Totemic Thoughts?

Classes Shaman
1

I’ll be honest, after reading and seeing everything I’m not sure for the tree as Enhance, Resto it looks decent definitely will give it a try, but for Enhance it’s not what I expected.

I see the synergy they trying to bring, Lava Lash + Fire Nova seems very important especially with the capstone only effecting those spells exclusively.

I enjoy their defensive although a little lacking need to see if it has interactions on Searing Totem when it’s spawns of Lava Lash.

I don’t know this tree seems very confusing, while the Stormbringer Tree has a clear direction, playstyle and feel, I feel like Totemic is being directed in multiple places trying to please multiple play styles but then reducing its effectiveness trying to please everything at once.

It’s like semi adhering to the Elementalist Build, but then has Talents pushing towards Ascendance and Sundering, it’s just hard to figure out. Are we trying to push for more Stormstrikes with Totemic Rebound?

Clearly I think it’s too early to judge as I’m sure no way our Spec Tree is going to be as it is currently and definitely will be adjusted. Cause Talent Spending wise it’s going to be a struggle, so do we lose Primordial Wave to pick up Windfury Totem, Sundering and Ascendance.

I was hoping the new tree adjustment would come with Totemic so we could have avoided this confusion.

Don’t get me wrong Totemic might be an absolute home run with the new spec tree, but currently it seems sort of directionless, like a mix and match of ideas pushed together. I think it’s a “too early to tell scenario”, but just then makes it more so difficult to play test and give proper feedback.

Edit: I actually feel like Totemic was created more so with Resto in mind, it seems decent for Resto, but Enhance looks like an afterthought.

3

It’s definitely a very, very rough first iteration, especially for Enhance… I personally thought Totemic would sort of specifically cater more so to the Elementalist Build/Playstyle.

They sort of semi have?, it just doesn’t seem right currently, maybe future iterations fix a lot + class/spec tree changes.

5

Its a wild tree. LIke, it goes into a fire and into physical? This make me think they are going to change up the Enhance tree big time, because this doesn’t make sense with the current tree. Physical damage, Stormstrike and Ascendance synergy but also Fire Nova? To work with Totemic on enhance you are going to have to build in a way we havent for the entire expac.

6

I agree, this makes me think it’s too early and was hoping to see the tree changes to go with it.

It makes me think is Primordial Wave even going to be around with a tree rework :thinking:.

It’s clear Ascendance, Sundering and Windfury Totem will be hanging around, no tree even remotely mentions Doomwinds or Primordial Wave.

I think our new spec tree is going to shake a lot up.

7

For Resto it could be fun. The two Resto trees have me more interested than the MW ones. I’ll reserve full judgement for when I actually get to mess around with them.

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8

Yeah I got a feeling Ascendance is about to become a core damage cooldown. I also am wondering if windfury weapon is planned to be made baseline and not a talent. Having a hero tree with Lava Lash, Fire Nova, Windfury, and Ascendance got me thinking. I was on the fence about Ennhance getting talent tree work until I saw this. Really wild tree.

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9

As a Resto main, in its current state, this is easily the most underwhelming Hero tree. I was hoping “totemic” would do crazy and banger stuff with our totems… but what I’m seeing is very bland and uninteresting.

Surging Totem: Replaces Healing Rain. Casts Healing Rain on a friendly target every 5 seconds. 30% more effective than Healing Rain.

A stronger Healing Rain, but I lose control of where to put it? Pass.

Totemic Rebound: Chain Heal can bounce off a totem to heal one more additional ally

One of only two talents in this Hero tree I actually like. Kind of a neat idea.

Amplification Core: Healing and damage increased by 3% while Surging Totem is active

Basically, it’s just a tuning knob. It’s whatever.

Oversurge: while Ascendance is active, Surging Totem is 150% stronger

Cool, let’s buff the Healing Rain I have no control over where it gets placed.

Lively Totems: summoning Healing Stream, Healing Tide, Mana Tide, Cloudburst, or Spirit Link casts a Chain Heal

Eh, a free Chain Heal. Good for numbers but not much else interesting about it.

Reactivity: Healing spells cause Healing Stream to instantly heal an ally for 50% effectiveness. Cloudburst stores an additional 25%.

