Totem Talk: Fixing the Fire Elemental problem
by Josh Myers 
Jul 23rd 2011 at 2:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all DPS specs for shaman. And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.
Imagine you have a friend. This isn't any normal friend, but a friend that you really, really, really want to get interested in World of Warcraft. To this end, you have the brilliant plan that if you let him raid on your character, he'll be so taken by the experience that he'll be level 85 within a week.
Naturally, this goes badly. Recount shows your character below the tanks every attempt, as your friend spends half the fight attacking the wrong target and the other half of the fight attacking nothing at all. Of course, that's only on the fights where he manages to stay alive, which is one in 10 attempts.
Now, imagine that in order to do your maximum DPS, you have to let that friend raid with you every single fight. If you choose not to allow that friend to raid, you'll lose about 3,000 potential DPS. However, if you choose to let him raid, you run the risk of his dying, attacking the wrong target, or standing in the center of the room while he mentally alt-tabs.
Welcome to playing an elemental shaman.
Imagine you have a friend. This isn't any normal friend, but a friend that you really, really, really want to get interested in World of Warcraft. To this end, you have the brilliant plan that if you let him raid on your character, he'll be so taken by the experience that he'll be level 85 within a week.
Naturally, this goes badly. Recount shows your character below the tanks every attempt, as your friend spends half the fight attacking the wrong target and the other half of the fight attacking nothing at all. Of course, that's only on the fights where he manages to stay alive, which is one in 10 attempts.
Now, imagine that in order to do your maximum DPS, you have to let that friend raid with you every single fight. If you choose not to allow that friend to raid, you'll lose about 3,000 potential DPS. However, if you choose to let him raid, you run the risk of his dying, attacking the wrong target, or standing in the center of the room while he mentally alt-tabs.
Welcome to playing an elemental shaman.
The problems
I've talked before about how good the elemental two-piece tier 12 bonus is, at least in theory. Fire Elemental Totem is generally a 3,000 DPS increase over Searing Totem; this number is gear-dependent, but I'll use 3,000 from now on for easy math. The actual increase from the tier bonus fluctuates based on fight length. On a fight that only lasts 4 minutes, you're only getting an extra 2 minutes of totem uptime. In that case, the two-piece bonus maths out to about a 600 DPS increase (3,000DPS*2/10 increased uptime). This is because we have to factor in the fact that without the two-piece bonus, you'd have Fire Elemental totem down for 2 out of every 10 minutes anyway.
To that end, the maximum bonus you'll be getting from this totem is "8/10*(Fire Elemental Totem's damage-Searing Totem's damage)." Using our estimated 3,000 DPS increase for FE over Searing Totem, the tier bonus should equate to around a 2,400 DPS increase. This is awesome, making it one of the most powerful tier bonuses ever and one that will only get better as we reach heroic gear levels, since Fire Elemental scales fairly well. And as commenters on my last post pointed out, there's some definite hope in the elemental shaman community that this glyph is a testing ground for Blizzard to introduce the permanent Fire Elemental as a staple elemental ability.
Of course, there's a glaring problem with saying "two-piece tier 12 is a 2,400 DPS increase," and that problem is the Fire Elemental himself. In theory, your Fire Elemental prioritizes targets with a Flame Shock on them. In reality, though, he's got the attention span of an undergraduate in a statistics class and spends half the fight DPSing the wrong target. If there are not multiple targets to choose from, your Elemental becomes a petulant child and spends the next 30 seconds standing in the middle of the room, bobbing up and down.
To top it all off, there's no easy way to monitor your Fire Elemental and who it is attacking. Classes with permanent pets have a pet frame, complete with a target of pet function, for precisely this reason. While your hunters, warlocks, and pesky frost mages get to monitor their pets from the safety of a 36-yard range, we need to rely on not rolling a one on our spot check. While watching for void zones, raid timers, cast bars, and the myriad other things fighting for our concentration on a single encounter, we need to be visibly checking the melee clump to make sure our Fire Elemental is on the right target.
