Talking PVE, totemic is lacking quite a bit. There are some amazing changes you could make though to make it more viable, and make it more unique in playstyle and fantasy.
The theme would be fire/earth, which it already is leaning towards with Hot Hands through Surging totem and Flame shock turning aoe, and ofc Surging Totem is Flamestrike damage.
Some ideas for Hero talents are;
Fire nova - a hero talent to reduce the cooldown of it by 6 seconds.
Lashing Flames - Sundering now also applies Lashing flames to all targets hit.
Flame Shock - ticks reduce the cooldown of Sundering and/or Fire Nova.
Lava burst - gets 10% dmg boost and 3 charges total. Hits all targets with Flame shock on for 30% damage.
These are just ideas that could use some sharpening ofc, but this would help out totemic quite a bit since it is lacking alot. And throwing fire would be a nice difference from lightning.
What do you think?
Edit: I found a build after the rework that performs alright (a fire build), not great but good. So it does work, but I still would like to see my changes and less dmg from Surging totem & more dmg from other abilities, just a design opinion tho ofc
The problem, is that in pve it is pretty good if you factor just performance. It is siming as the best ST build, but its shortcomings are not in its performance. It generally suffers in 3 particular areas:
Heavy reliance on a cumbersome totem:
Early in the beta, the totem would pulse aoe in every target inside 40 yards that you are in combat with. This was changed for some reason, and we are now stuck with a small aoe totem that NEEDS to hit every one of its pulses in order to be competitive. If you factor in the fact that the totem is 1/3rd of the damage, and that you can only move it once every 10 seconds, then you understand how cumbersome this becomes in fights.
HEAVY reliance on RNG:
At this moment when playing totemic you are reliant on 3 things to happen to actually reach your potential.
Flowing spirits procs (random proc from your abilities).
Ascendance (your main cooldown).
Sundering resets (small chance to proc on SS reset).
Unless all the 3 above happen to align, your damage is not gonna be anything particular, but IF those 3 happen to align, the damage is disgusting.
Only played on a Storm build:
Unfortunately the BASE scaling on lava lash/hot hands/lashing flames fell so far behind with current tuning, that half of the totemic tree is not even contributing to damage. This does not really have to be fixed at the hero tree level, but at the spec tree level.
So IMHO it is not a problem with its throughput per se that totemic is not played more, but because of its design limitations and how little iteration/design time went into it.
I am sure that down the line in 2-3 patches and maybe another rework it might be way better, but at the moment if given the choice of playing totemic vs playing storm, with the difference in how well designed the specs are, I do not expect many people to choose totemic.
Sometimes i am considering myself what is the job of a class designer in blizzard when all of us are doing their job by giving so many ideas when they implement some nonsence things so many times…
Lol ye sometimes, I think most hero specs are really cool but totemic is weird to me. I’ve not seen anyone in game play it other than me for pve, and i get why lol, low dmg and moving totem is kinda awkward. But i have seen someone allegedly play it with a storm build, which is crazy cuz you don’t even get the Hot Hands that surging totem gives you. So ye i’d love to see it get “fired up”
On fights like ulgrax and rashanan, like 30-40% of the top 100 logs are with totemic. Its damage is really good, just it is limited by rng and movement (really falls behind if you miss some pulses).
And yeah, everyone is playing it with storm, mainly because by spamming storm strike over and over while using flowing spirits, you can get some big pack of wolves (physical dogos ofc). The lava lash side of the tree is not played because it destroys the synergy between sundering resets and physical wolf spawn.
Yeah, imo this version of totemic is really neat, even if it’s just a different storm build, but for example replacing some of the attempted fire synergy with reduced cooldown of Totemic Projection would help the clunkiness as well.
IMHO if totemic projection cd was also reduced by the talent that reduce totem cds that would be perfect.
As for the fire side of the tree/hero, tbh developers need to cook abit more (like they did with the storm side of the tree). But overall it is a huge upgrade from previous patch totemic.
They also could let us relocate Surging Totem by pressing the ability while on CD.
Or they could get Surging Totem to act as an aura around your character (your char would pulse instead of your totem).
Or they could add a choice node for Totemic Projection, with one version with cooldown and another with no cooldown but with a mana cost.
I’d rather have that instead of Projection being affected by Totemic Surge (6cd reduction for totems) since I think that node is actually lacking for totems with long CD.
I saw somewhere someone suggesting Totemic Surge to reduce every totem CD by 20% (the bigger the CD, the bigger the CD reduction). I think that would be nice instead.
I mean, we already have this kind of functionality with totemic projection (you can literally make a macro to work like you describe). The problem is that totemic projection falls abit short in order to make the totem not feel bad.
TBH the best solution was the one they had initially in beta, where the totem had a 40 yards range and the pulses were on the mobs themselves. It was SO nice because it was almost impossible to go outside range and miss.
Then they changed it because it did not work very well for resto because it would throw some healing rains in the ranged camp, and the end one was also changed to this small aoe.
At the moment they want totemic surge to be more of a QoL thing, rather than a throughput node. If you change it like that, you just make it a needed node for restoration (which ofc will have the impact of nerfing the totems to make them balanced around the new cds).
Haha I like how the conversation derailed from being about reworking Totemic so that more damage comes from your abilities and less from the totem itself, into conversation about how annoying it is to maintain that damn totem.
In my mind this is the biggest issue of the hero tree that needs to be addressed first, it is so annoying to maintain the totem it’s crazy.
They just fixed issue with Windfory Totem which had the same problem, but they cannot do it for Surging Totem? What the hell Blizzard?!
It should have 40 yard range like before. It would be very thematic if you carried the totem on your back. Perhaps there can be a choice node where instead you can place it on the ground.
I really do not like proposed solutions to reduce cooldown on Totemic Projection, it would just be awful band aid fix that doesn’t address core issue.
In general I am ok with capstone giving totem elemental motes, that augment certain abilities.
I like OP’s idea to make the hero spec more about fire.
However Lava Burst hitting targets with Flame Shock is already Elemental’s think, Enhancement needs to be more distince.
Perhaps fire mote could make Lava Burst do more damage and explode on target for AoE damage.
Air mote being triggered by lightning spenders is fine, this does not need to be changed. But if we want to remove some damage from the totem, instead of it triggering Totemic Rebound, it can instead apply shock to nearby mobs, that would do some damage and apply small debuff that increased their damage taken. Something similar to lightning rod, but for all types of damage.
Earth mote currently affects flame shock, which makes no sense thematically. It could instead imbue Windfury Weapon for some duration with more damage after using Sundering.
Possibilities are really endless here.
They should just make you place it every time you use Sundering.
Totemic for Resto is fine, because you were gonna place Healing Rain either way, so it doesnt change the fact that you place an AoE to heal.
But Enhance feels bloated by it cause now its just too much time wasted on pull it feels like.
well for resto totemic is fine because surging totem is just there for acid rain. it basically heals for peanuts.
but it is actually good that it heals for almost nothing because if you arr not running full melee it would be terrible.
it would be better for totemic enhance to make the totem just pulse 30y dmg to all enemies in combat. everything else would be annoying.
bonus points for just make the totem passiv on your back
I just macroed totemic projection to storm strike and use a “cast @player” macro for the totem itself. I press the totem button and it drops under my feet. The storm strike just drags it along. It’s not hard to maintain at all.
There are moments the adds leave totem range. But only for short time.
.
But still, from a PvP perspective, having YOU decide who gets to pulse is kind of better. But kiting also…