Shaman Totems vs Paladin Blessings

[Yurup]

A couple of quick notes before bed. I work with a 'set' roster of 4 pallies. On any given raid night, one or two may not be there. If I can get 3-4 pallies on my raid, I consider myself lucky from a class balance perspective. The situation has eased some of late, as we've had some more folks come up the ranks, but there were raids I've gone on without a pally around at all. The Avarice ARP site lists 15 'active' pallies, in that they've raided at least once in the last three months. Of those, I look over the list and find that there are TWO that are regulars, that's it.

I know those two enjoy their role. I know of a new main, and a hunter with a pally alt who seem to enjoy the role of a pally.

4 of 15 actually ENJOY and want to play their pally. The rest tend to bring another alt, or just not raid if they can't not bring their pally.

As a raid leader, and not a RL of an "uberguild", I don't force people to raid on toons they don't want to.

Most often, my raids have 2 pallies, and those two are working their butts off doing the best they can, keeping 40 people buffed to the nines, and spot healing in between.

Not really a "shortage" I suppose, but certainly not an excess, either.

Thats pretty weird.. On the europe server, earthen ring. We have about 20 paladins signing up for MC. Paladins are the one thing we never have a short suply off.

[vor_lord]

Question: Can you stack effects from the same "element" with multiple shaman?

Yes.

Can you get Windfury and Tranquil Air, and Grace of Air with two shamans in a group?

With three shamans yes, two shamans no (all three are air totems).

The effects of individual totems outclasses the effects of blessings.

Total them up and see... I'm not so sure, but maybe I haven't thought about it long enough. TA < BoS always, SoE + GoA + WF > BoK + BoM for melee DPS but not by a huge amount... or is it? Mana spring + mana tide < BoW + JoW.

Couple that with the continuing mana cost, limited life span, and immobility and I still don't see it approaching what the paladin can do.

I believe the game code doesn't support it well. There are no friendly effects that are AoE based to my knowledge, they are all party-based (with a range). Seems a trivial thing to add but who knows how their code works.


edit: Thought about it some more... with paladins you only get one per pally. With shamans with "raid totems" you could get 4 per shaman, one earth, one fire, one air, and one water. Even so... not sure it'd be overpowered.

[Skandranon]

Is there any reason not to allow raid totems? How much do you raiders think it would actually effect things? Would it be enough to make you feel more useful even if not at the same level as paladins?

Raid totems would be horrifically unbalancing. I don't think anyone can objectively argue the fact that Horde currently have it worse in end-game. It's obvious that a solution should be implemented. But raid-wide totems are not that.

To illustrate: Mana Spring is 5 mana/sec for one minute for the group (ideally, five mana users). Five mana per second is 25 mana every 5 seconds. Blessing of Wisdom, fully improved and ranked, is 40 mana every five seconds. The edge goes to Alliance, clearly: every caster can get a Blessing whereas some mana users may miss out on Spring depending on group composition. Mana Tide can make it a little smaller of a gap, but in any encounter where Judgment of Wisdom can be applied, Alliance mages and warlocks gain an enormous benefit.

With raid-wide totems, however, five shaman dropping mana springs would provide an incredible 125 mana every 5 seconds to every caster in the raid. This doesn't just balance Blessing of Wisdom, it crushes it, delivering over three times the regeneration. Every mana tide shaman increases the rate by an additional 18 1/3 mp5. Should all five shaman be Tide specced, the rate would rise to 216 2/3 mp5, well over five times the regen Blessing of Wisdom could offer. At some point, rates could rise to the point where Horde players could not conceivably run out of mana in a raid environment, and that would be far more of a balance issue than the current state happens to be.

There's no point removing one imbalance only to introduce another one that's enormously worse. Nerfing totems so they stack to a reasonable amount won't help either, since then it'll be useless in any situations outside of raids, as well as being too weak with too few shaman and too strong with too many. I don't think that there's going to be an easy solution to fix totems.

[oldmandennis]

<snip sillyness>

With raid-wide totems, however, five shaman dropping mana springs would provide an incredible 125 mana every 5 seconds to every caster in the raid.

<snip sillyness>

No same totems stack. And no mana regen totems stack - tide, spring, and the trinket, pick the most powerful.

The question is, would it be unbalancing to allow 3 players to supply the totems to the whole raid, allowing two more useful classes to be subed in? And it is pretty rare to have more then one shaman in a group, having all your melee with WF and GoA would be a substantial boost to the horde.