Because of the 8% proc chance on the tier bonus, losing your pet isn't as crippling as it was in previous tiers. However, in order to properly redrop the totem, you need to move into melee range, make sure you have a Flame Shock on the target you want it on (and preferably none on other targets), and blow a global cooldown that could have been spent on another ability, had your FE just stayed alive. Additionally, Fire Elemental scales with your spellpower at the time you cast it, meaning you can eke out more DPS by waiting for Power Torrent or trinkets with spellpower procs to activate and redropping your totem. Unfortunately, if your FE dies on leashes away from a boss, you don't have the luxury of waiting for procs.
A thought for the solution
I'd like to propose a change. We know that Earthquake is effectively a failed talent with limited use in PVE and virtually no use in PVP. It's a drain on mana, it's affected by armor, and it does less damage than rolling Flame Shocks and using Fire Nova on cooldown. In addition, our Fire Elemental does more AOE damage while it's up, provided it can properly utilize its own Fire Nova ability. We also know that elemental is the only shaman DPS spec that uses Fire Elemental for single-target rotations. (Enhancement gets some use out of it in AOE situations, but we rarely run into the 2-minute AOE phases that would make it shine.)
Right now, elemental shaman are stuck in a liminal space between pet spec and non-pet spec, with the downsides of requiring a permanent pet to maximize our DPS yet none of the pet spec perks like dynamic scaling, a control bar, or a pet frame. That needs to stop.
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Ready to take your elemental shaman up to the new level cap? We'll help you get to level 85, dig into pre-raid gear and DPS trinkets, and find the addons that'll help your performance shine.
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mordred Jul 23rd 2011 2:16PM
No! I love earthquake! *smack*
ugoticedbro Jul 23rd 2011 2:37PM
Earthquake was awesome, before it was nerfed. Now it just makes me say "how the hell am I out of mana?" Then I sob silently.
Mystfire Jul 23rd 2011 2:58PM
Welcome to Druid Hurricane, Shammy Edition. Abysmally high mana costs? Not even situationally effective? Welcome to Non-mage AoE 4.0!
Harvoc Jul 23rd 2011 2:20PM
I'd always thought of Enhancement as the pet spec, what with Feral Spirit and all. Seeing as they don't actually use Fire Elemental Totem however (for single target at least) and Elemental does, then yes, I would definitely support the replacement of Earthquake with a permanent Fire Elemental Totem. However, since people rarely use Earth Elemental Totem, you could combine the both of them, and create a Magma Elemental Totem. You could have Magma Elemental Totem trigger the cooldown of both Fire Elemental Totem and Earth Elemental Totem. And since the Earth Elemental is much more survivable than the Fire Elemental, you could have it where the totem has as much health as the Earth Elemental itself and possesses the abilities its "predecessors" had: Fire Blast, Fire Nova, Fire Shield, and Angered Earth. Or create brand new abilities that possess qualities of both sides, fire damage and survivability and threat.
Ianmis Jul 23rd 2011 3:22PM
This ^^^^
Harvoc Jul 23rd 2011 4:07PM
@ Ianmis
Glad you like it! After thinking about it, my proposed plan would actually work out pretty well. Since Elemental uses the Fire Elemental Totem as a dps cooldown for both single-target and AoE and Enhancement uses the Fire Elemental Totem as a dps cooldown for AoE and the Earth Elemental Totem as a dps cooldown for single-target, then it seems that the Earth Elemental Totem is better for single-target and the Fire Elemental Totem is better for AoE. I don't know if Elemental uses the Earth Elemental Totem for single-target however. Nonetheless, the Magma Elemental Totem could act as both. Need an AoE cooldown? Use the Fire abilities for AoEing down the small packs of mobs and the single-target damage of the Earth Elemental's attacks for the boss. Need an emergency tank? Use the Earth Elemental's AoE taunt. Also, since the Earth Elemental Totem is an earth totem and the Fire Elemental Totem is a fire totem, then the Magma Elemental Totem could either count as both if Blizzard wishes to restrict shamans or count as neither so the AoE capabilities of Elemental are boosted as they're free to use Magma Totem to help AoE or the Searing Totem to focus on the boss. Plus, they get to keep one of their earth totems.
kaos95 Jul 23rd 2011 4:24PM
The really funny part of this, is that my Shadow Priest has a pet frame and all the trimmings for his Shadowfiend, who is up less than the Fire Elemental.
