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

[Protoman]

Why do people make it more complicated than it needs to be?

As I've said before the best solution to totem survivability would be something along the lines of this:

Totemic Protection: Shield the Shamans totems for 4 seconds making them immune to all forms of damage.

It's an ability not tied to specific totems, so you can use it with any combination of active totems. Give it ~30-45 second cooldown. Let it be usable while silenced and off the GCD. This gives Shaman an active ability to protect their totems. They won't be able to protect every totem, but can choose which ones or when to do so. This actually promotes good game play rather than being a mindless passive. And for the love of God, don't make it into a fucking glyph or talent.

I have thrown this idea out myself many times.....infact its really just a revamp of an existing ability, our stoneclaw totem which used to shield any currently active totems with a small absorb shield. Instead, give Shaman a 30 sec spell that puts a shield on the shaman as well as a smaller shield on any active totems to give them some temporary protection......either absorbs a % of damage, like 10%HP, or it absorb 2-3 direct attacks from anything like melee, spell, ect.

Making it work for Shaman was just my own tweak to it but its mainly cause I miss our stoneclaw totem's short cd shield and I think it would work pretty well, its active defense for our totems and would make you play smarter. A shield that absorbs 2-3 attacks might not be a big deal for the shaman, but will be a big help for totems that can be basically one shot even with 5-10%HP.

The idea of increasing totem HP brings more balance problems. Example: If totems did have 5-15% health, then healers and DoT classes would have a lot harder time countering them. On the other hand it wouldn't matter much from melee since they will still 1 shot them. There is no difference if a melee hits you totem for 5 health and 30K over kill or hitting it for 30k and no overkill, it's still a 1 shot. 5% or even 10% doesn't effectively increase totems survivability (outside healers).

The thing that you (and Blizzard) are forgetting is that PVP is not 1v1, its group play of usually 3v3 or more.....a healer may or may not be able to quickly kill a totem with 10%HP, but a group can easily do it, or just one dps in your party who an quickly mouseover the totem and insta shot it wiht a spell. This is what makes totems so much more crappy in group PVP is because of just how easy they are to kill with just one DPS, so if you have a party its a joke......certain totems should require a group effort to kill quickly because they have powerful buffs that need to be removed quickly like stormlash, spirit link, capacitor......all 3 of these totems have only 5HP which means one person can easily kill it, which IMO is unbalanced for group pvp gameplay.....when you drop one of those totems the other team should voice out a warning to switch and the whole team targets the totem so after a few seconds its dead, not just one second and one gcd but 3+ gcd's. This is why something like stormlash, with it's 5min CD, should easily have atleast 15-20% HP. Those 3 totems are also all air totems, meaning we cannot protect them with grounding totem......another flaw in design and making "Active defense" not possible......Grounding totem should be a spell or a non-element tied totem so we can protect ANY totem we want from an instant spell. A shield spell like I previously mentioned would serve the same purpose of protecting a totem like capacitor or stormlash for atleast 2-3 gcds.

[paror]

Gametime ran out, I'm done.

Still no mention of incomming shaman(elemental) buffs. Not really feasable to gear/level alts with the gear upgrades and conquest points investment, as it takes months to gear a char to be competitve.So I will only lurk forums now and switch to league of legends, where they can acutally balance shit.

Hf shamans

[CHRONICGODX]

im just about ready to cry when i get blanketed now. but swapping to rshams has never been so fun...

[Omanley]

Not that there was all that much doubt about it to begin with, but it's official now at least that the totem nerf was aimed at resto.

Steps are being taken to balance healers, especially Shaman, in PvP. This is being done incrementally to avoid a knee jerk reaction and going too far in one direction. Moving totems back into the schools of magic was one of the changes to bring them more in line.

[paror]

Not that there was all that much doubt about it to begin with, but it's official now at least that the totem nerf was aimed at resto.

what scared me the most of that statement: It's only ONE of the steps to bring them inline. Wich implies more nerfs. I mean if they nerf shamans(all specs) even further we are utterly uselss. With 1 spec(enhance) being average and elemental being 1 of the worst pvp specs in game. and resto at the moment barely holding on (getting globaled in a blanket silence <4 sec by frost mage as resto). I made the right the decision . League of legends and CS:GO are more fun, it's about skill not about being FOTM.

[Endus]

what scared me the most of that statement: It's only ONE of the steps to bring them inline. Wich implies more nerfs. I mean if they nerf shamans(all specs) even further we are utterly uselss.

