Anyone else think that Totem should not be considered as spells?

[Nebria]

IMO it is a clear sign Blizzard don't care about Elemental in PvP. Resto is out of bounds so they have to "fix" it ASAP and later will perhaps find a better solution or just leave it as it is no matter if they broke Elementals defense utility.

People who argue with "welcome in the world of all other casters" forget that the Shaman was built with that tools in mind (or you don't care and just be happy about a Shaman nerf) and without it they will lack some of their tools which is putting them in a disadvantage as long as they don't get something else for compensation. Such band aid fix is never good as we have to live with a broken defense a whole season and perhaps even more if they don't see some issue at all.

[Endus]

Maybe you're right, but healers should be overpowered when compared to DPS specs. That's just the nature of the beast. If a healer can't survive 1v1, then how the hell can they survive 2v1 or keep someone alive 2v1.

I can't agree with this. I don't see why a healer should be able to do more than barely survive 1v1, or that they should be able to survive 2v1, or keep someone alive under that kind of pressure.

If you're in 2s as a DPS/healer team, the goal should be to have the healing provide enough survivability to allow your DPS buddy to survive long enough to kill one of the double DPS on the other team. If you can just keep them up through dual DPS, that's overpowered, and dual DPS teams could never beat a DPS/healer combo without flat-out being way better players. That's not balanced PvP. A healer should bring about as much strength to the table as any other spec, no more.

[savvasp]

This is just flat out incorrect. in arena 2200+ holy pally have more representation at 10.2% than resto shaman do at 9%.

TSG/KFC is what made Holy Paladins more represented tbh

[shell]

People who argue with "welcome in the world of all other casters" forget that the Shaman was built with that tools in mind (or you don't care and just be happy about a Shaman nerf) and without it they will lack some of their tools which is putting them in a disadvantage as long as they don't get something else for compensation.

Exactly.

And folks, this is why we shouldn't compare classes 1-to-1, or abilities 1-to-1. It is the entire toolkit of the classes that matter.

anyways, this is the thread that players are using on the official site http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7004448292

[Endus]

Exactly.

And folks, this is why we shouldn't compare classes 1-to-1, or abilities 1-to-1. It is the entire toolkit of the classes that matter.

An argument that I have typically used to defend Shaman changes, but in this particular case I would say that it is another reason this change is a bad, bad idea.

This affects our whole toolkit, class-wide, in ways that are ONLY relevant for PvP, and neither Enhancement nor Elemental were overpowered (especially Elemental) beforehand.

anyways, this is the thread that players are using on the official site http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7004448292

Please, make your voices heard there. If you're going to contribute, though, please follow these guidelines;

1> Don't be rude or abusive. This just makes people ignore what you're saying, regardless of how just your cause might be. It would just contribute to getting the thread shut down and ignored by the devs.

2> Be clear and specific. Don't just post "OMG this is the worstest thing since hitler and stalin's demonbaby". Give hard, specific reasons why it's bad. It's much easier for them to see the validity to actual things than trying to judge whether you're spouting a ton of hyperbole.

3> Suggest alternatives, if you can think of them. They do not make changes like this on a whim; the only reason I can see is that Resto is too strong even while silenced/interrupted. Accept that there's validity to that reason, and provide alternative solutions that don't hurt the rest of the class; just asking them to reverse it leaves them with a problem still to be addressed, so they're less likely to do so.

[Northy]

With totem lock-outs and the incoming hybrid heal nerf, Elemental will be in the worst state ever seen. This is astonishing considering how awful Ele is before said nerfs. WoW is really doing an awful job on PvP this expansion.

[Blitond]

I can't agree with this. I don't see why a healer should be able to do more than barely survive 1v1, or that they should be able to survive 2v1, or keep someone alive under that kind of pressure.

If you're in 2s as a DPS/healer team, the goal should be to have the healing provide enough survivability to allow your DPS buddy to survive long enough to kill one of the double DPS on the other team. If you can just keep them up through dual DPS, that's overpowered, and dual DPS teams could never beat a DPS/healer combo without flat-out being way better players. That's not balanced PvP. A healer should bring about as much strength to the table as any other spec, no more.

If healers can barely survive 1 DPS then they stand no chance against 2, much less when DPS pop cooldowns. 2's aren't the source of balanced either.

[Management]

I really don't like totems at all, i'd suggest they become pets that follow either you or your target depending on the situation.Or that they are removed completely and the totem abilities turned into normal abilities. I really just hate everything about positioning with totems atm. It's too clunky for PvP at least.

