how many totems?

[Mac]

I haven't seen a need to drop a totem that just blows up yet, anyone use Fire Nova ?

Fire nova and magma totems aren't very impressive compared to arcane explosion and the like, but it's the only AoE you have (well, and chain lightning maybe). Sometimes in instances, you will be attacked by a very large group of weak mobs. Drop a stoneclaw totem to distract them (or they will destroy the fire nova). Then as many fire novas as you can... Boom!

It's just a shame you don't get loot/xp from totem kills (unless you tag them all, one by one).

Excellent, thanks for that, It didn't even occur to me that this Fire Nova was in effect an aoe. *smacks head*

I have run into this issue before, when I was leveling a hunter I found out that if I just let the pet kill the mob, and I didn't shoot it, I didn't get to loot it! wtf, its my pet, come on... anyway, as a shaman how do you tag stuff that your going to aoe in the case your going to use a Fire Nova totem to blow them up? I know in many cases waves of many mobs come fast, and in many cases they can drop some good loot, i'd hate to miss out on it, how do you tag them all?

[BobGnarly]

Earthbind, Stoneclaw: If I'm running through an area, and just trying to get from point a to point b and don't want to bother with mobs, if I agro, I'll drop a stoneclaw using round robin on Keyclone, then drop a Earthbind also on round robin , the stoneclaw distracts, and the earthbind slows them allowing me to get enough range to drop out of combat, note: don't stop until your out of combat or you will have to deal with all of them. These two are also helpful for when you pull too many mobs.

Searing: This just ads dps as far as I can tell. I haven't seen a need to drop a totem that just blows up yet, anyone use Fire Nova ?

I haven't observed that: Stoneskin, Strength of Earth, or Fire Nova are not that helpful at this point. At least, I haven't found a use for them yet.

As for macros, keybinds, addons, thanks for the input, I will investigate them. I like your macro ideas Chorizotarian and Magz. I wish I was better at this macro/keybind stuff, its like reading greek to me, but I'm trying to learn, :S I think I see what your doing here to have one key that makes the pali do his thing and the shaman do their thing at the same time allowing for the timing component of judgment.

Stoneskin: Reduces incoming damage, so why not? This is even more important when you pull multiples, which you will do a lot as a paly (or at least I do). It helps.
Strength of Earth: As mentioned, helps tank hold agro.
Fire Nova: I use this sometimes against big groups if my tank goes down. I will use the cycled-earthbind cheese, kite them all over, and time the drops of 4 fire nova totems to aoe the entire group that is following me. If you do it right, it's pretty impressive - and fun.

You gotta get down with the macros to multibox, imo. It's not easy if you don't have a background in this stuff, but take the time and figure it out. It's really the crux of what makes it fun versus an exercise in masochism.

[Atorifan]

This is where I'm at, over 7 days played (I'm a slow learner, and grinding professions near as I can to level cap). I've been doing SM since Thur night or so. On my server, I'm finding a lot of itemselling competition, so the money is more trickling than pouring in. I just put some items in the guild bank, til there's less competition on the Ah, usually a day or three will help. I've the first level mount money already from stripping my mains nearly to 0. So while the epic mount is a big concern, I'll eventually get there.

My 4 sha/pal 5box team works something like this. Pally aggros, consecrates. Shamans drop 4 x nova totems. Then 3x healing and 1x mana(this is generally on 3 mob pulls). Hit the down arrow, my assist macro, shamans do chain lightning x4, usually by this point, nova has gone off. If I remember, I hit seal of justice on pally 'k', sometimes while the shamans do the chain lightning. Sometimes just 'k' for SoJ and 4x lightning bolts. If I can remember, I drop 4x Searing, this really helps clean up on the elites you'll be fighting.

If the mob isn't dead, I hit ';' which launches 4x earth shock, and the pally's judgement button. At some point, I may have had hit f2, and had 5 heals land on the tank. Refresh consecrate, target new mob with pally, and sometimes have the shaman finish off mob(rarely necessary) with a 4x lightning bolt. SWitch to new target, cast chain lightning, try and seal and judge the second mob. So on and so forth.

This is an awful amount of work. I suppose I could make it easier, by adding some of the other totems I have, tremor etc. And for some instances, I just may have to. Key presses are not always my friend, and sometimes I wait for a pally to be healed, while I don't realize f2 didn't get pushed firmly enough. While I may be working against myself, I was able to solo library and armory with a team of 34/35. Cath was just too difficult, mostly the aoe'ing bastard wizards. I did get to the Cath's inner door, but it was pretty plain, I needed to wait. Get all of Herod's gear on my tank. 5 runs for the 4 pieces he needed. One deadman's hand has dropped in about 15 runs.

I typically leave them on follow during most encounters. If I have to pull mobs back to a cleared area, I hit the 'up' button to break follow leaving them in the area I'll be dragging mobs to. Often a mob won't cooperate, and instead of spending time dragging the mob into clones LOS, I just have them do a quick f12, follow, and let them begin casting. If bad goes to worse, I hit the 'down arrow', unbound on shammy's, til they are all in melee range, and melee them down. My mana pool is probably horrible for my level, and I have to do this on occasion. Or I do this just to up weapon skills. I sometimes get a bit blase about sealing justice. This has led to surprise pulls numerous times. Sometimes I've died to a fight of 5 to 7 mobs, but usually I can survive an encounter like that. Or even let the runners chain pull mobs to me. Using the mana stream and melee to eventually wear out all the mobs in one hall or room or area of SM. I'm about 2hrs til 40 on almost all of my toons. There's probably way better techniques. But I've surprised myself with what I've done in this caveman fashion, so far.