[MongoJerry]

Total them up and see... I'm not so sure, but maybe I haven't thought about it long enough. TA < BoS always, SoE + GoA + WF > BoK + BoM for melee DPS but not by a huge amount... or is it? Mana spring + mana tide < BoW + JoW.

And don't forget that BoK is also giving extra health to every player in the Alliance raid. Also, BoK increases casters' (and hunters!) mana pools and gives them all a boost to their spirit for even more mana regen.

With raid-wide totems, however, five shaman dropping mana springs would provide an incredible 125 mana every 5 seconds to every caster in the raid. This doesn't just balance Blessing of Wisdom, it crushes it, delivering over three times the regeneration. Every mana tide shaman increases the rate by an additional 18 1/3 mp5. Should all five shaman be Tide specced, the rate would rise to 216 2/3 mp5, well over five times the regen Blessing of Wisdom could offer. At some point, rates could rise to the point where Horde players could not conceivably run out of mana in a raid environment, and that would be far more of a balance issue than the current state happens to be.

There's no point removing one imbalance only to introduce another one that's enormously worse. Nerfing totems so they stack to a reasonable amount won't help either, since then it'll be useless in any situations outside of raids, as well as being too weak with too few shaman and too strong with too many. I don't think that there's going to be an easy solution to fix totems.

Straw man arguement. When people suggest raid-wide totems, they don't mean that a given player would get the same effect from multiple totems. That is, a player wouldn't get the effect of five mana springs at once any more than a given player can have five or more Blessings of Wisdom on him or her. People are simply suggesting that if a shaman drops a buff totem, say, a mana spring totem, then anyone in the raid within a 20 yard radius would get an extra 10 mana/5. Extra mana spring totems in the area would not have an additional effect on the player. That's it.

Mana Tide should probably not be raid wide. I would agree that that would be overpowered. But buff totems like Mana Spring, the new nerfed Windfury, Grace of Air, and Strength of Earth should be. Mana Spring should probably be buffed a little, too, while we're at it.

The question is, would it be unbalancing to allow 3 players to supply the totems to the whole raid, allowing two more useful classes to be subed in? And it is pretty rare to have more then one shaman in a group, having all your melee with WF and GoA would be a substantial boost to the horde.

In real world raid encounters, players can't stand in a nice 20-yard radius ball and get all the totem servicing they need. At the minimum, you'd need some shaman to go forward and provide totems for the melee and some shaman to stay back and provide totems for ranged classes. That's just for dumb "tank, heal the tank, kill the boss" encounters. Almost all new encounters are not like that. They usually involve some sort of spreading out or working in small sub-group teams or moving constantly from place to place. You'd definitely need more than three shaman to fulfill all the buffing roles.

The one hitch I see to raid-wide totems is how can you make the Tranquil Air affect melee dps players but not the tanks in the area? Somehow, a tank needs to be able to select that he or she does not want the Tranquil Air effect.

[Rinnhart]

Yes.
With three shamans yes, two shamans no (all three are air totems).

Sorry, neglected to change it when I added GoA to the post.

Total them up and see... I'm not so sure, but maybe I haven't thought about it long enough. TA < BoS always,

Yeah, but only because it's a recent addition.

SoE + GoA + WF > BoK + BoM for melee DPS but not by a huge amount... or is it?

Melee; no clue. Does windfury effect ranged attacks? GoA > Kings for hunters.

Mana spring + mana tide < BoW + JoW.

True- BUT, if it were a raid group effect you could drop more totems while the previous ones were on cooldown. The mana regeneration of a manatide totem = nearly the same as a full duration five minute BoW (At least, that's how it worked out last time I looked at the numbers) in only a few seconds.

Couple that with the continuing mana cost, limited life span, and immobility and I still don't see it approaching what the paladin can do.

I believe the game code doesn't support it well. There are no friendly effects that are AoE based to my knowledge, they are all party-based (with a range). Seems a trivial thing to add but who knows how their code works.

Holy Nova. Given how many AE effects the game tosses around at any time, it seems very trivial. The limited duration would require some management, but really, raid totems would just become another aspect of raid positioning; which is already something any decent raid guild should have a clue about.

edit: Thought about it some more... with paladins you only get one per pally. With shamans with "raid totems" you could get 4 per shaman, one earth, one fire, one air, and one water. Even so... not sure it'd be overpowered.

THAT is my big issue with the idea. And a lone paladin in a small group can still only give one blessing. Shamans can dump totems until they turn blue, the paladin still has to pick a single buff. A raid group with a shortage of paladins loses out on alot, too.

