Totems

Just curious if there is any hope of looking at totems at how the system can be improved.

Moving them up to 5 minutes and on a 1 second GCD were both huge changes that should have happened a long time ago. The 5 minute change is mostly going to help PvE Shaman while the GCD helps both PvE and PvP/Arena Shaman alike.

The problem with PvP and mostly in Arena is that totems are still easily killable. They have not scaled as we have moved from level 1 hitting for 5 points of damage, to level 80 where we will be hitting for obscene amounts of damage.

Ghostcrawler, I understand the whole "Hey... totems are what make Shaman unique". I get that, I honestly truly do. I'm not asking to radically change them so that we become more like other classes.

But you have to admit there is a fundamental flaw there that needs to be addressed... somehow.

Before 3.0 we could drop a rank 1 windfury for much of the same effect as a max rank totem. If it was destroyed then big deal, we just drop it again since it barely cost any mana. Now we are stuck with only max rank spells and wasting a good chunk of mana on a set of totems for your opponents to only have to breath on them to remove them. There is something wrong about this if it's going to continue like this!

We were in a bad way pre-3.0 and now it's even worse with only max rank totems.

Things have gotten worse for Shaman with their beloved totems.

They have not got better.

Let's not pretend it has, because it hasn't.

I'm not ranting or upset or anything like that. I'm merely making a point that the Shaman class is going to continue to suffer in the arena with even less options for "getting around their weaknesses". In fact, there are no options now since 3.0 came out.

There are easy fixes to this problem that I would ilke to throw out there... which I'm sure are not new for anyone to read:

1. Give totems more HP. % of the master's health perhaps.

2. Remove mana cost from totems. Easy fix and guess what... it's not overpowered by any stretch of the imagination. Our trade-off for dropping 4 totems is time... it's bad enough we waste all that time let alone mana if it can be removed by a level 1 character.

Something needs to be done for WotLK to keep our totems viable and you know what... I would like my opponents to fear my totems... not laugh at them.

Thanks for reading.