While this is rather long, I'd recommend opening with consecrate, this tags all mobs, then the nova and follow up with searing to do a much faster aoe kill. Assuming my pally can handle a big group pull of 10+ mobs, w/o dying. the consecrate + nova combo will really prove a huge grinding tool for you, follow up with searing. If I read magma, I might add that to the mix. Of course, none of those fire totems work on all mobs, but most aren't fire immune. Make sure to run around with full prot pally, and max righteous fury, it seems to make consecrate always overcome nova threat, til it goes off. Then it's rather amusing to see the mobs attack 'spent' totems. They always go back to the pally, as he's usually cast the 2nd consecrate by then. I've probably lost 3 mobs to the nova totems, as in not able to loot them. I imagine that doing this as a multiboxer will really draw some heat, as the nova totems don't make it necessary for me to really bang much on non-elites. And, max your fire totem talents, assuming an elemental build. I also farmed them 4 illusionary rods, int/sta and crit strike. That seems the best weapon, as they operate as mages in mail at this point(nearly in mail). This may be a terrible injustice and great naivete on my part. But it also seems to work well for me. They will eventually have the whitemane's capeau, as being the dps, like a healer, they don't need the most mega armor. That's what the tank is for, and the clones will rarely be hit. Since you also have a pally, make sure to put righteous defense on a closeby button. I typically have poor observation on clones' health, and pretty much panic when I notice one near death. But righteous has saved a shaman or two. Often this happens, and I just finish it with 3 shamans. This 4 of 5 box team also happens when I don't notice one has broke follow, and then one shaman is just sitting back, buffing her nails, dropping useless totems completely out of combat d'oh! I hope this of some use, since we're running the same team (mostly in a 'what not to do' way :P)

[Blokus]

I have run into this issue before, when I was leveling a hunter I found out that if I just let the pet kill the mob, and I didn't shoot it, I didn't get to loot it! wtf, its my pet, come on...

Nerfed a long time ago. Getting XP from a pet-only kill can be exploited by putting your pet on aggressive, letting it kill anything that comes close, and walking away from your PC while your character gains XP unattended.

[suicidesspyder]

Ok ive been reading all this now to set my totems to get one step closer to being set. Ive only done pve totems atm so this is what i got to:
toon one button 4
/castsequence reset=15 earthbind totem, searing totem, healing stream totem, windfury totem
toon one button 5 totemic recall

all other toons are staggered on earth water and air fire to them all ends out searing for the added dps and later on for the elemental nothing like 5 shamana and 5 elementals right

Im thinking for pvp to do almost the same thing but heres the thing in pvp ur gonna get attacked more with poisons and diseases so should i put those on two shamans water and the other three use healing or no

[Ualaa]

For PvE, you'll generally use no totems and just blow stuff up.
This is because you have Water Shield on each of your casters.
One nuke or maybe two per shaman, is all that is needed to kill your target.
You use almost no mana with several toons.

For more difficult mobs you'd definitely employ a castsequence for each shaman.
You might have more then one setup of these.
For example, in an instance you'll have Stoneclaw totem to deal with adds... Perhaps two on a click, and two on another click.
But outdoors, Stoneclaw is a pretty useless totem to be in a cast sequence.

Some totems are very important, and you'll want to access them immediately.
They can appear in your cast sequence, but you'll want to be able to get them now.. without needing to go through the sequence.
Typically this will include:
- All groundings now.
- Staggered drop of Tremors.
- Fire/Earth Elementals.
- Mana or Healing Totems.
- Cure Totems.

Your sequence should include a reset command, which will reset the sequence after a certain time period.
This allows you to dump one or two totems per shaman, without dropping number three or four.
Or if one shaman is stunned or otherwise unable to drop a totem, the sequence will re-sync shortly.
I like reset=12, but you can use reset=target (resets when you change target) or reset=combat (resets when combat ends) or even reset=modifier key (resets when macro is clicked with the modifier key) or any combination.
You might have Mana Spring as the first totem in each shaman's sequence in your PvE set. So one click only, is mana totems.
A PvE sequence might be:
--- Mana, Grounding, Tremor, Searing
--- Mana, Tremor, Grounding, Searing
--- Mana, Grounding,, Searing
--- Mana, Grounding,, Searing
The fourth click is searing totems, so when you don't want adds three clicks gets your non-aggressive pulling totems out, and a fourth click gets totems that will pull anything nearby for you. If you have Wrath of Air or Totem of Wrath, for PvE they'll be in your rotation for sure.

With four shaman's, your tremor will be
--- /castsequence Tremor,,,
--- /castsequence ,Tremor,,
--- /castsequence ,,Tremor,
--- /castsequence ,,,Tremor

You'll definitely want this on an easy to reach key. You might put two Tremors in a normal cast sequence.
But even if you do, you'll want this too.
Basically the Global Cooldown on totem drops is 1 second.
So with a Fire/Water/Air/Earth, four totems dropped per shaman.. each totem is about 1 second after the last.
Tremor pulses every 2 seconds.. so the best you'll get is a pulse every second in a castsequence.
But with the above macro, on say 4... you can mash 4 quickly (ideally 4 presses over 2 seconds), so Tremor pulses every half-second.

You'll want to drop all Groundings on a key, just for when you have casters against you.

A cure-set might be...
--- /castsequence reset=10 Poison Cleansing Totem, Disease Cleansing Totem
--- /castsequence reset=10 Poison Cleansing Totem, Disease Cleansing Totem
--- /castsequence reset=10 Disease Cleansing Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem
--- /castsequence reset=10 Disease Cleansing Totem, Poison Cleansing Totem
The first click cures two poisons and two diseases from the whole party.
The second click cures two more of each.
Third will be two more again, as the sequence is over and it will start at the beginning.
If you don't need to cure something *now*, just leaving a single click will gradually cleanse you of poisons/diseases every few seconds.