[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Deleted]

Trinket, melee swing. All your cc's blown. And now what? Putting it down requires alot of effort to get it in the right position.

Thats only if you try to set it up all by your self, 3v3 (where PvP is balanced around) is not 1v1, I used it as an example, but if your team mate does any kind of CC you can chain CPT onto the end. And also trinket has 3 minute cooldown whilst the longest cooldown in that rotation (earthgrab) has a 1minute cooldown.

Vastly overpowerd... because 1 melee or caster cant touch you. How is that differnt from a normal stun?

Because a 5 second, no downside besides cooldown, unavoidable stun doesn't exist in the game. The only stun that comes close is Hammer of Justice which has a longer cooldown but it has no AoE component. Theres no "Cast Hammer of Justice, press it again to instantly stun a target or if you wait 5 seconds you stun everyone near the original target". If you look at it purely as a single target 5 second stun its not overpowered, but its the fact its that AND an AoE stun if you put in this mechanic.

Because there are no other instant stuns? deepfreeze, hammer, feral bash(altho that gets removed)

Again, you ignore the AoE component. Your in 3v3 against Warrior, DK, Healer, you're able to instantly stun both the Warrior and the DK for 5 seconds allowing you to easily switch onto the healer with 0 peels. Far to strong. There is no instant AoE stun that stuns for 5 seconds.

Every fucking decent resto shaman, will use manatide and stoneclaw after to protect his manatide, I use this ALWAYS when I drop manatide in arena or rbg.

In RBG yeah because you're out in the open, but in Arena its better to drop the Mana Tide simply LoS so you're able to use the Stoneclaw to protect yourself. I agree I shouldn't have said never use it to protect totems, but the rarety in which it is used in my opinion doesn't warrant a new ability to be added just to fill that roll, especially as we have an entire tree dedicated to totem protection already.

good play has nothing to do with it. SLT's getting destroyed in a second, groundings getting destroyed by a dot/lance w/e (not to mention grounding suffers ms lag horribly)Ofcourse it does what it says but dropping grounding on cc's you need near perfect timing and a bit of luck. We dont need another casino stun, we need reliable utility now. Don't get me wrong I like the utillity totems as I really dislike the buffsticks(for alot of reasons) and I hate searing totem with a passion(destroying itself on reflective shields, spellreflects, targeting cc'ed targets, thats why every high rated ele shaman uses flametongue totem) but no one else loses his utility with a melee swing.

SLT is most useful for the first tick of the totem, giving it a small shield wouldn't help because it would STILL be tunneled, its designed that way, Blizzard knows that when a Shaman puts down SLT in PvP it will be trained. Grounding is designed to absorb the first spell, by your logic Spell Reflect is bad too when you can remove that with any spell too.

I didn't enjoy reading this... that's like take it or leave it ... And i don't understand why 'sacrifice' must be a key aspect of our totem-system. Why must every shaman ability be counterable?

It's clear pp want a reliable stun during pvp fights; not something to sacrifice ...

As Endus said, the reason they are a sacrifice and easy to kill is because they are totems. Its how they were designed and how the mechanic works. If you don't like it you don't like a core aspect of the class. We have talents and glyphs to improve totem survival but at the base of it they are designed to be easy to destroy and its down to the shaman to use them in situations where they wont be killed or to protect them (through abilities and placement) in all other situations.

[Arinnaya]

2 - Unless the stun penalty was 2 seconds they wont put a stun onto a person that destroys CPT because that makes it too strong. You drop the totem next to you and for the next 5 seconds no melee is able to touch you without themselves/a team mate getting stunned seems vastly overpowered

Wait, it's overpowered to have one person stunned for 5 seconds, but not overpowered to have a whole group of them stunned for 5 seconds? It makes it a trade-off, either one person eats the stun or you all eat it or all escape. That means they have a choice to make. Right now, one of them switching targets for a single auto-attack swing is hardly a choice at all. This will force teams to think quickly, and work out if someone can afford to take the stun, or else they'll all have to run out. It promotes intelligent countering, rather than just one attack on the totem before going back to business as usual.