Remove the one blessing limitation and give shamans raid effects. Everyone's happy (except the priests and shamans who have to mash purge once or twice more).

It is a class balance issue, and something does need to be given to paladins if shamans get a defining edge.

Overall, however, I see it as moot. There's the occasions where paladins would be great, and the occasions where a raid would kill for a shaman, but alliance and horde guilds are still competitive with eachother on servers with a fair population balance.

[MongoJerry]

Melee; no clue. Does windfury effect ranged attacks? GoA > Kings for hunters.

Windfury does not affect ranged attacks. The current Windfury + SoE is slightly better than BoK + BoM for melee dps, but also keep in mind that you can't use poisons or other temporary weapon enchants and Windfury at the same time. If it's a fight where Alliance players choose to use sharpening or weight stones, then the advantage is negated. With the new nerfed windfury, Windfury+SoE will be worse than Bok + BoM for melee dps. And that's even assuming that you're in a group with a shaman and that the encounter does not require moving around. Plus, BoK gives more life. Also, paladins can give their auras to their parties on top of their blessings.

Regarding hunters, GoA <<<<<<<<< BoK + BoW + JoW. Way way way worse. Horde hunters put up far less dps than Alliance hunters, because Horde hunters have to spend much more time drinking in the middle of combat. The hunter is the class that benefits the most from paladin blessings vs shaman buffs.

True- BUT, if it were a raid group effect you could drop more totems while the previous ones were on cooldown. The mana regeneration of a manatide totem = nearly the same as a full duration five minute BoW (At least, that's how it worked out last time I looked at the numbers) in only a few seconds.

Mana tide is it's own item. First of all, for all that Alliance players like to point it out, most shaman don't get it. Of the eight shaman in my guild, only one has it. Second, it's not really a buff totem with it's short duration. I'd have no problem keeping it as a party-only item, while letting the true buff totems become raid-wide.

Holy Nova. Given how many AE effects the game tosses around at any time, it seems very trivial.

Holy Nova heals raid-wide? That's news to me.

THAT is my big issue with the idea. And a lone paladin in a small group can still only give one blessing. Shamans can dump totems until they turn blue, the paladin still has to pick a single buff. A raid group with only a shortage of paladins loses out on alot, too.

Shamans would still have to drop totems mid-fight, taking away their precious mana and combat time while doing so. This is particularly important for those many fights that require moving around. Also, totems have a limited range, so to ensure coverage, raids will need to bring many shaman. Finally, as noted above, many of the most useful totems are in the same Air tree, so you still would need multiple shaman for that.

[Monkey]

The one hitch I see to raid-wide totems is how can you make the Tranquil Air affect melee dps players but not the tanks in the area? Somehow, a tank needs to be able to select that he or she does not want the Tranquil Air effect.

The solution isn't to make all existing totems raid-wide but to give the shaman raids options like Greater Blessings. Just add a number of "Raid Totem" spells, we'll call them "Storm Totems". Trainable at level 60, no reagent, and you can't overlap Storm Totems. Shooting from the hip with some numbers to show the concept:

Earth Storm Totem: 1/2 Strength of Earth to all raid/party members within 20 yards
Mana Storm Totem: 1/2 Mana Spring to all raid/party members within 20 yards
Air Storm Totem: 1/2 Gift of Air to all raid/party members within 20 yards

The reason for the 1/2 modifier is that I think regular totems should still work inside the party. Also, this makes these totems, just like Greater Blessings, a complete PvE spell--you'd never choose to drop a 1/2 GoA in PvP when you can drop the full thing, or drop Windfury. Whether that should be 1/2 or 1/3 or whatever is something that Blizzard's multi-million-dollar dev team can work out for themselves.

Edit: The nicest part about this idea is that it's easy to slowly scale it up. Blizzard can always add additional Storm Totems. If they made all existing totems raid-wide, they'd probably have to nerf it back.

[Mirajj]

Trainable at level 60, no reagent, and you can't overlap Storm Totems.

Why no reagent? The most useful party/class sized buffs (Fort and Greater Blessings) require reagents. Something 'raid sized' would require an 'equivilant' reagent, I'm thinking.

[vor_lord]

Why no reagent? The most useful party/class sized buffs (Fort and Greater Blessings) require reagents. Something 'raid sized' would require an 'equivilant' reagent, I'm thinking.

They also last 15 minutes (minimum for paladin blessings). Totem durations are much much shorter.

