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Q u o t e:
Blizzard could make totems be unkillable.

But that would be way overpowered, and nothing at all like all the buffs and auras that other classes have that are undispellable. <_<

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I think its more of the fact that blizzard likes the concept of totems being this source of a buff that if an enemy is smart enough will destroy.

Now maybe instead of making them unkillable, which sounds ridiculous but the more i think about it sounds less and less so, maybe give them a penalty for destroying totems.

For destroying mana spring, the player would suffer a loss of mana, rage, energy, or runic power.

For destroying str of earth, a player losses X amount of AP/spell power and X amount of critical strike.

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Q u o t e:
Using a petattack macro isn't exploiting

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Technically it isn't. But GC said it was unfair and that he doesn't want it to be possible.

Just to throw this out there: since Wrath launched our macros are now saved server-side. Blizzard can see which macros we use. They can tell if you're using a totem stomping macro, and if they wanted to deem it an exploit, they could.

Nothing actually has to change to solve this problem. Blizzard could label it an exploit and then start monitoring our macros. The only reason they likely don't do this now is that, like many other suggestions, it would be expensive and time consuming.

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Q u o t e:
Just to throw this out there: since Wrath launched our macros are now saved server-side. Blizzard can see which macros we use. They can tell if you're using a totem stomping macro, and if they wanted to deem it an exploit, they could.

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While you didn't "suggest" this is a solution (you just mentioned it), there is actually a workaround around that. Mods can create UI side macros and action buttons that aren't stored on the server.

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Q u o t e:
If you had read the really long topic with a few blue posts in it from a week or so ago, you would know our stance.

We don't like totem stomping macros and we are taking steps to prevent them. Because of technical limitations, these changes probably won't be in place for 3.1. But we will get them in place soon.

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I knew you'd come back, GC.

I always knew. <3

Is it true that I won't be able to Hand of Reckoning totems anymore? I really hope not. Considering both of my CC's are eaten by Grounding non stop. And my only other options are to walk up to a totem, away from my target, melee it with one of my three abilities, or waste a 15 second CD exorcism, just in order to use a CC with a 1 minute and a 40 second talented CD. And both of my CC's are completely dispellable.

Edit: Not talking about macro's. Talking about targeting a totem and using an 8 second CD on it.

Why not do some brute-force method for breaking the macros? Make it so any macro that includes "/tar" and any part of any totem name simply does nothing when you hit the button?

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Q u o t e:
Why not do some brute-force method for breaking the macros? Make it so any macro that includes "/tar" and any part of any totem name simply does nothing when you hit the button?

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Because bandaid-bandaid fixes is bad programming behavior. Long-road bandaid fixes typically end up causing more problems in your coding than it fixes in the final result, and resource-wide (depending on the extend of the program or section of the program in question) it can also be pretty intensive depending on how you constructed the classes.


Rule of thumb is that in the end, that kind of design is generally not worth it, and you are much better off finding a "design" solution than a coding solution that requires extensive workarounds.

Edit: When i say "resource-wide", I'm not talking about the CPU or computer performance requirements, but the coding requirements. A good development team is usually a busy development team, and they are most likely quite often limited on time or need to keep deadlines. In a good design team like the WoW team, you generally avoid bandaids unless its a simple matter such as changing a few numbers to give a spell more scaling etc. or because its a very serious issue (like the mage soloing Naxx 25).

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Q u o t e:
Is it true that I won't be able to Hand of Reckoning totems anymore? I really hope not. Considering both of my CC's are eaten by Grounding non stop. And my only other options are to walk up to a totem, away from my target, melee it with one of my three abilities, or waste a 15 second CD exorcism, just in order to use a CC with a 1 minute and a 40 second talented CD. And both of my CC's are completely dispellable.

Edit: Not talking about macro's. Talking about targeting a totem and using an 8 second CD on it.

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My paladin has the same macro but it's not a huge issue if he can't break them himself, before HoR I would be the one breaking the grounding totems by either running over and hitting them or using a shock on the CC target before HoJ or repent just to make sure there was no totem up.

Also, paladins do pretty well against grounding totem, put one point in eye for an eye and every time someone crits you it will break grounding totem if there is one up. :)

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Q u o t e:
If you had read the really long topic with a few blue posts in it from a week or so ago, you would know our stance.

