Totem Talk: Elemental shaman notes from the Twitter developer chat
by Matt Sampson 
Jul 22nd 2010 at 9:00AM
As you may be aware, last Saturday there was another developer chat on Twitter. If you're anything like me, you would have searched through it for the elemental-specific questions and ignored the rest. (OK, so I did look at the druid ones as well, just to keep up with what's happening for my alt.)
Q: What class are you currently most happy with how the talents are currently set up? Is there one you feel needs more work?
A. They all need more work!
A. They all need more work!
Obviously, this means that nothing is finished or finalized yet, so any serious analysis would be premature (not that some of us won't be doing it anyway). It also means that this is a good opportunity for a bit of feedback.
Q: Are we going to be able to view the Mastery talent previews for Cataclysm soon as we can currently?
A. With the talent tree redesign, all the Masteries need to be re-implemented, and, in some cases, redesigned. This will require at least a couple of weeks before they will be available on beta.
A. With the talent tree redesign, all the Masteries need to be re-implemented, and, in some cases, redesigned. This will require at least a couple of weeks before they will be available on beta.
We know that our third mastery is Overload, which most likely will not change from the previewed version. Just to recap, Lightning Overload has been renamed to Overload and now applies to Lava Burst as well. The Overload damage will still be half the damage of a normal spell, and the proc chance will be a base figure plus an additional percentage from the new mastery rating, rather than our previous 20 percent at max rank. Some initial screenshots have shown a 25% proc chance, but it's too early to look at any numbers with Overload yet.
Q. Have some of the old talents been made into new glyphs?
A. Usually when we cut a talent it's because we thought it was a bad talent, but we might bring some talents that were so situational to fit in the new model back as glyphs. We are still designing glyphs. Players shouldn't necessarily assume that any of their current glyphs are going to still be around. Some will, but many are changing.
A. Usually when we cut a talent it's because we thought it was a bad talent, but we might bring some talents that were so situational to fit in the new model back as glyphs. We are still designing glyphs. Players shouldn't necessarily assume that any of their current glyphs are going to still be around. Some will, but many are changing.
Q: How much of an impact will the new medium glyphs have on the fun factor of choices in the new 31-point talent trees?
A. We hope it adds a lot. Part of the problem is that if there is, say, a Glyph of Mutilate, you feel like you have to take that as an Assassination rogue over anything else. The Medium glyphs are designed to let you customize your character a little more. They are the glyphs you would take if Mutilate didn't exist. Incidentally, the new tiers are called Prime, Major, and Minor. Majors are the new Mediums. Glyph of Mutilate would be a Prime.
A. We hope it adds a lot. Part of the problem is that if there is, say, a Glyph of Mutilate, you feel like you have to take that as an Assassination rogue over anything else. The Medium glyphs are designed to let you customize your character a little more. They are the glyphs you would take if Mutilate didn't exist. Incidentally, the new tiers are called Prime, Major, and Minor. Majors are the new Mediums. Glyph of Mutilate would be a Prime.
Aside from the passive crit bonuses, the only talents that were removed completely were Booming Echoes and Astral Shift. I don't expect either of these to make an appearance as a glyph, since the Astral Shift-esque talents were removed across the board with the stated intent of not having anything like these present. Booming Echoes, on the other hand, duplicates the function of Reverberation with a passive damage bonus, which seems a bit excessive for a glyph, as they're almost all single-ability change/buff effects rather than two at once. We'll also expect to see Glyph of Totem of Wrath changed or removed, since the flat spellpower buff has been changed to a percentage.
On the Prime/Major/Minor glyph breakdown, most of the glyphs we currently have could go either way. However, I'm thinking that glyphs like Elemental Mastery, Fire Elemental, Shocking, Thunder and the like will stay as major glyphs, whereas Lightning Bolt, Lava, Flametongue, etc. will become prime glyphs. This is because doing things like decreasing cooldowns is nice, but nobody will take them them over a glyph that increases Lightning Bolt damage by four percent.
