The problem with Shaman talents

[Teriz]

I think the last three posts show exactly what Dhozer was talking about. Some players think everything is fine, and others believe that there are some significant issues that need to be addressed.

I have a distinct feeling that we're heading down familiar territory with this expansion, and that isn't a good thing.

I think those assumptions only reveal your prejudices I'm afraid. Lets break them down one by one.

Totemic Projection baseline: People occasionally pop up mentioning a situational use for it and that's great, but other than those who have been demanding it for years it seems most everyone ignores it barring those specific situational uses.

Everyone ignores it because its in the same tier as ridiculously powerful talents. Again that runs counter to the design philosophy of the new talent system. Even a PvP shaman who may benefit from TP is more than likely going to take Totemic Restoration instead. A PvE Shaman may enjoy tossing his totems around, but he isn't going to give up CotE for that added utility. Replacing Totemic Projection with Elemental Harmony would give Shaman an actual choice in that tier.

Conductivity reworked: It's fine for elemental, I think you're actually the first person I've seen who claims otherwise. It does need a change to benefit enhance more yes, but no-one here has disagreed with that.

For Conductivity to be beneficial you need to have enemies within the HR, you need to make sure you have sufficient allies within HR for the AoE healing, and you have to properly target enemies for the AoE to work. You also have to deal with the relatively long LB casting time, especially if you glyphed to move while casting LB.

Or you could just drop HTT and continue doing your DPS. I know which one I'm going for if I need AoE healing in a pinch.

Totem Health: This change would be completely irrelevant to anyone playing PvE, if your totems are being targetted by PvE mobs then you've got bigger problems.

True, but PvP is a significant portion of the game, and some who play PvE do so on PvP realms, or like to Duel when they're not doing anything else. Nothing brings down class morale quicker than when your class is hopelessly outmatched in PvP, regardless of what form PvP takes. The uproar over Capacitor Totem's significant drawbacks is just the most recent example.

There is a definite theme running through all of these suggestions though. All of these changes would act as a direct buff to enhance, specifically PvP enhance, either by saving you glyph slots (Totemic Vigour)or allowing you to have the totem laucher and still take Call of Elements. What you propose is either irrelevant to, or provides no benefit to Elemental or Restoration in PvE, and little benefit to them in PvP either.

Talents and glyphs are supposed to be a tradeoff so that you end up with a set of abilities that suit you and the situation you're dealing with: They are not your christmas list to Santa.

My Christmas list to "Blizzard Santa" would be 2H Enhancement tanking, with Spirit Wolves as permanent pets that I can ride on with a trail of lightning behind me.

In other words, I'm merely asking for some class balance. I don't think any of my suggestions are OP or game breaking. Nor would they disrupt Shaman who prefer to only do PvE.

[Endus]

Everyone ignores it because its in the same tier as ridiculously powerful talents. Again that runs counter to the design philosophy of the new talent system. Even a PvP shaman who may benefit from TP is more than likely going to take Totemic Restoration instead. A PvE Shaman may enjoy tossing his totems around, but he isn't going to give up CotE for that added utility. Replacing Totemic Projection with Elemental Harmony would give Shaman an actual choice in that tier.

Elemental Harmony was, if anything, even more niche and situational than Totemic Projection. It was much maligned when they clarified that Fire totems wouldn't be included, which was the only really serious use for the ability. You can't use your own preferences as if you speak for all Shaman, when you patently do not. If you, personally, don't like Totemic Projection, then don't take it. Problem solved.

For Conductivity to be beneficial you need to have enemies within the HR, you need to make sure you have sufficient allies within HR for the AoE healing, and you have to properly target enemies for the AoE to work. You also have to deal with the relatively long LB casting time, especially if you glyphed to move while casting LB.

Or you could just drop HTT and continue doing your DPS. I know which one I'm going for if I need AoE healing in a pinch.

"You have to play properly" is not a valid complaint about an ability. Yes, Conductivity has situational strengths. Under those circumstances (which are FAR more prevalent than you apparently think) it outweighs HTT significantly for healing done by a DPS. HR isn't a small area, and if you're dropping it on melee, their targets are also in the HR, unless you're actively trying to avoid them.

