Please gets rid of Storm Totem’s 8s cool-down. It’s way too long and it dies easily. You can create a 8s nuke Totem during specialization.
About the best thing about Shaman is his Tornado. Spriggan is bugged so I don’t know what it is doing.
Shaman should be all about Totems but I find that relying Totems to get buffs is very unreliable during tough fight because Totems just die and each time I am casting Totem, I am not attacking.
Shaman also needs to have very Specific Passives that greatly increases Totem’s survival (health, resistance, regen) and damage. I don’t want +Minion because that affects Wolves too.
Totem survivability can be greatly increased by improving totem placement. I don’t have too much trouble keeping totems alive on my fire shaman, I’ve invested nothing into minion specs.
Do you play in Arena where swarms of enemies come at you? Maybe it’s different setting for sure. For Totems to survive well (thus dealing ok damage), the other pets need to tank better. I have invested in a lot of +minion health for the Wolves to tank better so the Totems can attack more freely.
On a side note, Void Knight’s Devouring Orb - Abyssal Emission totally makes Totems look so weak. I am sure they’ll balance damage ratio later.
Totem survival is important because a good chuck of Shaman’s specs rely on Totem being active.
On another side note, Necromancer’s Skeleton Mage spec does good damage and can easily replace them with no cool-down. Thorn and Storm totems have CD. :((
Yeah, I do arena. I don’t use other pets, mainly just swipe, leap and tornado. I do most of the tanking and just position the totems primarily behind me. As a side note you can get multiple charges and decreased CD on thorn totems such that you can spawn a large number of them with decent cast speed.
Being stationary, I find I can make totems survive better than Acolyte skeles by placing them better.