Please give us some communication on this. Are there any other classes who don’t have at least two of their trees out yet? Or are we really the bottom of the pile?
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Just rogues. Priest is still missing one as well.
I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that we are in the non-NDA portion of alpha and some classes don’t even have their hero trees to test.
Seems like an important thing to have for the testing phase of the new expansion.
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I’m so nervouse we’re going to get some oracle tier hero trees and not have time to fix them.
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If anything stormbringer and totemic will be like sentinel hunter, just boring procs. I think the data mined totemic passives confirm this.
Respectfully disagree. From what I have seen in the data mined Totemic, it looks excellent. A totem that does a bunch of damage and builds up as well as totem procs?! Proccing totems on our abilities is a brilliant design and honestly helps out the tempo immensely. And that tree is only half done atm. Curious what they come up with the “windfury totem has a CD and does something interesting when dropped” as well as “New weapon imbue effects”!
We actually need more passives to our abilities not more buttons.
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I do agree that we don’t need more buttons, I honestly just want to hear something from Blizz about why they weren’t included.
Button bloat is gross and shamans have it the worst out of any class. Passive increases to our abilities is a good way to go with just making our current kit feel much stronger, though there should be visual upgrades to these as well.
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I, personally, don’t wanna touch anything that has to do with putting a significant, build defining portion of our damage into a totem. Nah, so tanks and groups can clown you for low dps cause they don’t understand how CDs vs ‘Pack pull size and frequency’ work?
Shamans are great dps, we just don’t have defensives. Resto & ele need some kind of raid buff. Give shamans an absorb or another defensive and rework reincarnation, and we’re an S tier class.
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Why can’t it be exactly what we have now just with searing totem and spire totem procs? I certainly didn’t think this was something that would dominate our minds and rotations. More of an accessory designed for the mastery build. In which-case it does it in an organic way.
specs that either have capped aoe and setup time or have uncapped aoe that’s stationary always end up with issues on dps because a tank can easily ruin a pull for you. We end up being secondary picks to specs that CAN dish out the damage quick while being uncapped/having high target count at the same time as being mobile.
Your damage ultimately depends on if everything is a patchwerk and doesnt move more than 6 feet from where you put down a thing and that can feel kinda garbage.
You’d then be delegated to playing with specs like blood dk because they benefit the most from standing still in a circle and that’s who you’d have the most success with in pugs. (Maybe not exactly, but from my experience, i’ve done well with all but on my destro lock i pump with a blood dk tank.)
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But totemic adds another button as well, Spire totem is a pressed button, even in the datamined data it has charges.
“## Spire Totem
Instant
2 charges
Enhancement
Summons a totem at your feet for 60 sec that launches an Elemental Blast at a nearby enemy.
Restoration
Summons a totem at your feet for 60 sec that launches a Healing Wave at a nearby injured ally.
The totem can stack on top of itself 2 additional times, with each stack increasing the damage or healing it does by 10%.”
It looks like certain abilities and skills may summon one passively, but we have a button to add to it to get it to 3 stacks quickly to proc its effect.
“Your spells and abilities have a chance to call down a Spire Totem, increasing your Agility/Intellect by 2%. Spire Totems stack on top of each other. Enhancement When the totem reaches 3 stacks, your next use of Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or Elemental Blast activates the totem, causing it to hurl an Elemental Wave at your primary target for X Elemental damage and causing Y damage to nearby enemies. Restoration When the totem reaches 3 stacks, your next use of Healing Wave, Healing Surge, or Chain Heal activates the totem, causing it to send an Elemental Wave at your primary target for X healing and healing up to 5 nearby injured allies.“
That’s my worry with Totemic, as both Resto and Enhance, we have already on our plate in terms of buttons to press, having another is going to be a tough to add in and I personally think it’s going to feel worse.
It’s hard to say as it’s still only datamined, not even implemented in Alpha yet, so it could be changed to be purely passive, but from what we’ve seen so far in the datamined notes, another button is a no go from me.
It sort of goes completely against of what your suggesting needing more passive and less buttons when it’s essentially adding another button.
(Tone is impossible to tell from text, but please read these from a neutral standpoint. I have no ill-will towards either of you.)
