Shaman Totem Mechanics and PvP

There's a lot of discussion going on about how the Totem mechanics are designed to function. According to MMO-Champion, the devs believe that it's fundementally important to know when and where to drop our totems. I have to say I do agree with this. One of the things that kept drawing me to roll a shaman was the cool totems that I got to throw on the ground. And, if I may play favorites for a moment, I think the Draenei totems look SO much cooler! ^_^

Anyways...

They don't want the range on totems to be so big that it just seems like another raid-wide buff. That defeats the purpose of the totem. Then there's the other issue that it takes too long to set and reset totems. I mentioned this earlier in a fight like Emalon where the tanks CAN take a lot of damage right off the bat. I like the proposed idea of dropping all the totems on one GCD, or perhaps taking totems off the GCD all together.

With regard to wanting totems to be removed from the game, I'll answer with this: roll another class. If you want buffs that will stay on no matter where you are, roll a pally/druid/priest. Except for Tree Form buff and Pally Aura buff, all of those classes don't require a distance minimum. I, for one, like totems and needing to have them set up right. It's another challenge.

PvP.

Burst damage is too high. It's *somewhat* difficult to get decent resilience gear to last in an arena fight. Arenas are too fast....

These are all arguments being made.

1.) Burst Damage - Yes, I feel it's a little too high. As a healer (I do arenas on my 880-resilience disc priest), sometimes you wonder how it's even possible to survive when a 2-dps 2's team blow all their cooldowns on you at once. Although that is smart playing, there needs to be a way to combat it. One match: Trees, Mage Clones, Starfall, Water Elemental....all on me at once. I popped stoneform, PW:S, Pain Suppression, Renew, and my PvP trinket all at once. The only reason I survived is because when we faced them again, I knew it was coming. The first time, I didn't have enough time to react and I was dead in about 3 seconds. As for arenas being too fast. Then there you go. However, I like the adrenaline rush. Otherwise, I'd just go do BGs all day. =)

2.) Gear - Arenas are harder. Hence, better gear should come from them. BGs are easy (and even easier to be a moron in), so why should they potentially give good gear from them? Too often do I step into WSG and while me and a tank are going for the flag while the other 8 people in the BG are in the middle trying to farm honor kills. Unless they can reward more honor or extra marks of honor for actually winning the BG the way it's supposed to be won (helping cap towers, capturing flags, etc). They combatted the AFKing a decent amount, but how can they combat stupidity? Why should someone fighting in the road between Blacksmith and Stables be rewarded the same as me for actually capping those nodes? Unless they make HKs irrelevant unless you're within a certain "buff zone" of the flag.

Burning for Flame Leviathan

I'm a healer. I like to heal. Some people hold issue with the "whack-a-mole" nature of healing, but I prefer to call it the "aggressive reaction" style of healing. Yes, I use Grid. Yes, I tend to keep an eye on Grid more than the actual screen, but isn't that the job of a healer? It's my job to keep a close eye on my raid's health bars to make sure they're topped up at all times.

So, why did I even choose healing? I like the spontaneity of it. I like knowing that without me or the other healers, we don't stand a chance. I've single-healed/two-manned Heigan the Unclean twice. Once with a tank, and the other with a ret pally. The ret pally does have plate, but he was still taking some pretty big hits, not having defense or avoidance ratings. My point is not to say that healers are the Old Gods' gift to the World (of Warcraft), but that we play a really crucial role that is RARELY the same from encounter to encounter. I like dipping back into DPS from time to time, but I really do think Healing is one of the most exciting roles in the game for me. I've done melee dps, I've done caster dps, and I've done healing on two classes. The only "role" I have left to really sink into is tanking.

Last night was my first run at Flame Leviathan with my other guild, Team Sport on Nazjatar. Having never set foot into Ulduar yet, I didn't know what to expect. I knew that tanks and vehicles were involved, but I didn't know that the only opportunity for healing was to role-play a "Last Crusade"-esque Harrison Ford with a Sean Connery in the sidecar of my little chopper (Sorry, Dralo, I know that you thought we were all saying Demolisher). Although I really do enjoy the style of the Leviathan fight, I feel it's a misrepresentation of what's to come. I was kind of disappointed that I really only had 2 spells at my disposal: Sonic Cone or Tar (I believe they're both called). It was a nice little ego boost to down Leviathan, the first boss in Ulduar, but I really wanted to test my real healing skills.

As I said, it's a fun fight, and it's definitely something different, but I was certainly hoping to say the fight was a success thanks to my perfectly-timed nuke-heal saving the day!!

The Blogging Community...

So, I had a conversation with Brigwyn over at The Hunting Lodge about joining more into the blogging community of WoW. As I said in my first post, I haven't really been able to find options when it comes to Shaman blogs. So, here I am. I will be working on getting an RSS feed up so people can follow more closely. I hope to also join the ranks of Twisted Nether at some point. Hopefully my extensive healing background will be sufficient to make a dent over there.

As for now, it's off to work.... and planning my next post...

"Chain Heal" and "Tidal Waves"

http://www.mmo-champion.com has a great way of relaying blue posts from various forums. This is an awesome way to check up on what's going on in the developer/programmer world.

On today's post, we see comments about how the Devs feel about Chain Heal in Ulduar, Mp5 issues, and Tidal Waves when paired with Haste.

Chain Heal in Ulduar - Granted, I haven't been in Ulduar yet, but in AoE pulls across the board, I notice a strong dependency on my Chain Heal. If everyone's dropping at the same rate, spamming CH on the Tank to keep him/her up just isn't enough. At least on my priest I have Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew. Maybe I just need to find other ways to spread the healing around. I'm interested to see how things improve as my gear gets upgraded. At this point, with the Blues saying they don't see a problem with the current state of Chain Heal, I'm not too concerned.

Mp5 Issues - YES YES YES YES! Especially if a lot of other shamans have been having Mp5 concerns, then this is definitely something I'd like to see taken care of. Enhancement Shaman's have a really great Mana Regen skill in Shamanistic Rage, and I'd love to see something like that. Yes, we have Mana Tide totem, but it doesn't hit as hard as it did at the beginning of WotLK. Mana Tide on my priest used to fill my bar almost all the way up, now it does maybe a 1/4 of it. Again, I personally need to work on my own Mp5, as I don't expect to be invincible at my gear level.

Tidal Waves - This is something I hadn't really thought of yet. Tidal Waves does a great job at reducing the cast time of certain healing spells. However, as Haste becomes easier to come by in the higher level gear, Tidal Waves loses it's power. I saw this on my priest. When I would have more haste on my 25naxx gear, my Flash Heal would get pretty fast.. Then, I had the Egg of Mortal Essence, which has a chance to proc an additional 505 haste for 12 seconds. With the amount of haste on my gear, 505 haste really didn't shave too much time off my flash heal. The faster something is, the less haste is going to have an effect. The Blues have said that this is an issue they're going to take a look at, and I'm interested to see how they intend to fix it.

Food for thought.. When do you start grabbing haste? From what I've read and seen, it's one of the last ratings you should aim for.