[shell]

If healers can barely survive 1 DPS then they stand no chance against 2, much less when DPS pop cooldowns. 2's aren't the source of balanced either.

Well, to be honest, it doesn't look like either one of you is looking at this from a 3's perspective, which is the source of balance.

I get the gear issue that you alluded to earlier, if I had the power to make the pvp power suggestion I made happen, I would compensate for it by making it so players get some kind of stat bonus for wearing all pvp gear. They'd have to make it so the bonus doesn't work in pve but it looks like they have the tech to do that.

[Endus]

If healers can barely survive 1 DPS then they stand no chance against 2, much less when DPS pop cooldowns. 2's aren't the source of balanced either.

No one character should ever stand a chance against 2.

That would mean they're overpowered. I'm not trying to say the 2s bracket is what should be balanced around, I'm just saying that healers shouldn't be any stronger in PvP than anyone else. They should be roughly equal 1v1, and totally destroyed in any 2v1.


To clarify what I mean a bit, a value usually used in shooters with reference to the guns is something I'm going to introduce here; time-to-kill (or TTK for short). In shooters, it's how fast the gun can reduce someone from full to dead. For WoW PvP, the same valuation should, roughly, exist, though it's a bit more interactive as we also have defensive cooldowns, so you need to factor in your own damage mitigation. The basic idea, though, is you can set a rough guideline on how fast someone will die.

Adding a healer to the mix vastly increases their defense. If one DPS has a 60 second TTK (to make up a number), and adding another DPS decreases that relative to the total number of DPS (so a second DPS would halve it, a third would end in 1/3 the total time, etc), then healers should be doing roughly the opposite. Under this, a 3-DPS 3s team would have a 20-second TKK. If they were facing a 2-DPS team, the 2 DPS would have a TTK of 30 seconds, meaning one of their teammates would die first, the second following shortly after. If they had a healer, though, the healer just needs to make one teammates twice as hard to kill; that brings the enemy team's TTK up to 40 seconds, while the healer plus two DPS is still at 30s, meaning they'll survive long enough to get the first kill.

In a 1v1 situation, the healer probably can't get a kill. He can probably survive twice as long as a DPS. And that's sufficient to completely change the dynamic in a 3s team.

Healers don't need to be OP, or to be able to survive being focused by 2 players. They just need to survive long enough for one of those players to get killed by their teammate first.

[Blitond]

With totem lock-outs and the incoming hybrid heal nerf, Elemental will be in the worst state ever seen. This is astonishing considering how awful Ele is before said nerfs. WoW is really doing an awful job on PvP this expansion.

I think people are overestimating the impact of the hybrid healer nerf. PvP power is only 50% for heals, which most people ignore or don't know. So with 40% PvP power you were only getting +20% to your heals. I still think that the main source of the problem was shadow priests, and to a lesser extent boomkins. I thought elemental/enh/ret/ww were pretty balanced in the off healing regard. Instead of nerfing the specs that needed it they applied this blanket nerf to all hybrids.

I'm not saying this doesn't hurt elemental, on the contrary it hurts us more than most since a large chunk of our survivability is centered around LHW and water totems. What I'm saying is that I don't think this nerf will change much regarding Shadow and boomkins, making me wonder why even implement a change like this.

[Ascendant]

Druids shouldn't be able to shapeshift while silenced then. Changing from human to animal requires more magic than summoning some stick right ?

Oh and silence should prevent Hunters from doing anything. They no longer carry ammo in their inventory, so clearly they must be using some magic to SUMMON it for their weapons.

Silence does prevent hunters from doing a lot of things, especially BM.

[Blitond]

No one character should ever stand a chance against 2.

That would mean they're overpowered. I'm not trying to say the 2s bracket is what should be balanced around, I'm just saying that healers shouldn't be any stronger in PvP than anyone else. They should be roughly equal 1v1, and totally destroyed in any 2v1.

Your argument doesn't hold well in 3v3. If healers can just barely hold their own 1v1 with a DPS, then there would be no point of ever bringing a healer in 3v3. A healer needs to be able to withstand any 1v1 situation. They need peals and cooldowns to survive 2v1 or when their opponents pop cooldowns (which is how it is currently). If 1 DPS can apply this pressure, then it throws the whole system out of balance.