[Mavfin]

Raid totems would be horrifically unbalancing. I don't think anyone can objectively argue the fact that Horde currently have it worse in end-game. It's obvious that a solution should be implemented. But raid-wide totems are not that.

To illustrate: Mana Spring is 5 mana/sec for one minute for the group (ideally, five mana users). Five mana per second is 25 mana every 5 seconds. Blessing of Wisdom, fully improved and ranked, is 40 mana every five seconds. The edge goes to Alliance, clearly: every caster can get a Blessing whereas some mana users may miss out on Spring depending on group composition. Mana Tide can make it a little smaller of a gap, but in any encounter where Judgment of Wisdom can be applied, Alliance mages and warlocks gain an enormous benefit.

With raid-wide totems, however, five shaman dropping mana springs would provide an incredible 125 mana every 5 seconds to every caster in the raid. This doesn't just balance Blessing of Wisdom, it crushes it, delivering over three times the regeneration. Every mana tide shaman increases the rate by an additional 18 1/3 mp5. Should all five shaman be Tide specced, the rate would rise to 216 2/3 mp5, well over five times the regen Blessing of Wisdom could offer. At some point, rates could rise to the point where Horde players could not conceivably run out of mana in a raid environment, and that would be far more of a balance issue than the current state happens to be.

There's no point removing one imbalance only to introduce another one that's enormously worse. Nerfing totems so they stack to a reasonable amount won't help either, since then it'll be useless in any situations outside of raids, as well as being too weak with too few shaman and too strong with too many. I don't think that there's going to be an easy solution to fix totems.

Same totems don't stack. 5 Shamans could conceivably drop *every* available buff totem, but the raid could *only* get one of each. The only reason to drop multiple mana tides would be to cover the whole raid if it was spread out some. Or multiple SoE, or WF, or GoA, or Stoneskin, whatever.

[lemekim]

THAT is my big issue with the idea. And a lone paladin in a small group can still only give one blessing. Shamans can dump totems until they turn blue, the paladin still has to pick a single buff. A raid group with a shortage of paladins loses out on alot, too.

Paladins also get auras and judgements, you can't just leave them out. Plus, even in 5 man groups, you can tailor your blessings to suit the person you are casting it on. Do you really think that the Priest/Mage in the group is benefitting from the Windfury/Strength of Earth totems that Shaman gave to Warrior/Rogue? Fire totems don't even give any really useful buffs in a 5-man situation, so you are down to 3 totems maximum already, and any particular person in the group will benefit from a maximum of 2 totems... Which is incidently similar to what Paladins can provide (not counting judgements) - up to 2 buffs in a 5 man situation. And you cannot discount how much more mana efficient and easier to maintain Paladin blessings/auras are - that advantage does not just dissapear when you look at 5 man groups.



What needs to be done to totems? Taking into consideration the Windfury totem nerf, the following would balance out most fights in one way or another. Make raid version of a few totems - 100 yard range, 5 minute duration, destroyable (and of course, non-stackable):

- Grace of Air
- Windfury totem
- Strength of Earth
- Stoneskin Totem
- Mana Spring
- Healing Spring
- Mana Tide (yes, Mana Tide - I will explain)

And no Tranquil Air, yeap (it is nearly impossible to make it a raid version - but with other totems applicable to the whole raid, Horde can tailor their groups to provide Tranquil Air as needed!). Does that seem overpowered? It's not. Compared to an Alliance raid, Horde will now have some advantages and disadvantages:

- Alliance will still have have higher life/mana/spirit
- Alliance will still have tanks with higher mitigation (1k more armor is far, far superior to Stoneskin totem)
- Alliance will still have better aggro control
- Paladins will still be the most efficient healers
- Horde will have better mana regeneration (this is why you need raid-wide Mana Tida totem - without it, Horde's Mana Regeneration would be about equal, without having higher efficiency of Alliance - and we did say we want Horde to have at least some advantage).
- DPS... I think it will be close enough to call this point moot (Horde melee will lose some DPS because of Windfury totem nerf, but will gain some because they will also get Grace of Air now).

I know this might not be the best solution, but I had to put it out there for one reason - to show that even if Horde raid members can get every single useful totem buff (pretty much the ones listed above), it will not be overpowered compared to what Alliance currently get. And this will have no real effect on 5-man groups, where Paladins are at their weakest.

