Mana Spring Totem and Healing Stream Totem possibly not merging!

[Ualaa]

If we eventually reach the point where you can have a maximum of one healing totem and one mana totem, before the other totems are redundant (give a non-stacking benefit), will it become advantageous to move more towards a mixed team.

Tremor seems to pulse on the server clock, regardless of when my team drops the totems.
That is primarily the earth totem I use. Occasionally earthbind too, probably more so if I pvp'd more.
If I add a tank to the mix then Strength of Earth would be one additional useful earth totem.
Even still Tremor + Strength of Earth, two shamans could provide the earth power you'd desire.

For water totems, I go exclusively all health in instances and all mana elsewhere.
Dropping the cure totem as necessary, generally on the active shaman only.
Two shaman's would essentially cover all the water totems that you'd use on a regular basis.

Air totems are usually grounding on all shaman's, but occasionally the wrath of air.
Since each totem protects against a single spell, they effectively stack. The more shammies the more useful air is.

Fire totems still stack nicely with more shamans. You'd only want a single Totem of Wrath.
But searing, magma and fire elementals are extra damage the more shaman's you have in a given composition.



So basically we have Fire - 5 Shammies, Water - 2 Shammies, Air - 5 Shammies, Earth - 2 Shammies, to cover the totem drops which are always useful.
Sure you can argue for Healing Stream + Mana Spring + Disease Cleansing + Poison Cleansing + Fire Resistance for 5 useful water totems.
How often do you drop Disease Cleansing when fighting against non-diseasing animals? I'd say beyond Health/Mana, the others are situational - at least for me.

More then two shammies provides protection from casters and additional aoe.
Going with two different dps, in addition to two shammies as the caster component of a team can add more potentially.
Especially with changes to totems.

I haven't decided what to do with my teams yet.
Basically was working on 4x Elemental Shaman + 1x Prot Paladin & 4x Boomkin Druids + 1x Death Knight.
With a fifth elemental shaman as my raiding toon, who could substitute in for the paladin for battlegrounds.

If my primary team moved from 4x shaman + 1x paladin towards say...
1x paladin tank, 1x discipline healer, 2x Elem. Shaman and maybe 1x Boomkin...
Would the gains of AoE healing (Fort buff), Druid providing (MotW) and dps etc balance against loss of additional fire/air totems, given the water/earth are covered already?
Not really sure yet.

[Perrigrin]

Mmm, I'm getting more and more motivated to level up my druid/priest/mage to swap to a mixed team ...

[Catamer]

a non stacking mana totem is essentially less than completely worthless.
a non stacking healing stream totem would also be worthless.

i mean get real, 33 mana per tick on players that have close to a 15k mana pool is NOTHING, it only became something when you had 4 or 5 of them down.

[shaeman]

Surely you can test the impact of this now to see exactly how you'll be effected.
Have only one shaman drop mana spring when you do your normal instance runs.

At least this way you will know one way or the other whether your team is still viable as is or if you need to look at alternatives
to improve your mana pool, enchants, mana pots etc.

You might just have to tweak casting rotations. So you dont go for max dps - just balance the dps needed to kill the boss with mana usage.

[Taliesin]

a non stacking mana totem is essentially less than completely worthless.
a non stacking healing stream totem would also be worthless.

i mean get real, 33 mana per tick on players that have close to a 15k mana pool is NOTHING, it only became something when you had 4 or 5 of them down

Can't say I agree with your sentiments. 33 mp5 on a priest (mixed quest/heroic geared) with about 200-250 mp5 while casting is a pretty significant increase. A 13-16% increase. I definitely wouldn't call a 13% damage increase "nothing", as a comparison. In heroics, the totem might not be that big of a deal just because the fights should not be taking that long to run the risk of running out of mana. But longer, and healing intensive fights, like Naxx can really put a strain on mana pools. Sure, they currently have 600-700 mp5 while not casting, but that assumes you'll have frequent non-casting periods, which is true for some, but not all fights.

Also keep in mind that mana regen across the board is effectively being targetted by Blizzard in 3.1 for reductions. The totem may not sound like much now, but I think I'm going to appreciate it a whole lot more once spirit gets nerfed on priests. The longer fights are what Blizzard is worrying about. I'm sure this has something to do with all the elite guilds complaining that the game was "easy mode" right now.

Just using priests as one example, as shamans already have intense mp5 while casting, even without totems. If you're just thinking from a shaman standpoint, then I agree that mp5 is hardly even a concern right now.

[Sydwayz]

i dont understand how we can compare a stationary buff that needs to be put down for every fight to a buff that can be applied on the go and remains on the player until purged (which will only be in pvp) or it wears off after 30min. I thought blizzard was try to make shamans totems more useful. It just doesn't make sense. We will just have to wait and see what they do for Shamans in 3.1.

Elemental Shamans in PvP
We are going to implement our Elemental PvP mechanic next build. I'm not sure it will solve every concern you have, but we think it's cool.

[Gares]

This pretty much nerfs any 4X+ Shaman PVE teams into the ground

[Lance]

This pretty much nerfs any 4X+ Shaman PVE teams into the ground

Slight overstatement

[Redbeard]

I was under the impression that on live right now mana spring didnt stack, only healing stream. Guess I was wrong.

Personally Im fine with the change but for the love of good please combine it with healing stream and get rid of that horrible Restorative totems talent (reduce talent cost pls).

Im OK with them removing stacking as long as they buff the abilities that theyre nerfing. We'lll see if that happens.

[Shokz]

I was under the impression that on live right now mana spring didnt stack, only healing stream. Guess I was wrong.

Personally Im fine with the change but for the love of good please combine it with healing stream and get rid of that horrible Restorative totems talent (reduce talent cost pls).

Im OK with them removing stacking as long as they buff the abilities that theyre nerfing. We'lll see if that happens.

Wait, so healing stream doesnt stack either?

EDIT: Lol half asleep missed the *on live* part, thought he was talking about ptr almost had heart failure.