True, but PvP is a significant portion of the game, and some who play PvE do so on PvP realms, or like to Duel when they're not doing anything else. Nothing brings down class morale quicker than when your class is hopelessly outmatched in PvP, regardless of what form PvP takes. The uproar over Capacitor Totem's significant drawbacks is just the most recent example.

The class isn't "hopelessly outmatched". Stop using ridiculous hyperbole. We've been OP in certain seasons, even with the supposedly gamebreaking issues you're talking about. Enhancement in Beastcleaves in WotLK, for instance, Resto in T11 for another. We're far from "hopelessly outmatched" even on live, and most of the new talents provide major changes to specifically address some weaknesses certain specs had.

Also, there's been no "uproar" over Capacitor Totem that I've seen. Certainly not here, and a quick search of the beta class feedback forum only shows one thread that was decidedly not uproar-y. Again, hyperbole.

[Teriz]

But over all i am disappointed with our talents large part is just reused stuff these are reused talents/ abilities / or something we had
Nature's Guardian - resto tree talent
Stone Bulwark Totem - bust have pvp glyph now ( stoneclaw)
Astral Shift - i still think its inferior version of ele old talent that reduced dmg while silenced /feared/ stuned as its then when ppl take mos tof dmg
Frozen Power - enh talent now
Earthgrab Totem - ele talent now
Elemental Mastery - talent in ele tree now
Ancestral Swiftness - talent in resto tree
Healing Tide Totem - healing mana tide
Ancestral Guidance - in away works like Ancestral awakening
Unleashed Fury - unleashed elements
Primal Elementalist - controllable pets for enha now enha suffers with dumb ed down woolfs

So 11 unimaginative / rehashed/ reworked / boosted talents imagine 11

Sorry I missed this before. Very good (and depressing) points.

BTW, you should add that Windwalk Totem is just a rehashed version of Earthen Power in the Enhance tree.

[Tomikadzi]

Conductivity is just about perfect for Elemental. It needs to work off SS/LL for Enhancement, as they can't chain-cast LBs like Elemental can without destroying their DPS to a much larger degree, but for Elemental, it's absolutely fine, if not borderline OP for certain fights.

There's a glyph that addresses the totem health issue. It is a problem that has already been solved. If you want totems that can't be killed with an autoattack, it's going to cost you a glyph. Such is the nature of tradeoffs. If it's not worth the glyph slot to you, then it's not that big a deal. If it is, then you've made your choice. A glyph benefit being something you want is NOT an argument for making it default.

Still, I cannot remember any boss in whole Cataclysm where I had to use my Healing Rain to help our healers except Spine on progress due we killed more bloods then we had to. But still, I think that Healing Tide Totem + Call of the Elements combo would be much more preferable even there since it is additional cooldown your raid may need.
You can address it to our healers or my personal lazyness but I still think that if your healing is mandatory on any fight then your healers doing it wrong.
Untill ZA times with 1.5 healers time will back

2nd. I'm not able to find anything how our totem's protection have been solved. Obviously, it is not Totemic Vigor glyph.
Currently, my health on live is around 150k in pvp gear so glyphed totem will have 5+150*0.05 = 12.5k. It is even less then Stoneclaw totem provides. And EVERY class/spec can kill it with special attack or cast, some classes are even able to smash it with white swing. Some may say "Yeah, it is good because then shaman won't get this attack instead", but this statement is completely wrong. It is like giving dispel to everyone, without any CD or any other restriction.

Also, there's been no "uproar" over Capacitor Totem that I've seen. Certainly not here, and a quick search of the beta class feedback forum only shows one thread that was decidedly not uproar-y. Again, hyperbole.

Shamans do not provide that much feedback on US forums as far as I have seen. Are you lazy there or what? There're much more topics on EU but they lack any feedback from Blizzard staff (actually, I haven't seen any blue post on EU since Beta has been starting.