[KiloVictor]

What needs to be done to totems? Taking into consideration the Windfury totem nerf, the following would balance out most fights in one way or another. Make raid version of a few totems - 100 yard range, 5 minute duration, destroyable (and of course, non-stackable):

- Grace of Air
- Windfury totem
- Strength of Earth
- Stoneskin Totem
- Mana Spring
- Healing Spring
- Mana Tide (yes, Mana Tide - I will explain)

The best idea that I've heard so far is to make "Raid Totems" which work like Lightwell. Let the shaman cast Raid Totems that live for 5 minutes and apply their buff to any raid member that clicks on it. That way the totem buff gets applied across the raid just like pally buffs.

Each shaman would still be limited to dropping one Raid Totem for each element, so if you want to apply GoA, WF, and TAT to the raid you still need to bring three shaman. You could limit players to selecting one buff per element (i.e., they can't get both GoA and WF) but lemekim does an excellent job of demonstrating why that's not balanced, so I'd suggest it's balanced if they can pick up as many buffs as there are raid totems to click on.

Poof, problem solved.

Kv

[Monkey]

They also last 15 minutes (minimum for paladin blessings). Totem durations are much much shorter.

Yeah, I really wanted to preserve the differences between totems and blessings. The mechanics of a paladin and a shaman are very different in a 5-man and they should be in a raid, too. That's why my suggested range is only 20 yards and why it's not all totems, just some of the DPS and mana buffing ones. That allows the raid to benefit without taking away the choices about which group to put the shaman in, where he should stand, what he should wear.

This probably means that alliance is still easier when raiding the current content, but because the factions are not identical, every encounter is going to be easier for one side or the other. The long-term solution (once totems can reach more people) is to design equal numbers of pro-alliance and pro-horde encounters.

[Skandranon]

The only reason to drop multiple mana tides would be to cover the whole raid if it was spread out some.

Not quite. Same totems don't stack, fine: the result is a baseline 25 mp5 from one mana spring. That doesn't mean that shaman can't drop Mana Tides end-to-end to get the most out of their cooldowns. Inside five minutes, five shaman dropping five mana tides chained end-to-end generate 5800 mana for the raid; losing 60 seconds of Spring (300 mana) to get it.

Across five minutes, each caster would get 116 2/3 mp5. It's not as crazy as the numbers in my original post, but it's still about three times what Blessing of Wisdom offers. Plus, the four shaman not with Spring or Tide out at any time can throw in Fire Resistance, Healing Stream, Poison Cleansing, whatever.

[Kevin]

Windfury does not affect ranged attacks. The current Windfury + SoE is slightly better than BoK + BoM for melee dps, but also keep in mind that you can't use poisons or other temporary weapon enchants and Windfury at the same time. If it's a fight where Alliance players choose to use sharpening or weight stones, then the advantage is negated. With the new nerfed windfury, Windfury+SoE will be worse than Bok + BoM for melee dps. And that's even assuming that you're in a group with a shaman and that the encounter does not require moving around. Plus, BoK gives more life. Also, paladins can give their auras to their parties on top of their blessings.

Right but nerfed Windfury + GoA + SoE > BoK + BoM easily. GoA scales for melee DPS as well, fully ranked and talented it's 88 agi which is over 4% crit for a warrior and 3% crit for a rogue. Crit scales with weapon damage. Windfury scales with weapon damage. SoE and BoM don't. Kings scales with gear as well but right now even with the scaling it's not as strong. You have consider that with raid wide totems the melee DPS will have all 3. And at least in the older dungeons (MC and BWL and even parts of AQ40) you can learn where to put Tranquil air so that it hits the melee DPS but not the tank becuase those are static positioning fights and you can play with the location to get it to work, I have to assume the group would be able to get it so that melee DPS can raise the damage cieling by 20% so that the extra damage matters. Still a lower cieling but I'm not sure that matters.

If you want to look at the mostly irrelevant totems and blessings stoneskin + healing stream ~ blessing of sanctuary + judgement of light. Since healing stream will get benefit from +healing the damage reduction (I don't count either of those as healing, I count them as damage reduction) is pretty much equal. But those combos don't really matter that much in most raid situations. Though horde would have that little addition all the time and alliance wouldn't because not a lot of paladins spec to blessing of sanctuary, but that doesn't really matter either.

The question of getting the judgement up and keeping it up alliance side seems pretty irrelevant. You can apply it from a decent range and it is safe to assume that you will have one or two paladins with 3/3 lasting judgement meaning it stays for 40 seconds even if the paladin can't get up there and swing.

