Magma/Nova totem changes

[Schwarz]

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

There is definitely a lot of AE (area effect damage) going on in World of Warcraft dungeon runs at the moment. We’re not too worried about it for now – on the contrary it’s nice to see so many people doing the level-up dungeons on the way to level 80. If we find that AE tank + AE damage strategy (with no sheeping, sapping or other crowd control) is the only way people are running heroics and raids, then we’ll probably make some changes, but for now we’re content to just see what happens.

Having said all that, we feel like a few groups are being left out of the AE fun, which makes them of less utility in the 5-player dungeons. We aren’t able to provide a lot of details yet, but here are some upcoming changes we’re making.

• Shaman – we are removing the threat component from Fire Nova Totem and Magma Totem and increasing the damage from Magma Totem. This should provide the Elemental shamans in particular with some formidable AE.

What in the heck does this mean. Are Magma Totems going to be the new choice of totem vs searing totems now?

[Fuzzyboy]

Hardly - they're still pretty expensive in terms of mana and they have limited range. The intention is to provide a viable form of AE damage, but they'd have to get a pretty damn intensive buff to be that. Since they're pulsing they are in reality sort of a spell with a really long cast time which furthermore attracts aggro while doing the damage, sort of like a blizzard-type mechanic, but only works close up. This means a tank has to have AE aggro before casting (or the totems will be destroyed), but the buff is very welcome never the less :-D

[Fuzzyboy]

Silly me - I forgot to read the part about aggro-removal. That's quite nice, I think it'll make them very useful for almost any type of 3+ mob encounter :-)

[Schwarz]

If magma totems is meant to be " formidable AE" then 4 or 5 of them is going to be nuts. I am really excited to see what they have done.

[Fizzler]

Nifty.

I am concerned that they are keeping a close eye on AOE instancing. My brother played a Prot Pally well before they were popular and we were chain pulling instances before it was in. I would hate to see that go away it would definitely affect some of our play styles. I am sure we will adapt either way.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Woot!

[reman]

quoted from GC
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1289...s-changes.html
"I realize buffing totems sounds strange to players who are used to loltotems. One of the designers just made the comment that telling Elemental you are buffing damage totems would be like telling Holy priests we are nerfing CoH and you're expected to area heal with Holy Nova now.

But the change to Magma Totem in particular is substantial. The base points went from 170 to 370 and the coefficient from 0.67 to 1.0. In our tests, the pulses were doing something like 600 damage. You would be hard-pressed to get that kind of increase out of Totem of Wrath, even considering its benefit to the whole raid.

Yes you have to run up, but we don't think that is too much to ask considering you can still Chain Lightning or whatever while the totem does its thing.

Totems are a core piece of the shaman design. We want to make them work, not remove them from the game.
"

Looks like we can drop Fire Nova first for the first round. After it explodes, drop Magma after that for some "serious" AOE.

[heffner]

Interesting. Wonder if I should re-examine my current Spec...

[Schwarz]

One thing that I hope they change is if something is killed by a 4 or 5 nova totems we get XP from it. Do any other classes have AOE that if they only use they don't get XP from?

Wishfull thinking on my part. But you have to think the new magma totem is going to be hot. 600damage every 2 seconds or more like 2400 damage every 2 seconds for people running 4+ shamans. This plus the plan on changing up some talents to give us more damage I think we will be good to go.

[Saevio]

Blizzard should add a glyph that increases the radius of magma totem but decreases it's damage a bit (there would have to be some sort of trade off, otherwise it'd be too powerful).