Q: Are there plans to give more procs to some classes to make the rotations a little more interesting?
A #2. Sure, we want all specializations to have interesting rotations. There is a point though when you can be overwhelmed by the amount of procs going on and the gameplay becomes erratic and not very fun. So it's a constant balance between the two.
A #2. Sure, we want all specializations to have interesting rotations. There is a point though when you can be overwhelmed by the amount of procs going on and the gameplay becomes erratic and not very fun. So it's a constant balance between the two.
Hopefully, this implies that if Lava Surge is really awkward and painful to use, it'll get changed and/or replaced. It will change the normal rotation/priority system most certainly; it's just a question of whether Lava Surge becomes the thing you watch for with tunnel vision and hope like hell you can either use a /stopcast macro on Lightning Bolt to get the next Burst out as quickly as possible, or that it's an "awesome" moment when it procs. Just as an aside, I have put together some comparative analysis between the current version and another, based on a suggestion by Santux on Planet of the Hats where it uses the Lock & Load mechanic of making the next cast not trigger the cooldown.
Q: What is the conversion rate for intellect to spell power for Cataclysm? Will it differ with each class?
A. Each point of intellect grants one point of spell power, excepting the first 10 points. This is vaguely similar to attack power, where each point of strength or agility gives two attack power, excepting the first 10 points.
We realize this slightly reduces the spell power per budget on items, so we also increased the amount of spell power granted by caster weapons, and that increase entirely makes up for the deficit. Those weapons will continue to have spell power as well as intellect, and the amount of spell power will be significantly larger than in 3.3.5.
A. Each point of intellect grants one point of spell power, excepting the first 10 points. This is vaguely similar to attack power, where each point of strength or agility gives two attack power, excepting the first 10 points.
We realize this slightly reduces the spell power per budget on items, so we also increased the amount of spell power granted by caster weapons, and that increase entirely makes up for the deficit. Those weapons will continue to have spell power as well as intellect, and the amount of spell power will be significantly larger than in 3.3.5.
In short, less spellpower initially, but weapons will have an increased amount of spellpower compared to how things work at the moment. Nothing particularly exciting, but it's worth including in here anyway.
Q. With the new implemented Lava Surge, will Chain Lightning become useful for multiple mobs only?
A. It always has had, and will continue to have, some niche use as a gap-filler against single targets when Lava Burst has around a second left on its cooldown. Lava Surge won't always proc, but it's likely to be more of a multi-target ability, yes.
A. It always has had, and will continue to have, some niche use as a gap-filler against single targets when Lava Burst has around a second left on its cooldown. Lava Surge won't always proc, but it's likely to be more of a multi-target ability, yes.
Again, a fairly straightforward answer.
So, in summary we know the following:
- Talents aren't all done yet.
- Tree/Mastery bonuses are coming.
- Glyphs are being redone, and we're not likely to see any removed talents become glyphs.
- Rotations will be interesting, fun, but not so complicated that they become "not very fun."
- Intellect to spellpower conversion is one-to-one, excluding the first 10 points in intellect. Weapons will have proportionally more spellpower.
- Chain Lightning will still be used as a gap-filler in normal rotations (or not, as you so choose).
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Matt Sampson's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, we have you covered.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Firestyle Jul 22nd 2010 9:19AM
2 points I guess:
1. I'm surprised to see the posted failed to comment on totems and Blizzard's reply that basically they aren't changing totems in any meaningful way for cata. This is a major let down for A LOT of shaman.
2. Increasing the reliance on weapons for spellpower has the potential to gimp casters in pvp against disarm classes. Imagine being disarmed and all of a sudden you're damage and healing goes POOF! That's basically the current design. Perhaps they'll change disarm so it doesn't remove the stats from the weapon from the player for the duration of the disarm.
Imnick Jul 22nd 2010 9:30AM
I don't really have a problem with my totems to be honest.
