unmemorable to me (Pandaria was the least memorable story in my mind, and while Deepholm in Cataclysm spoke to me, none of the other zones really did). In my mind, Windfury Totem is providing a static damage increase, no scaling. Strength of Earth and Grace of Air are providing static number increases to stats, no scaling. Flametongue Totem is providing static increases to spellpower, no scaling. As you progressed through the game, they just became less and less valuable. While Searing Totem scaled outside of Vanilla, I recall it scaling far more poorly than equivalent DoTs did.
Shaman absolutely did sit around before each dungeon/Raid to discuss what they were dropping… because if they didn’t, they were kicked out of the raid/dungeon for stepping on the toes of every other Shaman in the group (again, never happened to me because I did talk to folks, but it wasn’t a choice - it was a requirement).
I guess I just never really thought of Windfury as iconic. It was a button I pushed every so often that made me viable for swinging my weapons with any other ability. I don’t really think of that as an iconic thing, so much as a necessity. Shocks certainly were originally, but I don’t really want to go back to the original Shocks mechanic either (interrupt, slow, and damage all on separate abilities with the same timer) - there were iterations in between that fixed various issues, and they did make it better. Flametongue and Frostbrand in Legion/BFA replaced them, essentially doing the same things but without the cooldown lockout. I don’t really care if they’re shocks or “attacks” that do the same thing as the shocks, personally. Honestly, in my mind, Stormstrike was the most iconic Enhancement ability - it was the one everyone specced into for that melee attack. The one that originally provided the best windfuries, or swung with both weapons at once when no other ability did. I kind of hate that ability now as well, since it became what Enhancement was 100% balanced around, and I found that an uninteresting way to balance a class.
Don’t get me wrong here, I enjoyed playing Shaman in almost every expansion - and I changed my gameplay almost every expansion - and at one point in time or another, I probably complained about every expansion 
I had fun figuring out how to place my totems in some fights, or figuring out how to optimize a group of 2 Shamans vs. 3 so that we gave the best buffs to the group… I didn’t really care for re-upping weapon buffs constantly, or lightning shield for that matter. The weapon imbues took away access to other weapon buffs that were sometimes better for certain purposes, and that was always frustrating. It’s probable that while a lot of folks are looking back at “glory days” of Shaman with rose colored glasses, mine are really super smoky. I’ve been living under a haze of smoke for months now, and I’m medically diagnosed as depressive. heh. It’s likely that all of this, for me, is psychological backlash at extreme changes when incremental ones make a lot more sense in my head.
To me part of it is that no element of a class is immutable, and a mechanic that isn’t particularly well balanced, or is onerous to the point that you have to redesign that specific mechanic every expansion, is acceptable to remove no matter how much people seem to like its aesthetic. Though, as someone who has done a lot of work on custom rulesets for TTRPG and live action gaming, I was known for getting rid of mechanics that didn’t work or were abused too often - and it may be that history that’s striking me now.
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So I get what your saying…And I am not someone that wants to return to vanilla auto attacking praying for a wf proc… But to a lot of people that have made comments on the Forums they see totems and windfury as our class/spec identity and I would also include shocks with that list… And some of those totems helped us with our defensives and blizzard said we were getting totems back and then what did we get back healing and windfury totem. Where is our armor totem where is the totems we lost they said we were getting searing totem and then they removed it.
I am glad they got rid of the legion and bfa weapon imbues and returned them to what they were. But I think we should have gotten frost brand back as well, I also think we should have gotten earth shock back… I do understand removing bad systems i mean look at covenants they are garbage atm and balancing nightmares.
I miss totems, Want windfury buffed to do decent damage not being op to where it will one shot but I think its stupid that we have to take Forceful winds for windfury to do ok damage. The fact that the talent forceful winds is even there is blizzard saying yea we nerfed it so if you want it to be somewhat decent you have to take this talent or leave it as garbage dps.
I do perfer the end of cata/mop version of Shamans and did not like legion/bfa shaman.
For reference, I don’t hold it against anyone for preferring one version over another. I don’t necessarily understand it, and I’ll sometimes post disagreement responses like this, often trying to understand why the preferences exist. I’m usually looking at the parts of the mechanics that are bad, and I won’t deny that, because I’m always looking for better mechanics.
There are some things about the mechanics I don’t understand, as far as why they are the way they are. Totems had a lot of problems, and while some provided effects that seemed useful at a glance, they usually weren’t. Stoneskin totem provided 2% damage mitigation. There were scrolls that did the same, or more, during one expansion or another.
Honestly, totems as defenses are the worst use case we can have for them. They waste a gcd for a player but don’t do much more than that. That’s why people on here are still complaining about Capacitor Totem, and it’s only up for 2 seconds before it pops. Enemy players still burn it down before it helps us. If a totem is down, it’s not doing much good for you. There are better places to pull from in our history for survivability. For example, we could look at old versions of Feral Spirit, or moving some of our old totemic effects into buttons that feel better to push. Maybe lightning shield could reduce damage taken by the same damage it outputs, or maybe using Lava Lash could activate an updated Stoneskin effect, which reduces damage taken by 10% for 30 seconds. Maybe our heals should just not suck. Heh.
What I remember most about totems is that the game changed how we used them, literally every expansion. That from vanilla to today, people complained about how easy they were to get rid of. That tying so much of our utility into these sticks was negated by an add finding a buff totem before it found the tank, or a player sending their pet after it, and that they didn’t bring with them enough power to make up for these flaws.
