My experience about this issue comes primarily from Battlegrounds/Wintergrasp where the Raid's coordination is not all that good, especially when compared to High-End PvE Raids. However, this problem is present in almost every Raid and PvE encounter.
The issue i am referring to is the fact that our "Party Only" totems (non Raid-Wide) are limited to affecting only our 5 Party Members.
Now this sure seems logical and correct at first, but please consider the following:
During the Battleground/WG (and most PvE encounters) members of the same Party usually get too far away from each other, sometimes even to the opposite corners of the battlefield. At such times, our "Party Only" totems become nearly useless since they are only affecting the Shaman (and thus wasting 80% of their potential).
What i propose is not a buff, nor a nerf, but a FIX to this annoying issue.
Make Shaman "Party Only" Totems affect 5 NEAREST Raid Members.
"Party Only" totems would prioritize Party Members over other Raid members, but they would still affect other Raid Members if there are insufficient Party Members in its surroundings.
These Totems would never be able to affect more then 5 targets at any time, which is exactly according to their original design and intended function.
A list of our "Party Only" totems:
- Healing Stream Totem
- Cleansing Totem
- Tremor Totem
- Earthbind Totem (with Earthen Power / Enhancement Talent)
- Mana Tide Totem (5 minute cooldown / Restoration Talent Totem)
- Grounding Totem
As my fellow Shamans can see, there is quite a lot of "Party Only" totems in our arsenal and all of them are very valuable.
By implementing this fix, our Totems would be properly doing their intended function - hence, there would be no balance issues about such a minor change.
Thank you for reading my post.
If you can, please copy this thread to the USA Forums so the Blizzard Staff could take a look at it.