And you cannot even image how many shamans' topics are there on russian forums

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3635914342
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3735184022
Here are 2 of "whine" threads

[Teriz]

Elemental Harmony was, if anything, even more niche and situational than Totemic Projection. It was much maligned when they clarified that Fire totems wouldn't be included, which was the only really serious use for the ability. You can't use your own preferences as if you speak for all Shaman, when you patently do not. If you, personally, don't like Totemic Projection, then don't take it. Problem solved.

I'm well aware of the history of Elemental Harmony. It deserved to be maligned when Blizzard placed such a ridiculous limit on the talent. Especially a talent that was intended for a level 90 Shaman. I also disagree that multiple fire totems is the only serious use for the ability. Being able to have SBT, Earthbing/Grab, Tremor Totem, and Earth Elemental out at the same time would also an amazing use for the abilty. As would being able to have HTT, HST, and Mana Tide out at the same time. You could even mix or match the totems you need at a given time, and not have to worry about elemental limitations.

In the end, Totems have changed. The mechanics should change with it.

Being able to drop Searing Totem near me, and tossing Magma totem into a pack of baddies, while dropping SBT and Earthgrab to stop some damage coming from my flank would be a really good change of pace.

"You have to play properly" is not a valid complaint about an ability.

Having to AoE heal in the first place as a DPS isn't really playing properly. Because of that, a talent that stresses such a utility should make it as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, Conductivity doesn't do that.

Yes, Conductivity has situational strengths. Under those circumstances (which are FAR more prevalent than you apparently think) it outweighs HTT significantly for healing done by a DPS. HR isn't a small area, and if you're dropping it on melee, their targets are also in the HR, unless you're actively trying to avoid them.

I never said it wasn't possible to pull off, it's simply cumbersome. Not only do I have to cast the HR, I then have to cast LBs at specific targets or I just wasted my talent point.

Or again, if my group or raid needs AoE healing, I can just drop HTT and do what I do best.

The class isn't "hopelessly outmatched". Stop using ridiculous hyperbole. We've been OP in certain seasons, even with the supposedly gamebreaking issues you're talking about. Enhancement in Beastcleaves in WotLK, for instance, Resto in T11 for another. We're far from "hopelessly outmatched" even on live, and most of the new talents provide major changes to specifically address some weaknesses certain specs had.

I was talking about why PvP is important for a lot of people, since Curdle was rather dismissive of it. I wasn't saying that Shaman are horribly outmatched in MoP (yet).

Also, there's been no "uproar" over Capacitor Totem that I've seen. Certainly not here, and a quick search of the beta class feedback forum only shows one thread that was decidedly not uproar-y. Again, hyperbole.

I'm willing to bet that the consensus is that Capacitor Totem is a very weak ability for PvP.

[Endus]

Still, I cannot remember any boss in whole Cataclysm where I had to use my Healing Rain to help our healers except Spine on progress due we killed more bloods then we had to. But still, I think that Healing Tide Totem + Call of the Elements combo would be much more preferable even there since it is additional cooldown your raid may need.
You can address it to our healers or my personal lazyness but I still think that if your healing is mandatory on any fight then your healers doing it wrong.
Untill ZA times with 1.5 healers time will back

It's not about it being "mandatory", it's about it being beneficial. If the Enrage isn't a worry, but healing is tight, dropping a Healing Rain to help out the healers is more important to your successful kill than pushing more DPS.

Yes, there's cases where either AG or HTT will likely be better, but that doesn't make Conductivity useless. The big strength is that it has no cooldown other than Healing Rain's; the other two have significant cooldowns.

2nd. I'm not able to find anything how our totem's protection have been solved. Obviously, it is not Totemic Vigor glyph.
Currently, my health on live is around 150k in pvp gear so glyphed totem will have 5+150*0.05 = 12.5k. It is even less then Stoneclaw totem provides. And EVERY class/spec can kill it with special attack or cast, some classes are even able to smash it with white swing. Some may say "Yeah, it is good because then shaman won't get this attack instead", but this statement is completely wrong. It is like giving dispel to everyone, without any CD or any other restriction.

Stoneclaw Totem only provides a 4k shield. So the glyph is clearly an upgrade in that respect, especially since it's always up and doesn't take up an Earth Totem slot. Though the correct math is that 5% of 150k health is 7.5k health; you seem to have added 5k as the base health rather than 5. Still almost double Stoneclaw's protection.