I wouldn't freak out too much; they're talking about nerfing Restoration further, not Shaman. The totem thing happened because of the healing totems, but that's the only utility-based change that we're likely to see like that, outside of possible game-wide changes like the interrupt and dispel overhauls of the past which affect everyone equally. Other than that, we got confirmation that they think burst damage is overall too high and sustained damage too low; Enhancement is already pretty close to there, and Elemental is likely to only see some increases in sustained damage; Ascendance is strong but so easily controlled.

[Hyve]

The totems themselves use the Elements that spell do, Nature, Fire, Air & Fire. Why should they be allowed to bypass any silence that affects spells in the same school? Shamans in PvP were pretty powerful, this makes them more balanced.

I approve.

[Nahj]

From a multi glad of a different class the totem nerf is a bit knee-jerk versus certain comps. To some degree it was necessary, but there should be some small areas of compensation like astral shift while stunned (might make people use it even though it's only 6 seconds on a 2min cd) and SLT while blanketed (not locked out).

Though balancing healers currently is more about buffing disc/monks and toning down resto druids by raising Displacer Beast's cd back to it's orig CD in beta (1min or not usable while silenced) and typhoon/NS having their cd's increased as well.

[Omanley]

@Endus: The totem nerf was to all shamans. If they really wanted to bring only resto in place, they could've done it in a better way (as rigorously discussed before). With the totem nerf and other class-wide nerfs aimed at resto (purge, gw, windshear...) there's not the slightest guarantee they wont bring out more all-shaman nerfs. If at all, it seems more likely than anything else, since blizz seems to follow the logic "If resto is more op than other healers, it is bound to be because of the baseline shaman toolkit, so we'll nerf that".

@Hyve:
1) Totems are imbued with magic, just like our weapon imbues (which work while silenced and are perfectly reasonable in doing so). You dont cast a spell while placing a totem. You did that beforehand. Being unable to place totems while silenced is completely illogical.
2) Resto shamans were to powerful. Goddamnit I am really getting angry at all those people who dont know a thing about shamans but think they do.
restoration =/= all shamans
Neither enh nor ele were "powerful" in pvp. Enh was barely getting by and ele was no.1 bottom-feeder. The totem nerf was like a kick in the stomach while down.
3) Not being hindered by silence was to make up for...you know?
-being immobile/limited to range
-target/destroyable (5p)
-limiting themselves through elemental schools (only one fire totem, earth totem etc. at a time)
If you want to make it fair and totems like spells, you'd have to go all the way, making them indestructable and removing the elemental schools, allowing to place as many of the totems as wanted.

[Hyve]

1) Totems are imbued with magic, just like our weapon imbues (which work while silenced and are perfectly reasonable in doing so). You dont cast a spell while placing a totem. You did that beforehand. Being unable to place totems while silenced is completely illogical.

This may be true, but you can't freely allow the use of them when they fairly powerful. I'm not saying this change was the perfect solution. When it comes to gameplay, you need to ignore or fully incorporate Lore. What you're talking about is Lore based, rather then gameplay based.

2) Resto shamans were to powerful. Goddamnit I am really getting angry at all those people who dont know a thing about shamans but think they do.
restoration =/= all shamans

Stop getting angry and upset. There is no need. I merely forgot to segment Enhancement Shamans & Elemental Shamans out of my comment. Shesh...

[Omanley]

This may be true, but you can't freely allow the use of them when they fairly powerful. I'm not saying this change was the perfect solution. When it comes to gameplay, you need to ignore or fully incorporate Lore. What you're talking about is Lore based, rather then gameplay based.

The thing is though

We thought they were too hard to counter. Have a lot of utility (not just group buffs) in 5.0 and you just have to endure them

This is not the case at all. All I have to say to this is:

5 HP

What hard to counter is there? Nothing! They are not really powerful either. Shock Wave/Shadowfury easily beat Capacitor Totem, Spellreflect owns the sh!t out of Grounding Totem, Freezing Trap/Desecration are better than Earthbind Totem, Water Elemental is better than Fire/Earth Elemental Totem, your usual hot can compete/outdo Healing Stream Totem.
The list goes on. Totems are neither more powerful than similar abilities, nor are they unique.