3 - I *could* see them remove the glypH and make the glyphs effect always up, but I personally prefer the option to choose that, theres no way they would make it instant though, vastly too strong against melee teams

Or they could reduce the power of the stun/radius - so make it a 2/3 second stun with a 5 yard radius and make it instant. Definitely preferable for me, I'd rather have a low/medium-power ability that always works rather than a high-power ability that is more easily countered/has some downsides.

Our whole totem system is based around sacrifice and good play. I'm sorry if you don't like that and you feel you should get the benefits of such sacrifices without the downside, but thats not how the totem system works and the totem system is the single most key aspect to the Shaman Class (especially in PvP). If you don't like it then its the class you don't like, and you should consider a reroll because changing the class you play so much would involve removing a mechanic that is utterly unique to the shaman and a big reason why lots of people enjoy playing the class.

No one's saying that in this topic... people are asking for less downside AND less power. I'd rather have an ability with a lower stun duration and a lower radius, which worked more often, than what is currently available. Your post here is trying to shut down debate by falsely labelling anyone who doesn't agree with you as "anti-Shaman." Totems should be able to be countered, but it should be more than a single auto-attack swing (and before you bring up totemic vigor glyph, that's still only 1 auto-attack for a melee class) to counter them - either the health gets buffed OR certain totems has effects for people destroying them. This is why I think the "destroy it and you get stunned" idea is so good - if you destroy it, the effect of the totem is lessened (one stun instead of multiple) but not completely eradicated. However, if you all run out of the area, noone gets stunned. Switching targets to a totem for a second shouldn't be an automatic reaction for other players it should require a decision - and the only ways I can think of doing that are boosting totem health (so they have to use some of their attacks) or providing some downside to killing various totems. Right now we have all or nothing, when a lot of players simply want more consistency, even at the cost of power.

[Deleted]

I don't see how this has anything to do with then "current Shaman vibe"; totems have been easily killable always. What I'm doing is taking a hardline stance that they not change one of our defining class mechanics so much that it's beyond recognition.

I agree it needs tweaking with the change in how totems are being handled, but when I say "tweak" I mean a nudge, not a shove. An offhand attack from a Rogue shouldn't kill a totem, but a Sinister Strike should, IMO, to use an example.

I agree with this, I'd like the totem to have slightly more than 5 hp so it can't just be wand killed (Priests Wanding my Tremor totem just as their warlock buddy was finishing his fear cast back in WotLK was the bane of my existance), but I think much more than that is not nessesary.

[Arinnaya]

Because a 5 second, no downside besides cooldown, unavoidable stun doesn't exist in the game. The only stun that comes close is Hammer of Justice which has a longer cooldown but it has no AoE component. Theres no "Cast Hammer of Justice, press it again to instantly stun a target or if you wait 5 seconds you stun everyone near the original target". If you look at it purely as a single target 5 second stun its not overpowered, but its the fact its that AND an AoE stun if you put in this mechanic.

No it's that OR an AoE stun. Both cannot happen on one totem cast, by its very design.

Again, you ignore the AoE component. Your in 3v3 against Warrior, DK, Healer, you're able to instantly stun both the Warrior and the DK for 5 seconds allowing you to easily switch onto the healer with 0 peels. Far to strong. There is no instant AoE stun that stuns for 5 seconds.

Again, you've ignored all calls for shorter cast time in return for lesser power. A 2/3 second stun would be more than adequate for instant-cast, the healer should be at range anyway so by the time you reach him, their peels are available again.

As Endus said, the reason they are a sacrifice and easy to kill is because they are totems. Its how they were designed and how the mechanic works. If you don't like it you don't like a core aspect of the class. We have talents and glyphs to improve totem survival but at the base of it they are designed to be easy to destroy and its down to the shaman to use them in situations where they wont be killed or to protect them (through abilities and placement) in all other situations.

Again, there's a difference between EASY to kill and TOO EASY to kill, as Endus said, and you left out. EDIT - never mind, you've said the same now. Ignore this bit!