We don't like totem stomping macros and we are taking steps to prevent them. Because of technical limitations, these changes probably won't be in place for 3.1. But we will get them in place soon.

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Could you sticky this so the Totem Stomping threads go away? >_>

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Q u o t e:
Is it true that I won't be able to Hand of Reckoning totems anymore? I really hope not. Considering both of my CC's are eaten by Grounding non stop. And my only other options are to walk up to a totem, away from my target, melee it with one of my three abilities, or waste a 15 second CD exorcism, just in order to use a CC with a 1 minute and a 40 second talented CD. And both of my CC's are completely dispellable.

Edit: Not talking about macro's. Talking about targeting a totem and using an 8 second CD on it.

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This guy is a huge problem with WoW. Holy and ret pals dominate shaman faces and eat totems up before using cc when we try our very best to avoid it...it is currently impossible if they have a brain. That repentance or HoJ is just plain gamebreaking and we SHOULD be able to counter it with our core class mechanic just like fear and on and on. ENH/ELE are already weak enough, resto is good but takes skill unlike hpal i have both.

People truly believe it is their right to completely disable shamans because they have been allowed to for so long...there are even threads like "in defense of totem stomping macros" where people voice why its ok and TRULY believe it.

You don't know how frustrating it is that the buffs your damage/survivability are built around are so easily destroyed in the first place but this makes them meaningless. To avoid one fear with tremor it often forces me to use 10 gcds (10 totems) when i have tons of mediocre abilities for my gcds already.

Besides that our silly buffs that keep our damage nearly up to par in comparison to other classes have to be sacrificed for for survivability things that really don't help much (we still have to do everything we can) and don't forget our shocks for interrupts and snares or just frostbrand which cuts your damage WAY down. Shamans have no burst and no utility but have to sacrifice their mediocre damage to try to stay alive...very ridiculous

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Q u o t e:
My paladin has the same macro but it's not a huge issue if he can't break them himself, before HoR I would be the one breaking the grounding totems by either running over and hitting them or using a shock on the CC target before HoJ or repent just to make sure there was no totem up.

Also, paladins do pretty well against grounding totem, put one point in eye for an eye and every time someone crits you it will break grounding totem if there is one up. :)

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I'm not using the macro, I manually target and then use Reck. Though after the last shaman I fought where he kept hiding the totems somewhere... well, actually I was going to get SCT to start announcing whenever he dropped the damn things so I'd know not to CC. I lost so many CC's against that shaman because he'd drop it behind a pillar and nowhere in LoS.

Eye for an Eye only works if someones attacking you. Which never really seems to happen to me when there's a shaman on the other team.

And my partners a priest, so they don't really have any low mana remove totem abilities. Except melee'ing I guess, but then they're usually shut down so badly just trying to survive. I mean it wouldn't be the end of the world I suppose, it's just another thing for my priest to spend their time doing instead of me doing it.

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Q u o t e:


Because bandaid-bandaid fixes is bad programming behavior. Long-road bandaid fixes typically end up causing more problems in your coding than it fixes in the final result, and resource-wide (depending on the extend of the program or section of the program in question) it can also be pretty intensive depending on how you constructed the classes.


Rule of thumb is that in the end, that kind of design is generally not worth it, and you are much better off finding a "design" solution than a coding solution that requires extensive workarounds.

Edit: When i say "resource-wide", I'm not talking about the CPU or computer performance requirements, but the coding requirements. A good development team is usually a busy development team, and they are most likely quite often limited on time or need to keep deadlines. In a good design team like the WoW team, you generally avoid bandaids unless its a simple matter such as changing a few numbers to give a spell more scaling etc. or because its a very serious issue (like the mage soloing Naxx 25).

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And that is why I didn't take a job as a software developer. Academia for life, where hacking is appreciated.

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Q u o t e:
If you had read the really long topic with a few blue posts in it from a week or so ago, you would know our stance.

We don't like totem stomping macros and we are taking steps to prevent them. Because of technical limitations, these changes probably won't be in place for 3.1. But we will get them in place soon.