Really only benefits Cloudburst. 50% weaker tick from Healing Stream isn’t much to write home about.

Wind Barrier: gaing a damage shield every 30 seconds while you have an active totem

I really don’t like them buffing Shaman’s survivability into the Hero Trees instead of just making our base line survivability better.

Oversized Totems: increase the size and radius of totems by 15% and their HP by 30%

Really? That’s it? The radius on totems is kind of nice, but increasing their size and HP is just… who cares?

Swift Recall: successfully dispelling with Tremor or Poison Cleansing, stunning with Capacitor, or rooting with Earthgrab reduces their cooldown by 5 seconds. Cannont happen more than once every 20 seconds.

This is, in my opinion, the worst talent of the tree. A whopping 5 second reduction on one of our CC totems. Woo-freaking-hoo. Maybe this would be more useful in M+ and PVP (I don’t know. I don’t do either of those forms of content), but I don’t see them getting much use in a Raid unless they’re going to be ramping up the number of boss fights that have add phases or Poison/Fear effects.

Imbuement Mastery: increase the duration of Earthliving’s effect

I hope they buff Earthliving Weapon to make this worthwhile. Right now, I’m not aware of any Resto builds that use it.

Pulse Capacitor: increase the healing/damage of Surging Totem

Eh, another tuning knob. It’s whatever.

Supportive Imbuements: learn Tidecaller’s Guard. Cast on shields. Increase healing by 2% and the duration of Healing Stream and Cloudburst by 3 seconds

The only other talent in the tree I like. Finally, shields are actually useful and not just a stat stick.

Totemic Coordination: Chain Heals from totems are 30% stronger

Basically, it’s a 30% buff to Totemic Rebound and Lively Totems.

Earthsurge: healing is 10% stronger on allies effected by Earthen Wall, Ancestral Protection, and Earthliving

Neat, I guess? Do these totems even see much play? Maybe this is an attempt to get people to actually use them more?

Whirling Elements: elemental motes surround your Surging Totem. Healing spells consume a mote for an additional effect

I’m not a fan of having to fish through rotating buff effects to get the one I want. I don’t like Blessing of Seasons for Paladins… and I don’t like this either.

All and all, I don’t see myself ever running Totemic in its current state. I don’t like losing control of where to put Healing Rain and most of the talents are just boring to me. For Resto, I’m definitely taking Farseer over Totemic.

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11

I’m highly amused that I’m now 3/3 on the previewed/alpha trees including things incredibly similar to stuff I put in my versions while we were waiting for them to come out.

I certainly hope not. Enhancement is in the best place it’s been in ages. The Elementalist side doesn’t need drastic reworks, only refinement. Storm is the side that needs sweeping changes, but everything you’re suggesting hits Elementalist way harder.

Good sweet spirits I hope not.

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12

For resto…outside of acid rain and possibly the ELW treatment…

The tree looks pretty great.

13

tree looks kind of good depending on the enhance tree reworks. I am thinking if they just combine the lava lash nodes for spreading and using and move fire nova one more up would be a start.

14

Well, I can’t say changes are coming for sure, but the only way this crazy hero spec makes sense is if they are coming. It just so wild and out of pocket how the skills here are mixed compared to the traditional builds that exist in the current tree. Maybe they wont and hope this will force people to mix it up? Imagine a Elementalist build that uses Ascendance? A Storm build using Fire Nova? Wild man…

16

As an Elemental main, trust me, you don’t want Earthquake as your AoE. It’s hot garbage.

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17

how is it that players come up with better talent trees than blizzard

honestly just cooking but what if the totem replaced ascendance/ when ascendance procced the totem goes down. granting you the buffs for however long it naturally would have. Great alternative to ascendance imo

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18

Yeah, but we have a lot of Physical damage multipliers so it would scale way better for us.

In regards to the hero talents…

Surging totem could be super nice if it has a bunch of HP. Instant damage in a huge radius, really strong for getting stealth classes out in arena. Should be smart targetting as well to only affect things in in combat with you(PvE) and not in CC. Would need to be like a jade statue or have the same hp as shaman baseline for the extra 30% hero talent to truly shine. Plus the extended radius/duration from the regular talent. This totem is clearly meant to be right in the thick of it with you, so it needs to take a ton of resources for them to kill it. (it not being able to be crit would go a long way towards that) On a 14 second CD, with talents, it wouldn’t be worth them committing to it over and over. So it could just sit there and do the most damage ever.

