Spirit Link Totem Spell Effect

[Jademist]

The animation is decent and will probably go well with healing rain, it's just too bad this spirit link totem is overall pretty meh. Blizz saw that shaman lacked a CD compared to pallies and priests for raid/tank survivability and in stead of giving something we could use with as much success as AM or Guardian or PS etc we get this. Its not horrible, but 10% reduc is laughable in comparison and the effect, while unique, can backfire as much as help depending on when/where you use it. There are a few great times for it, but I'm really hoping for an overhaul to make this a viable CD for saving the raid rather than just making it a little easier to heal already very healable portions of fights.

I just tried it and actually, if you pair it with your other AoE heals it is actually a fairly great tool.
Since it levels the health of the people inside it (It took health from me and other members and distributed it to the rest. My 100% health went down to about 60%, but as I kept healing the levels kept rising and it was easier to actually heal off everybody.)

I popped healing rain, popped the totem and did a couple of chain heals and at least for me, it was glorious.
It quickly got the health of my lower-healthed group members higher and I quickly regained the health I was losing. So as I was getting healed, they were getting healed and they were getting healed extra...

Gah its hard to explain. But I think the totem is fairly nice.

---------- Post added 2011-03-10 at 06:19 AM ----------

Okay. I just tested it with a group of players who wanted to kill each other through duels.
My health was at 100% and they ended with around 1-20% of their health each.

I popped healing rain. I dropped the totem, it leveled all our health to about 50-60% and as the healing rain was healing, it was redistributing all the healing in between all of us. I popped a couple of other heals and all our health quickly leveled back to 100%.

Its pretty astounding...at least, from my perspective.

It looks pretty too.

[Teriz]

It gives it a small bubble, but mine is used on cd to give myself a shield 4x stronger to negate 16k damage. And I know its not intended for pvp, would just be nice to have one, I'd even take a barkskin clone at this point. Kind of hard to do anything while being focused by a warrior and any other dps. Warriors or a dps alone I can handle and kite. Guess ol earthbind and I will keep on pillar humping.

I rather have unique Shaman abilities than carbon copies of other class abilities just so that PvP Shaman can feel viable.

---------- Post added 2011-03-10 at 06:24 AM ----------

Okay. I just tested it with a group of players who wanted to kill each other through duels.
My health was at 100% and they ended with around 1-20% of their health each.

I popped healing rain. I dropped the totem, it leveled all our health to about 50-60% and as the healing rain was healing, it was redistributing all the healing in between all of us. I popped a couple of other heals and all our health quickly leveled back to 100%.

Its pretty astounding...at least, from my perspective.

It looks pretty too.

Awesome. :-) Maybe some of this QQ can be curb-stomped.

[Jademist]

I rather have unique Shaman abilities than carbon copies of other class abilities just so that PvP Shaman can feel viable.

---------- Post added 2011-03-10 at 06:24 AM ----------



Awesome. :-) Maybe some of this QQ can be curb-stomped.

I agree...so much QQing.
Just be thankful we got something.

And its actually pretty amazing.

[Hypernetic]

Why do so many people think that anything but blindly praising blizzard for everything they do is "QQ".

Criticizing or simply discussing the pros and cons of something is not QQing. This is what most of us have done since they first announced SLT.

Discussing the pros/cons of SLT doesn't mean we aren't grateful either.

[Deleted]

How is this amazing from a tank-saving point of view? Please explain.

[Samthemann]

Yeah I'm all for a free CD we didn't have before that doesn't share a totem with something useful or another spell's CD. My point was that this totem is very situational in its practicality. Example time!

Pro usage: Phase 2 Nefarian: where you're on a pillar and about to go through a crackle and people are randomly taking spikes of damage, drop the totem, HR, and CH to victory. Awesome!

Con usage: Magmaw heads up phase: raidwide aoe and some random splashes but everyone's hurting only a little bit, pop the totem down and you have a 1/3 effective PW:Barrier, gg.

Pro usage: Phase 2 Cho'gall: Some people are affected by the healing debuff from the adds, drop the totem HR and CH and bam they get healed regardless of their debuff. Hell yea.

Con usage: Omnitron Defense System: Fire guy and chain lighting guy are out at the same time, lots of aoe abound, stack totem HR CH again for effectively 10% damage reduc. Meh.

Then there are situations where this totem will kill you and or those around you.

Bad touch 1: Antramedes: 1 baddie got to 100 sound, you pop this totem and watch as that devastation wrecks your raid in stead of just the bad.

Bad touch 2: Chimaeron: Any time non feud, whoops you hit it by mistake and now even though you're 6 yards from ppl, you're not 10 and get someone killed by balancing health and they went below 10k.

If this totem were to go live as is, I'd be fine with it. But my argument is that it doesn't solve the problem that Blizz thought they were addressing. Raid leaders saw that all 5 healer specs were somewhat even on throughput, but still need to pick and choose who to bring. The CD's that Paladins and Priests bring to raids that help through the hardest parts of fights by popping AM, HoS, PW:B, Pain Supp, Guardian etc and ultimately reduce the incoming damage of the whole of the raid or of the tank by a considerable amount is what made them more valuable and therefore chosen first over shaman and druids. This totem doesn't make or break boss fights. 10% dmg reduc when a priest can provide 30% doesn't sell me, the balancing thing when there are so few fights where that portion of the totem really outshines anything else on the table, I don't like it. 3/12 where its great and 9/12 where its situational or merely a weak CD makes me sad.

[Optenka]

youtube.com/watch?v=Qle7clHiA9M
Spirit link totem animation

[Deleted]

What class is the totem?
Earth, Air, Water?

[shiryo]

How is this amazing from a tank-saving point of view? Please explain.

Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.