Regarding hunters, GoA <<<<<<<<< BoK + BoW + JoW. Way way way worse. Horde hunters put up far less dps than Alliance hunters, because Horde hunters have to spend much more time drinking in the middle of combat. The hunter is the class that benefits the most from paladin blessings vs shaman buffs.

Cutting edge encounters, I can agree, easily. Older stuff (after you are geared really well for it) I don't always agree. I've got a horde hunter and when we first started MC I had to drink in most boss fights or deal DPS without using mana. Now my mana pool nearly always lasts the whole encounter even going all out, and a demonic rune is generally enough mana back to get me to the end. This is mostly because we know the encounters better and because as we gear up more our raid DPS is better and the encounter finishes faster. I also know that BoW + JoW does not prevent an alliance hunter from having to FD and drink. It does extend the mana pool a fair bit but I'm not sure it extends it enough.

I'm not sure on what the proc rate of JoL is, I would believe 50% though. Rhok is 2.9 speed. 15% speed quiver is 2.5. So that makes it easy to figure out as 59 mana/5. Blessing of wisdom is 40 mana/5. That puts you at 99 mana/5.

I figure you stay at the fully buffed totems so I'm getting 88 agi from the totem. Current gear I would get 36 agi from kings + a slightly extended mana pool. So I'm up by 52 agi which is 104 AP and 1% crit. So 7 DPS from AP and in my gear that crit would be at least 1 more DPS more likely 2. I can go about 110 seconds till OOM (I do get some base regen in in the shot rotation). So in any fight that lasts 110 seconds or less. I win. Longer fights I will lose but by how much? MC, BWL time from start to end, yeah I'm covered for most of those. A demonic rune can extend that time to drink by at least 20 seconds more though I admit you can't always take the life hit for that even as a hunter.

In that 110 seconds the alliance hunter would be getting 2178 mana back. That + more regen would be another 40 seconds or so before needing to drink. So were I alliance I would have to drink about every 150 seconds vs every 110 seconds. I put out 780 or so more damage in my 110 seconds. So in fights that last 110 - 150 seconds I lose. In fights that last 150-220 seconds I'm back to winning again because we both had to drink once. And while the alliance hunter won't have to drink as long (thanks to the other regen going on) I'm not going to worry about that.

Any fight that goes over 330 seconds I should lose since there won't be anymore windows of we both drank the same amount of time. Those will all be I had to drink more.

And really that math is very rough. The fight can probably be shorter than 5.5 minutes to swing the advantage alliance side. But really that is what you need to do, on a basic level, to see who gets more for the buffs. This is of course assuming the hunter has a shaman. And to be fair I should put at least mana spring (not tide that tide shaman won't be in with hunters). Again assuming the hunter gets a shaman (they go to tanks, melee and healers before they go to hunters for us). That would just change the windows of drinking and slide things out a little farther. Just redo the calcs with alliance getting 74 mana/5 more (since mana spring is 25 mana/5) and you should be close enough. Hmm I also didn't factor in the larger mana pool from BoK.

Raid wide totems would simply ensure that all hunters got GoA and mana spring. We still lose out the longer the fight goes and win as long as the fight is shorter than base mana or 1 or 2 drink cycles will get you. We don't scale as well though. The crit from GoA is a scaling factor, but hunters are able to push 600 agi without buffs (maybe more) which starts to make kings close the DPS gap even more.

Tranquil air, like blessing of salvation still pretty much doesn't matter as both alliance and horde hunters will be using FD for aggro control. It only matters if you get crit strings at bad times or if an FD is resisted.



What about caster DPS with raid wide? All casters would get mana spring and tranquil air (agian I figure you can learn the positioning to keep tanks out of it). Healing stream is probably going to be > Judgement of light for damage mitigation on a caster, it's 35 healing/5 and seal of light at 61 per proc 50% proc rate is 30.5 for a 2.5 second cast spell. Healing stream does get some benefit from the +healing on the shaman too. Does that matter much? I doubt it. The damage cieling is 10% lower, and the mana pools are still smaller (25 mana/5 vs 40).


