What happened to Searing Totem?

[Helcaraxe]

Got into beta and I was excited to hear they are adding Searing Totem back in the game.

Keeping myself in combat to not get sapped after blind/polymorh/fear was gonna be life saver in many arena situations but I can't see it in game, what happened? Was it too broken in PvP?

You are in the wrong forums these people have an average 1300 XP. You speak about PvP utility but they spam "it was doing little damageeeeeEEeEeE." You were expecting too much from these people.

[Nyel]

... and there are good reasons why they went back on adding it.

Yeah, because they suck at class design. But nevermind, unprune useless sh*t like Flametongue Weapon or Primal Strike, just because. Searing Totem could have had an interaction with all three specs, which was their announced goal with unpruning. Instead we got two absolutely useless skills for 2/3 Shaman specs - thanks for nothing I guess?

The whole unpruning in Shadowlands has for most classes been an utter disaster because they unpruned useless crap that was removed for a reason. Bringing back something like Kill Shot for Hunters should have been the goal for every class / spec, but they failed yet again.

I agree with your Searing Totem concerns, but there would have been a solution if they tried. But they didn't even try - that's my problem with it.

[rabbimojo]

Yeah, because they suck at class design. But nevermind, unprune useless sh*t like Flametongue Weapon or Primal Strike, just because. Searing Totem could have had an interaction with all three specs, which was their announced goal with unpruning. Instead we got two absolutely useless skills for 2/3 Shaman specs - thanks for nothing I guess?

The whole unpruning in Shadowlands has for most classes been an utter disaster because they unpruned useless crap that was removed for a reason. Bringing back something like Kill Shot for Hunters should have been the goal for every class / spec, but they failed yet again.

I agree with your Searing Totem concerns, but there would have been a solution if they tried. But they didn't even try - that's my problem with it.

While Flametongue and Primal Strike are depressingly useless, I don't feel like unpruning was a disaster at all. You have your narrative ("they suck at class design"), but another narrative might be "they underestimated the workload of SL and the impact of the pandemic, and rightfully decided that finding new niches for unpruned abilities wasn't high priority."

Unpruning is not a resounding success for raiders, but the pruning was never that painful for raiding either. For solo, PVP, and M+ content, I think it's worked as intended. e.g.:

• I'm happy, as ele, to have lightning shield back (for MS or MW, though the damage feels weirdly pointless - not worth the data xfer or server processing time). I'm happy to have HST. I'm OK having chain heal back too. Could they be better? Yes. But they're useful as-is.
• As priest, having SW:P on all specs is a welcome change - a spammable instant damage source, which is even better than we had in vanilla? That's a win. MB and PI are both welcome as well.
• As a warlock, CoT and CoEx are quite welcome.
• On mage, I'm thrilled to have AE again. Mirror Image and Fire Blast are, y'know, fine to have.

Honestly I struggle to find a class that hasn't been meaningfully improved by the unpruning.

That said, I hope if/when they have time post-SL-launch, they return to some of the complete duds (flametongue and primal strike are definitely there) and give them a use. I don't expect it, but I hope.

[Nyel]

While Flametongue and Primal Strike are depressingly useless, I don't feel like unpruning was a disaster at all. You have your narrative ("they suck at class design"), but another narrative might be "they underestimated the workload of SL and the impact of the pandemic, and rightfully decided that finding new niches for unpruned abilities wasn't high priority."

Unpruning is not a resounding success for raiders, but the pruning was never that painful for raiding either. For solo, PVP, and M+ content, I think it's worked as intended. e.g.:

• I'm happy, as ele, to have lightning shield back (for MS or MW, though the damage feels weirdly pointless - not worth the data xfer or server processing time). I'm happy to have HST. I'm OK having chain heal back too. Could they be better? Yes. But they're useful as-is.
• As priest, having SW:P on all specs is a welcome change - a spammable instant damage source, which is even better than we had in vanilla? That's a win. MB and PI are both welcome as well.
• As a warlock, CoT and CoEx are quite welcome.
• On mage, I'm thrilled to have AE again. Mirror Image and Fire Blast are, y'know, fine to have.

Honestly I struggle to find a class that hasn't been meaningfully improved by the unpruning.

That said, I hope if/when they have time post-SL-launch, they return to some of the complete duds (flametongue and primal strike are definitely there) and give them a use. I don't expect it, but I hope.

This has nothing to do with the pandemic. They talked about unpruning right at the announcement of Shadowlands - at that time they already should have had a plan on a) what to unprune and b) how to unprune.

There are very few good examples of unpruning (Kill Shot for Hunters, Shadow Word: Death baseline again (not to talk about that this should have never been made a talent), but a long list of really useless stuff they unpruned for the sake of unpruning (Frost Bolt, Fireball for all Mage specs - utterly useless; Flametongue Weapon and Primal Strike for Elemental & Restoration Shaman - utterly useless; etc.).

If I would dedicate one work day of time, I'd come up with better unpruning solutions and how to integrate each of the unpruned skills into each spec or even core rotation. It really isn't that hard and there have been hundreds or even thousands of posts from the community on how / what to unprune. Instead of using that feedback, they just abandoned their idea of unpruning middle of the road and we're stuck with what we have now - and for most classes it's in no way satisfying.