One thing I'd like to see is making totems immune to any auto-attacks (melee, ranged, wand) - keep them low health so that one attack is enough but the player must CHOOSE to use the attack rather than just switching targets quickly.

[Deleted]

Or they could reduce the power of the stun/radius - so make it a 2/3 second stun with a 5 yard radius and make it instant. Definitely preferable for me, I'd rather have a low/medium-power ability that always works rather than a high-power ability that is more easily countered/has some downsides.

I could get behind that for a glyph, reduced power but reduced cast/instant, but thats not what was suggested. They suggested instant and 5 second stun, which is what I was argueing against.

No one's saying that in this topic... people are asking for less downside AND less power. I'd rather have an ability with a lower stun duration and a lower radius, which worked more often, than what is currently available. Your post here is trying to shut down debate by falsely labelling anyone who doesn't agree with you as "anti-Shaman." Totems should be able to be countered, but it should be more than a single auto-attack swing (and before you bring up totemic vigor glyph, that's still only 1 auto-attack for a melee class) to counter them - either the health gets buffed OR certain totems has effects for people destroying them. This is why I think the "destroy it and you get stunned" idea is so good - if you destroy it, the effect of the totem is lessened (one stun instead of multiple) but not completely eradicated. However, if you all run out of the area, noone gets stunned. Switching targets to a totem for a second shouldn't be an automatic reaction for other players it should require a decision - and the only ways I can think of doing that are boosting totem health (so they have to use some of their attacks) or providing some downside to killing various totems. Right now we have all or nothing, when a lot of players simply want more consistency, even at the cost of power.

Again, the point I was argueing against was not less downside and less power, just less downside alone. I'd get behind a glyph that reduced the stun to 2 or 3 seconds and make it instant, sort of like Dragons Breath. I disagree with people simply wanting the downsides to totems to be removed, vastly changing a core mechanic of our class, and if you dislike a core mechanic of the class by extension you dislike the class. Its like not liking the fact Hunter pets can be CCed or not liking the fact DoTs dont do all their damage upfront.

[Arinnaya]

I wanted to expand on this a little, just as a way of communicating what I mean about Capacitor Totem having a downside to being killed.

Again, you ignore the AoE component. Your in 3v3 against Warrior, DK, Healer, you're able to instantly stun both the Warrior and the DK for 5 seconds allowing you to easily switch onto the healer with 0 peels. Far to strong. There is no instant AoE stun that stuns for 5 seconds.

If I drop CT in this scenario, then one of the melee simply switches target and it's dead within a second. Almost not worth dropping it (although obviously it's going to be worth dropping it just in case they don't kill it). No real decision making there - I know it's fucked, and they kill it asap.

If we've got the "destroy it and you get stunned instead," now their team has a real decision to make. The warrior/dk could run away from the totem (which means you might get a bit of defense for a moment), one of them might kill it and eat the stun, leaving the other free to peel off the healer, or even the healer could use an instant to destroy it, meaning that he eats the stun, but the warrior/dk are both free to peel and keep their pressure up.

I know that totems are meant to encourage intelligent gameplay, but I don't see why they shouldn't force OTHER CLASSES to be intelligent around them. We have to work out what buffs are worth stripping with purge and which are worth leaving, other classes should have to learn that a mindless switch+auto-attack to a totem is not always the best option.

[Omanley]

You first place totems at your feet. Always. As an enhance that means right at the feet of your enemy. CPT is gone the moment you place it. You cant just say:"Okay, I now stop hitting my target I'm going for the kill at, run behind the next pillar which might be quite far away, drop it there and then throw it back at my target".

That does not work. As ele/resto, sure, you might plant it during pillar humping and probably be able to pull that off, but not as enh.
Other abilities are not even remotely as hard to make work as CPT or other totems are. To justify those heavy drawbacks, CPT would have to additionally hit for 50-70k. Yes that would be an exagerated effect and as such it will never happen. I'm just saying the drawbacks are just as exagerrated.