And yes, the idea that causing someone to expend an attack on a totem rather than you absolutely is worthwhile. It's damage you didn't take. It's like chess; leaving something vulnerable as "bait" is a valid attack, so you can capitalize on the weakness they create by taking the bait. You need to simultaneously be planning for what happens if they don't, too. That's how PvP works.

---------- Post added 2012-05-07 at 11:12 AM ----------

Having to AoE heal in the first place as a DPS isn't really playing properly. Because of that, a talent that stresses such a utility should make it as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, Conductivity doesn't do that.

In Heroic progression, you're wrong. You use the tools you have, including off-healing, to achieve success.

Conductivity just capitalizes on the Healing Rains you were already going to cast. If you weren't going to cast them, you obviously wouldn't take the talent.

I'm willing to bet that the consensus is that Capacitor Totem is a very weak ability for PvP.

You really need to stop making wild and baseless claims. The majority of posts I see on both the official forums and here are tentatively positive about Capacitor Totem. I was only able to locate one anti-Capacitor Totem thread on the official beta class forums, and it only had three posts.

An absence of evidence does not lead anyone to conclude that there's a consensus support for your claims.

[Teriz]

And yes, the idea that causing someone to expend an attack on a totem rather than you absolutely is worthwhile. It's damage you didn't take. It's like chess; leaving something vulnerable as "bait" is a valid attack, so you can capitalize on the weakness they create by taking the bait. You need to simultaneously be planning for what happens if they don't, too. That's how PvP works.

Problem with that analogy is that my SBT, Stormlash, or Capacitor Totems are Bishops, Rooks, and Knights. A white attack is a Pawn.

[Curdle]

Everyone ignores it because its in the same tier as ridiculously powerful talents. Again that runs counter to the design philosophy of the new talent system. Even a PvP shaman who may benefit from TP is more than likely going to take Totemic Restoration instead. A PvE Shaman may enjoy tossing his totems around, but he isn't going to give up CotE for that added utility. Replacing Totemic Projection with Elemental Harmony would give Shaman an actual choice in that tier.

I think you're overestimating CotE for PvE, it wont affect any totem that directly increases your DpS (Stormlash/Elementals) just totems that are situationally useful (Tremor/Windwalk/Grounding)...it's a very rare fight where you need to use these abilities only one more time than their cooldown would allow (CotE has an 8 min cooldown so you're not using it more than once per fight). So for elemental and enhance that tier isn't about throughput in the least but purely about situational usefulness, ergo Totemic Projection is perfectly at home on that tier.

CotE may be mroe powerful for resto as it resets cooldowns on Healing Stream, Mana Tide, Spirit Link and potentially Healing Tide Totems,but again those are all situationally used.

For Conductivity to be beneficial you need to have enemies within the HR, you need to make sure you have sufficient allies within HR for the AoE healing, and you have to properly target enemies for the AoE to work. You also have to deal with the relatively long LB casting time, especially if you glyphed to move while casting LB.

Or you could just drop HTT and continue doing your DPS. I know which one I'm going for if I need AoE healing in a pinch.

Bosses generally have very large hitboxes, if everyone is stacking up for incoming damage it is almost always on the melee group, given these two things it's near impossible to NOT have at least some of the Healing Rains overlap the hitbox somewhere. If people are not stacking up to stand in the Healing Rains then you take one of the other two from that tier, that's fitting the talent to the situation and group: Exactly the intent of the new system.

True, but PvP is a significant portion of the game, and some who play PvE do so on PvP realms, or like to Duel when they're not doing anything else. Nothing brings down class morale quicker than when your class is hopelessly outmatched in PvP, regardless of what form PvP takes. The uproar over Capacitor Totem's significant drawbacks is just the most recent example.

I'm farily sure I've said this to you before but it bears repeating: So long as it is possible for you to compete successfully against an equivalent (gear/skill/etc) opponent, it does not matter where the tools are coming from, baseline spec abilities or class abilities.