In fact the only unique totem is Spiritlink Totem, which just so happens to be exclusive to the one single overpowered shaman spec.
Blizz is incompetent in nerfing resto without destroying shamans as a whole. The totem change was entirely out of "resto is op" context.

Stop getting angry and upset. There is no need. I merely forgot to segment Enhancement Shamans & Elemental Shamans out of my comment. Shesh..

The thing is: Ghostcrawler did exactly that as well. He forgot to segment enh/ele out of resto (and later played it down, disregarding it as not that bad a nerf).

[Endus]

@Endus: The totem nerf was to all shamans. If they really wanted to bring only resto in place, they could've done it in a better way (as rigorously discussed before).

And those healing totems are, aside from Spirit Link Totem, class-wide. It was an issue across the board with regards to hybrid healing, and this was how they nerfed Shaman healing. As well as reducing Resto's power overall.

So you're right in that it wasn't JUST to hit Resto, but you're wrong in thinking that the effect on Elemental and Enhancement wasn't deliberate.

With the totem nerf and other class-wide nerfs aimed at resto (purge, gw, windshear...) there's not the slightest guarantee they wont bring out more all-shaman nerfs.

Ghost Wolf wasn't "nerfed"; you can still glyph it for full effect the same way you could talent it for full effect.
The Purge and Wind Shear changes were part of overhauls to the entire dispel and interrupt systems respectively, standardizing things, and those changes affected a lot of classes, not just Shaman.

You can't just ignore the context and other related changes to try and claim there's some agenda against Shaman specifically. There's certainly legitimate arguments to be made, but that isn't one of them, it's baseless sky-is-falling alarmism.

---------- Post added 2012-12-08 at 01:25 PM ----------

What hard to counter is there? Nothing! They are not really powerful either. Shock Wave/Shadowfury easily beat Capacitor Totem, Spellreflect owns the sh!t out of Grounding Totem, Freezing Trap/Desecration are better than Earthbind Totem, Water Elemental is better than Fire/Earth Elemental Totem, Your usual hot can compete/outdo Healing Stream Totem
The list goes on. Totems are neither more powerful than similar abilities, nor are they unique.

You cannot compare abilities 1:1 like that. Every ability is tuned based on the rest of the class toolkit. There is intended to be variation between abilities. Plenty of our abilities should be weaker than some other class'; that is normal and proper design. To do otherwise would be to require us to be overpowered.

You keep coming back to this, and it's a misleading and misinformed argument. It's not true, it won't ever be true, and you've been told this multiple times across multiple threads.

If you were right, then any ability classified as an "AoE stun" would have to work exactly the same for every class, and every class would have to have one. And the same would be true for every other ability. There would be zero class variation aside from aesthetics; every class would be mechanically identical in every single way. That is what your 'argument' boils down to, when we take it to its logical conclusion. Since that's a ridiculous conclusion, it means your argument must be invalid. Not "wrong" in that you missed some detail; "invalid" in that the very structure of the argument does not logically hold up, and it doesn't matter how much evidence you pile on to it; it's still invalid and doesn't work.

[Omanley]

And those healing totems are, aside from Spirit Link Totem, class-wide. It was an issue across the board with regards to hybrid healing, and this was how they nerfed Shaman healing. As well as reducing Resto's power overall.

So you're right in that it wasn't JUST to hit Resto, but you're wrong in thinking that the effect on Elemental and Enhancement wasn't deliberate.

Even if healing totems being placed while silenced by enh/ele were a problem (which I really, really doubt), they could've kept it to healing totems only. Again, they are unable to nerf a single thing without destroying the rest. They dont see the need of being able to place a Grounding or Tremor while being silenced, because they dont look at the bigger picture.
I dont think they deliberately wanted to nerf enh/ele healing through that. They just wanted to nerf resto, and simple didn't care about enh/ele, because those are not really pvp specs in their mind anyway (at least not ele, with enh being not as hit as hard so it'd be alright there).

Ghost Wolf wasn't "nerfed"; you can still glyph it for full effect the same way you could talent it for full effect.

I was talking about the nerf to it's movement speed, which was 40% before (early cata I think). As a compensation we get to use it indoors, which in pvp is 99% of the time not making a difference.

The Purge and Wind Shear changes were part of overhauls to the entire dispel and interrupt systems respectively, standardizing things, and those changes affected a lot of classes, not just Shaman.