Lightning Shield als Elemental Shaman is pretty pointless as it adds nothing to the class except yet another button to press that does nothing (that was the exact reasoning why it was pruned). Furthermore it prevents us from using the Earth Shield talent as both can't be active on you at the same time - this is where it's obvious that unpruning was never thoroughly thought out. They incentivized button bloat with this kind of unpruning, but never thought about interactions of the unpruned skills in the respective spec toolkit - that's what unpruning should have been. Go over pruned skills, see which fit class / spec design and bring them back. In this regard, they completely failed.

The thing is, Flametongue Weapon once was useful for Elemental Shaman when it had a spell damage component. But instead of bringing that version back, they just added the Enhancement version of that skill for Elemental and Restoration - why not the one that was useful? Why not Earthliving Weapon for Restoration? It's just mind-boggling how poorly implemented it is. It's a huge missed opportunity.

[op3l]

Searing totem is and will always be a horrible mechanic. It adds nothing to the rotation. At this point wanting it back is simply for the sake of nostalgia of how Shamans used to be.

[Thestrawman]

I dont know where is the difference between Searing Totem and a Dot that has no CD and just doing damage, without effecting anything at all. Its the same. So i was happy about searing totem aswell. Sad its gone already.

DoTs can't be outranged. Or killed.

[deenman]

Without a Totem Bar it seems totem gameplay is dead. Blizz cba to add Totem Bar back to the game to give shaman the unique and impactful toolkit it once had.

a totem bar makes no sense with how totems work these days,there would be no point in using one,it made sense in the past when many totems were just buffs so droping multiple was usefull,today it wouldnt be

[rabbimojo]

This has nothing to do with the pandemic. They talked about unpruning right at the announcement of Shadowlands - at that time they already should have had a plan on a) what to unprune and b) how to unprune.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure any company in the industry is reliably prepping every feature plan or announcement like that.

Considering the date of the announcement, we could hypothesize that the unpruning was one of the last additions to the SL plan, added as an attempt to capture enthusiasm for Classic. If so, it's likely someone was tasked with doing a cursory overview of what abilities have existed for each class, maybe evaluating them by "iconic-ness" (esp. w.r.t. the Classic experience), and just seeing if it seemed possible. Throw in a quick brown-bag to the team about what was found, see if everyone felt it worth announcing, voila.

So while it would probably have been more prudent to do more pre-work and planning, we can tell they either did not, or simply did not prioritize implementing those plans. From this side of the curtain, we don't know which. Since SL got pushed back we know they didn't plan enough time for the critical development path, I think it's plausible that they punted on any more meaningful changes.

I'll agree that much of it's awkward and bland, but I never thought the feature was aimed much higher than that. They didn't promise "Fire mages are gonna be using frostbolt rotationally!". Having it as a non-fire-school snare is about as much value as it had before pruning. Shrug?

Will be interesting to see if they use the returning abilities as a platform for more things like "Disciplinary Command" and "Chains of Devastation", both of which would have made little sense without unpruning.

[Saltysquidoon]

They could have done something with ST but they choose not to because the unpruning was always a meant to be a low effort means of boosting box sales by riding the nostalgia wave caused by classic before it falters.

That said if the only option was to leave it as a 'button your press because it exists to be pressed' or nothing I pick nothing.

While Flametongue and Primal Strike are depressingly useless, I don't feel like unpruning was a disaster at all. You have your narrative ("they suck at class design"), but another narrative might be "they underestimated the workload of SL and the impact of the pandemic, and rightfully decided that finding new niches for unpruned abilities wasn't high priority."

What a load of old boot. First of all the covid argument is nonsense and ether a denial of how dev cycles work or a willing acceptance to swallow corporate BS.

Secondly, class design is not like fishing there shouldn't be misses, especially when all you are doing is re-adding old content. I guarantee you most people wouldn't care if primal strike was quietly readded in a patch for a fun bit of flavour. But when you are selling it as a feature of an expansion it has to be content.
There are far too many examples of this 'content' either being literally devoid of use under even the most made-up forum circumstances (FT or corruption) or being backwards spec design (SnD for assassination) or clearly only readded because they designed a covenant ability around a spell but forgot that one spec didn't have that spell so they decided to 'unprune it' instead of changing the covenant ability (DnD for frost dks). For the unpurning to be anything but low effort nostalgia pandering.

[StillMcfuu]

a totem bar makes no sense with how totems work these days,there would be no point in using one,it made sense in the past when many totems were just buffs so droping multiple was usefull,today it wouldnt be

That's the point, Blizz doesn't want to use totems or bring them back outside of extremely situational uses. Problem is totems largely defined shaman game play and separated good shaman players from bad ones.