As for your talking about PvE players on PvP realms:
1) We can't go balancing the bottom line of classes purely around PvP for the same reasons we can't go balancing it purely around PvE.
2)If you play on a PvP realm you either expect to spend a certain amount of time being ganked, or you level/quest/whatever using a PvP Talent/glyph setup so that you can defend yourself. That is an age old concept.

My Christmas list to "Blizzard Santa" would be 2H Enhancement tanking, with Spirit Wolves as permanent pets that I can ride on with a trail of lightning behind me.

In other words, I'm merely asking for some class balance. I don't think any of my suggestions are OP or game breaking. Nor would they disrupt Shaman who prefer to only do PvE.

What you were asking for is every ability you fancy the looks of to be available to you all at once. That's explicitly the opposite of the new (and to some degree the current) Talent System and is in no way balanced.

[Omanley]

There's a host of issues with this idea, though;

• 1)
• Who picks?
  
• Part of the reason we have a dev team is because they're not just idea jockeys. They understand the limitations of the game code. It's no good saying "X is a perfect fix" if X takes a huge amount of coding to implement; if Y is almost as good and just takes a couple minor tweaks, Y is the right pick.
• The dev team also considers game balance. They don't have a "shaman team" that only works on Shaman and to hell with those other classes lets make Shaman as awesome as we can. That's going to be the mindset of many Shaman players, and it's a destructive attitude. It would ruin the game FAR faster than anything you might think Blizzard developers are doing.
• Lastly, this isn't a democracy, nor is democracy the best way to go. The ideal form of government is benevolent dictatorship. Democracy is at the mercy of the ignorance of its "citizens", and often has a moderately glacial pace of governance. If you think development is slow NOW, democratizing it would make it take at least twice as long.

The devs already listen to and interact with the community. Trying to democratize the process would have only negative repercussions.

1) Obviously the decision with that would lie with the dev team. Posters on the official forums or sites like mmo-champ could however be "inderectly nominated" by others getting agreed to often, as in: "Hey look at that guy here, I often see him post suggestions here and there about things that could be issues. He's got lots of agreement and stuff. Could be our man, if he's popular and thoughtful, worth a try"

2) Of course there would need to be dialogue and transparancy between the two parties. Stuff like the devs explaining design limitations and stuff, constructive discussion and the like.
3) I know that and I never demanded to be as OP as other classes were at some point throughout game history. Obviously there would have to be dialogue with the dev team, and maybe the "shaman council" could scan forums here and now, discuss about topics whereever they are worth discussing or not, bring it towards the devs and ask for the okay to make a poll or something.

Blizz kept their totems-are-fine-as-they-are-making-buff-totems-into-auras-is-not-what-we-wanna-do stance for years!
Finally they're fixing that, but do you think they would've done that without us CONSTANTLY nagging them to change it?
That's one of those things which could've fixed during wotlk even (or at least in cata beta). The shaman council looks through forums, inevitably stumbles over totem complains, post it up as a poll and.... see an overall dislike of the old mechanic.

Obviously you would have to point out things like totems as a whole not going away and offering stuff like that glyph that plants four totems always to keep up the visuals, or retards unable to fully grasp the thing it is about would still scream "dont take away my totems!", screwing the results.

4) It would be halfway democratic. As democratic as it needs to be I'd say. You would not be able to vote for the counsil as blizz does that and you cant decide what topic will be brought up (but you can influence it by bringing up the issue, hoping a counsil member sees it and finds it interesting). But you can give your heartfelt opinion on a matter and blizz can look at the results and say stuff like:
Oh, we didn't know totems as they are right now are so disliked, we gotta do something about that!
or
It's came up that dps shaman presence in higher ranked arena/rated bg is at an overall low since like forever, people are angry about that, lets look into why they are hardly represented. => Ooooh, they have very few tools to pressure healers (mostly enh), lacking burst (enh), survivability (both) and mobility (ele). Gotta look into that.

In MoP, they've gone a long way into adressing quite a few of those issues and I must say: They've done more for the class now in MoP beta than for the rest of the betas included. As such I am quite happy. I only wished they'd've taken that way earlier, and a council of players would've maybe achieved that, being useful to the present day and beyond.

