#0 - Feb. 17, 2009, 5:06 p.m.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15211001704&sid=1
I would like to begin by saying I have been playing the shaman class for 1 month at 80 and I truly enjoy it. I believe the class takes a significant amount of skill to play at a high level, and being handicapped in a few ways such as survivability makes it a challenge to compete. But I have a question directed to the development team of WoW.
Why must our class feature be so trivialized by the nature of totem stomping macros?
I understand totems should be killable, and should not be a static buff we give to our allies because the buffs they provide are both substantial and effective. I also see it as a distinction between shamans and other classes. I am not trying to argue they shouldn't be killable by certain measures. What I don't understand is why our form of group buffs (which are, in some cases, weaker or less convenient because the totem is immobile [see: DK group buffs]) can be dispelled with the use of macros tied into normal, spammable spells, and be especially effective with no regard.
If you were to compare this situation to another you would see this is similar to purging or dispelling buffs. The mechanic behind this requires you to spend a global cooldown and in most cases you must target the player which you wish to dispel. In the shaman's case, our buffs are dispelled without having to waste a GCD if you have a pet. This is the example macro I've chosen to use:
/cast Unstable Affliction
/petattack
/petattack [target=mana tide totem]
/petattack [target=grounding totem]
/petattack [target=tremor totem]
/petattack [target=windfury totem]
I know people will be annoyed by me posting the macro in the thread, but I did to show people how truly effective they can be. If anyone really wanted to they could easily google this macro anyways.
The point I'm trying to make is when those few lines are tied to every spell a player normally casts in pvp it can make those specific totems nearly useless besides the few seconds of benefit you receive from them. Spamming the totem provides a decent counter, but also a drain on mana as well as a major waste in GCDs.
When I'm tanking a death knight who has totem stomping macros I sometimes don't even bother wasting the GCD on totems aside from things like grounding LHW. If a shaman so chooses to put the effort into totem stacking over tide (lol I know) they should receive some benefit by doing so without being circumvented by a simple macro.
I think most of the pvp shaman community will agree with me when I say, "nerf totem stomping macros".
Also, before anyone armories me I will have them know I 2v2 with a survival hunter at 1850, will have 1011 resil, 19.5k hp, 1650 sp, and 22% crit later on today. I'm currently being farmed by frost mage rogue in 2v2 and we're working on strats to counter them. I fully expect to stand a chance as soon as we figure out the massive cooldown spam from both sides in the initial 20 seconds of battle and play over 100 games together.
