#0 - March 13, 2009, 2:39 a.m.
1. From Ghostcrawler on 1/15/2009, "Totems Totems Totems"
Q u o t e:
Totems are a class-defining feature for the shaman. We are not going to remove totems and we do not wish to marginalize them. We are totally open to ideas that make them cooler, however.
2. From Ghostcrawler on 2/18/2009, "I don't get the regen nerfs..."
Q u o t e:
I thought I mentioned this at one point, but we were pretty happy with Resto shaman mana regen. They were our target and we wanted to bring priest and druid regen (by making non-casting regen lower) and paladin regen (through DP and SA) closer to that point.
3. From Eyonix on 3/11/2009, " Blessing of Wisdom & Mana Spring Totem change"
Q u o t e:
We are making a change to these spells so that their benefits are exclusive in patch 3.1.0. The buffs will be equivalent, but will no longer stack. Mana Spring will affect the entire raid instead of just the shaman’s party. We felt that both paladins and shamans brought too many unique buffs to a group. Additionally, we have been trying to tone down mana regeneration in large groups, and were concerned raids would feel the need to stack paladins or especially shaman to have enough Mana Spring totems. We have also been trying to get more benefits out of the party and into the raid, and Mana Spring previously was still a party only buff. With this change, if there is only one paladin, he or she can bring Blessing of Kings while the shaman offers Mana Spring. If there are two paladins and the second offers Blessing of Wisdom, then the shaman can offer healing or cleansing with their water totem instead.
Given these blue statements, I'm sure you can understand why this comes as such a shock to many of us.
1. Referring to the first blue post, while you clearly state that you have no intention to remove or marginalize the totem system, do you not realize that is essentially what has happened here? With clunky range restrictions and duplicate buffs provided by other classes, there is really very little reason to use them anymore. This Mana Spring Totem nerf just magnifies how flawed the totem system is in this "bring the player, not the class," environment that you've created. In essence, haven't you just marginalized them, and as a result, passively removed them from raids?
2. Referring to the second blue post, I'm sure most players understand that this nerf was good in the sense that it will remove the possibility of stacking shaman to deal with the sweeping mana nerfs, but seeing the nerf without a buff to return the lost MP5, completely contradicts your statement. Is there a plan for 3.1 to return the shaman's mana regen in another form?
3. Referring to the third blue post, Yes we all get that as raids become larger from 10 to 25man, the value of the buffs your class brings diminishes due to the higher likely hood of greater class diversity presence. The problem here for shaman is that by removing the ability of MST to stack with BoW, this becomes much more prevalent due to the current restrictions that totems have. Buffs that move with the char and persist through the death of their provider are just far superior when there is little-to-no differentiation in the benefits that they provide. Shaman have essentially become range restricted "Gap Buffers." Eyonix's two paladin example clearly illustrates this, along with how flawed and marginalized the totem system in general has become. Is there any plan to address this, possibly by moving some of our buffs to a blessing system similar to paladins, or vastly increasing the range of totems and allowing them to persist through death until we release corpse?