The nerf to Purge (only one dispelled effect, enh no longer benefitting from reduced cost) came way before MoP, so shaman got the offensive dispell nerfbat ealier than others. No doubt the target there was resto as well, as always. As for windshear: they nerfed it before cata as well. Granted, they gave the option to skill have it, but requiring to talent it. Again, a resto nerf hurting enh/ele.

...and claim there's some agenda against Shaman specifically. There's certainly legitimate arguments to be made, but that isn't one of them, it's baseless sky-is-falling alarmism.

I am not doing any "alarming" stuff. Totems were already nerfed. The deed was done. I haven't claimed anything either. I've interpreted from their actions and words.
What I do is critisize. And while there's always been stuff to do on the class that could've been better, in recent days GC/devs outdid themselves in screwing with the shaman comunity.
As a result, shamans seem to leave the class/game in droves. I can assure you, I am not the reason. I only point out what everyone knows already.

[Endus]

The nerf to Purge (only one dispelled effect, enh no longer benefitting from reduced cost) came way before MoP, so shaman got the offensive dispell nerfbat ealier than others.

That purge nerf was aimed primarily at Enhancement, not Resto, which was why Enhancement also had the mana cost increased. This is exactly what I mean when I say you take things wildly out of context to try try and twist them to fit the conclusion you want to draw.

As for windshear: they nerfed it before cata as well. Granted, they gave the option to skill have it, but requiring to talent it. Again, a resto nerf hurting enh/ele.

It didn't hurt Elemental at all, and it was easily reachable by Enhancement. The explicit intent there was to nerf Resto, while still making sure the lower cooldown was available to the DPS specs. So you're just wrong that this was a big negative to DPS Shaman. It slightly reduced Enhancement's spec variation, but the spec with the interrupt was used plenty even before the change; it was absolutely viable.

[Omanley]

I'd love to hear what overpowered abilities we have that require those harsh conditions on totems. Totems are a shamans' most characteristic mechanic. It's what defines shamans. And they've hit rock-bottom in comparison with other classes utility toolkits.

You say you cannot compare abilities 1:1, but that is exactly what got us nerfed. Blizz compared totems to other classes' utility, thought it was op to be able to plant them while silenced and completely disregarded the drawbacks already on totems, going on about "to hard to counter".
Totems from the get go had many limitations to keep them from getting overpowered. In fact they had to many for the new totem system. Blizz made a step in the wrong direction on this one.
And I listed two completely different aoe stuns, to show that they dont have to follow a precice script. I am not saying aoe stuns with charge-ups are good in any case, so warlocks/death knights dont have it all that better with their versions, but warlocks are loaded with cc last time I checked. Cant honestly say all that much about death knights though, I admit.

No matter how I look, the overall conclusion is that the sum of both enh and ele's capabilities are subpar, and totems as they are are partly responsible for that. Other aspects are shared cds for shocks (elemental) and better mobility for enh, but that's another story.

That purge nerf was aimed primarily at Enhancement, not Resto, which was why Enhancement also had the mana cost increased.

So you say, but if it was so, wouldn't it be just as fine raising just the cost for enh, like they did? It's not like enh could spam it like that afterwards. Plus enh wasn't doing particularly well at that time either, different from resto, which was popular for it's niche abilities like GW, Wind Shear, Frostshock etc.

It didn't hurt Elemental at all, and it was easily reachable by Enhancement.

It required to take the talent, which ele normally didn't, afair. As for enhance, it required to forgo resto talents for better healing, which was the way to go back then in enh pvp (so their nerf was indirectly a survivability nerf to enh). Also resto was still able to get that lowered cd Wind Shear, they just had to sacrificy mobility for it.
Blizz at that time could've just lowered the cd for enh/ele upon chosing the spec, or increasing the cd upon chosing resto. Same as how they could've done with their totem changes: make healing totems unusable while silenced upon chosing resto.
That was hard alright, keeping nerfs to the specs that require it.

It could've been so damn easy if they just started doing spec specific changes, but they dont. They seem to insist that a shaman's toolkit has to remain the same for each role mostly, but that's just not possible with a class utilizing three different roles that share a lot of them with each other (esp. enh).

[SenSayNyu]

Q: Do you not think it's a little unfair that Fury has never been good in Arena? Other specs had their time to shine except Fury.

‏GC: The bigger topic is whether it's fair to players (or reasonable to balance) to have 34 viable 3v3 Arena specs.

