I don’t know if this will be popular, but honestly Totemic is really fun and has made me miss when totems were more integral to the shaman class fantasy. Especially my beloved searing totems ( <3 )
I remember feeling awesome when I unlocked them back in vanilla, doing the quests to get my totems, and it just felt so cool. Now, there’s so few totems that honestly I feel dumb playing the totem based spec lol. Anyone else?
With how much movement is in the game and given to every class the old way wouldnt work out much anymore.
Was ir fun to set up ur 4 totems and go ham on ele? Ya. But those days are over
Idk, if they gave Shaman Totem of Wrath as a raid or group cd it would be pretty big even if it had limited range. If they made Fire Nova a totem again it would really be no different than Shadow Crash. (Not saying they should.) I’m hoping Fae Transfusion can make some sort of comeback as a totem someday. Probably would have been better than current Surging Totem. Totems can work just fine, Blizz just hasn’t done it much. I think current Searing Totems are pretty great, I just wish they lasted a little longer.
Totemic is baller. Really enjoy it on enh as well even if it isnt the “best.” I miss my searing totem
Back some years ago Shaman actaully asked for totems play to be more or less removed as Shaman could never get a proper buff because Totems were to strong. Also Rotation back then was basically “Cast 4 totems”, and Lightning bolt, then when Lava Blast when off CD.
That was basically all of Shamans dps Priority list for a long time till totems were reworked.
Current ele rotation for stormbringer is not really that different 
I miss my totems as well. I want the ability to summon all 4 even if its cosmetic just for the sake of it.
The Surging Totem is cool. I just don’t like 50%+ of my damage comming from this single thing they I just throw on the ground.
They want to make the new skills relevant, but it doesn’t make sense it doing more damage than the Elemental Blast that I need to cast several skills to make it usable.
True, but I think they could make a work around.
E.g. a totem harness that allows you to cast certain totems to your back instead of the ground could be cool. Or they could just rework totemic projection and make it base kit and a shorter CD.
E.g. things like counterstrike totem, static field totem, and grounding totem being shunted into pvp talents makes me sad! I wish we could have more totems to use 
For real, except Earth Shock is locked behind Maelstrom.
The best we have ever had with totems is being able to cast 4 at once of GCD.
Now as part of setup and the required mobility for all encounters, their just inferior to character buffs.
I don’t mind offensive totems (earthbind), lava surge, lightning capacitor, but having survivability totems sucks. I mean stone bulwark totem provides a necessary shield that shaman have always lacked, but being forced to stand still or lose your shield is a stupid tradeoff.
That would be cool! Or having them rotate around u slowly giving off hard classic vibes but with a twist.
They do need to make totems easyer to use. Totems placed at our feet automatically when they involve helping u out and giving us back place on cursor in the settings instead of this aim crap.
Totemic is just not fit the modern game design. M+ and raid have too many movement. Totemic is straight up unplayable on bosses like Queen Anseruk and you need to track Surging Totem damage tick in both M+ and raid. Totemic Projection is not even enough in M+ and raid.
I don’t know, I made it work for Ansurek (heroic should say, I ain’t a mythic prog-er lol). And M+ works so long as the tank isn’t moving groups constantly like a crazy person. Needing totemic projection kinda makes it fun, since you need to place it predicting where everything is gonna end up.
Wouldn’t mind a lower totemic projection CD tho, or my preference would be no CD but give it a purge-esque mana cost.
Valid point on wanting damage not focused entirely on the tremor. I’d really like to see Rebound proc off stormstrike, ele blast, and chain lightning. Then make Searing Totem benefit from rebound buff and duplicate the bolt at reduced effectiveness.
Maybe throw in some in some imbuements improvements, increased windfury rates while surging/searing totem exists or something.
Edit:overall tho, I’m really hoping the 11.0.5 changes improve things, totemic is so very clearly underperforming compared to stormbringer
If you want totemic projection, you want Weakaura to track Surging Totem pulses because it’s easy to miss the damage tick. You can’t use Totemic Projection for utility totems. It’s an awful design. 11.0.5 doesn’t solve the main issues and I would still put it in complete bean tier. I wouldn’t surprised that Totemic will still have 0% usage for hero talents.
If you’re moving surging totem so much you need a weakaura to track pulses, you’re moving it too much
When you use totemic projection for surging totem, it also moves the utility totems. Since you’re putting the surging totem where the enemies are, that’s usually where your party is gonna be, so utility still easily being used. EDIT: mild note for windrush totem getting weird with it, but meh
You’re making mountains outta molehills
Totemic should have been Elemental and Resto.
Functionally totems are just ground targeted aoe skills that can be destroyed.
For throughput they cant allow a mechanic like that to really have an upside so totems have pretty much always been just normal skills with downsides.
The ground targeted totems are the better designed ones, the others are just boring passive buffs that do very little and since your power is balanced around having them up permanently in the first place they just became awfully designed maintainance buffs.
Searing totem was designed this way, do nearly zero damage over a minute with no valuable interaction. If you had to move you replace it to keep up your weak buff. It never feels good to press those buttons.
It didnt need to be garbage though, if searing totem had 2 charges, 1min cd, lasted 15s and were allocated a damage budget that would allow them to feel good then they could have been fun and thematic, but for whatever reason they just had to remain pathetically weak.
What i would like to see is elemental blast become the baseline spender for elemental (talent it for either instant or high cost/damage), and instead of giving a boring stat buff you drop a random totem.
Then create some interactions with the totems like rather than a haste buff, if you drop a storm totem you get faster lightning bolts, fire totem increases lava surge procs, earth totem adds more earthen spikes etc.
Its a shame i really like totem aesthetic but mechanically its handled awfully.
It wont be popular because its terrible and outdated being centered around totems
Does it need to be popular? It fills a thematic niche while enabling a totem focused game style.
Needs some buffs and minor mechanical changes (really wanna see rebound proc off stormstrike, ele blast or lightning, and chain lightning, with rebound buffing searing totem and duplicating bolts off rebound at reduced effectiveness) but its interesting and gives a more rewarding but more fun rotation. Subjectively speaking lol.
Doesn’t even need to be buffed to be as powerful as stormbringer. Just should be within 10-15% of effectiveness rather than 50%.
If you want to kill the class, bring back being locked around totems. It’s simply outdated gameplay