This is the way its always been (excluding outlier events such as OP/UP classes, or bug exploits, etc.). Even back in BC it was this way. The only difference then was that games were more focused on draining the healers mana (which those tools no longer exist). Some classes have an easier time against a specific healer, but that's a specific scenario and not the general healing paradigm. The trade-off for bringing a healer is significantly less damage, but significantly more survivability.

If you want to argue that healers mana regen is to strong for PvP, effectively turning 2's into 45 minute stalemates then that's one thing. That's not what I've seen you arguing though.

I know it sucks for 2's, which is one of the main reasons they took rewards away from 2's (because it couldn't be balanced with other areas of PvP) There have been blue post saying nearly the exact same thing I'm saying over they years.

[Chainreactor]

Your argument doesn't hold well in 3v3. If healers can just barely hold their own 1v1 with a DPS, then there would be no point of ever bringing a healer in 3v3. A healer needs to be able to withstand any 1v1 situation. They need peals and cooldowns to survive 2v1 or when their opponents pop cooldowns (which is how it is currently). If 1 DPS can apply this pressure, then it throws the whole system out of balance.

This basically

If a healers can barely survive 1v1 then 3v1 the healer will get zerged specially considering the amount of burst in the current state of PvP

One DPS does not have enough peals to stop 3x DPS Classes from wrecking the healer
And with the amount of CC each class can bring the third DPS on DPS/DPS/Healer team can be constantly CCed

Also it will trash healers in 2s bracket as CC train on the healers partner will result in the healers death instantly at the hands of 2x DPS (IF they can barely survive 1v1)

[Deleted]

So we no longer can break fear? Haha, another excellently thought out Shaman change by Blizzard.

[woopytywoop]

So we no longer can break fear? Haha, another excellently thought out Shaman change by Blizzard.

you still can drop tremor in fears i think, you only can't when you're silenced/locked out.
So if now if they blanket you, you can't use tremor for you or your team.

Unless more things changed on PTR? :X

[shell]

you still can drop tremor in fears i think, you only can't when you're silenced/locked out.
So if now if they blanket you, you can't use tremor for you or your team.

You, both, are unfortuantely correct.

Also, thought I'd post GC's only twitter response thus far:

Q:
What's up with the totem nerfs coming in 5.1? I understand concerns for Resto shamans, but that really hurts Ele, and Enhance.

GC's response:
Do players really silence / interrupt Enhance often? Elemental... maybe.

[Endus]

We're getting a bit distracted by an offhand comment I made about PvP that really didn't have anything to do with 2s in particular, and I'd like the conversation to get back on track to the thread topic; the change to totems.

---------- Post added 2012-11-16 at 03:42 PM ----------

You, both, are unfortuantely correct.

Also, thought I'd post GC's only twitter response thus far:

Q:
What's up with the totem nerfs coming in 5.1? I understand concerns for Resto shamans, but that really hurts Ele, and Enhance.

GC's response:
Do players really silence / interrupt Enhance often? Elemental... maybe.

He's probably right with regards to Enhancement; they're not doing a lot of hard-casting and choosing them for a silence seems more of a "everyone else that casts anything is dead, may as well lock him down for lulz" kind of thing.

Elemental, though, is arguably the MOST vulnerable caster to interrupts. Our main instants are on a shared 6s cooldown. Our main nuke and filler are both cast, and Elemental Blast is generally how a lot of PvP Ele are going, which ALSO has a huge cast (AND locks out everything if interrupted), because Unleashed Fury only boosts LB damage (the first thing we sacrifice for utility/healing/etc) unless we burn extra GCDs for utility (not really a great idea), and Primal Elementalist is only of any use for 2 minutes out of every 5; maybe okay for arenas, but not so much RBGs.

That's the bulk of my concern. There's also some effects in PvE, where silence effects (like, say, the cloud on the first boss in Heart of Fear) can often be used to drop Searing Totem; it's a small change, but still, there's no reason for it other than "resto's too strong in PvP", and my response to that is "well, then nerf Resto, not Shaman".

[Bobzor]

HUEHUEHUE GC does it again. WHo would've thought?! Don't get your hopes up, these changes are definitely going live.

[Chainreactor]

Q:
What's up with the totem nerfs coming in 5.1? I understand concerns for Resto shamans, but that really hurts Ele, and Enhance.

GC's response:
Do players really silence / interrupt Enhance often? Elemental... maybe.

/bangsheadonwall

Need moar uses for Skillful Blanket Silences