There are like a dozen stuns in the game, and while ours in duration and with being an aoe effect is a little stronger than the others, the drawbacks are horribly huge and unjustified. Shamans lacked a good way of pressuring others, especially healers for a long time. Now they get one and the healer herp-di-derp one shots it with his mace. That's simply not right.

Yes the 5% elite will probably be able to make it work, but have to safe it for the right moment, not once a minute.

2) You kidding me, right? For destroying the aoe component, the destroyer shouldn't eat more than a crappy 2 second stun? Far too strong?
It's a 1 minute cooldown. What's OP about having one 5 second stun per minute? Paladins, rogues, warriors, mages, ferals all have that.

3) Far to strong against melee teams? There's like a dozen comparatively strong abilities ALREADY IN THE GAME, not even starting on MoP ones. I think you simply grew accustomed to shaman up-ness and think anything competitive is OP if we have it.
If an instant CPT would be OP, remove Warrior's Dragon Roar, Shock Wave and Piercing Howl, because they'd be still competitive or even stronger than CPT with instant stun. Or monks Sweeping Kick.

4) Yes used to. Do you know why? Because totems were not worth protecting, that's why. Tremor used to have no cd, Cleansing when we still had it neither. Grounding and Earthbind have/had lower cds pre MoP as well.
In MoP an updated Stoneclaw Totem could perfectly close the gap (or at least a good amount of it) created by new totems and old restrictions.

Yes, shamans have sacrificed a lot, and rarely gained from any of those sacrifices. For years. Thank you for reminding me of that trait oh so typical for shaman development, and the game play resulting from that.
I have never, EVER seen ANY blizz developer state ANYTHING about totems being designed to be a sacrifical game play mechanic. As far as I am concerned, they were plastered with lots of drawbacks to counterbalance the huge amount of utility they used to provide, which no longer is the case.
Totems in MoP will be a repertoire of cooldown utility similar to that of a rogues. It trades the supportive notion of aoe effects for overall weaker effects.
The 5hp/elemental brackets restriction are what is over the top.

Weak totems are among the unneeded over the top restrictions of shamans. Just take Shocks for example. FrS sharing its cooldown with FS/ES is why this fella (high ranked ele afaik probably wont ever take Frozen Power, something which otherwise would be an interesting elemental talent of choice. Would it be op if they decoupled at least FrS from the shared cd? NO! Why is it kept? No one knows.

And to get into the "totems were always like this" discussion: Screw that! Warrior stances? REWORKED! Hunter pets REWORKED SEVERAL times. Warlock pets? GET REWORKED.
You say class defining, but 5hp totems are no class defining trait, they are a close to 10 year old relic which was left alone for whatever reason. Times changed since long ago, and so need totems.
The old totem system is from a time where rogues and paladins were the only ones to stun. Now everyone gets to do this, but ours has to be the herp-derp version again? Again, SCREW THAT!

[mrinvisable2]

Undefetter and endus answer can coldowns be remowed on other classes with mele swing or with some instant cast and purge to remove coldowns it seems that most of cd in mop cant be purged? does other clases have glyphs so they cooldowns wouldnt be so easy removed?
our cooldowns are totems so they must be more powerful if they can be so easy removed or they should make them tougher to remove

CT is way inferior to other stuns , totems should have base 5-10 % hp and glyph who destroyed totem gets stuned for 2 sec with dr so on 3rd he would be imune to that stun for some time

[Deleted]

Undefetter and endus answer can coldowns be remowed on other classes with mele swing or with some instant cast and purge to remove coldowns it seems that most of cd in mop cant be purged? does other clases have glyphs so they cooldowns wouldnt be so easy removed?
our cooldowns are totems so they must be more powerful if they can be so easy removed or they should make them tougher to remove

CT is way inferior to other stuns , totems should have base 5-10 % hp and glyph who destroyed totem gets stuned for 2 sec with dr so on 3rd he would be imune to that stun for some time

Other classes dont have the ability to place their cooldowns in physical locations. Our cooldowns work differently to others. As I have said before, if you dropped a 'totem' and the player only had to melee YOU to remove the buff that would be broken and severely underpowered, its the fact they have to kill a totem, which you can place intelligently and use abilities to protect/restore rather than just pop and it appears on yourself.