It is blizzards game and buisness how they design it. But it is us millions of players playing and paying it and I think class balance might be a reason for lots of those who quit (including me). It can only be in blizzards best interest to allow for more direct dialogue, not "WOW! A f*@#ing blue in the shaman forums?! When's the last time that ever happened?!".

[Maticko]

Imo - EM is only better than EotE (for elemental) if you can use Ascendance 3 times in a fight, 2nd time with Heroism. Otherwise EotE is probably better, especially if you have a trinket with haste proc (which brings you under 1 sec cast time soon), already have high haste rating or you're using heroism at start of the fight. And since elementals hit "haste cap" pretty soon my choice in this tier would be EotE over EM.

[rogas]

What's the shaman deal-breaker atm? What have the dev failed to fix in mop?


Seriously, apart from some small things, elemental shaman has never been that fun to play with ... Between you and me; i hope that they put elemental mid-pack again, because i don't want everybody start playing it... ;-)

[Maios]

Every class has reused/rehashed talents to some degree or another. We have 11 as someone mentioned earlier, priests have 6, and warriors have 12.

This doesn't mean our talents are bad.

[matheney2k]

There is a pretty decent thread about the state of shaman talents as of now for MoP on the OF. Nothing against MMOC, but bringing up good criticism and ideas here isn't going to change anything for us.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...8479881?page=2

[Endus]

Problem with that analogy is that my SBT, Stormlash, or Capacitor Totems are Bishops, Rooks, and Knights. A white attack is a Pawn.

Have you ever played chess?

Sacrificing bishops, rooks, and knights to pawns, to gain a win, is absolutely a tried and true strategy. Sacrificing a bishop to pull apart their line of defense is quite often worth the cost.

Hell, grandmasters have written books based on this principle;



If you're not giving up a piece of greater value for strategic gains, it's not a "sacrifice".

[Curdle]

I
Having to AoE heal in the first place as a DPS isn't really playing properly. Because of that, a talent that stresses such a utility should make it as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, Conductivity doesn't do that.

Are you sure you actually want to play a shaman and not a pure dps class?

A large part of any hybrid class is the ability to flex and adapt to situations, I would say this is true of shaman more so than the others even, that doesn't seem to be something you're interested in.

A dps being able to offheal/kite/other instead of purely dps is often the difference between failure and success in either PvP or PvE at higher levels. Choosing to ignore that ability because it doens't fit with what you want to do is deliberately not utilising the class to its fullest, cutting off your nose to spite your face even.

[Tomikadzi]

1.Yes, there's cases where either AG or HTT will likely be better, but that doesn't make Conductivity useless. The big strength is that it has no cooldown other than Healing Rain's; the other two have significant cooldowns.

2. Stoneclaw Totem only provides a 4k shield. So the glyph is clearly an upgrade in that respect, especially since it's always up and doesn't take up an Earth Totem slot. Though the correct math is that 5% of 150k health is 7.5k health; you seem to have added 5k as the base health rather than 5. Still almost double Stoneclaw's protection.
And yes, the idea that causing someone to expend an attack on a totem rather than you absolutely is worthwhile. It's damage you didn't take. It's like chess; leaving something vulnerable as "bait" is a valid attack, so you can capitalize on the weakness they create by taking the bait. You need to simultaneously be planning for what happens if they don't, too. That's how PvP works.
You really need to stop making wild and baseless claims. The majority of posts I see on both the official forums and here are tentatively positive about Capacitor Totem. I was only able to locate one anti-Capacitor Totem thread on the official beta class forums, and it only had three posts.
An absence of evidence does not lead anyone to conclude that there's a consensus support for your claims.

1. I'd rather say there might be a case when your Conductivity overcomes HTT.
From FL+DS 25 HM PoV: Shannox - nope, Beth - yeah, Rhyolith - nope, Alysrazor - nope, Baleroc - nope, Staghelm - nope, Ragnaros - nope, Morchok - rather nope then yes, Yorsahj - nope, Zanozz - nope, Haggara - nope, Ultaraxion - rather yes then no, Blackhorn - nope, Spine - rather no then yes, Madness - nope. Yeah, that's my opinion and some may disagree with it. But still, raid cooldown (HTT) is much stronger thing that some additional healing your raid maybe (or maybe not) requires.
Also, taking in account that there's nothing else good for PVE from CotE tier we would take this talent. And it stacks great with HTT making this talent even more preferable for elems/enhs.

