Enhance Totemic Feedback - How to fix it

Classes Shaman
23

While we are adding “what about this?”. I’ll throw some thoughts into the ring.

I find the concept of totemic interesting, but the execution (so far) is pretty sad. I thought I’d take a crack at it. So, with the goals of not adding buttons, primarily supporting the Elementalist Enhance build, and not asking Bliz to redo everything. Here’s my rewrite of the Totemic Hero talents:

Surging Fury Totem – (complete rewrite) Upgraded Windfury Totem. No cool down, no splash damage, no damage, lasts for a minute. Works like Windfury but also applies the second strike chance to melee abilities (Stormstrike, Lavalash, Ice Strike). The surging ability is NOT party wide.

Totemic Rebound – (complete rewrite) Causes the Surging Fury Totem to duplicate any second strike on the nearest (to the totem) hostile opponent.

Amplification Core (Choice 1) – (no change) 3% buff

Oversurge (Choice 1) – (complete rewrite) When the Primordial Wave buff is active Lightning Bolt deals an additional 10% damage.

Lively Totems – (no change) Lava Lash has a chance to spawn Searing Totems [note – I can’t wait to see my Lava Lash hit an enemy sending out a cascade of sparks, some of which spout up to become Searing Totems!] [note 2 – these need to be movable/recall-able so they don’t cause accidental pulls]

Oversized Totems (Choice 2) – (no change) Increased size, radius and durability of all totems.

Swift Recall (Choice 2) – (no change) Reduced cool down on effective use of utility totems. (this will need some tuning to be useful).

Wind Barrier – (no change) Totems create a shield that is renewed every 30 seconds. (this will need some tuning to be useful).

Reactivity – (no change) Hailstorm and Fire Nova cause Searing Totems to volley at up to 5 nearby (to the totems) enemies.

Imbuement Mastery – (complete rewrite) This ability makes Windfury Weapon and Flametongue Weapon procs generate 1 maelstrom each.

Pulse Capacitor (Choice 3) – (complete rewrite) Surging Fury Totem now applies the second strike change to targeted spells of the three elements, i.e. Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Frost Shock, Flame Shock, Fire Nova.

Supportive Imbuements (Choice 3) – (complete rewrite) Windfury Weapon and Flametongue Weapon increase the critical strike and critical damage of nature and fire spells.

Totemic Co-ordination (Choice 4) – (no change) Increases the critical strike and damage of Searing Totem.

Earthsurge (Choice 4) – (complete rewrite) Allow Surging Fury to apply to Sundering, twice (once per element included, potentially 3 hits).

Whirling Elements – (partial rewrite) Whenever you drop Surging Fury Totem gain 4 motes, one each of: Air, Earth, Ice, and Fire. These provide bonus effects once to specific abilities for each mote.

  • Air causes your next Stormstrike to deal 25% increased damage and hit a second target at 75% effectiveness.
  • Earth either reduces the cooldown of Sundering when cast by 12 seconds, or refunds the cooldown of Elemental Blast.
  • Ice increase the damage of either your next Ice Strike or Frost Shock
  • Fire increases the critical strike chance of either your next Lava Lash or Fire Nova cast.

Use of one mote exhausts that mote, but creates a new mote of the next type. No more than one mote of any type. Air creates Earth, Earth creates Ice, Ice creates Fire, Fire creates Air. This would create a benefit for cycling the elements.

24

Its a bigger buff for storm builds then ele. Letting storm builds actually benefit from mastery would be huge and I actually think Stormstrike should deal Stromstrike damage, but on a proc only. Like lets say you proc your Strombringer mastery for stormstrike? Well then it should deal stormstrike damage… Or, what if it changed stormstrike to stromstrike damage for one hit after spending 5 or 10 MSW? This gives you a bit more control over burst, and encourages storm builds to spend their MSW stacks as much as possible. And it would just be a straight buff to a filler for Elementalist who already do this.

1 Like
25

The thing is that in the past when they’ve had a lot of things scale off mastery for a spec, they then nerf mastery scaling to tune it rather than the actual ability. This then leads to scaling issues overall as we go later into an expansion because the power of our secondaries becomes weakened.

I do love your suggestion of it dealing with Stormstrike damage from Stormbringer procs would be a good solution, though I’d rather that just be built into our mastery baseline rather than being a spec talent or hero talent. The fact it isn’t is pretty weird IMO now that I think of it.

26

You basically just described Stormblast. A talent already in the tree

1 Like
27

No I didnt, thats additional damage at set % of the strike’s actual damage. Converting the damage of stormstrike to nature or stormstrike damage would make the ability hit a lot harder then what Stormblast does since all the damage would scale with mastery. I can see why you would be confused because it is very similar.