If you let the resist totems be raid wide, or the cleansing totems be raid wide that could cause problems. Paladins don't give the whole raid 60 fire or frost resist. Raid wide totems would let a couple shaman (consider range on the totems) do that though. Those would have to stay party. Same with the cleansing totems. They already give some advantage in ZG and AQ20 (and yes you have to think about those places and think about groups that aren't in MC and BWL purples being in there). I also agree that mana tide should stay party only and get a buff even as a party only totem as it is only 1160 mana over the course of 12 seconds and with the 5 minute cooldown that is really only 19 mana/5. Yes I am saying that mana tide when considered over the long haul is in fact worse mana/5 than mana spring if you only use one or the other, which of course is not what you do. Since you can only have one or the other down you do spring and then tide when it is up so it's just a "kick" to the rate. Use them both and you actually should end up getting 43.3 mana per 5 (In the 300 second window you get 288 seconds of mana spring at 5 mana per second and 12 seconds of mana tide at 96 2/3 mana per second for a total of 2600 mana / 3000 seconds or 43.3 mana/5).


Keep the resist, cleanse, and mana tide totems party only and even with raid totems 5 paladins out buff 5 shaman. I think one shaman could out buff 1 paladin though. 25 mana/5 for every that gets in the range (and I'll assume 30 yards, I'll assume they have the resto talent), 88 agi (this is a raid shaman 12 points in enhancement for the totem buff is like 11 points in prot for a pally to get blessing of kings) for everyone and I take that over windfury because when looking at all physical DPS classes it will help the raid more), 88 str for everyone as well. Of course the agi might not be there and you place it so that much of your ranged DPS at least can get benefit from it. A single paladin could not do that. But I think if you look at 2 pallies and 2 shaman that pretty much goes away.

I didn't talk about blessing of light because with healing way in the game now it is pretty much irrelavant too. It only made flash of light comparable to lesser healing wave in raid situations and healing way will actually make healing wave better than holy light in a raid. Paladins still have more longevity though, so the healing issue isn't that big of a deal. Shaman burst better, paladins last longer. I think the healing sides are pretty fair while being different.


Yeah I think some raid totems would be good. Since only one totem of that type can affect a person (I can't have mana tide and mana spring on me at the same time) more shaman placing the same totem only affects the range. Totems are still harder to use and in most cases even with being able to get more totem effects on people are not going to really be all that imbalanced.

[Kevin]

Not quite. Same totems don't stack, fine: the result is a baseline 25 mp5 from one mana spring. That doesn't mean that shaman can't drop Mana Tides end-to-end to get the most out of their cooldowns. Inside five minutes, five shaman dropping five mana tides chained end-to-end generate 5800 mana for the raid, and you don't even lose mana spring regen since one of the shaman with Tide on cooldown has Spring up.

Across five minutes, each caster would get 121 2/3 mp5. It's not as crazy as the numbers in my original post, but it's still three times what Blessing of Wisdom offers. Plus, the three shaman not with Spring or Tide out at any time can throw in Fire Resistance, Healing Stream, Poison Cleansing, whatever.

Right and most people don't disagree with you. See my long post that I was making while you posted this, I don't think mana tide should be anything but a party buff, just like auras. The 121 2/3 mp5 for all casters is too much, even if you consider that for a hunter with Rhok they get around 99 mana/5 when you look at Blessing of Wisdom + Judgement of Wisdom. And that number is smaller if the JoW proc is lower than 50%. I don't know what that number actually is. Casters get even less. Healers get even less than casters.

I'm not going to argue against the 5 shaman with mana tide. While most horde raids don't have 5 shaman with mana tide you have consider that they easily could and what that will do. A 5 minute fight with that much more mana to work with is a huge deal. So as mentioned you don't make a raid wide mana spring totem. Greater Blessings are not automatic you have to train them, it is reasonable to assume that you would have to train raid totems.

You essentially set it up so that some totems are equivalent to blessings and some totems are equivalent to auras.

And no Tranquil Air, yeap (it is nearly impossible to make it a raid version - but with other totems applicable to the whole raid, Horde can tailor their groups to provide Tranquil Air as needed!).

I'm not sure on this. As I said I think you could make a raid waide tranquil air and make it work for all of MC, BWL and what I've seen of AQ40. Sure you likely wouldn't have it on the trash mobs at all, but who cares? Of course leaving it party only and making the groups to take advantage of it, just like the auras is fine. Different mechanics to get the same results. I can live with that.

[MongoJerry]

I'm not sure on what the proc rate of JoL is, I would believe 50% though. Rhok is 2.9 speed. 15% speed quiver is 2.5. So that makes it easy to figure out as 59 mana/5. Blessing of wisdom is 40 mana/5. That puts you at 99 mana/5.

