I’ve played shaman for many years now, and its one of the only classes I have consistently enjoyed. We were originally a more hybrid class with lots of group utility, but we’ve lost a lot of that utility over the years with pruning to the point we’ve become a dps or healer with less utility and survivability options then the other dps and healers.
Totems were always an iconic part of the class and would be a good way to add utility back into the class. My following suggestion would be a way to add more utility options to allow shamans to be the class that can deal with lots of situations, but not all at the same time.
The core of the idea is to give all of the primary totems (earth, air, water, fire) charges that they share with other totems of the same element. Also some changes to some possible changes and new totems.
Earth Totems: 3 charges, 20 second cooldown.
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Tremor Totem; same effect; costs 2 charges
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Earthbind Totem; same effect; costs 1 charge
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Earthgrab Totem; make baseline, remove slow component, reduce totem duration, root doesn’t break on damage only on totem death; costs 1 charge
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Earthen Wall Totem; make available to enhance/elemental; costs 2 charges
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(new)Earthen Bulwark Totem; redirects 30% of damage taken by the shaman to the totem, costs 2 charges
Air Totems: 3 charges, 30 second cooldown
- Capacitor Totem; increased duration or aoe, something to balance the cost of the delay; costs 2 charges
- Grounding Totem; make baseline, same effect; costs 1 charge
- Wind Rush Totem; make baseline, reduce totem duration; costs 2 charges
Water Totems: 2 charges, 60 second cooldown, 40 for restoration
(since there is currently only 1 water totem that isn’t healing tide I’ll be dredging up some fuel from vanilla)
- Healing Stream Totem; add an effect that makes casted heals trigger an empowered tick; costs 1 charge
- (Dredge)Poison Cleansing Totem; removes a poison effect from a nearby party member every 2 seconds for 10 seconds; costs 1 charge
- (Dredge)Disease Cleansing Totem; removes a disease effect from a nearby party member every 2 seconds for 10 seconds; costs 1 charge
- (Dredge)Mana Spring Totem; restores 1% mana every 3 seconds for 15 seconds to a nearby party member; costs 1 charge
Fire Totems: 2 charges, 75 second cooldown
(Since there aren’t any currently and taking into account the reason why searing totem was reremoved)
- Molten Reflection Totem; places a totem at target location for 8 seconds, if Flame Shock, Lava Lash, and Lava Burst are used on a target within the area they are also cast on 5 other targets within the area; costs 1 charge (this would be a way to make fire nova more competitive without further nerfing Hailstorm, and go with the theme of synergizing abilities)
- Searing Fury Totem; places a totem at your feet for 30 seconds, while the totem is active your Flame Shocks do not lose duration, deal damage 20% faster and cause the target to take 20% more damage from your next Lava Lash or Lava Burst stacking 5 times
Change Echo of the Elements to add an additional charge of every totem, and cause your abilities to reduce the totem cooldowns of the respective elements. I.E.
- Earth Shock, Earthquake, Stormstrike, and Primal Strike reduce the cooldown of your Earth Totems by 1 second.
- Frost Shock and your healing spells reduce the cooldown of your Water Totems by 1 second.
- Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, and Crash Lightning reduce the cooldown of your Air Totems by 1 second.
- Flame Shock, Lava Lash and Lava Burst reduce the cooldown of your Fire Totems by 1 second.
- Elemental Blast reduces the cooldown of all your totems by 2 seconds.
To account the loss of additional Lava Burst charge, revamp Lava Surge; maintain the next cast is instant, but instead of resetting the cooldown it increases the cooldown recovery by 200% for 4 seconds, similar to how the new Hot Hand functions.
This was a lot of writing and I’m probably crazy, but let me know if I made any sense.