How is it a let down? Why fix what isn't broken?
Azalyn Jul 22nd 2010 9:39AM
I feel like my totems are alright as well, my only (very minor) qualm is not really having a useful fire totem when I'm resto/enhance.
Also, when a melee character has their weapon disarmed their damage goes POOF! so why should us casters have it any different, especially for PvP purposes?
arcaneterror Jul 22nd 2010 9:44AM
Imagine being disarmed and all of a sudden you're damage goes POOF!
Welcome to playing a melee class, enjoy your stay. Know the pain of the Warrior.
GnomishMight Jul 22nd 2010 10:48AM
Except spell-casters already have a "damage goes poof" mechanic. Perhaps you have heard of silence?
Pyromelter Jul 22nd 2010 12:01PM
Well, ToW effect is going to be 100 yards, which is a significant improvement. If all the "buff" totems go to 100 yards, I'll be happy. I don't think things like earthbind should have that effect (obviously), but passive spellpower, haste, AP/Agi/Str buffs should have large ranges to match pally type buffs.
Sean Jul 23rd 2010 12:30AM
No changes to totems so far IS disappointing. Give us a targeting circle on the ground for where the totems should land, please? 100 yard area for our totem's buffs, please? With Totem of Wrath being merged into all our Fire totems, what use is it to drop Searing Totem if you're too far away from the enemy for it to shoot at it? Plus you can't specify what it targets. Magma totem requires you to run into melee range and risk death while dropping a single totem that lasts less than 30 seconds. Right now Earthquake is far too weak to be a substitute for it.
Also, with other classes getting a 5% haste buff for the raid, what use is our Wrath of Air totem? Or that Strength of Earth is useless when there's a DK, or Stoneskin is useless when there's a pally running Devotion Aura. Or even Flametongue Totem is useless if another Shaman is running ToW. On top of that, when we die, our totems disappear. They should last until the timer runs out or their are targeted and destroyed.
There are TONS of things that need to change with totems to make them more worthwhile.
Oriflame Jul 23rd 2010 9:37AM
I didn't see it as a flaw of the article, but I was disappointed in the no totems fixes announcement. There were some good totem announcements (making searing do better single target dps than magma, having ToW apply off all fire totems etc)
But having buff totems that are range limited and destroyed with one hit that apply buffs that other classes apply as 100 yard auras, or as 30 minute permanent buffs basically just makes totem buffs worse than other class buffs in everyday.
Positioning should be an element of game play for totems, but making it critical to just perform as well as other classes is disappointing. It made sense when pallies had to micro manage their 10 minute buffs, but now it's just a drawback without any advantage.
Firestyle Jul 22nd 2010 9:34AM
Well, the concern expressed numerous times on the forum and in the dev chat was the duplication of totem buffs to other classes consistently results in the totem form of the buff being inferior to the other class's version due to range limitation, fragility of totems, and in some cases the death of the shaman removes the totems and the buff when other classes buffs persist.
With the distribution of the haste buff to moonkins and spriests, there's no real need for a shaman to drop totems.
So we end up with a great mechanic for soloing, but nothing useful in a raid.
Budokan Jul 22nd 2010 10:22AM
^This apparently can't be said enough times, as is clear from these comments. People still don't "get it" when it comes to the shaman community's real beef with totems. It's not that we don't like totems (most agree that they're a fun and unique perk to the class), it's the fact that their usefulness has been marginalized bit by bit over the last few years until what we have now is a gimmick mechanic that is great while soloing, and situational in group play.
Angus Jul 22nd 2010 10:24AM
Wait, you drop totems solo? I barely bother in 5 mans. Solo they are a waste if tine and mana.
Totems are a mechanic designed for WOW 5 years ago and are close to worthless in current WOW.
In PVP the only totems used are the important totems. The totems that are you staking a spot if the battlefield and making a stand. Those are barely used in PVE. And they should make that the way things are in PVE. Make the buffs auras and make the only totems used the awesome ones.
