Or 4. A lot of the language being used is weighted, leading to conversational bias that detracts from the actual points being made, and I'm trying to get people back to discussing things in a reasonable, friendly tone, and without portraying their own preferences as if they were incontrovertible facts.
Like this. The rest of your point there was well-written, and I can get behind the idea that totems maybe need to be a bit more sturdy in the new design.It feels like Blizzard is giving us some shinny new toys then saying oh wait you can only play with them for 5 seconds a week.
When you start saying "Blizzard gave us stuff but then took it away because they're meanieheads who hate shaman and/or don't know what they're doing", that's when discussion shuts down and the conversation becomes one giant "NO U" fest.
To be fair, I've suggested some options myself in the past. I don't think they should be killable in a single autoattack, but killable by any instant-cast ability or auto-attack proc (like Windfury proccing, or the like) would be just fine. That would help make killing a totem a conscious, deliberate choice, while still keeping it easy to accomplish, and will usualy require you to burn a GCD and possibly put an ability on CD or use up an attack proc (a Windfury on your totems is a Windfury that wasn't on you).Ideas of just increasing the health of these totems. I really don't like these ideas but they are better than nothing. They are just feel bland and can still get 1-2 shot by DPS which doesn't solve much.
Omanley specifically compared them to Rogue abilities that, in his own words, were "undestructible". I only mentioned invulnerable totems before that as an example of a reductio ad absurdum, and it wasn't in direct reference to anything you said. I apologize if you got that feeling (though I stand by the comment made to Omanley, since he DID imply indestructibility was what he wanted).The comments about not liking totems is silly and childish. It's not like myself and other don't like totems or want them to be invincible abilities that have no counter, I just don't want them to be countered by EVERYTHING.
When people say "I don't like my stationary buff sticks that can be killed forcing me to lose the buff", they're saying they don't like totems, which means they don't like Shaman. We can discuss tweaking some of those factors; I can agree that they're maybe TOO easy to kill right now, and Totemic Projection allows for some mobility, but that doesn't mean they should be invulnerable floating sticks that follow you everywhere (and while nobody here has suggested that specifically, it HAS been suggested in the past by people). I like the idea that my totems are vulnerable. It forces me to think strategically, to find spots to drop them out of LOS, to use terrain against people, even to bait them deliberately by dropping a totem I KNOW they'll want to kill to get them off me for a second. This is a reason I like the class. If I wanted a melee/ranged/healer class with a shapeshift for movement speed and NOT to have to deal with totems, I'd play a Druid.
Some players have expressed exactly the same complaints about those other glyphs as well. What you're saying is that you want more than the three glyphs you're limited to, which is really saying that there's a lot of good choices and the decision isn't easy. Which means the design is working properly. The whole idea with the revamp is to make these choices more interesting, meaning there isn't a default set of choices that work for 90% of all circumstances. You might end up finding a set that works for you for that many circumstances, but if others are making different choices, everything's exactly as it should be.As for the glyph argument, your right I don't want to be forced to use a glyph for something central to the class. Choices should be more like the purge, spiritwalkers grace or windsear glyph. I don't want to have options that are already chosen for me.
Because choices mean consequences. Even if just by taking up a slot that could have been taken by a different choice.By your same rationality then why even have more than 3 glyphs per spec if this philosophy remains the same? Every time an Elemental is moving for more than X seconds they will glyph for unleashed lightning am I not right?
If we're talking PvE, I'll probably end up taking Unleashed Lightning. But for two reasons; personal convenience, and because I'm currently planning of going with Unleashed Fury, pending further scaling testing at level 90. I like the flexibility UF provides with imbue swaps, and taking it will mean basically using UE on cooldown, meaning I wouldn't have it available as a movement tool like we did in T11. If I went with, say, Primal Elementalist instead, Glyph of Unleashed Lightning might not be as appealing. The change to crits and the potential for longer Flame Shocks really increases the value of the base Unleash Fire effect, too, making it probably much more competitive compared to LBs, at 90.
I'm hopeful our glyphs get another passover though. We had some interesting ones (Glyph of Lava Burst, for Elemental) that didn't stick around, and there aren't so many that it'll be much of a choice for most specs. Glyph of Chain Lightning, for instance, will be of less value in MoP, since Lava Beam hits 5 targets by default, meaning you can keep unglyphed CL for cleave situations, if you're popping Ascendance for full AoE. Or glyph it and save Ascendance for single-target burns.
Other than those two glyphs, though, the rest seem pretty basic. Glyph of Flame Shock is probably a given since it will be a DPS increase in raiding, the rest are very situational.