[deenman]

That's the point, Blizz doesn't want to use totems or bring them back outside of extremely situational uses. Problem is totems largely defined shaman game play and separated good shaman players from bad ones.

how does using a totem bar bind to use your 4 buff totems and forget about it separe good shamans from bad ones?the situational ones mostly mattered in pvp,and those still exist,and the ones you use in pve today are far more impactful than the old ones,mass root totem,group speed totem,spirit link,earthen wall totem,healing totem as a mini short cd,sky fury totem for pvp bursts,counterstrike totem,liquid magma,cloudburst totem(this one actualy takes some skill to use),and now we got windfury back and mana tide

i mean seriously...have you even played shaman?todays totems are leagues more complex than the old ones

[Nyel]

how does using a totem bar bind to use your 4 buff totems and forget about it separe good shamans from bad ones?the situational ones mostly mattered in pvp,and those still exist,and the ones you use in pve today are far more impactful than the old ones,mass root totem,group speed totem,spirit link,earthen wall totem,healing totem as a mini short cd,sky fury totem for pvp bursts,counterstrike totem,liquid magma,cloudburst totem(this one actualy takes some skill to use),and now we got windfury back and mana tide

i mean seriously...have you even played shaman?todays totems are leagues more complex than the old ones

Most totems are still fire and forget. In that regard, almost nothing changed. They just added way more situational totems with 3-5m CDs, but the use of them isn't any better than it was 10 years ago. It's just button bloat. The spec with most totems is Restoration. They have too many totems that do not enough. HST, HTT, SLT, CBT, APT / EWT... it's just too much for Resto. HST and HTT are fire and forget, SL / APT / EWT require a little bit of situational awareness, only CBT is something that needs skill to be used in an optimal way. On the other hand we have Elemental and Enhancement, that have no offensive totems in their rotation although there are options (Liquid Magma Totem has been a rather sh*t talent forever now). And then we have Vesper Totem, which is as much fire and forget as the others.

Searing Totem is something of which every spec could have made used of if there would be a Flame Shock interaction, because every spec uses Flame Shock. This is most likely the only spell next to Lightning Bolt that every spec uses and therefore would have been the way to go to unprune and make something useful out of it. And they blew it.

[StillMcfuu]

how does using a totem bar bind to use your 4 buff totems and forget about it separe good shamans from bad ones?the situational ones mostly mattered in pvp,and those still exist,and the ones you use in pve today are far more impactful than the old ones,mass root totem,group speed totem,spirit link,earthen wall totem,healing totem as a mini short cd,sky fury totem for pvp bursts,counterstrike totem,liquid magma,cloudburst totem(this one actualy takes some skill to use),and now we got windfury back and mana tide

i mean seriously...have you even played shaman?todays totems are leagues more complex than the old ones

Because you used to have to manage your totems. The big reason was totem types and dropping one totem for a temporary effect and then dropping the proper fight totem.
All totems today are reactionary and simple to use, there is no consideration for effects you lose when trying to get a tremor out. Totem management was compelling and interesting. Reactionary isn't awful, but its no different than any other class, where pre-cata it was.

The class has evolved beyond that gameplay, but then throwing totems like WF back in the mix makes me wonder why they just don't reintroduce the totem bar and give us a variety of options to drop with one button, instead of just one reactionary totem. Enhance has empty GCDs back and mana isn't a concern anymore. If I'm going to drop a tremor, let me drop WF along with it to reposition. Why can't ele or enhance use a weaker version of earthenwall, etc....Even brining back totemic mastery, why can't those totems effect everyone again, the effects weren't OP, especially not in today bloated secondary game.

[bitterwinter]

I do have to agree with others in this thread that searing totem..well, it sucked. It’s incredibly uninteresting and didn’t feel impactful at all compared to other totems

[Venziir]

I get that ST is a dull abilitiy, but compared to stuff like Primal Strike which made the cut, it's a darn hoot.

[Orby]

I been playing a shaman alt since late TBC, and I do feel sad how badly totems have kind of been stripped from them as an identify, or at least feel a little messy. The idea of having the earth, wind, water and fire totem schools were soo good, also I enjoyed MoP solution of selecting the type of totems you wanted and could place 4 down at any time. You got something like that similar now but its not the same.

I wouldn't have minded Searing totem back, if it wasnt working then make it work, I just hate the whole mind set of 'its not working remove it'. With classes always changing you never know when it might have seen some play again.

Of course I know the game is more faster paced now, where as back then it was more slower so it doesn't fit the games style anymore, so in which case I say make it fit. Make the way totems work different now, the MoP way was the best in my opinion. Also change it to where totems are not on GCD would be great too speed it up with the current gameplay, otherwise yes the totems would feel clunky a slow compared to what the game is, but as I said just because the way totems used to work doesn't fit the game anymore doesn't mean they should be removed entirely, adjust and adapt them.

Still we have weapon enchants back so I cannot be too mad (except rockbiter though sadly)

[Beuargh]

You are in the wrong forums these people have an average 1300 XP. You speak about PvP utility but they spam "it was doing little damageeeeeEEeEeE." You were expecting too much from these people.

There is something wrong if people wanted this totem back just to stay in combat. It was never its purpose and a couple people already pointed it out in this thread, but maybe its expecting too much from you if you cant understand that.

If you want enha pvp utility, please ask for something thought to be used as pvp utilities..... not just a clever use of a failed mechanic.

I mean, seeing the reason why people wanted it back is for me the proof of the big failure this totem was...