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eta.... 4.1

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Q u o t e:


This guy is a huge problem with WoW. Holy and ret pals dominate shaman faces and eat totems up before using cc when we try our very best to avoid it...it is currently impossible if they have a brain. That repentance or HoJ is just plain gamebreaking and we SHOULD be able to counter it with our core class mechanic just like fear and on and on. ENH/ELE are already weak enough, resto is good but takes skill unlike hpal i have both.

People truly believe it is their right to completely disable shamans because they have been allowed to for so long...there are even threads like "in defense of totem stomping macros" where people voice why its ok and TRULY believe it.

You don't know how frustrating it is that the buffs your damage/survivability are built around are so easily destroyed in the first place but this makes them meaningless. To avoid one fear with tremor it often forces me to use 10 gcds (10 totems) when i have tons of mediocre abilities for my gcds already.

Besides that our silly buffs that keep our damage nearly up to par in comparison to other classes have to be sacrificed for for survivability things that really don't help much (we still have to do everything we can) and don't forget our shocks for interrupts and snares or just frostbrand which cuts your damage WAY down. Shamans have no burst and no utility but have to sacrifice their mediocre damage to try to stay alive...very ridiculous

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Right. I'm the one wrong with WoW lol. Or maybe you were saying something else, your first sentence didn't make much sense.

Enhance and Ele do need better options. Resto Shams do not. How does me having to go around a pillar in order to hand of reck a grounding totem before using ANY form of peeling CC against whoever is destroying my priest make me eat a shamans face?

Does your shaman even have gear? Resto shamans laugh at Rets. I'd laugh at Ret's too if I was a resto sham.

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Q u o t e:


Right. I'm the one wrong with WoW lol. Or maybe you were saying something else, your first sentence didn't make much sense.

Enhance and Ele do need better options. Resto Shams do not. How does me having to go around a pillar in order to hand of reck a grounding totem before using ANY form of peeling CC against whoever is destroying my priest make me eat a shamans face?

Does your shaman even have gear? Resto shamans laugh at Rets. I'd laugh at Ret's too if I was a resto sham.

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You could get your priest to bind a low rank SW:D or just cast a dispel magic for breaking totems. If you see a grounding totem (I'm assuming you see it since you said you weren't macroing) you can call out for your priest to break it and follow with HoJ or repent. Also, it is a melee training your priest he can try to move them out of the grounding totem's range.

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Q u o t e:


Because bandaid-bandaid fixes is bad programming behavior.

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Dont give me any of that crap, allowing them in the game since start is bad/lazy/stupid programing.

Blizzard has failed the shaman class in ways that are mystic.

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Q u o t e:


It would, solution would obviously be putting a name generator like they have for DK and warlock pets on totems, with the totem's title in the subtext.

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X's Spirit
<Totem>

random earth elemental / shaman type name

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Q u o t e:
Dont give me any of that crap, allowing them in the game since start is bad/lazy/stupid programing.

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I will give you as much of that crap as necessary, because its obvious you don't understand coding and game design at all. Developers are human beings, and they simply can't think of everything, especially not on a project of this size. Quoting Ghostcrawler here is pretty appropriate:

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Q u o t e:
We're pretty smart guys here at Blizzard Entertainment, but we don't pretend for a moment to be smarter than the entire fan base put together.

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Ive spent much time on both the EU and US forums for 4 years of this game, mostly on the PvP forums where the PvP complaints pretty much all used to originate until the Role forums were created, and never ONCE did i see a single totem stomping complaint thread from shamans until mid TBC, even though the macros (or hell, even addons in vanilla) were perfectly possible to create and utialize for the purpose.

If it took the ENTIRE playerbase 3 and a half year to actually make Totem Stomping widely known, and it only became a recognizeable complaints after WotLK was launched, then expecting the developers to have foreseen it or thought about it from the start is bold. Game designers simply think different, and to PvP centric players, PvP problems will always appear bigger or more apparent to them than to the developers.

In the mind of the PvP centric player flows "My class has 20 different problems you need to fix for me to be PvP viable". In the mind of the developer flows "Okay the game is now at stage X, so what should we improve for stage Y". They have to think much larger than the PvP centric player does, and when you are thinking about the larger perspective of a project, missing details in the smaller areas is almost always going to happen.