1. #1

    should fire elemetal totem get a larger range?

    my fire elemental seems to leash on me quite alot and at times wont even attack its target. such as magmaw during phase 1 its fine it will attack him even attack the adds but when he gets stuck on the spike my totem forgets what it was doing. also on serveral heroics if the tank is kiting he will stop following and go back to his totem. ive also noticed on Chimeron when the 2 heads start fighting my totem will leash. im not understanding what is going on here but more like poor planning on blizzards part to fix shaman.

    so incase my rambling didnt have a question..should they make fire totems smarter? or give us a new pet bar?

  2. #2
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    Sadly... i don't think much of this will get changed. Totems have terrible AI, it is the same with Searing Totem - it forgets what it has to do occasionally... but in case of Searing Totem you can at least redrop it. Pet bar would be a solution yes. I mean, ghos wolf already has one... but then they would have to make Fire Elemental talentable and for ele only i guess. I mean... Enh with 2 pet bars?

    I know this is offtopic, but you brought me to this idea again:
    Last night... i strangely had the thought about an "Fire Elemental Form" for Ele... all your totems vanish, you grant 10% spell power and 5% spell haste to the raid (to make up for the vanishing totems), you can only use Fire Spells, but your Lava Burst will be instant cast, and your Flame Shock doesn't have a cooldown anymore. 5 minutes cooldown, 20 seconds duration. Cannot drop any totems while in Fire Elemental Form. Each time you cast a fire spell the duration gets longer by 1 second.
    (The idea is that you run out of mana sooner or later because you cannot use any mana-back-spells while in this form and not use any totems, you trade that for being able to do lots of dmg and being able to cast while moving, so you do it on the beginning of the fight and burn your mana, then you change into a low-mana-and-give-mana-back rotation with Thunderstorm and lighting bolt)

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by TheJan View Post
    Sadly... i don't think much of this will get changed. Totems have terrible AI, it is the same with Searing Totem - it forgets what it has to do occasionally... but in case of Searing Totem you can at least redrop it. Pet bar would be a solution yes. I mean, ghos wolf already has one... but then they would have to make Fire Elemental talentable and for ele only i guess. I mean... Enh with 2 pet bars?

    I know this is offtopic, but you brought me to this idea again:
    Last night... i strangely had the thought about an "Fire Elemental Form" for Ele... all your totems vanish, you grant 10% spell power and 5% spell haste to the raid (to make up for the vanishing totems), you can only use Fire Spells, but your Lava Burst will be instant cast, and your Flame Shock doesn't have a cooldown anymore. 5 minutes cooldown, 20 seconds duration. Cannot drop any totems while in Fire Elemental Form. Each time you cast a fire spell the duration gets longer by 1 second.
    (The idea is that you run out of mana sooner or later because you cannot use any mana-back-spells while in this form and not use any totems, you trade that for being able to do lots of dmg and being able to cast while moving, so you do it on the beginning of the fight and burn your mana, then you change into a low-mana-and-give-mana-back rotation with Thunderstorm and lighting bolt)
    Except that burst would be absolutely insane for PvP. Flame shock -> boom 40k instant lava bursts; 2-3 lava bursts would be enough to kill the player, and you would be nowhere near oom.

    As for the fire elemental problem... I'm having a terrible time with my Fire Ele, it's honestly brain dead =D
    I've always wondered why it doesn't have a pet bar but I guess it would make sense that it doesn't as the Feral Spirits have a pet bar, and two would be.. yeah (as the above poster pointed out).

    But switching the fire elemental to elemental tree could fix that.

  4. #4
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    It's a problem that's actually difficult to fix.

    • They can't give us a pet bar. Because Enhancement already has pets, their wolves. You can't have multiple pets (technically, one of the wolves is a pet, and the other is classed as a guardian, so Feral Spirits isn't an exception). You can't even tie it to the same pet bar the way the second Feral Spirit does, because they're not up all the time.
    • They shouldn't make it "smarter". Look at the AI in most FPS games. Those are games where the AI is complex and the core of the gameplay. And you still end up with glitches that involve enemies running into walls or standing there while you shoot them in the head. AI is never smart. At best, you're looking at ant-like intelligence, and that involves a ton of computing power. The totem will always be dumb, so I would rather it be reliably and predictably dumb, rather than making the AI more complex and giving it more ways to glitch out and impossible to control properly.
    • They can't just have it switch targets to your target. I'm pretty sure they tried this in the past during testing, and what ends up happening is you swap targets to nuke adds, and your Fire Elemental runs over, fire novas before it gets there but too late to hit the boss, gets there just as they die, and then wastes more time running back to the boss. There's also issues with pulling if you've got your fire totem down and switch targets to something that isn't engaged. It's been tried, it causes way more problems than it solves.


