New tremor totems are awful...

[heyaz]

There was a hotfix about a week ago that included several changes, one being changing the tick on tremor totems to 3 seconds. I don't know what it was before, but I notice a huge difference.

I'm getting feared all over the place... It seems to almost always take the full 3 seconds to break it, and by then all of my shaman are 20 yards from each other in opposite direction. It also seems like either the range has been reduced or they don't always work, beacuse sometimes I just get feared for the full duration.

I also thought the DR on fears was pretty significant - but it's reallly not. By the third or fourth fear I'm still running around for 3 seconds.

is the tick random, or is it possible to drop 3 of them one second apart and get the same result? As it is, even with 3 tremor totems I have to trinket out of the fear beacuse it's long enough to put them out of range of follow.

[Hachoo]

Eh? Are you sure this changed? I have noticed absolutely no difference and I use my tremors every day. Fought King Dred and a bunch of fearing berserkers last night and My 4 tremors always stopped the fear before my guys even moved.

[Zal]

stagger the drop times of your totems, i'm never affected much by a fear.

[Chranny]

Ya, it pulses every third second after drop. DR's remain the same though, so don't want to comment on that part of your post.

[heyaz]

Positive they changed, there was a blue post about it. I didn't think it would make a difference till I did some BGs... Just got out of one with 4 warlocks and 2 priests and it was a nightmare. It's ticking so slow that my whole group is either dead or out of follow by the time it breaks.

Before this change, the longest I would get feared is about 1 second, usually more like half a second. I haven't tested it in PVE yet but something definitely isn't working right in PVP.

[Velassra]

... but something definitely isn't working right in PVP.

Idk, it might be something to give both priests and warlocks a little extra survivability in PvP, so it might be working exactly as intended.

[Zal]

once again, just stagger the drop times of the totems, you should never be in a fear for more then 1 sec if your doing it right.

[grettir]

Would love to get this clarified, do they all pulse at the same time or does it work placing them seperetly?

[Stealthy]

I noticed the same thing in WG yesterday - had dropped my totems in the usual staggered timing but was feared out of range of the totem.

I just assumed that it was Winterslag being its usual self...might have to find some mobs that fear and test it out....

Cheers,

S.

[keghia]

The totems now pulse, and all pulse at the same time. Tested it tonight against some random mobs that fear. Numerous times I would get feared very close to out of range of the totems even when the totems are dropped in staggered format. It sucks.

[grettir]

Is it me or does it seem like the shaman time in the areana is now officially over? Kinda sucks, Ive been working on a team for afew weeks now, they just reached 53 last night.

[Bresquad]

Is it me or does it seem like the shaman time in the areana is now officially over? Kinda sucks, Ive been working on a team for afew weeks now, they just reached 53 last night.

- You missed the fun train !

[Hachoo]

Eh, I haven't noticed a single issue in PvE at least. I still stagger my tremors and I still get "unfeared" within ~.5s of getting feared, every single time.

[emesis]

Eh, I haven't noticed a single issue in PvE at least. I still stagger my tremors and I still get "unfeared" within ~.5s of getting feared, every single time.

How many times is "every single time"? If you're talking about PvE, there's only a few fights where this mechanic comes in. I think you've just been lucky so far.

Last night on Dred I managed to wipe, which I haven't done in ages, because my guys got feared enough to face them away from the boss. I wasn't exepecting that and managed to let my tank die while I was repositioning.

[grettir]

Well I dont know what changes are incoming for the shaman ele spec but they will need to be pretty damm good to make up for this, 2 fear classes can now basically take out the whole group with a 3sec timer on tremors. Maybe another instant spell would be good, could use the instants while reorganizing the group after a fear.

But on a sidenote, this change was clearly aimed at multiboxers imho.

[emesis]

But on a sidenote, this change was clearly aimed at multiboxers imho.

This is a huge hit to shaman multiboxers, but I don't actually think this was aimed at us. Remember, discouraging multiboxing is as simple as nerfing /follow. Even though there are still some sucessful shaman boxing teams, I hardly see multi-shaman teams a major threat to arena ladders at the moment.

The expressed wording of the "hotfix" was to correct the pulse interval of Tremor Totem to 3 seconds. Apparently since 3.0.2 it had been pulsing more frequently than that, dropping fears almost instantly even with a single shaman. I suspect the mechanism of doing this was to set a single party-wide server side three-second timer that is initialized whenever someone in the party drops a tremor totem. It's just a side effect of having a unified server-side timer for this that tremor totem no longer stacks. This was put into place without considering that there might be multiple shamans dropping staggered tremor totems. At least that's my guess. Really, really sucks though...