I figure you stay at the fully buffed totems so I'm getting 88 agi from the totem. Current gear I would get 36 agi from kings + a slightly extended mana pool. So I'm up by 52 agi which is 104 AP and 1% crit. So 7 DPS from AP and in my gear that crit would be at least 1 more DPS more likely 2. I can go about 110 seconds till OOM (I do get some base regen in in the shot rotation). So in any fight that lasts 110 seconds or less. I win. Longer fights I will lose but by how much? MC, BWL time from start to end, yeah I'm covered for most of those. A demonic rune can extend that time to drink by at least 20 seconds more though I admit you can't always take the life hit for that even as a hunter.

You assume that the hunter is only auto-attacking rather than using an aimed-shot, multishot, auto-attack cycle, which ironically means that your hunter isn't using any mana at all. The benefit to an Alliance hunter is greater than your calculations indicate.

Second, comparing to MC, which you've clearly outgrown with your gear, and even BWL which it appears you're outgrowing isn't a good comparison. MC is designed to be difficult for a raid in a mix of blues and tier-1 or flarecore fire resist gear. It's not designed for people walking around in a significant number of tier 2 epics and BWL weapons. I mean, yeah, a person can argue that mages don't benefit from having a larger mana pool or mana regeneration, because we can kill Ragnaros now before the first Son's phase, but I think you would agree that that is a poor argument. The same is true for hunters.

Hunters don't have the burst dps of mages, rogues, or even warriors on short fights. And on long fights, like Twin Emps, C'Thun, or even Nefarian, where hunters ought to excel, Horde hunters have to spend a significant part of their fight drinking while Alliance hunters do not. This shows up in the damage meters on kill fight videos of new bosses. Alliance hunters tend to show up much higher on the damage meter rankings at the end of the same fights than Horde hunters do. People are starting to realize now that it's actually hunters who benefit more from mana regeneration than any other classes, which is why there's a significant push now to put shamans with mana spring in hunter groups rather than healer groups.

Not quite. Same totems don't stack, fine: the result is a baseline 25 mp5 from one mana spring. That doesn't mean that shaman can't drop Mana Tides end-to-end to get the most out of their cooldowns. Inside five minutes, five shaman dropping five mana tides chained end-to-end generate 5800 mana for the raid; losing 60 seconds of Spring (300 mana) to get it.

Again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Mana Tide should be a raid-wide totem, because it's not really a buff totem per se anyway. However, if it were a raid-wide totem, I would guess more shaman would get it, because as it stands now, most shaman don't.

[lemekim]

Right and most people don't disagree with you. See my long post that I was making while you posted this, I don't think mana tide should be anything but a party buff, just like auras. The 121 2/3 mp5 for all casters is too much, even if you consider that for a hunter with Rhok they get around 99 mana/5 when you look at Blessing of Wisdom + Judgement of Wisdom. And that number is smaller if the JoW proc is lower than 50%. I don't know what that number actually is. Casters get even less. Healers get even less than casters.

It's 50%

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=20355

While Hunters will benefit from higher agility of GoA, Mages/Warlocks will not. Also, you forgot to count in the mana procs from Multishots and Aimed Shots, which will come out to about 40 mp5 on top of your estimate - to 139 mp5 - and you called 121.7 mp5 overpowered! BoW is superior to raid-wide Mana Spring, and with JoW, mages/warlocks/hunters enjoy much higher mana regeneration, and conversely, DPS, than their Horde counterparts.

I'm not sure on this. As I said I think you could make a raid waide tranquil air and make it work for all of MC, BWL and what I've seen of AQ40. Sure you likely wouldn't have it on the trash mobs at all, but who cares? Of course leaving it party only and making the groups to take advantage of it, just like the auras is fine. Different mechanics to get the same results. I can live with that.

I don't think you understand the problem of raid-wide Tranquil Air. Let me rephrase this. If Tranquil Air is applied to everyone in the raid - including the tank - what is the point of it? Do you see the problem now? How do you make it NOT affect the MT? It's easier to just leave it party-only and place Shamans in groups based on that.

[Monkey]

I don't think you understand the problem of raid-wide Tranquil Air. Let me rephrase this. If Tranquil Air is applied to everyone in the raid - including the tank - what is the point of it? Do you see the problem now? How do you make it NOT affect the MT? It's easier to just leave it party-only and place Shamans in groups based on that.

"Raid-wide" is a confusing term. Totems currently have two limits as to how they're applied:
1. Range
2. Party

Taking away the range limitation destroys the mechanic of using totems; I believe the suggestion at hand is to remove the party limitation instead. Then a shaman can carefully place tranquil air to reduce the aggro of only people standing in range.