The radius and hp bonus sound like a godsend… if they rework the base health of all totems… The absorb every 30 is super incredible, having passive shields is never a bad thing! Especially if it scales off the amount of totems. It says “totems” in there so it could be amazing as the fight progresses. The windfury damage and proc rate is really good as well. Everything else though… It’s deff a head scratcher for sure. I suppose if you are proccing WF a ton you are getting a bunch more flametongue procs as well? So it could be a decent passive damage increase? I mean my Flametongues are hitting for 1350 non crit and no multipliers atm. I would love to see it make it so FT can only crit instead and get the extra crit multiplier. Or it proccing a flame shock on the target (would be sooooo nice in PvP) or even better proccing a snare.

With the current version of the talents these don’t make any sense at all. I guess we wait and see what is released. Also, has anyone play tested this in the alpha I can check out yet? I can’t find anything.

19

From someone who focuses on m+, this talent tree looks promising. You’ll be able to have multiple healing rains out, all instant cast, all doing more healing and damage. You’ll get more frequent access to utility totems like poison cleansing (possibly negating afflicted affix) and capacitor totem. You’ll be throwing out frequent chain heals. You’ll get an absorb periodically, and buff the amount of healing targets receive.

All without requiring extra GCDs.

Hopefully the totem visuals look decent.

I’m a little put off having to invest in earthliving weapon, but maybe it’s getting a bufff to make it relevant? Im still hoping a rework is coming…

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20

Pretty sure Theun’s recent video on YouTube, confirmed it’s only one Healing Rain ever, no overlaps or anything.

But for Resto it does look a lot better and designed for, I actually like the emphasis on Earthliving and added Tidecaller’s Guard. Enhance sadly seems to be an afterthought.

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21

So much of the tree is straight up bad for enhancement.

The fact that elementalist build doesn’t really use stormstrike makes the stormstrike talents/capstone pretty useless. The imbuement talents are a waste of space, Windfury weapon and Flametongue make up maybe 3% of our damage so increasing them is doing nothing. Storm build doesn’t use lava lash enough or sometimes at all so you can’t count on a searing totem when you need it. Storm also doesn’t usually pickup hailstorm/fire nova because storm build requires too many talent points to work. Then you’re forced into taking certain talents like sundering or elemental blast to make talents work. The capstone is basically all of the above, having parts of the capstone become ineffective or useless because you didn’t pick a talent or don’t use that ability with your build just plain ol’ sucks.

If they designed it with the current talent tree in mind then they failed completely at understanding enhancement and our whole 2 builds. I’m not sure how they thought an omni-element build would work, but it doesn’t and there is a reason no one runs it. Both builds require every last talent point to work well, especially storm. You don’t have the luxury of picking up a talent or two to “splash” into other builds. Stormstrike requires so many talents just to be usable, otherwise it’s just a wet noodle and is really only there to proc other things that actually do damage. I cannot overstate just how horribly put together this tree is for enhancement or understand their reasoning that enhancement uses 0-1 totem regularly and the rest on a niche utility basis so that’s a good thing to base a hero spec around.

22

Thanks for the clarification. Not as good, but still not bad.

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23

I agree, clearly Totemic looks like they using an adjusted spec tree, which I hope we would have gotten with the hero spec to essentially avoid this confusion.

Like to make either build work for Totemic (Storm or Elementalist) it seems we have to sacrifice a lot to pick up required skills to actually play the Hero Spec using the current spec tree.

Like I’ve been coexisting as the Elementalist Build, but now I need to pick up Windfury Totem, Sundering and Ascendance, so I cut out Primordial Wave?. I’m going Stormbringer regardless (Storm Build all the way), but I was praying Totemic would be a home run too.

I just hope a Dev could post something clearing a lot of the confusion up. Then leaving it to the players in assuming.

It’s still a great hero spec for Resto, I do like Farseer but hate being forced into Unleash Life… so Totemic is looking great for me as Resto.

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24

I don’t even understand what they’re going for with the enhance version of it. It’s just like they threw a bunch of random stuff together without understanding how either of the builds for it plays.

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