[paror]

Thats only if you try to set it up all by your self, 3v3 (where PvP is balanced around) is not 1v1, I used it as an example, but if your team mate does any kind of CC you can chain CPT onto the end. And also trinket has 3 minute cooldown whilst the longest cooldown in that rotation (earthgrab) has a 1minute cooldown.

I am getting a bit tired of the you have team mates argument. alot of cc dr's wich each other , also needing it to be in range is one of the major drawbacks, and its visible as fuck as your teammate cc's one of them 2 of them can still melee swing your cc down. wich makes it casino and unreliable so not used at all. Pvp trinket is 2 mins cd and not 3. Also earthgrab is only a slow if not talented and does not prevent them from casting or anything else.

Because a 5 second, no downside besides cooldown, unavoidable stun doesn't exist in the game. The only stun that comes close is Hammer of Justice which has a longer cooldown but it has no AoE component. Theres no "Cast Hammer of Justice, press it again to instantly stun a target or if you wait 5 seconds you stun everyone near the original target". If you look at it purely as a single target 5 second stun its not overpowered, but its the fact its that AND an AoE stun if you put in this mechanic.

Clearly you have not seen much talents of other classes, 1 min hammer BUT with a CASTABLE SPAMMABLE repentance 6 sec (talent) , Mages ring of frost AOE stun 1.5 sec cast, instant block on contact 10 sec cd(they made it 10 times better then it is now) so why exactly would ours be op ?

Again, you ignore the AoE component. Your in 3v3 against Warrior, DK, Healer, you're able to instantly stun both the Warrior and the DK for 5 seconds allowing you to easily switch onto the healer with 0 peels. Far to strong. There is no instant AoE stun that stuns for 5 seconds.

I dont care if they remove the aoe, I just dont want another casino stun. I want reliable utility as it is on live we have none besides hex and hex is arguably not even that great as people can still move away from you.(ts can fail, earhtgraps can fail, grounding can fail due to ms lag, slt gets destroyed in seconds, etc)

In RBG yeah because you're out in the open, but in Arena its better to drop the Mana Tide simply LoS so you're able to use the Stoneclaw to protect yourself. I agree I shouldn't have said never use it to protect totems, but the rarety in which it is used in my opinion doesn't warrant a new ability to be added just to fill that roll, especially as we have an entire tree dedicated to totem protection already.

Have you ever played arena at a high level, what you are saying just does not hold up. I will not explain in detail but any decent resto shaman protects his manatide, in short: why risk it getting destroyed with a lance,wand,w/e when you can just apply stoneclaw. You will not use mantide when focused on so your reasoning holds no value.

SLT is most useful for the first tick of the totem, giving it a small shield wouldn't help because it would STILL be tunneled, its designed that way, Blizzard knows that when a Shaman puts down SLT in PvP it will be trained. Grounding is designed to absorb the first spell, by your logic Spell Reflect is bad too when you can remove that with any spell too.

I am not arguing the usefullness of the totems I am arguing that its all unreliable and no slt is not only about the first tick.

As Endus said, the reason they are a sacrifice and easy to kill is because they are totems. Its how they were designed and how the mechanic works. If you don't like it you don't like a core aspect of the class. We have talents and glyphs to improve totem survival but at the base of it they are designed to be easy to destroy and its down to the shaman to use them in situations where they wont be killed or to protect them (through abilities and placement) in all other situations.

Because outdated designed mechanics should stay as they are? Dropping totems one by one was fine. It got changed, this has reasons. I am getting quite tired of mods using "if you dont like totems dont play shaman" to hold the shaman class back. Things change, so did totems. Buff totems are gone, why do you feel our utility totems NEED to be destroyed in seconds? Does it make them "op" that the durations are in line with everyone else his utility cd's ? I don't think so.

I just compare it to thinking windows95 is still fine. Ofcourse it still works and it still is viable for 1995 standards. But it's 2012. Things change. Don't fear change.

