Proposal: Windfury totem now provides a static aura

[Nonnoanselmo]

Title more or less says it all. During an interview with the shaman designer for vanilla, the designer himself stated that totem twisting was an accident and that windfury providing a temporary buff was due to mechanical limitation and he'd rather have had the totem provide a static aura.

This would make more space in the shaman's mana bar to cast other abilities instead of twisting with wf1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7xKE0W7Pc&t=2008s

[Atreidon]

You get only downsides if you implement this change. If it was just an aura you couldnt twist, even if you want to. So you end up at the same as if you just choose not to twist.

On the contrary, twisting gives enhancemets a chance to benefit from their air totem, even if other melees are present in his group and help him maintain flurry.

Dumbing down enhancement playstile while lowering the potential output makes no sense on a class as weak as enhancement shaman

I think the massive manacost of twisting should get addressed instead. (For instance by refunding mana based on the remaining duration of the overwritten totem)

[Xudo]

It is really fun to be busy with replacing one totem with another for 77 agility buff?

[Gantulga]

It is really fun to be busy with replacing one totem with another for 77 agility buff?

As opposed to watching your auto attacks?

[Jstansberry]

It is really fun to be busy with replacing one totem with another for 77 agility buff?

No, it isn't. Worse still, twisting costs an insane amount of mana for minimal benefit. Ideally, twisting gets pushed out of the meta by giving enhancement more buttons to press that are actually useful and/or twisting gets removed outright.

The problem is that enhancement shamans are an incomplete spec that have no buttons to press. They have Stormstrike on a 12s cooldown and non-scaling shocks on a 6 second cooldown. Their personal DPS is relatively unimpactful so having mana for SS and shocks is often considered less important than the 4% extra crit Grace of Air twisting provides to gigachad fury warriors. Players who think that is good class design that should be preserved because enhancement is a "support" spec should be condemned to only play totem twisting enhancement shaman for the rest of their days.

[Chudman123]

It is really fun to be busy with replacing one totem with another for 77 agility buff?

No, it isn't. Worse still, twisting costs an insane amount of mana for minimal benefit. Ideally, twisting gets pushed out of the meta by giving enhancement more buttons to press that are actually useful and/or twisting gets removed outright.

The problem is that enhancement shamans are an incomplete spec that have no buttons to press. They have Stormstrike on a 12s cooldown and non-scaling shocks on a 6 second cooldown. Their personal DPS is relatively unimpactful so having mana for SS and shocks is often considered less important than the 4% extra crit Grace of Air twisting provides to gigachad fury warriors. Players who think that is good class design that should be preserved because enhancement is a "support" spec should be condemned to only play totem twisting enhancement shaman for the rest of their days.

I agree with this.

In the spirit of keeping them a support class. What if deep enh allowed for agility and WF totem to be a single combined gigatotem?

Then enh would wf totem in pvp too which is cool.

Allows both buffs like we currently have
Less mana wasted
Less headache

Pallys guarantee proccing stuff does hurt enh shaman from making use of nightfall so may as well give them this as a qol then give them something like overpower but when the enemy parry

[Xudo]

Looks like your problem not exactly in totem twisting. Anything comparable to 4% of warrior DPS could work.
What if shamans get "positive" shocks?
Like instacast buff 4% haste for 15 seconds to single friendly target with 4 seconds cooldown.

[Jstansberry]

Looks like your problem not exactly in totem twisting. Anything comparable to 4% of warrior DPS could work.
What if shamans get "positive" shocks?
Like instacast buff 4% haste for 15 seconds to single friendly target with 4 seconds cooldown.

More raid buffs in general is bad for the game, in my opinion. Warriors break the game well enough as it is with their insane scaling. I think Turtle WoW made a good decision by disallowing world buffs in raids, though their reasoning behind it is different from what mine would be. If they add more buffing abilities to the shaman kit, they should not be things warriors could use to pump out more damage. WFT is a strong enough buff to be the only buffing totem a shaman provides and they'd still be just as desired.

