Today I want to briefly talk about the bane of all elemental shamans, Totem of Wrath. This totem is the core caster buff totem that ele shamans bring to a raid. It gives a better spell power buff than the flametongue totem, and it also provides additional crit on any enemies within it's range. So in theory, it sounds like a great thing doesn't it? The problem comes into the sacrifice a shaman must make to provide the buff. Ele shaman DPS appears to be balanced around the thought that we will be using searing/magma totem as an additonal DPS source. However, those totem share the fire totem used by ToW. So the only way to maximize our personal DPS is either to screw over the rest of the raid, or have an additonal person supplying the buff. That is just poor design. I can't think of a single other class that is forced to sacrifice DPS to provide a buff like this.
I ran a Patchwerk 25 last week just for fun, and was shocked to see we had another ele dropping ToW. I gleefully plunked down my searing totem and went to town. It sucks to see the extra DPS boost we SHOULD be able to use at all times. I ended the fight around 6.5k.
So how would I address this if I was Blizzard? The best solution would be something like this:
Totems of Wrath: All of your fire totems now also provide a 280 spell power buff to all raid members for 5 minutes when they are dropped. In additon, as long as a fire totem is active, increases critical strike chance against any enemies within 40 yards.
Or even better:
Brothers of the Flame: As long as the shaman has Flamtongue applied to his weapon he also gains an aura providing 280 spell power to all raid members within 40 yards. In addition, this aura provides additonal critical strike chance against all enemies within the raidius.
Either of these options would provide the same functionality as the current Totem of Wrath, and allow the shaman to actually USE his DPS totems.
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2 comments:
ToW is a problem for Shaman of other specs as well. For both my enhancement and resto builds, I fill out Enhancing Totems. My Flametongue provides more spell power than ToW, but will always be overridden. Why can't they make it so they "stack" only in that the crit debuff stays, but the highest spell power is provided to the player.
Don't fire mages have this too? Someone to glyph and be the scorch bitch, when scorch is not an optimal part of the fire rotation (fireball/pyro/LB refreshing).
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