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Maintankadin

Totem Twisting Windfury/Wrath of Air

Joanadark
Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:05 pm

Totem Twisting Windfury/Wrath of Air

I wanted to share a concept that allows your threat to be utterly maximized.

For those of you who aren't already familiar with the concept, Totem Twisting is a tool available to shamans to effectively have two Air totems out at one time.
Most often, the totems twisted are Windfury and Tranquil Air (20% threat reduction that stacks with Salv) in a powerful melee DPS group. Sometimes you might see a shaman twist Grace of Air and Windfury for the benefit of a tank group.

None gets the benefit, however, of a tankadin receiving both Windfury and Wrath of Air.


How does it work?
Windfury totem, when dropped, places a 9 second buff on the main hand weapons of the players in thr group, granting them a chance to proc windfury attacks. The totem pulses renewing this buff.
The thing that makes totem twisting work is the fact that the windfury buff stays on your weapons even if the windfury totem is taken away.
What the shaman does is drop Windfury, let it pulse once, and then immediately replace it with Wrath of Air, keeping Wrath of Air out for the remaining duration of the Windfury buff on peoples weapons and then dropping Windfury again to renew them.

What this effectively means is two-fold.

Firstly you will be receiving the benefit of Windfury attacks granting additional Seal procs for added threat as well as getting the almost constant benefit of Wrath of Air spell damage coverage simultaneously.

Secondly, this twisting provides a reasonable justification for a Ret Paladin being in your group without completely nerfing his own personal DPS, as he is receiving a benefit from both totems as well. Ret without windfury is pretty terrible, and so it can be hard to justify a ret paladin in your group unless you consign yourself to settling for it instead of Wrath of Air.




Its notable that you will not be able to use a Wizard Oil, however the benefit from Windfury far outweighs that alone.

Totem Twisting using max-rank Windfury costs about 1200 mana/minute for the shaman.
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In many ways we are still learning to understand ourselves."

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Jensaarai
Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:14 pm
There's the problem of how many shamans you'd be bringing, though...

I wouldn't want to take an ele shaman out of the caster group...

Would you want a resto shaman worrying about this every 9 seconds? And then a healer group doesn't get mana tide...

And would you nerf your other melee dps by taking their enh shaman? Because I'd think you'd want the MT group to be

warrior (CS)
lock (imp)
ret pally (sanctity)
you
shaman (wf/woa)


I guess if you had two enh shamans you could do this; my guild currently uses one, and the melee dps group gets him. I believe he totem twists goa/wf, though he scrubs it up a lot so I don't know what the hell he's doing half the time Razz

It would be nice, though. Mana intensive on the shaman (I'd think it'd have to be an enh for shamanistic rage/jow procs), but very nice on the TPS ^_^
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Worldie
Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:32 pm
Isn't that kind of totem spamming kinda mana-devasting for the shaman?

Other than destroying their GCD.
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Invisusira
Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:44 pm
It's not THAT mana-devastating, kinda like SoV/SoR.. uh... weaving.

HOWEVER

Blizzard says it's Against the Rules and a Bannable Offense. Or so our Shammy ocifer says.
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Aalryn
Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:17 pm
definitely not bannable to constantly change totems.

This job is usually reserved for enhancement shaman. The cooldown from totems count as an instant cast spell which doesn't interfere with swing timers. Between JoW and shamanistic rage, the mana they loose from doing this is easily gained back.
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Maranus
Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:37 pm
fuck buzzwords.
srs.
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