[Endus]

Or they could reduce the power of the stun/radius - so make it a 2/3 second stun with a 5 yard radius and make it instant. Definitely preferable for me, I'd rather have a low/medium-power ability that always works rather than a high-power ability that is more easily countered/has some downsides.

If it were going to go this way, I'd want to go full-on psychological warfare.

Glyph of Capacitor Totem - Capacitor Totem no longer provides an AoE stun. Instead, striking Capacitor Totem stuns the attacker for 5s. Capacitor Totem lasts 5 seconds, 45s cooldown.

Is it a real Capacitor Totem that you need to kill to avoid the stun? Or will killing it stun you? Hit it and find out.

[rogas]

Wait, it's overpowered to have one person stunned for 5 seconds, but not overpowered to have a whole group of them stunned for 5 seconds? It makes it a trade-off, either one person eats the stun or you all eat it or all escape. That means they have a choice to make. Right now, one of them switching targets for a single auto-attack swing is hardly a choice at all. This will force teams to think quickly, and work out if someone can afford to take the stun, or else they'll all have to run out. It promotes intelligent countering, rather than just one attack on the totem before going back to business as usual.



Or they could reduce the power of the stun/radius - so make it a 2/3 second stun with a 5 yard radius and make it instant. Definitely preferable for me, I'd rather have a low/medium-power ability that always works rather than a high-power ability that is more easily countered/has some downsides.



No one's saying that in this topic... people are asking for less downside AND less power. I'd rather have an ability with a lower stun duration and a lower radius, which worked more often, than what is currently available. Your post here is trying to shut down debate by falsely labelling anyone who doesn't agree with you as "anti-Shaman." Totems should be able to be countered, but it should be more than a single auto-attack swing (and before you bring up totemic vigor glyph, that's still only 1 auto-attack for a melee class) to counter them - either the health gets buffed OR certain totems has effects for people destroying them. This is why I think the "destroy it and you get stunned" idea is so good - if you destroy it, the effect of the totem is lessened (one stun instead of multiple) but not completely eradicated. However, if you all run out of the area, noone gets stunned. Switching targets to a totem for a second shouldn't be an automatic reaction for other players it should require a decision - and the only ways I can think of doing that are boosting totem health (so they have to use some of their attacks) or providing some downside to killing various totems. Right now we have all or nothing, when a lot of players simply want more consistency, even at the cost of power.

I could get behind that for a glyph, reduced power but reduced cast/instant, but thats not what was suggested. They suggested instant and 5 second stun, which is what I was argueing against.



Again, the point I was argueing against was not less downside and less power, just less downside alone. I'd get behind a glyph that reduced the stun to 2 or 3 seconds and make it instant, sort of like Dragons Breath. I disagree with people simply wanting the downsides to totems to be removed, vastly changing a core mechanic of our class, and if you dislike a core mechanic of the class by extension you dislike the class. Its like not liking the fact Hunter pets can be CCed or not liking the fact DoTs dont do all their damage upfront.

The thing i wanted to adress is the 'static' perception of our shaman class. Who decides wich are core features of our shaman class? If one dares to question one of those... your a bad shaman. Our totem-system just did get completly shoved by blizzard. They removed all our buff totems. It's still beta ... and you allready presenting this new totem-build as the 'new' core of our shaman class.

Destroying a totem should be possible ... but in the case of this 'capacitator totem' a small stun should be justified. And some of our defensive totems should get more hp.

[Endus]

Undefetter and endus answer can coldowns be remowed on other classes with mele swing or with some instant cast and purge to remove coldowns it seems that most of cd in mop cant be purged? does other clases have glyphs so they cooldowns wouldnt be so easy removed?
our cooldowns are totems so they must be more powerful if they can be so easy removed or they should make them tougher to remove

No, but they're not Shaman. We have different restrictions than they do. That doesn't mean they don't have restrictions too.

If you don't want to deal with this, like I said, there's 9 other classes out there. 10 in MoP. This has been the single core part of Shaman gameplay since their creation. It's not something new that's being sprung on Shaman players; you all rolled this class knowing that totems were vulnerable buff/utility providers. Complaining that they're vulnerable at this point isn't very reasonable.