[Suvega]

Less QQ at tremor. Enjoy your ZOMG grounding holywtf buff. (And by buff I mean a revert to functionality that existed a year ago)

[Vyndree]

Always boggles the mind that a healer can heal facing any direction, but a caster has to face his target.

Healers used to have to face their target.
Then someone realized how stupid that was for a healer to know the relative position of every person at any given point in time in his 40-man raid.

Penance, in its first form, required that you face the target before you casted it. That was terrible. It was fixed in a recent patch not to require that you face your heal target, though you must still face your target if you use it as a DPS spell.


I don't feel it's unfair to DPS if healers don't have to face their targets. Generally there are less opponents to keep track of in PvE content compared to the number in a raid -- and, having raided sunwell as a melee class, melee has to not only face their target but maintain appropriate hitbox distance in heavy movement fights. Ranged facing isn't really that bad. Facing only becomes an issue in PvP, and even then, melee have it worse.

[emesis]

Less QQ at tremor. Enjoy your ZOMG grounding holywtf buff. (And by buff I mean a revert to functionality that existed a year ago)

Erm, you mean the 2/18/2009 hotfix which is described as "A Grounding Totem is now properly destroyed even if the grounded spell did not do damage."?

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/23/15211002734-recent-ingame-fixes.html

This is a buff?

[grettir]

I would really like to hear from some experienced multi shaman box pvper how the new totems are working for them! Can we just forget pvping with shamans boxed now or is there a glimmer of hope?

[puppychow]

The tremor totems definitely changed this week - I do Onyxia every monday and her phase 3 fears were broken in under a second in past weeks, today when I did it they took between 1-3 seconds to break - and yes, I stagger drop them with /cast ,Tremor Totem, (different place in ,,, for each shaman). No big deal at all for PVE imo, the number of 80 mobs that fears I can count on 2 fingers (Dred and the trash in HoS?) and even if you drop 0 tremor totems both are relatively easy.

Of course in PVP I imagine this is a bit more of a problem.

[Hachoo]

Less QQ at tremor. Enjoy your ZOMG grounding holywtf buff. (And by buff I mean a revert to functionality that existed a year ago)Eh? What buff? I have noticed no grounding totem change since I started multiboxing last August.

Also, to the person that responded to my last post, I have run into a TON of people that fear in the last week. Here is a list:

All death knights in DTK (they fear almost every combat, though its not AoE)
King Dred (Have been AoE feared by him at least twice, once one of my shamans turned around but didn't actually move at all, a simple /follow and then hitting my back key turned him around - this used to happen long before the tremor totem change as well
And, most importantly, the berserkers in UP. Theres tons of them after Skadi and they all AoE fear. Had 0 issues and 0 facing issues with them using tremor totems as recently as 2 nights ago.

[emesis]

Also, to the person that responded to my last post, I have run into a TON of people that fear in the last week. Here is a list:

All death knights in DTK (they fear almost every combat, though its not AoE)
King Dred (Have been AoE feared by him at least twice, once one of my shamans turned around but didn't actually move at all, a simple /follow and then hitting my back key turned him around - this used to happen long before the tremor totem change as well
And, most importantly, the berserkers in UP. Theres tons of them after Skadi and they all AoE fear. Had 0 issues and 0 facing issues with them using tremor totems as recently as 2 nights ago.

OK, but absence of proof <> proof of absence.

Multiple people including myself have noticed a significant recent change in the behavior of tremor totem. The fact that you haven't had an issue with them, as I mentioned previously, suggests to me either a limited observation window or luck on your part (the single pulsing happening to occur at a fortuitous time).

[Souca]

Simple enough to determine the current behavior. I have a warlock and 4 shaman. I will stagger tremor totems and then fear a shammy in a duel. Based off a large enough sample size and proper combat log parsing, I should be able to give a definitive answer. After that you can argue about how it used to work, but at least we will know how it does work.

On a side note, I think a precious theory is correct. The totems all pulse at the same time now. I'm guessing it might be related to the graphics change they made to the mana and healing totems back in 3.0.2. They likely wanted them to pulse together and just tagged the tremor totem to the same tick source.

I'll report back with hard data and pretty graphs.

- Souca -

[Multibocks]

Duel isnt a good idea, your other shaman cannot heal someone dueling so I would suspect their pulses of Tremor would not affect as well. You need someone from opposite faction to do it or find a mob that fears, a lot.

[Multibocks]

Less QQ at tremor. Enjoy your ZOMG grounding holywtf buff. (And by buff I mean a revert to functionality that existed a year ago)

I have no clue what you are talking about. Enquiring minds would like to know.

[Souca]

Duel isnt a good idea, your other shaman cannot heal someone dueling so I would suspect their pulses of Tremor would not affect as well. You need someone from opposite faction to do it or find a mob that fears, a lot.Good point. I think I know someone on the other side with a few priest. I'll see if I can't set something up.