Makes absolutely no sense to me
noah Jul 28th 2011 11:47AM
i agree with the idea have the magma ele be a pet thats controlable so you can turn the tuant on and off,take out fire and earth,and mabye give it a move with a fair cd like "split" where it turns into the earth and fire ele to do more dmg the magma itself with earth ele only tuanting if the magma ele was able to tuant b4 it "split"
Jandor Jul 23rd 2011 6:00PM
OMG please make this happen! It would almost make me want to play my shaman again.
Gobuywow Jul 23rd 2011 8:50PM
It seems that Blizzard has no thought to buf Shaman atm, they thought Shaman is so coooooooooool now. I just gave up my little Shaman and reroll a priest.
Salubrious Jul 23rd 2011 2:24PM
You know what I use earthquake for? Guarding a flag in AB. It's nothing great, but it has saved my ass a few times.
mordred Jul 23rd 2011 3:36PM
I use earthquake in PVP all the time. It's fun to watch Alliance fall on their butts.
gitsi Jul 23rd 2011 7:17PM
that is more a function of the other team failing than anything else, seeing an eq cast in pvp is a big bright interupt me sign, magma totem does that job much better with no cast time and no cooldown
Anonnymouse Jul 23rd 2011 2:40PM
A few other points to mention...
1. Druids get a pet bar for their trenants and SPriests get one for their Shadowfiend. Why can't we get one for our stoopid Fire Elemental, as they're all "temp combat pets"? (One for the searing totem would be nice too! I'm sick to death of BOTH of them doing nothing or hitting the wrong thing 75% of the time.)
2. Because Fire Elemental isn't a proper "pet" (at least i *think* that's why) it doesn't show up on other people's recounts. I can see it on mine, but no one else can see whatever damage it happens to do on theirs. Although I'm not sure if that's a problem with recount (speak up if Skada does this too, posters) or if it's how it's reported to the combat logs.
3. Possible solution? Pull the darn things (Earth Elemental too plz!) OFF the totems! I don't understand why they have to be tied to totems any more anyway. Seems like a broken mechanic to me.
- Main Elem (Resto,off) Shaman since 2008
Skarn Jul 23rd 2011 3:08PM
The fire elemental is technically the pet of the totem and the totem itself is more of a guardian than a pet. The ability has to be completely rebuilt for it to work like a proper pet. It sure needs to be done though!
Dan Jul 23rd 2011 3:25PM
Agreed. Blizz could solve the problem immediately if they just made the Fire Elemental work like the Shadowfiend does (I love that little guy on my priest). It seems rather silly to me that such an important cooldown for elemental shaman is so glitchy and wonky.
jabhwakins Jul 24th 2011 9:50AM
I seem to remember a blue post either from when the new assist functionality of pets came out or perhaps in one of the dev Q&A things where they had mentioned the issues of the totem elementals and searing totem. I believe it had said they were going to review how it worked for the pet classes and if all went well try and implement the same assist target functionality for those totems. That could be a possible fix.
And like Skarn said, the reason there's no pet toolbar at this time is because the elemental is tied to the totem, not to the shaman.
PvtDeth Jul 24th 2011 3:54PM
I was looking at skada logs last night after Nef. It showed Fire Elemental as the top damage spell for our resto shaman, so yeah, it works.
Renato Jul 23rd 2011 2:43PM
Blizzard please make this happen:
So, scrap Earthquake. Get rid of it forever. It doesn't matter that we've wanted it for a few years ... We got it, and it sucked, and that's it. Get rid of Fire Elemental Totem as a baseline talent and make it the 31-point elemental talent.
Thank you
juxul Jul 23rd 2011 3:22PM
What they need to do with earthquake is make like the paladins consecration or at least make a glyph that allows it to act that way.