Comments on: On Shammy totems, circa patch 2.3.

By: syrstorm

syrstorm — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:11:29 +0000

Look at “Totemus” mod – all of these sphere mods are derived from the original Necrosis for warlocks, but Totemus is really quite good. It includes totem timers, and a lot of flexibility along with the expandable buttons (one per totem element, one for weapon buffs, etc.).

TOTEMUS – your button bars will thank you.

By: cowboygus

cowboygus — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:19:41 +0000

That’s funny… Venantes seems to be a hunter version of Totemus: http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/5723/ (Which I’m pretty sure is the original), I think there’s a warlock version as well… maybe more.

Totemus is alright… sure it looks cool, but I find the bubble design can be trouble in a pinch. That’s why I like TotemTimers. Maybe the name throws people, but it’s an expandable totem menu that’s real easy to use.

I’m not a big fan of addons in general… but I can’t play my shammy without TotemTimers.

http://downloads.curse.com/details/5492/

Bliz really needs to just put this in the UI.

By: How would they fix shamans? | Warcraft-News.com

How would they fix shamans? | Warcraft-News.com — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:11:28 +0000

[...] Draezele and Mendax.org’s WyldKard go back and forth on how to fix shamans. WyldKard focuses particularly on totem mobility. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart as [...]

By: WyldKard

WyldKard — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:37:33 +0000

One of the biggest problems with totems is that they cost a fair amount of mana when they’re not providing benefits for their full duration. This tends to ingrain poor habits in younger Shamans, in that they ignore totems for a good amount of time because they want to save on mana use. However, if totems can be picked up and “frozen”, then when they are re-deployed, the Shaman saves on mana and can keep one totem active through numerous fights, as he can time when to “freeze” a totem to make the most of its duration.

Now that I’ve thought more about it, the idea of two “stances” for the Shaman would be ideal. One stance would be the current “grounded” totem stance (I’ll call it the Physical Stance), while the other would be the “frozen” stance (what I’ll call the Spiritual Stance).

In close-quarters PvP combat, it’s often an enormous hassle to drop all four totems on account of the global cooldown. However, if a Shaman can cast totems in Spiritual Stance, he’s effectively queued up his totems for a particular encounter. By entering Physical Stance, the Shaman immediately drops up to four totems, and is at full buffed capacity when the encounter begins. This would somewhat close the gap between Shaman totems and Paladin Blessings.

If there are too many nerf cries, mobility can be somewhat more restricted by putting a cooldown on the stance switch, such that Shamans can’t keep freezing their totem timers every couple seconds.

I’ll have to check out the addons you mention. Despite playing numerous classes, I think my Shammy is the only character that uses all of Bongo’s button bars, and he has the most cluttered interface of any character I’ve seen.

Thanks for stopping by, and good luck on the dual-boxing; drop me a line if you have any questions about your setup if/when you get around to it.

By: Draezele

Draezele — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:27:05 +0000

I really like the concept of being able to pick up your totems and then redploy them (although one could argue that it’s not far from our current system other than requiring mana and global cooldowns to drop). This has some potential for abuse (pulling them up if you see a rogue going after them, for example), so they’d have to think this one carefully. Alternate buffs while carrying totems is also interesting, but would be difficult to balance as well.

I’m pretty certain that invulnerable totems wouldn’t fly, however, as there aren’t very many abilities that are completely uncounterable (although most by dispel). I fear that the nerf cries would be overwhelming, to the point that we’d probably wind up in even worse shape. But we can dream, right?

As for addons, I’m not familiar with Venantes (although it sounds similar to zHunter, which I used with my hunter). However, there are several mods that give similar functionality, such as TotemTimers, GotWood and YATA (I’ve only used TotemTimers, but have been very happy with it – it has easy drop boxes, plus the ability to set “default” totems that you can simply click on without going through the menu).

Thanks for the mention, and I’m glad you pointed me your way. I especially enjoyed your dual-boxing post since I’ve been considering getting a second account to run exactly the same hunter/shaman setup.