While searing totem might be a frustrating mechanic in PvE.
Searing totem has always been pretty good for PvP, especially to stop rogues from restealthing. I hope they bring it back, even as just as a small damage filler
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This. The current variation makes no sense. I fully expect it to be redesigned.
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Ya why will you have healing and earth bind together . You want to be in range of a healing totem , while you want the target to be in range of earth bind as you kite .
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It doesnāt put your other totems on cooldown. Itās an extra cast of each, except searing ofc, and 1 minute cooldown for a searing that will do damage (if they buff it) as well as a slow + heal. It doesnāt seem too bad going through some things Iāve seen in dungeons so far. It fits the mastery aspect.
Old searing duration + cooldown didnāt make much sense. Damage was also abysmal. Zero interaction with kit.
Iām open to whatever ideas theyāve got in mind. I donāt think the range will be as big of a deal honestly. HST is going to heal you from a pretty large distance and itās not really detracting from the slow. Worst case scenario they stop and kill it. Your also still going to benefit from the zone control around objectives / pillars.
Itās a bit awkward but Iām not sure if Iād consider it bad entirely, yet. It can be improved on still.
It would have been cool to drop searing + 5% overload chance + additional haste + flame shock % + a retrofitted version of fulmination gen or something involving shocks but maybe thatās all too much.
Havenāt left my shaman feedback yet. Just been keeping an eye on the things everyone hereās been saying.
This is my first expansion doing CE raiding as Ele in Dazar / EP & Resto in Nylotha and M+ at 2.5 so I donāt have the same mechanical knowledge of old shaman vs new that everyone else has. Really all I know is lava shock & Icefury, both of which I thought were great, and my perspective on things tends to be overly focused on that 
Isnāt that the most obvious scenario if you are dropping healing totem then running away from it instead of applying pressure ? And if you are not running away then you have wasted the Earth Bind totem.
I donāt know ā¦ looks dumb to me . But what do I know .
The health pool on a healing stream is massive. Earthbind & Searing are killable but HST will require you to focus it down and I donāt think its strong enough for that to be worth it and bind doesnāt really discourage chasing.
If you managed to line me though and I wasnāt taking damage or willing to chase you behind a pillar or into the open, Iād kill it for resources.
The one thing I have against it is that it really is awkward with dropping it at your feet being the only option. As a ranged DPS or a healer that just doesnāt help anyone and one of the strengths of shaman is the additional team support.
Bind is kind of wasted on this ability. I canāt imagine it taking prio over healing stream. The idea of using a 1 minute cooldown to do damage or healing with the other one being wasted isnāt the greatest either.
If they leave it as is then I agree entirely.
There seems to be very less feedback on Ele in the Alpha forumsā¦ itās all about Enh. Ele is getting a lot of changes but zero feedback 
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@Kahiko pretty much sums up the feeling behind the removal. Rerolling to a different class though keeps paying Blizzard, so Iām a bit more dramatic in saying they havenāt yet earned my purchase of Shadowlands. So far, everything teased isnāt much more than what we got in content patches throughout BFA (and I wonder if everyone should just be refunded for it at this point). I donāt want to waste my time with another expansion of borrowed power and class homogenized azerite essences, corruptions, soulbinds, and covenantsā¦
BUT thatās off-topic. Regarding Searing Totem, Iād love to have it, but I also want the other enhancement totems too -, like skyfury and whatnot. I get they made a lot of it baseline (e.g. Elemental does 2.5x crit damage passively now), but the Call of Earth and Totemic Projection model was crazy fun. In fact, Iād prefer Incap Totem to be something that drops nearby and then you project at the last second to promote skillful timing with the kit.
They said tuning would come later, so the pathetic damage was fine as they could have readjusted. Whatās not fine is they didnāt even try to make it workā¦ They just said āNEVERMINDā. Granted, I donāt think the āone totem at a timeā model works at all.
Iām glad to see fire nova back for Enhancement. Now they just need to swap it with Stormkeeper, so we can actually get some synergy with Cycle of Elements. Iāll be very angry if itās only enabled thru Torgast anima powers because they thought that would be good enoughā¦
Not too bad? I canāt imagine any PVE time it will ever be picked over what else is in that row. Its a massive dps loss compared to echoing shock or aftershock. If its purely for PVP, move it to a pvp talent.
Storm, Earth, and Lava did a great feedback write up they are submitting. It details a lot of the issues with the ele design.
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actually moving to different class is more of 10% chance for me, im bout kind of done cause i was sold on return of totems and in fact im losing almost all totems. Im sorry im old school i play shaman for fantasy and playstyle of totems from early days of vanilla and on. Being left with totems i cant have out all time killed it for me, also who cares if a talent is worst in pve? Check my specs i use totem mastery for both ele and enhance cause I āwantā totems. I dont want to be a mail version of a mage i want to be a actual shaman. What i want is my totems to be put out at start of fight and still be out at end of fight with no downtime, like how they used to be, even searing totem was like that. If they cant bring all my totems back fine but leave me with āsomethingā anything. But taking the promised totems away, and also killing totem mastery to a cooldown, thats a, its finally time to retire.
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Enhancement is getting Windfury Totem as a zero cooldown, two minute duration upkeep totem that buffs your whole group, which I think is what youāre looking for?
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Oh i know bout windfury but is that only one? cause im mostly elemental.
Which they just recently had to fix the range on, and only helps for enhancement.
Further, I doubt white damage will matter in current year. If the totem gave multistrike, different story, but I expect it to be an excuse for shaman to be a sub-par contributor to group damage (as the totem bonuses will likely be logged wrong - giving bonus damage to the beneficiary rather than the shaman).
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Yeah, itās the only upkeep buff style totem left. Resto is getting Mana Tide Totem back but thatās a cooldown, and Ele isnāt getting a new totem so that you have more reason to bring Enh to groups.
Yep that feedback post sort of echoes my exact concerns.
While I think the removal of pointless upkeep totems is good (though I understand some people wonāt like it), and some of the changes with fire ele and whatnot seem very positiveā¦ the total decoupling and anti-synergy between eleās different spells is absolutely concerning.
Wow thays very depressing, if it doesnt change before launch i guess ill finally shelf my old shaman and retire from wow. Shaman without totems isnt a shaman just mail mage. Hope everyone else enjoys sl, kudos to those.
Funny, in the past I actually used Searing Totem as an enemy detector in PvP. I put it down before I open map/quest details, the totemās noise would alert me if someone is approaching, even from above.
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Iāve never cared for Searing Totem. When I started (during TBC), the only fire totems were Searing Totem, Magma Totem, Flametongue Totem, and Frost Resistance Totem. I would usually drop Flametongue because it increased spell damage and healing. For some reason (as elemental), the dropping of passive totems wasnāt enthralling, but I did like dropping cooldown totems like Grounding Totem, Stoneclaw Totem, and Earthbind Totem.
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If it attacked all targets afflicted by flame shock every tick instead of just one, couldnāt it be a fun AoE based ability/totem?
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I donāt know why they would attempt to bring that thing back into our spell rotation. There are better spells that should have made a return to the Shaman class. For example, āshamanistic rageā. Bring that spell back, Blizz, as it was.
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