- Souca -

[Hachoo]

Also, to the person that responded to my last post, I have run into a TON of people that fear in the last week. Here is a list:

All death knights in DTK (they fear almost every combat, though its not AoE)
King Dred (Have been AoE feared by him at least twice, once one of my shamans turned around but didn't actually move at all, a simple /follow and then hitting my back key turned him around - this used to happen long before the tremor totem change as well
And, most importantly, the berserkers in UP. Theres tons of them after Skadi and they all AoE fear. Had 0 issues and 0 facing issues with them using tremor totems as recently as 2 nights ago.

OK, but absence of proof <> proof of absence.

Multiple people including myself have noticed a significant recent change in the behavior of tremor totem. The fact that you haven't had an issue with them, as I mentioned previously, suggests to me either a limited observation window or luck on your part (the single pulsing happening to occur at a fortuitous time).It could definitely be extraordinary luck - though if I had this amount of luck for this long (enough where I didn't even notice a tremor change at all) - thats some serious RNG luck right there.

[Dominian]

Duel isnt a good idea, your other shaman cannot heal someone dueling so I would suspect their pulses of Tremor would not affect as well. You need someone from opposite faction to do it or find a mob that fears, a lot.Good point. I think I know someone on the other side with a few priest. I'll see if I can't set something up.

- Souca -

You can also do this in the Nagrand arena or Blades Edge arena.. :)

According to certain people tremor was FIXED not nerfed, apparently it ticked each second. However i do not have any blue posts to back this up..

I have my doubts that Blizzard wants us to be impossible to fear, so if it ticked each second then yes it was kinda insane.

[grettir]

The problem isnt wether they tick each second or every third second, but that they tick all at the same time. That is a nerf, stacking nerf to totems.

[Kaynin]

-snip- Just said what someone else had said already but read over it. :<

[blast3r]

boy this does suck. insta death for my group if just two players attack me and fear me..spreads everyone all over the place..goddammit blizzard..

i guess if you have time you can hit your formation button and drop totems then go back to the middle. at least you will have a wider range for the now crappy tremor totem..

[Multibocks]

Wow apparently they did pulse every second.



Tremor Totem: Now correctly pulses every 3 sec, up from 1 sec.


So expect to be feared more often! Wonder if they truly cannot be staggered anymore.

[Hachoo]

Hah, so I was right all along and everyone talking about how awful they were was making things up :P So they WILL be awful starting in 3.1 :)

[Multibocks]

Maybe there is a bug with stacking? Its not often that people notice these things right away, I mean how many people have two shaman in a group with staggered totems? And by that I mean nonboxers. It's quite possible there is a bug and it just went unnoticed.

[Souca]

Maybe there is a bug with stacking? Its not often that people notice these things right away, I mean how many people have two shaman in a group with staggered totems? And by that I mean nonboxers. It's quite possible there is a bug and it just went unnoticed.This is likely the issue. Sadly this is also why it will be a while before it is fixed. Boxers have the joy of find bugs and then watching them not get fixed since they don't affect enough people.

Speaking of which, I found a bug in Deathchill ('http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15276981384&postId=152755976106&sid=1#0') last night :(

- Souca -

[mrmcgee21]

My tremor works just like it always has, never noticed a difference. Deffinately reason to hope, check my sig.

**rant on**

My only big beef atm as far as bugs go is the fact blizzard wont even acknowledge that Thunderstorm can be spell reflected, won't say if its a bug or intentional. Moreover if it was intentional, well fuck them for giving us the first reflectable AoE in the game as a 51 pt talent, and then FUCK them again for making it a KB that is reflectable as well ... absolutely retarded. Have fun apologizing to your team after you wipe them in a bg or arena after getting that kb reflected on everyone .. idiotic.

**rant off** :D

[emesis]

My tremor works just like it always has, never noticed a difference. Deffinately reason to hope, check my sig.


Do you do arena with your 4 shammies/pally solo or are you doing the 4 shammies with a dedicated healer? I'm pretty 'mazed if the former.

[mrmcgee21]

Dedicated healer

[Bresquad]

Dedicated Paladin healer.

[heyaz]

If anyone is still sskeptical or wants "confirmation", I'll make a video of me dropping 3x tremor totems, staggered or not, and then fear bombed. It's pretty apparent.

BGs have been miserable lately, I noticed once I get one fear bomb, every class that can fear follows me around for the rest of the BG and just mops the floor with my group. I don't think they are aware of the change, I think they just announce "it's so easy to kill the box group, just fear bomb. Then of course having 4 ppl out of the team pretty much useless, we end up getting 5 capped or 2000-0'd real quick

I haven't arena'd since the change but I'm kinda afraid too.. I usually get fear bombed at least 2-3 times a game depending on the classes, sometimes more, but the old totems broke it instantly.

