Is Shaman Dead? 1.20 Aftermath Discussion

There's a difference between functionality and balance, having two totems right now would be OP, but there's no reason why that couldn't be balanced to work fairly while also giving shaman a lot more utility. The reason why I would support having mutiple totems so you can have a larger coverage so CCI doesn't hurt shaman's ability to zone as much since that's the entire point of the class. If that were to happen each totem would only get a portion of the power of a single totem of course, it wouldn't make sense to give shaman 2+ fully powered totems.

For the totem time, I'm well aware why it has an uptime, I'm wondering why it's so low without any recourse. Positioning of the totem is supposed to be extremely important which is why uproot can move the totem, but since the timer is so low it never actually makes sense to move the totem, it's just better to cast a new one.

The point I was making is that Shaman is missing synergy and it doesn't really do a good job at what it's supposed to be used for. Uproot should be for repositioning the totem, but it's bad at it, aura is basically when there's CCI, Haul is the worst mobility spell in the game and totem is just a weak utility compared to every other classes utility. If you're looking for what I think, I think having multiple totems could be cool since it would add strategy to how shaman zones, you could have a huge range at the cost of damage or a lot of damage at the cost of range. It would also make haul more interesting since it would give you a lot more control over mobility by using two totems. Uproot should add some time (+10 seconds maybe) to the totem up to a limit, maybe 30 seconds, so in theory you can have constant uptime on totem without needing to cast it over and over again. Finally, I think every spell needs an alt so if there's no totem they can still be cast at an increased mana cost (they would be the same spells, but they would place a totem too). There's a lot of other stuff the shaman toolkit could benefit from, but those are just a few idea I think would help out a lot.

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Archer could use a nerf but giving shaman more defenses isn't going to do anything to address it's fundamental inability to deal damage. Doing that alone isn't going to solve any problems with shaman, it'll just nerf archer.

 

Ah I see what you mean by multiple totems. This is a cool suggestion but i think it would make many people frustrated by the fact that right now there is no way to cancel your totem besides placing another one, meaning that if you accidentally place a second one you will end up with a half power totem and a useless one for the entire duration. Also poison tics will be a problem.

 

That's actually a great point, technically you can switch off your relik to remove all totems, but yeah there would need to be a way to remove individual totems for that to work, probably by shift clicking them or shifting while casting uproot or something, I'll need to give that some thought though.