My other gripe with abilities along the lines of what you proposed being regarded as an "answer" for making enhancement viable is that enhancement is not and should not be the "support" spec. Enhancement offered nothing more over other shaman specs in terms of "support" capability (other than totem twisting which was an unintended interaction) until Turtle added Bloodlust. You could argue that shamans and paladins are "support" classes, but there is no specific "support" spec between them - they just have good buffs and utility in their baseline kits with the paladin's utility being more defensively oriented and the shaman's more offensively oriented. Elemental and restoration shamans don't have to be less effective at their jobs because they can give totem buffs, so why should Enhancement alone be condemned to have such relatively low output? Enhancement is a melee DPS spec with a few mitigation talents for PvP/leveling, not a "support" spec. In my opinion, even Turtle's implementation of Bloodlust is the product of misunderstanding what enhancement was meant to be and is a mistake. People just see that enhancement has 3 totem buff talents (two of which are nearly useless) and pair that with that the fact that the only thing enhancement has ever been "useful" for is totem twisting and make a narrative in their heads that enhancement was meant to be a "support" spec centered around providing buffs. The fury tree for warriors has as many "support" talents as the enhancement tree. There is no "support" spec in this game - that is not a role. There are damage dealers, healers, and tanks - there are no supports. Abilities like the one you suggested do not scale with gear at all and that is already enough of an issue with enhancement shamans; there is no logical reason for them to receive gear upgrades over anyone else because the only benefit they provide over another class - totem buffs - does not scale with gear.

Sorry for the rant, but seeing abilities like that kind of triggers me when it comes to enhancement suggestions.

[Charanko]

Looks like your problem not exactly in totem twisting. Anything comparable to 4% of warrior DPS could work.
What if shamans get "positive" shocks?
Like instacast buff 4% haste for 15 seconds to single friendly target with 4 seconds cooldown.

More raid buffs in general is bad for the game, in my opinion. Warriors break the game well enough as it is with their insane scaling. I think Turtle WoW made a good decision by disallowing world buffs in raids, though their reasoning behind it is different from what mine would be. If they add more buffing abilities to the shaman kit, they should not be things warriors could use to pump out more damage. WFT is a strong enough buff to be the only buffing totem a shaman provides and they'd still be just as desired.

My other gripe with abilities along the lines of what you proposed being regarded as an "answer" for making enhancement viable is that enhancement is not and should not be the "support" spec. Enhancement offered nothing more over other shaman specs in terms of "support" capability (other than totem twisting which was an unintended interaction) until Turtle added Bloodlust. You could argue that shamans and paladins are "support" classes, but there is no specific "support" spec between them - they just have good buffs and utility in their baseline kits with the paladin's utility being more defensively oriented and the shaman's more offensively oriented. Elemental and restoration shamans don't have to be less effective at their jobs because they can give totem buffs, so why should Enhancement alone be condemned to have such relatively low output? Enhancement is a melee DPS spec with a few mitigation talents for PvP/leveling, not a "support" spec. In my opinion, even Turtle's implementation of Bloodlust is the product of misunderstanding what enhancement was meant to be and is a mistake. People just see that enhancement has 3 totem buff talents (two of which are nearly useless) and pair that with that the fact that the only thing enhancement has ever been "useful" for is totem twisting and make a narrative in their heads that enhancement was meant to be a "support" spec centered around providing buffs. The fury tree for warriors has as many "support" talents as the enhancement tree. There is no "support" spec in this game - that is not a role. There are damage dealers, healers, and tanks - there are no supports. Abilities like the one you suggested do not scale with gear at all and that is already enough of an issue with enhancement shamans; there is no logical reason for them to receive gear upgrades over anyone else because the only benefit they provide over another class - totem buffs - does not scale with gear.

Sorry for the rant, but seeing abilities like that kind of triggers me when it comes to enhancement suggestions.

Game is already overtuned with all the class changes and insane custom items… every raid boss melts like butter … if anything
Most classes need to be nerfed for at least 10%

Now to shamy change…yes stromstrike is a total joke of a ability; maybe it should work that when u use it it guarantees a wf proc on atack or whatever enhancment u have on wep, maybe rockbiter stuns/taunts, frost slows or snares, flame dots etc
Just throwin some ideas out there for the devs

[Inovatu]

just combine Strength and Agility Totem to one Totem like in Wotlk and you have your WF Totem for your Group and all Melees and Hunters are happy
more DPS for yourself as enhancer, less manacosts because you dont need to twist anymore and more Crit for your Group

[Atreidon]

Classic is full of these clunky mechanics and totem twisting is as far as classic dps rotations go quite skillfull. Dumbing it down for ease of execution makes no sense.
Without twisting you click a stormstrike every 10 seconds and a shock all 5. Hardly enough to make for a compelling rotation.

Just give enhancer mana management tools to allow him to reasonably twist and you keep the fun twisting rotation minus the feustration of being permaoom. Instead of limiting skillexpression on a class that got not much going on besides