I don’t know why Totem Mastery has to be a talent and not just a baseline spell. Before the spell pruning and class re-works, Shaman laid down 4 totems simultaneously. Each totem of 4 different elements could be rearranged to provide damage, utility, or support for yourself or others. I really want them to go back to a similar talent row in MoP. Talents that improves how each player uses their totems; A talent that resets all your totems with a CD less than 3 min, a talent that buffs the health/damage/utility of active totems (Totem Mastery)( i.e grounding heals you for damage negated), or the totems move with you as you travel around the world also acting as a redirect for damage. If this level of thought was put into totems as a class fantasy, I would be happy to have them.
Because it’s terrible and unfun.
How about a compromise. For those of us who love totems and those who want a more meaningful button to press. Make searing totem more meaningful. Enhancement get wind fury totem for a party upkeep buff. How about searing totem shoots fireballs and provides a meaningful aoe buff. Resto and ele should both get this totem. It taunts me on my login screen every day.
This is basically the answer to totems that I don’t understand why Blizz misses repeatedly. Give them some secondary immediate/pulsing effect that makes pressing the button alone worth at least something without requiring it live and be active for its entire duration.
Players: totems BLIZZZZZZZZ
PVP: totems get macro moonfired as soon as they’re cast
Players: WHY TOTEMS BLIZZZZZZZZZZ!?
The entire world already knows the solution to that problem, Blizz just refuses to make them require a dispel or take more than 1 hit for completely unknown and likely absurd reasons, especially given how other classes are designed.
Especially this new iteration
They really didn’t introduce it right. It used to be that you dropped it as certain specs (ele/enh) to get something that help contributes to your abilities (like Lava Lash hitting harder). If it wasn’t on the GCD but had a cooldown or had some kind of impact other than basically a stationary imp with less control it would’ve been cool. But Blizz hates us.
I love the idea of searing totem, but I much prefer a totem that does more.
To you. That is your opinion, other people have different opinions. I enjoyed having totems to drop as an Enhancement shaman. I also liked the ability we had were we could choose which totem we wanted and drop 4 at once. I do agree the removal of those hurt our class fantasy.
I definitely think Searing Totem (as it stood in SL) really is just button bloat and an unnecessary GCD. I really do miss using totems in combat but the way Blizzard is introducing them in SL doesn’t work with the faster pace design of things like M+ and even regular world content.
Currently on SL, Enhance Shaman has about 7 rotational abilities (granted you only use all 7 in AoE) and adding an 8th button that doesn’t do anything except basically act like a DoT sounds like an out of place idea. Not to mention we also have to separately keep up Windfury Totem now.
Blizzard should’ve at least tried to make the totem work though. They had the power to make it interact with our other abilities and instead just removed it.
look everyone has different game experiences but you have got to be kidding,
searing totem from way way back has always done a pittance of damage, is one-shot-able, eats a GCD to spawn, and frequently would bug out or attack nonsense targets
honestly, I can’t think of a better totem to nuke
EDIT: and on top of all that, the range was either terrible or infinite if it happened to be attack the wrong target
I’ve never been more pissed at an ability in a game. Playing classic and drop ST and it completely ignores the add 10 yds away and hits the one 30 yds away and aggros all 5 mobs just as I finish casting LB on the mob I originally planned to attack.
hahaha, omg, good times. and by that I mean at those moments way back then, really back freaking times. That so used to happen, like all the time!
in it’s original form it used to eat a ton of mana as well
searing totem mostly stayed off peoples quickbars, mine included
it could rarely, and I mean very rarely, be used usefully in some pvp encounters. searing totem was so infrequently used that against rogues someone could drop it and the uneducated players would take the time to target it to 1-shot it. it could buy a valuable second or two sometimes. but experienced pvpers would just ignore it and mow the shaman down.
EDIT: I should be a bit more generous though, nostalgia is nostalgia and it’s different for everyone. it’s true, for some level ranges if one was farming, it was a fun way to break up the monotony.
dont care too much about searing totem but they still really need to add flameshock spreading as a passive in both ele and enh. what’s wrong with lava burst/lava lash spreading it?
Ele spreading Flame Shock to infinite targets would require a Lava Surge re-work in order to not make it totally busted. Also, I believe the Fire Nova talent is also designed around X number of shocks, where X isn’t infinite.
As it stands, they can finely tune the experience knowing you can juggle at max X Flame Shock DoTs. I don’t really see the problem.
Or even have wind spells at all… We have wind shear as an ELEMENTALIST baseline… Are there any others? No gales that stop movement, twisters that pull people in etc… Kinda meh.
Might as well just call us lightning mages for all the variety of weather effects we can actually produce.
Wind shear
Windfury
SL has windfury totem.
We had gust of wind
The movement totem talent is wind based.
And we are master if the elements
Not
Masters of weather
Was asking about baseline for elemental spec. So yeah, wind shear. GoW would be neat.
We harness the destructive forces of nature. Like earthquakes and thunderstorms. I was just saying it’d be great if we got more wind spells.
Its not ridiculous. I started playing Shaman for searing totem too. You dont know fun. We have flavor. If you play all the other classes, what made shamans different was the totem. And that, was an iconic totem. A totem that did damage. And in a cool way. I’m mad if theyre taking that out.
I was considering maining shaman for shadowlands, but if they take this out I dont know. These people who wanna remove it dont know fun. Bad players. Hopefully they never get to class design.
Blizzard seed this. Pleasr bring back searing totem. Such a fun move.