KPB Jul 22nd 2010 11:27AM
My opinion on totems is similar to blizzards option on talents. There are some that are fine as is but others are pretty boring and need to go.
Active totems that do things make sense and are fine. Searing totem, magma totem, Tremor totem, cleansing totem, even Mana Tide all make sense as totems based on what they do and the mechanics they use.
The pure buff totems like Wind fury, Strength of Earth, Stone Skin, etc don't really make too much sense as totems and don't work well. You could make them a bit better by extending their range and duration or other possible mechanics changes but really they are totems because they started off that way and if they removed them all you'd have very few totems left.
Tomaj Jul 22nd 2010 9:45AM
On a personal note (because shaman are one of my favorite classes, and because elemental is my favorite spec of the three), it kind of sucks to me to see that Chain Lightning isn't really seen as a larger part of single target DPS rotation. It has such an awesome look but just isn't mana efficient overall compared to Lightning Bolt, especially considering how much we're supposed to be concerned about our mana in Cataclysm. (It's a big thing to me, personally; I run a Holy Priest as a main, and we're already terrible in terms of mana!)
jeremy_regnerus Jul 22nd 2010 10:07AM
I've sort of always thought this about the graphic as well. Sort of wish they had a "mini" version of the CL graphic for LB, or made the CL graphic a little larger and used the current graphic for LB. I know it's something that doesn't affect gameplay at all, but I'm with this poster, the CL graphic is one of my favorites.
GnomishMight Jul 22nd 2010 10:52AM
I agree. For being such a big part of shaman DPS, LB just isn't that visually threatening. Where Chain Lightning is an impressive blast of electrical power, Lightning Bolt is a piddly sparkle ball with little trailing streamers.
Wally Jul 22nd 2010 12:17PM
hai i'm a balance druid welcome to my club!
Pyromelter Jul 22nd 2010 1:04PM
I have to agree. One of the reasons I love being Ele is that you get that Emperor Palpatine muahahahah-age with CL.
Also, CL was totally win in the bonus rpg part of warcraft 3, when you have that troll shaman guy with rexxar nailing dudes with CL.
alfrizzle097 Jul 22nd 2010 2:26PM
Mana is explicitly NOT supposed to be an issue for dps classes. Healers are where ooming is supposed to be a threat.
Chain lightning as single target has the same issue as divine storm in terms of the following: if its good for single target, then aoe its crazy op.
I would like them to add in a frostbite or water pulse to the rotation. Something to change up your elements and add complexity to the rotation. It doesn't sound like unleashed weapons will be used except when you can't do anything else while moving.
Teaspoon Jul 22nd 2010 7:44PM
"Chain lightning as single target has the same issue as divine storm in terms of the following: if its good for single target, then aoe its crazy op."
Nope!
It fades as it bounces from target to target, so the total damage across all three targets is about two lightning bolts.
TBH, I'd rather see it do low initial damage but increase its damage per jump with unlimited (but short-ranged) jumps. Kind of like what the red drake's basic attack does in the Oculus.
Chickensoup Jul 22nd 2010 9:53AM
1) my only problem with totems is a lack of variety in a lot of cases. Right now in most fights I have maybe one good totem to drop that has any affect whatsoever. For a class full of buffs to give out it's semi disappointing. On many fights as an elemental I'm literally only able to use a fire totem to actually do anything of consequence( though healing stream is nice to pad healing meters when I go resto I guess)
2) the SP baked into weapons part is not that troublesome to me ( in regards to a disarm). It works simillarly to how melée are effected except not nearly as bad
3) what does worry me on the current trees is that there are basically no useful options after 31 or so points in your main tree. This is unlike many of the other classes (warriors and rogues for example) it's mostly this way because shaman have 3 trees for 3 distinct playstyles, but the top of trees could be made in a more universal way to give more use to the main trees