Totem tracking for Wrath beta
by Amanda Dean 
Jul 18th 2008 at 4:00AM
As promised Blizzard is giving Shamans some love in the next expansion. The Beta patch notes deliver on some of that. Most of what we're seeing at this time is changes to talents, but there's quite a bit of totem news in there. Some totems stand to get buffed, others nerfed and some removed from the game altogether.
As expected totems will be placed in the physical school, rather than magic. To date, one of the major downfalls of totems is that has been if the Shaman is locked out of the Nature school of spells, they are more or less out of luck until the effect wears off. Even when completely silenced it will still be possible for Shamans to drop their totems. This will be handy in both PvE and PvP, but will probably be more influential for PvP Shamans.
The biggest changes so far seem to affect primarily Air totems. Blizzard also promised that some totems will be combined. So far in the beta notes we only see Grace of Air Totem combined with Strength of Earth Totem.* From Blizzard's WWI announcements, we should be able to expect more combinations in the future. I find this a great help as I tend to drop both Strength of Earth and Grace of Air, and this will free me up to twist Windfury or Wrath of Air with my Grounding Totems.
It looks like Windfury Totem is in for a bit of a nerf. At rank 5, the tool tip currently reads "The totem enchants all party members' main-hand weapons with wind, if they are within 20 yards. Each hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker 1 extra attack with 445 extra Attack Power." The new version is a "20% melee haste totem" While this would be enough melee haste to cancel out the probable attack-speed penalty of a Warrior using Titan's Grip. Theoretically this should add up to the same number of hits as the current incarnation of this. The downside of this change is that the bonus hit will not have the same Attack Power bonus. I mentioned this one to my Warrior of a significant other, and the expression on his face was almost as sour as it was when I mentioned the deletion of fear resistance from Death Wish. Enchancement Shamans, take heart! The notes do not say if this change also applies to the Windfury Weapon spell.
Wrath of Air is also slated for change. Instead of the current description, "Party members within 20 yards of the totem have their spell damage and healing increased by up to 101." The totem now gives a 10% bonus to Spell Haste. This one looks to me like a boon to PvE Shamans who stack Spell Haste gear and a bane to PvP Shamans who rely more on resilience gear. Like any other totem, this one will be best in group settings. This one probably more so than others, as it will be of particular interest to caster buddies who can complete their channeled spells faster for the same total effect.
The talented ability Improved Fire Totems, will be making an exit, in favor of a return of Improved Fire Nova Totem. What's lost in this deal? "Reduces the delay before your Fire Nova Totem activates by 2 sec. and decreases the threat generated by your Magma Totem by 50%." What's gained? The new and improved talent gives the Fire Nova Totem a 50/100% chance to stun all affected targets for two seconds. If I'm reading this correctly that sounds to me like having a War Stomp every 15 seconds. The totem can be destroyed within the first four seconds of its existence. This gives the Shaman a touch of much needed crowd control. The patch makes no mention of the Hex ability, but this totem along with that polymorph-like ability should significantly help Shaman Survivability.
The only other talent that specificly apples to totems that appears in the Beta notes is Enhancing Totems. This ability is being moved from the second tier of the Enhancement Specialization to the first tier. Though many of the totem effect changes listed in the patch notes have not appeared in the skill drafts posted on MMO Champion, the Enhancing Totems ability is listed in the first tier of talents in their calculator.
Flametongue Totem and Stoneskin Totem are getting facelifts. In the Patch Notes Flametongue Totem Reads "now a flat spell damage totem. All ranks have been modified." It used to have a variable damage effect. Instead of reducing physical damage, Stoneskin Totem will increase armor. The official numbers for these have not been posted, but will scale up with totem rank.
Windwall Totem will be completely removed, at this time it does not appear to be combined with any other existing totems. Tranquil Air Totem will also become a thing of the past. The patch notes say "Threat is being addressed by modifications to the base threat of players and/or "baked" into tanking abilities." This is most likely happening because totems will likely affect entire raids in the future. Currently the tooltip reads, "the totem reduces the threat caused by all party members within 20 yards by 20%." In raids this would also reduce threat for a tank. No word on the ever popular Sentry Totem.