2. Yeah, I did fail with maths there.
Still I understand that with Grounding totem. That one does do its main task - catch up a spell. But Capacitor has another aim - to stun opponent/-s. And if it fails regardless of my skills then it is bad. On EU beta forum I said 3 main issues this totem has: HP, charge time, limited range. I wouldn't say a word if it would have one or even two but three is too much. And noone at 2.2k+ will let it stun someone, really.

[Endus]

Every class has reused/rehashed talents to some degree or another. We have 11 as someone mentioned earlier, priests have 6, and warriors have 12.

This doesn't mean our talents are bad.

Exactly.

A large part of the talent design was intended to take spec-specific stuff and make it class-wide, especially when that spec-specific stuff is things like Earth's Grasp which every spec could find a use for. Rather than write a new AoE CC ability, just make the one that already exists as an Elemental talent a class-wide option. Everyone's getting "rehashed" abilities, and if anything, we're getting fewer than a lot of other classes.

[rogas]

Isn't conductivity something we should use together with BL and ascendance? To max the damage output, in order to max the healing return? It's maybe interesting for the end-burst on hc bosses? But then again.... using BWT together with HTT should work too...

---------- Post added 2012-05-07 at 03:41 PM ----------

true endus ... but an 'repulsion totem' that can't be trown with 'totemic projection' would have been sweet ;-)

maybe next time ;-)

[mrinvisable2]

I'm well aware of the history of Elemental Harmony. It deserved to be maligned when Blizzard placed such a ridiculous limit on the talent. Especially a talent that was intended for a level 90 Shaman. I also disagree that multiple fire totems is the only serious use for the ability. Being able to have SBT, Earthbing/Grab, Tremor Totem, and Earth Elemental out at the same time would also an amazing use for the abilty. As would being able to have HTT, HST, and Mana Tide out at the same time. You could even mix or match the totems you need at a given time, and not have to worry about elemental limitations.

In the end, Totems have changed. The mechanics should change with it.

Being able to drop Searing Totem near me, and tossing Magma totem into a pack of baddies, while dropping SBT and Earthgrab to stop some damage coming from my flank would be a really good change of pace.

Whell thats my problem 2 as al,ost al except 2 dps totems are cooldowns this hinders us to use them in combinations if u take bulwark you are punished for chosing earthgrasp totem and you must give up shield to couner fear

Capacitor Totem is infierior as lot of clases are getting aoe stuns roots, and 5 sec charging up is to long it should be 2.5- 3 sec charge up time max and glyph removes as we HAVE TO MANY PVP glyphs in beta already

and CotE restore stormlash totem i think restriction is made for elemental's only

[Endus]

On EU beta forum I said 3 main issues this totem has: HP, charge time, limited range. I wouldn't say a word if it would have one or even two but three is too much. And noone at 2.2k+ will let it stun someone, really.

This is why I keep bringing up chess strategy. Chess has been around long enough the theory behind it has gotten decidedly meta. In chess, you might say someone at a certain rank won't fall for a certain obvious ploy, but then you use that assumption against them. If you know the enemy will counter Capacitor Totem, you can capitalize on that knowledge, by controlling when and how they have to deal with it.

You wouldn't be using it as a stun, you'd be using it as a THREAT they have to react to. You know they will, but it still forces their reaction in ways that you can predict and capitalize upon.

Controlling the opponent's behaviour means you're the one applying pressure, meaning you're winning. Both sides seem evenly matched in chess; same pieces, same rules, but the mere fact that White goes first and thus is the side applying pressure to start, that's enough to give White something like a 55% win chance in tournament play, rather than 50% if they were equally matched. Pressure's a big deal. It's easier to quantify in a turn-based game like chess, but the principles apply regardless.