Weapon imbues, in their current form are badly designed. They apply to the weapon instead of the player, but we can’t choose how we apply them. Windfury goes on the main hand, Flametongue on the offhand, and never the tween shall meet. Why aren’t these integrated into a single buff on the character instead? Why isn’t there simply an “imbue” buff that grants main hand attacks a chance to proc 2 extra hits and your offhand guaranteed fire damage? More than that, why is this a button we have to click at all? It doesn’t feel particularly good. It doesn’t even have a special animation associated with it like poison application for rogues. Is this a mechanic that actually feels fun? An hourly chore to reapply a spell to your weapons?
Shaman are a lot more than our totems. A lot more than buffs we place directly on our weapons. A lot more than a shared cooldown that forces us to choose between functionalities. We’re better than any one, two, or even three abilities. We’re storm-chucking, fire flinging, ice shattering, earth slamming beasts. We tie ourselves to the spirits of the ancestors and their beasts to learn from our past and crush our foes. Alongside all that, we keep ourselves and our allies alive with meaningful heals, we enhance them through abilities like bloodlust.
What’s iconic about Enhancement Shaman to me? Slamming a hammer into an enemy, driving them to the ground, and releasing the force of lightning into their face. When they stand and try to cast, using a hurricane force blast to stop them from doing so. Freezing their veins so that they can’t get away, charring their flesh, and unleashing the ancestral beasts of my people to chew them up and spit them out. It’s not an ability. It’s the flavor. The feel of what we do. I don’t care if it comes in the form of the flametongue attack, flame shock, or the flametongue imbue. We are Shaman. The elements will obey!
With that in mind, why don’t we draw down a circle of storm around us to make our enemies faster within a cylindrical storm effect on the ground? Why don’t shards of earth draw up around us and cover our flesh like armor? Why do we need little sticks to hold that power when we are the storm? (Though, seriously, I love the aesthetics of the troll totems. They’re beautifully trollish)
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Regarding Windfury and forceful winds… this is, without a doubt, a terrible mechanism, and needs to die. Windfury should be respectable without needing a talent, and forceful winds should probably do something else, the weapon buffs really shouldn’t have talents that directly impact them. If anything, their effects should modify other powers via talents. It shouldn’t take a full minute for Windfury to be useful. It should just be 250% stronger than it currently is, no matter how it’s applied to our weapons.
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I would love to have unleashed elements come back and replace ffw
Well as far as totems for defensives they were more for pve imo…We had SR, healing wolves, and Asteral shift…Then Ion and the bliz dev team decided that all we needed was Asteral Shift that reincarnation was our main defensive so they removed sr, then they nerfed the damage of our wolves and then took healing from the wolves…We are supposed to be mail wearers the 2nd best armor type but in pvp we are the squishiest class of the game…
Its pathetic, Shamans used to have respect people would be cautious with us now we are nothing more than a bad joke.
I love my Shaman I think what they have done for SL is a big step into returning us to what we were…If they were to add 2 abilities and return 4 options to abilities we have we would be at mop version of Shaman.
I agree we should be pulling chunks of earth and rock to coat our bodies to boaster our armor. Personally I think Enhancement Shaman should be about wind and lighting. Give us the ability to push back our enemies with big gust of wind and slow them… We should be slamming our weapons into them while unleashing lighting to fry them or wind to send them sailing away. My picture of an enhancement shaman is one of a warrior that uses lighting, wind, and earth inflect damage and for defense. To be a storm on the battle field. That is what I see a enhancement shaman as.
To bad blizzard likes using our class as the punching bag. Next to feral druids that is.
per the usual, good analysis.
I’d also add, make it other-only. Something to be used in group only. Change enhancement so that it’s baked into our weapon imbue for 100% of the time. Playing solo, having to simply have another button to press to press a button, well that gets old. We got rid of our constant weapon imbues (thank you) lets not replace it with an always-drop totem. Or at least give us some GCD relief.
It has some minor value to classes that auto attack a lot with crazy haste values, particularly ones that proc damage off their auto attacks (Fel blade demon blades comes to mind giving them more fury).
That being said WF feels insanely underwhelming and is a shell of it’s former self, but maybe thats a good thing. I honestly don’t know the answer to this whole situation because windfury is so iconic and should be in the game, but if you make it too strong it’s dumb. I think players have learned over the years that random proc damage is incredibly stupid and no one enjoys it, so you have to make it a minor boost to damage but then you leave players like “why do i even use this”
I digress.
The latest patch today just tripled WF damage baseline.
I saw. Thats good. There is a balance between what I Was talking about and it def needs a buff.
The problems with Totems is the lack of iteration and modernization on Blizzard’s part.
Good examples of modernization and iteration on totems are Earthen Rage (Ele Talent) and Thunderaan’s Fury (Enh azerite trait).
Thunderaan’s Fury turns windfury into an rng totem proc that just happens. It’s rng, but its mindless and works fine.
Earthen Rage you might be wondering…but its literally just Searing Totem with zero downsides. It is up in combat automatically when attacking, attacks your target as long as you do, isn’t tied to a stick in the ground, and can’t be stomped because it has no health. The only problem…its no longer a totem.
Blizzard shows a clear disinterest in wanting to revamp totems and make them noteworthy again for any spec besides restoration.e
But it’d be nice to see more totems modernized the way Searing Totem was to become Earthen Rage (or spread the Earthen Rage love to every spec to make up for removing Searing Totem).
It’s also one of my favorite animations. Most of the earth animations available to shamans suck compared to some NPCs, but Earthen Rage rocks. I use it no matter what.