Again; I agree they need to be a bit more resilient, but you're suggesting here that they shouldn't be killable at all, because nobody else's have that vulnerability. That's not reasonable. If you want that kind of gameplay, like I said, 9 other classes to pick from. I'd say the same to a Hunter player who didn't want to deal with pets, or a Warrior player who wanted to play a ranged character. Not liking the basic class mechanics of a class does not mean they should be changed, it means you should play something you enjoy instead. Some of us really LIKE totems. If you don't, that's fine, but go play something you like, rather than trying to force a change to a class some of us love, totems included.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 10:53 AM ----------

The thing i wanted to adress is the 'static' perception of our shaman class. Who decides wich are core features of our shaman class? If one dares to question one of those... your a bad shaman. Our totem-system just did get completly shoved by blizzard. They removed all our buff totems. It's still beta ... and you allready presenting this new totem-build as the 'new' core of our shaman class.

That's a change to what totems bring, not to how totems work. Totems are, at heart, immobile low-health providers of buffs/utility effects. That's remained true since Vanilla. Which buffs/utility changes, and we can tweak what we classify as "low-health", but asking for totems to follow the Shaman, or complaining that totems can be relatively easily killed to negate their effects, that's arguing that you don't like totems. It's the one mechanical system that defines all Shaman, as a class. Everything else is either spec-specific, or you're referring to specific spells rather than mechanics.

[rogas]

endus i agree with you ... our shaman class has totems and they are removable. But never before have we had this amount of ability totems. And we never have been more dependent on our totems in pvp. Are you sure we have a 5 seconds cd on our 'capacitator totem' because our enemies must get the chance to kill that totem? Isn't is just due to this 'totemic projection' talent? Because we need those 5 sec to be able to replace it?

I do like using totem ... i just don't like this 'capacitator totem mechanic... that's all

[Arinnaya]

If it were going to go this way, I'd want to go full-on psychological warfare.

Glyph of Capacitor Totem - Capacitor Totem no longer provides an AoE stun. Instead, striking Capacitor Totem stuns the attacker for 5s. Capacitor Totem lasts 5 seconds, 45s cooldown.

Is it a real Capacitor Totem that you need to kill to avoid the stun? Or will killing it stun you? Hit it and find out.

In that case I'm proposing Russian Roulette Totem:

5 minute cooldown, 8% of base mana.

Teleports a random enemy to TotemWorld, where 4 totems surround them. You must kill one of them, one will kill you, the other three will return you to the real world. Pressure's on, good luck...

[Barky]

This can be fixed very easily, just let the totem stun its destroyer for 3-5 seconds.

^ This pretty much sorts it out completely. At least that way when your totem is placed, it's more likely to at least stun one person. I seriously hope that this gets implemented.

[Aviators]

How is Totemic Projection working out for you? I've heard some players complain that its clunky; maybe having something like the beta version (not the live version) of hunter's trap launcher could help with that. Been hearing good things about trap launcher.

Pretty much all of my totem abilities are macro'ed for projection, so its something like /cast HST and then /cast Totemic Projection. I have to press each button twice to get the projection. Good thing is that it does not trigger the GCD.

I was doing some Nagrand Arena, and I was able to be at one pillar while my totems were projected to the other side of the pillar. Right now the heals are really strong so HST doing its full duration required almost no direct healing from me. Arenas right now are not stable, you dc and lag a lot.

[Endus]

endus i agree with you ... our shaman class has totems and they are removable. But never before have we had this amount of ability totems. And we never have been more dependent on our totems in pvp. Are you sure we have a 5 seconds cd on our 'capacitator totem' because our enemies must get the chance to kill that totem? Isn't is just due to this 'totemic projection' talent? Because we need those 5 sec to be able to replace it?

No, the main reason for that 5 seconds is because it's a 5s AoE stun with an 8y range. Remorseless Winter is a 6s stun with an 8y range, 5s to apply the stun effect. Shadowfury is instant, but only a 3s stun. We can glyph ours for a shorter "tick" time, and/or take Totemic Projection to toss it into the enemy at 0.5s left.