Feels like you are having a conversation with yourself at this point. You haven’t addressed a single thing I said. Now you are changing the topic and moving the goal post at the same time. Im not sure what to tell you friend. If you can look at a 60 second duration totem that potentional shoots out elemental blasts every 2 seconds (which is insane btw) and also procs while has 2 charges but still complain while 7 second CD totemic project will exist in this point in the game… Your on your own bud. Totem’s are kind of our thing, I guess if you choose not to play projection while feeling the way you do, Shaman isn’t for you. I feel like I speak for a lot of people in this community when I say: Getting more value out of our totems feels great.
Im not sure why you decided to copy word for word an ability you must know Ive read, as i’ve referenced it my own post. You copied a bunch and then said
??? What is your worry? You have only stated what you and I both already know. Also, feels like you are nit-picking my point on purpose here. I felt like it was clear I was talking about what I liked about it from the passives that are in there. Theres actually more buttons implied then you have copy-pasta’d here for us. Searing totems return, healing rain totem, chain heal/lightning totem. Not to mention how we are heavily likely to be playing Project and Recall which is 2 more buttons. Not everyone has already buttons for those, I certainly don’t. It can do things we don’t like while still going in the right direction. Both of those can be true at the same time. Which is why I will once again end by saying:
I’ll stop myself from being doomy before we see the whole tree but the premise of another totem that just fires off healing waves or ele blasts sounds super boring. Like, you couldn’t put less effort into a system if you tried. But maybe the tree will have some fun gameplay. Who knows.
What were your expectations? I guess, what do you want a totem to do? I personally thought it was really cool and helpful. Maybe I am out of touch but what would you consider not boring?
I’d say Hero talents that aren’t just elemental mastery.
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So now we are talking about Farseer instead? In that case I would say: fair enough. hahaha.
But how about what I was discussing, Totemic? 
Do you feel like Totemic is boring design wise as well? If so I ask you the same question.
I would consider a system that interacts with class talents, changes how spells work, or change up rotations to be exciting. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
- I am excited to play a mountain thane warrior just because thunderclap replacing whirlwind is fun and new to me.
- I am excited to play colossus warrior because the build up and payoff for demolish is new and fun.
- I am excited to play hellcaller warlock because immolate is now instant, that is huge to me.
- I am excited to play Druid of the claw because of the incredible new bonuses for weaving cat and bear form together.
- I am excited to play all the mage trees, they all have surgery within the mage kit as well as new spells replacing old ones, and great visuals.
Even something as small as thrash for guardian being arcane damage is fun to me because that changes how a lot of talents interact with the ability.
I don’t see anything like that for totemic (yet) or Farseer. It’s just non interactive damage / healing procs and another charge of riptide/lava burst. I’m hoping totemic has some interesting talents like healing rain being a totem which would interact with a number of talents but we will have to see.
I feel that is very valid. But these are different limitations are they not? I mean it is called totemic. My question is what do you want from it to be impactful? Its a build-a-totem that gives access to a new spell. Elemental Wave. Potentially twice? Data mined info is kinda worded weird so unsure about that. Totems are pretty simple, getting new weapon imbues and potentially extra effects to totems is pretty on point. I dont think this is supposed to be flashy. Minus that you will be able to immediatly tell a shaman is totemic when you see all the totems everywhere haha.
Making stormstrike nature damage or debuff is more in line what what you are describing interaction wise. But that sounds more of a stormcaller (w/e its called) not a totemic. Mastery of our basics and core concepts is the point of this one. Better weapon imbues, more totems (right now I have like 4, and that honestly feels bad) and better effects for them. An actual dps totems that may be more than just a tickle. It’s all very interesting (and reliable/consistent), but perhaps not exciting. But does it need to be?
IF ANYTHING. The most I could see from totemic to be more in line what you are describing. Is to be able to extract power from them, like a pet sac. Or create wild magic by fusing totems together or something. But theres an argument there for that being boring as well haha. Totems by definition are passive magic mostly used for protection to ward off things, or to cleanse others.
I agree, I was a bit shocked that people are actively engaging with the alpha and publishing articles/videos discussing things and there are still classes missing entire hero trees. It seems like a glaring oversight on one of the expansions key features, and should be evaluated and iterated on as soon as possible. How can alpha testers weigh in when the key feature isn’t even fully implemented for testing and feedback?
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Well I would need to know more about the elemental wave spell to know if it’s fun. But I am more interested in things that change our spells (like healing rain becoming a totem, I think that’s awesome because it changes how healing rain interacts with our talents and abilities) than I am with a generic damage / healing proc totem. I mean if the totem has a cool visual when it “stacks” that could also make it fun. Seeing a giant totem pole shooting fire or healing would be sick. Just need to know more.