Totemic Hero Talent rework ideas

Overall I think most of the enhance shamans are feeling pretty bad about the play style of the Totemic hero talents…the whole 3 of them anyways. And with the recent “changes” made to shaman in the latest build I figured now would be a good time to see what the community thinks totemic play style should be. I took some time ( and granted this is horribly balanced and not at all flushed out) to work on a potential new hero talent Totemic tree. It does heavily focus on the elementalist build, but considering the other option is Stormbringer for the “storm” build I don’t think anyone would complain about having the other be elementalist focused. This is all enhancement focused since I dont play any resto but I did try to think of resto players too. Would love to see what you guys think!

  1. Elemental Cradle Totem - Summon a totem that stores elemental energy. Lava Lash and Frost Shock (Riptide and lava burst) have a chance to leave elemental residue that is collected by the totem. At 5 stacks summon a Fire elemental (water) to aid you in combat. The cradle becomes more powerful every 5 stacks up to 40 stacks. Last 2min
  • This would act almost like windfury where you would summon before a pull or boss
  1. Every Hot Hands empowered Lava Lash add an additional 2 stacks to the cradle (instant riptide i think for resto)

  2. while the cradle is above 10 stacks, take 10% reduced damage

  3. Frost Shocks or Fire Novas (Healing Stream Totem / Chain Heal) has a 20% chance to splinter the elemental, summoning up to 2 lesser elementals.

  4. Swift Recall OR increase effectiveness of your non damaging totem effects (damage reduction) and splintered elementals by 10% (will apply to healing stream and healing tide totem as well)

  5. Wind barrier is alright shield based on totem health

  6. Every tick of flame shock empowered by Lashing Flames has a 5% chance to summon an unstable magma totem at the targets location exploding after 2 seconds dealing uncapped aoe damage (rewards tabbing to multiple targets to apply lashing flames) / healing stream totem now effects up to 5 members @ 40% effectiveness gain an additional charge of healing stream totem (healing stream totem really needs some love in a Totem based hero talent tree)

  7. Imbument mastery (i think its fine for resto?) hot hands proc chance increased by 5% and Flametounge damage done increased by 10%

  8. Hailstorm Empowered Frost Shock or Chain Heal has a 3% chance per target hit to summon frost or water totems on target creating a frost/water zone. Frost applys a brittle debuff causing enemies to take 5% more damage, or creating a healing puddle HOT and make your heals 5% more effective on targets in the puddle lasting 10 seconds. Cannot have more than one of these totems up at once.

  9. Increase crit chance and crit damage of splintered elementals and unstable magma totems / healing stream totem. OR Casting sundering empowers all active elementals for 10 seconds (for restos maybe healing tide?)

  10. Uncontrollable Elements - at 40 stacks, your totem overflows and creates another cradle up to 3. If 3 cradles are fully stacked combine them to summon a maelstrom cradle. While it is active you cannot summon additional cradles. Maelstorm elemental granting some kind of buff to the shaman

If you guys have any other ideas for how to rework the totemic tree I would love to see them! It just has been a bit of a disappoint tree for enhancement and although stormbringer is definitely fun being locked into one specific play style doesn’t feel great especially since we really had a good tree split between the 2 builds in dragonflight (yes elementalist did more damage but the actual tree paths were nice for 2 unique playstyles).

Summoning an elemental doesn’t really feel “Enhancement” to me.

Totemic overall feels like a very uninspired tree to me, but at this point we’re too close to pre-patch to totally rework the whole thing, so we’re in “just beat it into working shape” mode.

  • Surging Totem’s damage type changed to Maelstrom (Physical/Elemental) instead of Physical.
  • Oversurge changed to key off of Feral Spirit uptime instead of Ascendance.
  • Supportive Imbuements changed to make Flametongue Weapon increase spell damage by 5% instead of increasing the Flametongue proc’s crit chance and damage.
  • Whirling Elements replaces its Earth triggers with Frost triggers.
  • Totemic Rebound and Lively Totems both changed to trigger off Stormstrike, Lava Lash, and Ice Strike.
  • Imbuement Mastery changed to make triggering Windfury guaranteed to proc Maelstrom Weapon instead of increasing trigger chance and damage.
  • Earthsurge inverted to make Surging Totem’s initial damage pulse send out reduced effectiveness Sunderings in all directions.
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Honestly those are actually great changes to make to the current tree…though i dont see them coming through. I guess youre right going to have to accept the fact that its a lack luster tree. My copium for a new tree was really hitting new highs