Blizzard has also told us that Totems will affect entire raids in the future. This was not included in the Beta patch notes. Blizzard announced that is an incomplete list of changes. All things in Beta are subject to change, and we'll see many more promises broken and kept in the future.
It looks like none of the water school of totems have been changed in the current iteration of the patch notes. One of the things I would like to see is a combination of Healing Steam and Mana Spring Totems in the future, even if it was a Resto talented ability. Other popular totems like Grounding Totem and Earthbind Totem have not been adjusted.
This list does not introduce any new totems to the Shaman's shtick. There is plenty more Shaman goodness in the patch note. I'm sure there will be a fair amount of information in the weeks to come.
* Tooltips in this post reflect abilities as they exist today.
Edit: Sorry about the yellow, should be all better now. I'm not even sure how that got there. Thanks!
Wrath of the Lich King Beta testing is going live. WoW Insider will keep you posted on all of the latest and greatest news and information from patch notes until release. Remember that we still have no official date for the expansion, but we're one step closer today.
Filed under: Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Expansions, Classes, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Bloodieros Jul 18th 2008 4:07AM
To the poster of this article, I would edit your post and change the color of the yellow text to something darker as the yellow color against a white background makes the text difficult to read. The only I could read it was highlight the text with my cursor.
Shadow946 Jul 18th 2008 4:17AM
absolutely agreed
Rav Jul 18th 2008 4:08AM
Yea I think that the change to Windfury totem won't affect Windfury weapon enchant. Also i think i read somewhere that Windfury weapon enchant will be a buff that can be applied to other characters so i think that the change to Windfury totem will be a buff imo.
Bloodieros Jul 18th 2008 4:16AM
Windfury is not going to be a buff that can applied to other player's weapons, rather is going to act like a buff in that will not override other temporary weapon enchants like Poisons or Sharping Stones. The buff effects also means classes that Windfury does not currently work for (due to its proc nature) will now work for those classes. The class in question is Feral Druids (yay!)
Rav Jul 18th 2008 4:20AM
Ah that makes sense. It kinda sucks now that feral druids can benefit from windfury totem it gets changed to give haste instead.
Damon Jul 18th 2008 4:13AM
Cool, cool. Some changes that have been a long time coming. You sure the grace of air/strength of earth totem's a earth totem? If so, freaking awesome.
Rather dissapointed that there's no news about sentry totem though. Why did i even TRAIN that?
Rav Jul 18th 2008 4:15AM
Yea grace of air and strength of earth are now combined and is an earth totem.
Nick S Jul 18th 2008 4:18AM
no damage for dropping totems on ZJ?
that'd be sweet.
ANeM Jul 18th 2008 5:01AM
Not sure if that was sarcasm or not, but.. There was already no damage for dropping totems on ZJ.
Nick S Jul 18th 2008 5:11AM
eh i don't play a shaman. figured maybe they counted as spells.
Peter Ellis Jul 18th 2008 4:24AM
WF totem change is in no way a nerf.
The new version is a 20% increase to white damage, whereas the older version could proc off yellow hits as well. So that part of it is a nerf, true. It's not clear whether there's any bonus AP associated with it, but I would guess there is. The patch notes say it applies to "all ranks", and what are the different ranks doing if the haste effect is the same for all ranks?
HOWEVER: the amazingly big thing is it's no longer a weapon imbue. This means that:
1) Shamans can now use WF imbue on their main hand as well as WF totem
2) Warriors/paladins can use sharpening stones on their main hand
3) Rogues can use poisons on their main hand
4) Ferals will actually benefit from it
5) IT'S RAIDWIDE
ANeM Jul 18th 2008 4:59AM
I think you're missing the biggest part, Dual Wielding.
The old WF totem only affected the main hand weapon. This one is a buff, for 20% haste. No mention of main-hand or off-hand preference/exclusion.
Buffs don't discriminate between Main-hand and off-hand, which is probably why it was changed to 20% haste in the first place ;P
Larry-Steve Jul 18th 2008 4:31AM
It's comforting to see that some of the totems never used are recieving revamps to be useful in BOTH pve and pvp.
The new CC love for shaman via Hex and Improved FN is also something to look forward to.
It strikes me as somewhat odd that nothing is mentioned about the current Improved Weapon Totems talent with the changes being made to WF and Flametounge totems. I suppose the old one "might" apply to the flametounge, but if they're hacking the additional ap from the WF totem, it makes the talent a little out-of-date.