    The totem AI is dumb, but it's predictable. It prefers targeting your current flame shock target, or storm strike target. It doesn't spam checks constantly, and in the case of FS, it isn't going to swap targets while it has a valid target that's debuffed. In the case of Magmaw, the reason its pathing is weird is that Magmaw and Magmaw's exposed head are technically two mobs with shared health; if you've got your Elemental targeted on Magmaw, he's standing around being useless when the head is down because he's still trying to path to Magmaw, not the exposed head.


    Obviously, more control would be nice, but if anything, I want the AI to be more dumb. I threw a suggestion to the official forums, to basically provide the functionality for us to force-queue a spell to a guardian, the same way you can to a pet; warlocks do this all the time by macroing "/cast Fire Bolt" to a spammed spell, which causes their imp to target their target immediately. If we could do the same, and macro in "/cast Searing Bolt", our totems would be controllable, and we wouldn't NEED a pet bar or much AI at all.


  5. #5
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    To be honest I'd love to have fire elemental removed and bring our dps up to par without it. I know that good players make a good use of proccs when popping fire elemental, but still I think it is a weird cooldown.

    Probably the worst thing is that neither PvE enhancement shaman can use it nor elemental/enhancement pvp. It is very nice sometimes in PvE with sub 20% phase bosses popping fire elemental with trinkets and heroism, but I'd feel much more comfortable with removing it and buffing dps somewhere else.

    (Not that i can see that happen anytime soon)

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    It's a problem that's actually difficult to fix.

    They can't give us a pet bar. Because Enhancement already has pets, their wolves. You can't have multiple pets (technically, one of the wolves is a pet, and the other is classed as a guardian, so Feral Spirits isn't an exception). You can't even tie it to the same pet bar the way the second Feral Spirit does, because they're not up all the time.
    give the pet bar to ele only because time and time again the elemental justs stands there and looks at me
    Last edited by micho; 2011-03-13 at 04:52 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rorcanna View Post
    This is a game, and yet a "a whole bunch" of people treat it with a seriousness that would befit solving the world hunger or saving the planet.

  7. #7
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    be nice if they would take it off the totem altogether, like how warlocks can now summon doomguard and infernal without banishing their pet.

  8. #8
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by micho View Post
    give the pet bar to ele only because time and time again the elemental justs stands there and looks at me
    They can't do that without turning Fire Elemental into two (or more) spells and making them talents, not baseline spells. Which is a lot of work and hassle for a half-assed "fix", since it still does nothing for Enhancement or Resto, nor does it solve any problems with Searing Totem (which again, is shared between both Ele and Enhance and critical to both).


  9. #9
    I'm sure if they really wanted to they could design a special pet bar for it despite enhance having a pet bar for wolves.

    They could also make wolves trigger a CD on fire ele so they aren't up at the same time.

  10. #10
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    I guarantee if they did that there would be a ton of suggestions* from Hunter/Warlock players to let them use 2 pets at a time using the same system.

    It's not a perfect system. And I blame Enhancement for buggering it for all other Shamans. The only reason it's hard is Feral Spirits. This wasn't a big deal back when totems were basically negligible damage, but now Searing is critical to both DPS specs, so that's why we've got a conflict.

    I don't see it being resolved well without some major mechanics changes, which they're usually pretty cautious about doing. That's why I try and aim suggestions more at quicker fixes that make it manageable; they're more likely to happen before the next expansion.


  11. #11
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    On Cho'gall my fire totem was running to Cho'gall (around 50 yrds away) rather that hitting the adds that were right by the totem (so less than 5 feets away). I usually never use fire elem totem, it's stupid, never attack the good target and it hurt my lava lash too much. Just get rid of him, and his little cousin who can't even stay alive after i little hit on the jaw.

  12. #12
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kagdar View Post
    On Cho'gall my fire totem was running to Cho'gall (around 50 yrds away) rather that hitting the adds that were right by the totem (so less than 5 feets away). I usually never use fire elem totem, it's stupid, never attack the good target and it hurt my lava lash too much. Just get rid of him, and his little cousin who can't even stay alive after i little hit on the jaw.
    You're enhancement, so you don't need to use Fire Elemental, really, ever. But the same AI issues apply to Searing, which is critical, and you need to learn how the targeting AI works. Right now, if you can't get it to shoot the right thing, the AI is outsmarting you, and that's bad.