The truth is, ele will never be viable spec because of this. They can't balance or don't want put so much effort in balancing dps specs. Resto is favorite because there are numerous other caster dd specs in game, while healing limited to 6 specs. So, if you want to play caster in 3v3 choose another class, mage or lock will always be the best choice. Or if you still want to play shaman go resto, as I did.

[shell]

I think if they'd addressed the totems that are the 'problem', the other specs would have been hit anyways. They're apparently going to do some more nerfs so we'll see, but from what I've been reading on the forums, it wasn't just SLT that players were complaining about. It was HTT and Tremor as well, along with purge. Been reading more and more about knockbacks in arena too, so if they decide to do something about that, it'll effect elemental even though we're not the class/spec that ppl are complaining about. 5.2 is supposed to be a revisiting of the talent trees so I wouldn't be surprised if HTT in particular gets changed.

And those healing totems are, aside from Spirit Link Totem, class-wide. It was an issue across the board with regards to hybrid healing, and this was how they nerfed Shaman healing. As well as reducing Resto's power overall.

So you're right in that it wasn't JUST to hit Resto, but you're wrong in thinking that the effect on Elemental and Enhancement wasn't deliberate.

I'm not sure it was deliberate. The pvp power nerf was intended to nerf hybrid healing, I don't think this totem nerf had anything to do hybrid healing. I think it was aimed at resto and resto alone. I think it was justified on the basis of representation of the other two specs; so while it wasn't exactly 'well, your spec isn't viable anyways,so it won't affect you', it may have been something close to that, just thought out in a more diplomatic way.

[Endus]

They can't balance or don't want put so much effort in balancing dps specs. Resto is favorite because there are numerous other caster dd specs in game, while healing limited to 6 specs. So, if you want to play caster in 3v3 choose another class, mage or lock will always be the best choice. Or if you still want to play shaman go resto, as I did.

I think it was justified on the basis of representation of the other two specs; so while it wasn't exactly 'well, your spec isn't viable anyways,so it won't affect you', it may have been something close to that, just thought out in a more diplomatic way.

Honestly, I wouldn't care if they decided that certain specs were "PvP specs" and some not.

They just need to be open and up front about it, and remove the aspects of those specs which don't fit the PvE focus. For instance; Elemental has almost never been a very viable spec, but it has always had a plethora of talents that are clearly PvP-oriented. Heck, look at Thunderstorm; the knockback is so undesirable in PvE generally that they gave us a glyph to remove it, the damage is low enough you'd never use it for that, the mana regen is often not even necessary, and the slow effect is often something adds/bosses are flat-out immune to. It's clearly aimed more at PvP, and always has been (even when some of those factors didn't exist). It's also the only reason I keep playing PvP as Elemental; knocking people off cliffs is fun.

So really, I wouldn't care if they said "Resto's the only spec we're concerned about with regards to PvP Shaman". Fine, I'll PvP as something else if I don't want to heal. Just take Thunderstorm away or change it to make it PvE awesome. Same for Enhancement. The biggest issue with the current game is that every spec has tools that are primarily aimed at PvP, spec-specific tools even. And given that every spec has those tools, it makes it look as if they're intended for that kind of gameplay. So when their performance lags, it looks like a mistake. It would be better if they either made a concerted effort to balance all 34 specs for PvP, or to publicly declare which specs are "PvP specs" that they're going to balance for that content. You can't go with middle ground like this.

[Deleted]

It makes sense on some level in regards to Resto Shaman being able to use many cooldowns while locked out, but on the same token, that's always been the totem flavor. They are physical objects that can be killed as a counter. As a mechanic, totems have their downsides and this was their upside. With this change, totems will have all the negatives of every other cooldown, while also having their own downsides and no more unique benefit.

Thing is, you can't do ANYTHING if you get a blanket silence. A Paladin can still bubble, a Druid can still use a lot of his abilities and so can a priest for that matter. As a shaman you could use totems but did not have anything equal to their defensive. Now you can't.

[zenga]

Gc's last twitter gem:

Guy1: Way to learn the shaman class Ghostcrawler. Silencing enhance blocks our interrupt and some major cd's!
GC: yeah I know. But silencing an Enhance is like disarming a Mage. I'm sure it happens, but I dont see it often.
Guy2: That's not a fair comparison, as mages can still use their abilities while disarmed, whereas enh can't.
GC: the point is you're often better off spending a silence on a healer or a caster who is dependent on spells for 100%.

this shows a lot imo ... unfortunately