Advertisement

New beta notes (and Shaman spell)

Curse Gaming has posted the unofficial notes of the newest patch (2.0.3) on the beta BC servers, and in among the newness (Ore stacks to 20, Elite quests renamed to "Group" quests) is a nice little tidbit for Shammies like myself: a new spell called "Totemic Recall."

That's right, we can finally, finally remove our totems from the ground. Shaman have been asking for this for a long time-- totems grab aggro and have a short lifespan, so anytime a patrol happens to run by a totem you've left in your wake, your group gains an add, and it heads straight for you. Not so bad if you're Enhancement, not so great if you're the main healer in an instance. There are ways around it right now; whenever I see a totem in the way of an oncoming mob currently, I can just drop a totem of the same element in an out-of-the-way place, and it removes the first one (because you can't have more than one totem at a time down from a certain element).

But the problem with that is it takes mana to put another totem down, and considering mana is at such a premium with us already, it's a pain. That's why Totemic Recall is so neat: every time you hit it (no cooldown in the notes-- if you're in the beta, please let me know what it is in the comments below), it'll clear all your totems, and refund you 25% of the mana you spent putting them down. Gets rid of the totems and returns a small part of the mana to you-- now that's productive.

Of course, insert standard disclaimer about how these are beta notes and we may never see this spell in the game. But as a Shaman who needs to clean up his totems every once in a while, I sure hope we do.