  13. #13
    Bloodsail Admiral Kagdar's Avatar
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    For searing totem, i've got no problem in raids. He might just stand there 1 or 2 seconds sometimes, but i can't do anything about it.

    But on Cho'gall, fire elemental would have been great for the last slime phase (since he would have been far away from me until adds are down. That's pretty much the only time i ever use it when i think about him. Or on heavy aoe phases that are longer than 20 sec.

    But meh, he just focused on cho'gall since he was the one with SS and FS even tho he was really far from the totem.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    In the case of Magmaw, the reason its pathing is weird is that Magmaw and Magmaw's exposed head are technically two mobs with shared health; if you've got your Elemental targeted on Magmaw, he's standing around being useless when the head is down because he's still trying to path to Magmaw, not the exposed head.
    That is very true, as enha shammy i dont do fire ele, but i do know that i takes searing totem anywhere uto 20sec to switch between head and magmaw on it's own, so because would be a dps loss to let it do that on its own, i redrop it.

    What would be a particular good and easy solution for this problem with fire ele and even for enhas searing totem (redroping it is still a GCD, even if it's a short totem GCD), is to jsut implement a /command to clear (as in reset, so it behaves like it just spawened.) guardian AI. This would also work for guardian of ancient kings and other "guardians" that tend to do silly things.

    ---------- Post added 2011-03-13 at 11:45 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by GoldenEnergy View Post
    Probably the worst thing is that neither PvE enhancement shaman
    Maloriak green phase. Once every 10 minutes we can do a crappy aoe.

  15. #15
    Deleted
    Reading this makes me feel like I am the only shaman on this forums with a smart fire elemental totem^^

    It switches targets on magmaw adds right like I would have wanted it to do, it never stands around useless,
    and it deals gorgeous amounts of damage in burnphases. Just seems like my Fire ele has all the brain my searing totem
    hasn't. epic 7 redrops after FS expired on my former target (at omnotron)... guess what was it's target.

    Imo Fire Ele should loose ~5min CD, glyph redesigned cos of that, be moved to the Ele tree and work as a Pet. We need a real second CD
    with less than 10min on it. this could solve the problems with it's dumbness and work out as a minor buff. maybe skilltree interaction
    like EM, cd reduction by a few secs for each LB or CL we cast. Enhance won't suffer from this, stacking dot from searing totem + lava lash dmg boost is great anyway. this would put us on a level with the CDs of shadow priests for example.

    damn I would love this.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by ElementalRift View Post
    Reading this makes me feel like I am the only shaman on this forums with a smart fire elemental totem^^
    Its not that it's particulary stupid (it is miles better than it used to be in tbc), its just that, well... it has very limited use, and not that say it acts stupid as hell very often, just when it does act stupid, you just wasted 10min CD on elemental to just get stuck on a tiny rock and having every mob evading it.

  17. #17
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    I like my dumb fire elemental, it goes like derpdiderp.. ohhhh invisible wall, must return to totem!!

    And somehow seeing 20k crits in orange numbers is pretty cool. But ye, I'm resto..

  18. #18
    How about we just make it not usable while spirit wolves are out and vise versa?

    Seems pretty lame that ele gets dicked because enh already has pets ( and with enh losing searing flame its a bigger dps increase for ele anyway)
    Hi Sephurik

  19. #19
    Deleted
    honestly does enhancement even use fire elemental? I mean they are sacrificing huge portion of searing flames debuff that also increases their LL damage when they put fire elemental up.... why not make the fire elemental Ele spec only? it would still be a better choice for 31pt talent than EQ assuming shorter cd
    Last edited by mmoc42707180eb; 2011-03-14 at 09:25 AM. Reason: typos

  20. #20
    High Overlord lungo's Avatar
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    A way could be to keep it as stupid as it is, but give is a dedicated spell to "guide it" with.

    Think on it like the way the idea that flameshock work as a attack command for searing totem. Make a new spell, off the gobal cooldown and no cooldown, puts a debuff on the target, "mark of the elements" or what ever name. Basic´work like a hunters mark for your elemental and it will make it attack that target there are currently marked.

    For me, I see that as a rather simple and easy way to control the elemental around, while not conflicting with those restrictions we have, due to spirit wolfs etc.


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