I realize that blizzard is trying to figure out how to “bring back totems” without running into the very reasons/complaints that led them into their current state. And so, I offer a suggestion for how shamans could interact with their totems:
- Shaman places an elemental totem in a desired location, lasts 20 minutes or until the shaman is further than 100 yards from the totem.
- Each elemental totem has a passive effect associated with it. For example:
- Air: Damage buff aura to allies within 100 yards of the totem.
- Earth: Minor slowing AoE (similar to the current earthbind totem).
- Fire: Periodically shoots out fireballs at nearby enemies, prioritizing targets most recently hit by flame shock (similar to past versions of searing totem).
- Water: Periodically heals a nearby ally (similar to the current healing stream totem).
- The shaman’s other abilities generate a secondary effect on an appropriate existing totem. For example:
- Critically hitting with Lava Burst increases the attack speed of your fire totem by 10% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.
- [Restoration Only]: Casting Cleanse while Healing Tide (cooldown) is active will cleanse all targets being affected by Healing Tide of magic, poison, curse, and disease effects. Casting cleanse in this manner increases its cooldown by 15 seconds.
- Casting Earth Shock will cause targets affected by your earth totem slowing effect to be snared in place for 3 seconds. Damage breaks the snaring effect.
- Casting Chain Heal will increase the number of targets your water totem effects by 2 for 15 seconds. This effect stacks.
- Having Water Shield active will cause your water totem to also passively regenerate 10 mana per 5 seconds to nearby allies (or whatever amount would be appropriate).
- [Elemental Only]: Your elemental overload effects triggered from casting Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning will also cause your air totem to trigger those same effects.
- [Enhancement Only]: Using Lava Lash on your fire totem will cause its damage to splash on up to 8 nearby enemies and refresh flame shock on those affected.
- [Restoration Only]: Casting Earth Shield on your air totem will cause it to use its earth shield charges to instead absorb incoming negative spell effects (similar to the grounding totem, but an internal cooldown would be in place between charges being used).
- Using Earth Shock on your earth totem significantly increases its health and causes it to taunt all nearby enemies for 8 seconds or until the totem dies. Casting Earth Shock again on the totem will simply heal it and refresh the duration of the taunting aura. Casting earth shock in this manner does not trigger any of its other totem effects.
- Etc (the possibilities are endless, but the idea is to incorporate and merge existing mechanics together so that when the shaman does something, an appropriate totem does something too)
This proposal obviously creates a greater reliance on a shaman’s totems, making them more vulnerable in environments like PvP. As a balance precaution, shamans could simply have access to a PvP talent (that they can choose to elect into) which merges the functionality of the totems into the shaman themselves at half effectiveness (or something).
Thoughts?