[drevil]

a 3 sec pulse will be the end of pvp multiboxing (quad+).

all the cc, aoe and server lag took already so much fun out of it, but this makes it impossible to controll your chars anymore.

[Dominian]

a 3 sec pulse will be the end of pvp multiboxing (quad+).

all the cc, aoe and server lag took already so much fun out of it, but this makes it impossible to controll your chars anymore.

Quite sick of hearing this all the time, its been said tons of times since the launch of WOTLK . Still here are players who reached +1900..

MB isnt a free ticket to 2k rating anymore easy as that.

[drevil]

Quite sick of hearing this all the time, its been said tons of times since the launch of WOTLK . Still here are players who reached +1900..
MB isnt a free ticket to 2k rating anymore easy as that.- 3 sec pulse isn't in yet.
- i know no mb with 2k rating yet, only two with 1.9k using imba healers
- i only play a penta (5) team and that's real hard
- mb was never a free ticket for high ratings

[Ellay]

Tremor Totem is back to the way it used to be in Season 1-4 or there abouts, it was beefed up to pulse every second and not it back to normal.
The reason 4 Shamans was amazing back then was because you can stagger your tremor totems which I explained oh so long ago and I hope everything that is doing Arena's with Shamans is staggering, because it's basically immunity still to this day.
Going back to 3 seconds pulse for playing a single shammy does hurt and is especially frustrating when your tremor is down a priest whacks it, you drop another totem and are promptly feared and he whacks the next one out as well, giving you a full duration fear.

[Dominian]

Quite sick of hearing this all the time, its been said tons of times since the launch of WOTLK . Still here are players who reached +1900..
MB isnt a free ticket to 2k rating anymore easy as that.- 3 sec pulse isn't in yet.
- i know no mb with 2k rating yet, only two with 1.9k using imba healers
- i only play a penta (5) team and that's real hard
- mb was never a free ticket for high ratings

Tremor not ticking each 3 second?

Read this mate: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/13/15443184429-tremor-totem--feared-out-of-range-again-.html

There were a few 2k+ boxers in TBC and thats what i refered to, free ride to 2k is more an common expression then a something i directly refer to.. Im sorry if i made you misunderstand me.

Ofc 5 boxing is hard, it brings no real advantages compared to play 4x and a healer. Who wants to play 5 dps? It have never been successful and most likley never will be either..

I didnt mean that MB was a free ticket but it was alot easier in TBC then now, 1700 rating in a few epics compared to fully epic and alot lower rating now.

[genocyde]

Tremor totem nerfs will never be the end of 5 boxing PvP. Why do I say this?

My PvP team is priest, druid, magex3 and fear is rarely the cause of a death for me. Though I can silence people into the ground (silence DR was a HUGE nerf to my team as I have 17 seconds of silence on a 30 second CD providing none of my counterspells hit a spell lock for an extra 4 seconds each) any coordinated fear attempts will force me to trinket and eat a full fear if a second one is around. I learned to play around it. Any class that can fear is an immediate priority for me.

You shaman will just have to learn to watch for fear in a different way now that tremor totem is not complete fear immunity. The same way that I don't completely ignore healers like I did before the silence DR nerf.

[BobGnarly]

I've been trying this out. When I first read this, I went to run King Dred. I had been just dropping 1 totem (didn't realize it was bugged, but I did realize soon enough that one was enough), so in the interests of exploration I tried just one again. Yep, sure enough, I'm running all over the place and wipe.

Next fight, I drop 3 totems staggered 1s apart and it's breaking fear just like before. I've now run Dred about 4 other times, each time staggering, and no fear has lasted on me more than 1 s.

I think it has a 3s pulse, but can still be staggered. Sucks for the single shaman, but all is well with the multi shaman teams, just gotta stagger

[pinotnoir]

I've been trying this out. When I first read this, I went to run King Dred. I had been just dropping 1 totem (didn't realize it was bugged, but I did realize soon enough that one was enough), so in the interests of exploration I tried just one again. Yep, sure enough, I'm running all over the place and wipe.

Next fight, I drop 3 totems staggered 1s apart and it's breaking fear just like before. I've now run Dred about 4 other times, each time staggering, and no fear has lasted on me more than 1 s.

I think it has a 3s pulse, but can still be staggered. Sucks for the single shaman, but all is well with the multi shaman teams, just gotta stagger

If you park your group in that little gap just before the stairs the fear wont make them run all over. Your tank will still be feared all over but your group will be ok. I hate fear in instances because I run pally, 3 mages, 1 druid healer. I have to eat all fears.