The new WoA totem seems likely that it could better scale with level, making it possible to implement various ranks of the totem during the leveling of new shaman.
Change is generally a good thing though, and I anticipate the feedback that will come with the open beta.
WoA Totem Jul 18th 2008 4:56AM
"Wrath of Air is also slated for change. Instead of the current description, "Party members within 20 yards of the totem have their spell damage and healing increased by up to 101." The totem now gives a 10% bonus to Spell Haste. This one looks to me like a boon to PvE Shamans who stack Spell Haste gear and a bane to PvP Shamans who rely more on resilience gear. Like any other totem, this one will be best in group settings. This one probably more so than others, as it will be of particular interest to caster buddies who can complete their channeled spells faster for the same total effect."
The mechanics of the new WoA seems to be the caster version of the new WF to me, allowing people to cast spells 10% faster. So this means a 2 second lb becomes a 1.8 second lb. So how exactly is this a bane to pvp shamans? Both sides seem to have similar benefits.
Scrantinax Jul 18th 2008 5:00AM
Flametongue totem is the new wrath of air totem, straight +dmg buff totem.
Alexisonfire Jul 18th 2008 6:07AM
As an PVE Elemental, I am disgusted by the changes to Wrath of Air. Wrath of Air is currently the only Air totem that benefits us and by changing it to Spell haste, it is seriously messing with us. Sure, some Ele shams go for the LB Spam, but that is only optimal when you hit a certain point of gear level. Before that, working around CL's cooldown (or even CL and Flame Shock, if you have the mana to spare) is the way to go. And what does Spell haste do for those people? Absolutely nothing. Leaves them standing there for all that hasted time, waiting for the cooldown to end.
And think of it for other people. Totems are unreliable buffs. For some fights where there is a lot of movement present, that unreliable spell haste could really screw with a player's rotation. They could get used to it, but it would seem that it would go to waste most of the time.
And who knows if Spell Haste will even be desired in WotLK. The way it looks now, more eles will be incorporating Lava Burst into their spell casts. And spell haste won't make Flame Shock tick any faster to make full use out it, forcing you to wait for the opportune time to cast it. This part is more theorizing, but it could turn out to be similar to the actual situation shamans will encounter.
And Flametounge being the +spl dmg totem? Well, isn't that just a huge slap in the face! What the hell are we going to do with Totem of Wrath? Sure, it is the only totem out there that will stack, but I'm sure there are a helluva lot more people in your raid who would want the spell damage over the crit/hit.
And I do not get the WF changes one bit. I mean, didn't they announce a few weeks back that WF would work on Feral druids now? I mean, the actual WF affect? And that it would stack with poisons and sharpening stones? Isn't this, like, negating all of those promises?
Kalamona Jul 18th 2008 12:54PM
wewell, on mmo-champ there is a talent calculator - dont know, is that valid or not - but as DW shaman, i can say: noooooo
please, pretty please, no
thatquietgamerdude Jul 18th 2008 8:46AM
If they are making Flametongue Totem a spell damage increase rather than a weapon imbue, then Totem of Wrath should become an Air totem. Otherwise raid groups might lose some incentive to take ele shamans along. I am still not sure about the changes to the WF totem. Won't the +20% haste mess with the hidden Windfury Weapon cooldown (a big concern to me since I'm enh)? I thought having more haste would result in less WF procs.
matt.millermd Jul 18th 2008 9:34AM
It has been proven that the increase in white damage makes up for any loss in WF procs.
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t20765-shaman_enhancement/#Haste_Rating
Fire Jul 18th 2008 9:58AM
Wow, I would take spell haste over the mediocre wrath of air ANY day.
The windfurry totem is not really being nerfed... 20% haste is a pretty huge boost in DPS, and it actually benefits the shaman, AND we can drop the new strength totem as well.
And to thatquietgamerdude, while haste will put more hits into the cooldown of windfury, ultimately it will increase the number of windfuries as there will be more white hits to proc windfury when the cooldown is off, so you'll have more white damage, AND windfurry procs... and more CRITS for that matter.
and to William... how often did you use the stoneskin totem now? Only tanks are armor capped, and we don't even know what the cap will be in WLK, so we should wait it out.