It's balanced around all of that. Sure, someone could kill it, but that's not much different from someone just running out of Remorseless Winter. High-duration and AoE stuns tend to have a cast time or execution time. Leg Sweep is an exception, but it's also brand-new for the brand-new class, and as we saw with DKs, it can take a long time to get everything tuned right for a new class. I'm not making any calls regarding Monks until we get very close to the end of Beta; there's no history of class design to follow, and they can just completely uproot things for a full redesign if they feel like it with no real complaints.

[Aviators]

Tossing around EG totem and Capacitor Totem would be awesome if not for the fact that they can be stomped by an auto attack.

I can just imagine fighting a hunter, Warlock, or DK with that set up. He sends his pet to attack you while he snipes your totems, and then you're effectively locked out of your most powerful cooldowns for 30-60 seconds. Plenty of time to melt your face.

eh, as long as the EG totem gets that root effect off, i don't care if the totem gets destroyed. On live the same thing happens with Earths grasp. I know I am not getting the full duration of my EB but as long as the root goes off, which it pulses every 2 seconds, I am ok with it.

Pets have really crappy damage, and if the class is focusing my totems, it gives me free casts on them. I know its going to take them time to destroy my totem and then focus me.

All this is doing is a creating another skill barrier which makes the Shaman class even more fun and unique to play.

[Tharkash]

No, but they're not Shaman. We have different restrictions than they do. That doesn't mean they don't have restrictions too.

If you don't want to deal with this, like I said, there's 9 other classes out there. 10 in MoP. This has been the single core part of Shaman gameplay since their creation. It's not something new that's being sprung on Shaman players; you all rolled this class knowing that totems were vulnerable buff/utility providers. Complaining that they're vulnerable at this point isn't very reasonable.

Again; I agree they need to be a bit more resilient, but you're suggesting here that they shouldn't be killable at all, because nobody else's have that vulnerability. That's not reasonable. If you want that kind of gameplay, like I said, 9 other classes to pick from. I'd say the same to a Hunter player who didn't want to deal with pets, or a Warrior player who wanted to play a ranged character. Not liking the basic class mechanics of a class does not mean they should be changed, it means you should play something you enjoy instead. Some of us really LIKE totems. If you don't, that's fine, but go play something you like, rather than trying to force a change to a class some of us love, totems included.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 10:53 AM ----------



That's a change to what totems bring, not to how totems work. Totems are, at heart, immobile low-health providers of buffs/utility effects. That's remained true since Vanilla. Which buffs/utility changes, and we can tweak what we classify as "low-health", but asking for totems to follow the Shaman, or complaining that totems can be relatively easily killed to negate their effects, that's arguing that you don't like totems. It's the one mechanical system that defines all Shaman, as a class. Everything else is either spec-specific, or you're referring to specific spells rather than mechanics.

It keeps coming back to this, that totems are the core mechanic for shaman. Well when I rolled a shaman back in vanilla I knew my totems would be killable, but then they were passive buff totems with little to no cooldown, making it so you could simply redrop them if you so choose. In MoP the paradigm has shifted to making them our utility cooldowns that we can't simply redrop immediately when they're destroyed. This started in Cata when they changed Tremor to give an upfront benefit to being dropped and only last 6 seconds instead of being a passive effect with no cooldown. Most totems seem to me to be balanced around their effect over the whole duration and have very little upfront use (mostly).

It's clear they want to keep totems fragile since they implemented Glyph of Totemic Vigor at 10% initially and dropped it to 5%. Honestly I'd like to see the HP of the totem scale around the expected duration of the totem for the full effect and the CD of the totem. OR, if they wanted to keep them fragile there should be repercussions for destroying our utility totems to make doing so a choice rather than an automatic action.

Let me make myself crystal clear so I'm not misinterpreted: Totems as a mechanic for the shaman I do like, but them being as fragile as they were when the game shipped when they were just buff sticks I don't like.