Say you have 5 people affected by this totem. One tank at 1hp, and 4 melee at 100k hp. The totem hits and all the remaining hp are put in one big pile and redistributed so that everybody gets the same % hp.
(I don't know how much a tank has but lets say 200k and dps have 100k for simplicity).
Everybody in the group would get to 65% after the drop. 65k for dps and 130k for the tank. Well aprox. I just made this in my head as i was writing so my math may be a bit off.
At least this is how I think the totem works.

[Hypernetic]

Yeah I'm all for a free CD we didn't have before that doesn't share a totem with something useful or another spell's CD. My point was that this totem is very situational in its practicality. Example time!

Pro usage: Phase 2 Nefarian: where you're on a pillar and about to go through a crackle and people are randomly taking spikes of damage, drop the totem, HR, and CH to victory. Awesome!

Con usage: Magmaw heads up phase: raidwide aoe and some random splashes but everyone's hurting only a little bit, pop the totem down and you have a 1/3 effective PW:Barrier, gg.

Pro usage: Phase 2 Cho'gall: Some people are affected by the healing debuff from the adds, drop the totem HR and CH and bam they get healed regardless of their debuff. Hell yea.

Con usage: Omnitron Defense System: Fire guy and chain lighting guy are out at the same time, lots of aoe abound, stack totem HR CH again for effectively 10% damage reduc. Meh.

Then there are situations where this totem will kill you and or those around you.

Bad touch 1: Antramedes: 1 baddie got to 100 sound, you pop this totem and watch as that devastation wrecks your raid in stead of just the bad.

Bad touch 2: Chimaeron: Any time non feud, whoops you hit it by mistake and now even though you're 6 yards from ppl, you're not 10 and get someone killed by balancing health and they went below 10k.

If this totem were to go live as is, I'd be fine with it. But my argument is that it doesn't solve the problem that Blizz thought they were addressing. Raid leaders saw that all 5 healer specs were somewhat even on throughput, but still need to pick and choose who to bring. The CD's that Paladins and Priests bring to raids that help through the hardest parts of fights by popping AM, HoS, PW:B, Pain Supp, Guardian etc and ultimately reduce the incoming damage of the whole of the raid or of the tank by a considerable amount is what made them more valuable and therefore chosen first over shaman and druids. This totem doesn't make or break boss fights. 10% dmg reduc when a priest can provide 30% doesn't sell me, the balancing thing when there are so few fights where that portion of the totem really outshines anything else on the table, I don't like it. 3/12 where its great and 9/12 where its situational or merely a weak CD makes me sad.

Misusing a cooldown or just flat out being stupid isn't a proper argument against the totems viability. I'd love to have this thing for heroic magmaw tomorrow night.

[Deleted]

Unless you completely disable the ability (like the elemental totems), every ability is considered for both PvE and PvP. That said, this totem has as many negative possibilities as positive ones in PvP it's hard to fathom it going live at all in it's current shape. I would've prefered it to be invisible than as obvious as it is to be quite honest.

[Samthemann]

Misusing a cooldown or just flat out being stupid isn't a proper argument against the totems viability.

I disagree. Pain suppression, Guardian spirit, Aura Mastery and PW:Barrier Can't backfire. Use 'em anytime during any fight and you won't hurt people, you don't risk killing others. Merely the fact that the use of this totem has risks is an argument against it.

[shiryo]

I disagree. Pain suppression, Guardian spirit, Aura Mastery and PW:Barrier Can't backfire. Use 'em anytime during any fight and you won't hurt people, you don't risk killing others. Merely the fact that the use of this totem has risks is an argument against it.

Pain supression reduces threath by 5%

Could turn ugly if you have balls to the walls furywarriors or a low tps tank

[Crackleslap]

this is actualy quite awesome . Finally a good cooldown.

I dont want to see any QQ either. Because wasnt their a thread about new resto shaman c/d and SPIRIT LINK was an option and it won the poll and now we have it.

[phyrix]

I like that they give us a new cooldown.

I hate that it's a piece of crap that nobody asked for.

What we really needed was one of the following:

1) A huge tank healing CD, like a priest's wings.

2) A huge raid healing CD, like Tranquility.

Or both.

Instead we get an incredibly weak and even more situational ability that will probably kill more people than it saves.
I for one will boycott it.

[Hendrixstorm]

But you have mana tide! It allows you to funnel mana to other healers so they can freely use all of their cool healing abilities and bomb heals on the raid!

Isn't it fun being a support class?

[Deleted]

There's no such thing as a support class in WoW.

[Rezhka]

Why do so many people think that anything but blindly praising blizzard for everything they do is "QQ".

Criticizing or simply discussing the pros and cons of something is not QQing. This is what most of us have done since they first announced SLT.

Discussing the pros/cons of SLT doesn't mean we aren't grateful either.

^this

we're already excellent for being a raid healer, its like our role from the very start arent we? so why give another raid-wide tool for us? i'm not saying this skill is suck. its good but not that great. i myself prefer something that empower our self to heal more, like Drood's Tree-form or Pally's Avenging Wrath than this tbh...

[Hypernetic]

I disagree. Pain suppression, Guardian spirit, Aura Mastery and PW:Barrier Can't backfire. Use 'em anytime during any fight and you won't hurt people, you don't risk killing others. Merely the fact that the use of this totem has risks is an argument against it.

You can still misuse them. Most of the arguments I've seen against SLT involve people dropping it when it wouldn't be helpful or in some ridiculous hypothetical scenario that you'd have to be an idiot to use the CD during.

You can certainly pop PS/GS/etc at the wrong time during a fight and hurt people because of it, because when the time comes that you actually need the CD, you won't have it.

Everything we have as healers is a tool. How and when you use your tools is what makes you better than other healers.

[Kucedon]

Could somebody actually tell me to wich elemental totem this spell belongs to?