Description of Bug Behavior:
Prolonged or indefinite player “in combat” state upon mob death, mob combat reset/releasing combat (from running away, for example), or any other player or player-controlled pet pulls aggro from origin player or player’s totem.
Discovery:
While in a group, some members died after an unforgiving pull while questing. When the battle was over, myself (Shaman) and another player (Warrior, if it matters) were left standing. My warrior pal was able to eat almost immediately after combat ended. I, however could not. I was still stuck in combat low health and oom (yikes some of those respawn timers) with group members expecting a rez of course. I had to run some distance away from the result of the action to be released from combat.
Frequency:
Intermittent. Seems to happen more often with combat-interactive but nondamaging aura effects, (earthbind slow, stoneclaw taunt) than passive non-combat aura or damaging ability totems [although this might be due to the short duration and self-destruct of Searing Totem].
Observed Resolutions/Workarounds:
- Zoning in/out of an instance
- Running moderately out of range of the totem
- Running some distance away, and placing a new totem if totem was not killed
Speculation/Assumptions:
Shaman Totems and Player entities seem to have an alike behavior as Hunter or Warlock player pets. They have a separate aggro table and aggro radius to hostile npcs, but also share combat statefulness with the original Player entity (if totem is in combat, then totem’s owner is also in combat).
I’m assuming there are a lot of similarities to the programmed logic governing Shaman totems as well as Player pets (Hunter/Warlock) in relation to the owning Player entity. However, there is something just not right regarding the logic surrounding the release of combat state in totems. I speculate that the Shaman Player can run sufficiently out of range from a hostile mob engaged in combat, whereby the delay/distance triggers a release from combat. The subsequent release from combat to the totem entities may not be correctly handling this. I don’t want to speculate too much, but it seems it may be distance-based, which explains the indeterminacy and intermittent nature.
Other thoughts:
This is going to be really hard to reproduce, and I don’t think writing a unit test for something like this is even feasible. The bug usually isn’t a huge deal, so it’s not game-breaking. Maybe low-priority, worth taking a spike on it 
Edit:
After reading around, it appears there have been some quite a few issues reported regarding strange or unexpected combat state behavior. This submission may have been partly due to or in some combination of those mechanics that were observed. Overall reading through the different submitted reports, I think there is something within the logic governing combat state mechanics that might be a little off-tune.