Totem Talk: How to manage your elemental totems
by Josh Myers 
Mar 12th 2011 at 4:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. On Saturdays, Josh Myers tackles the hard questions about enhancement. Can we tank? Can we DPS with a two-hander? How does one shoot web? The answer to the first two is "no," and I have no idea about the third.
Elemental totems are one of those weird aspects of our class that are never as likable as they're intended to be. In Wrath of the Lich King, Fire Elemental Totem was a welcome DPS increase, but his 10-minute cooldown made him incredibly frustrating to plan fights around. By comparison, our Earth Elemental Totem has never had much of a part in our raiding game.
Cataclysm has changed all that. Not only has it removed the shared cooldown between the totems (making it so you can drop both elementals at once), but we've also seen changes to our basic functionality that impacts our totem usage. Learning how to use these totems correctly is a vital part of maximizing our DPS.
Elemental totems are one of those weird aspects of our class that are never as likable as they're intended to be. In Wrath of the Lich King, Fire Elemental Totem was a welcome DPS increase, but his 10-minute cooldown made him incredibly frustrating to plan fights around. By comparison, our Earth Elemental Totem has never had much of a part in our raiding game.
Cataclysm has changed all that. Not only has it removed the shared cooldown between the totems (making it so you can drop both elementals at once), but we've also seen changes to our basic functionality that impacts our totem usage. Learning how to use these totems correctly is a vital part of maximizing our DPS.
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk, Cataclysm
