There are multiple totem changes, that were not mentioned in the patch notes:

• Grounding Totem now works again like before the nerf in 2.x. It gets only destroyed by direct damage spells and absorbs any spell, with an internal cooldown of 10 seconds. Just tested this myself with another shaman.
• Poison and Disease Cleansing Totems: It looks like these totems now have a random delay of 0 to 5 seconds, before they first tick, similar to Tremor Totem. [Edit: Must have been a server lag issue, tests indicate it is unchanged]

Tremor has always been an instant tick the second you drop it....at least pre 3.0.8 it has.

Poison- and disease-cleansing totem has also always had the instant tick effect and I didn't notice any difference in Naxx last night.

What makes you think these changes have been made?


(e) I also don't see how the grounding totem effect is different than it had been performing before..

Ran Naxxramas last night and every time I dropped Poison Cleansing it cleared the debuffs immediately.

not to be redundant, however I saw in running a heroic that while having a poison cleansing totem down dropping a new one immediately cleansed. Do you have anything to substantiate the claim that it doesn't.

Since 2.3, grounding totem is destroyed everytime it redirects a spell to itself. Before that patch, grounding was only destroyed when it redirected a damage spell. If it redirected a non damage spell, like for example a purge or a strangulate, it remained active and was able to redirect another spell 10 seconds later. Since yesterday, the pre-2.3 mechanics are back.

About poison/disease cleansing, I was in Naxx10 yesterday and observed this effect. First I thought it was a lag issue, but then another shaman who was at a heroic without lag at this time, had the same problem. But maybe it's just a strange server issue. I will try to make a test, when the server is not so laggy the next days.

huh?

WoA/WF are air totems and poison cleansing is water?

Poison Cleansing Totem and Disease Cleansing Totem have always had the first tick instantly when dropped, dating back to lvl 60 days. After that, they will tick every 5 seconds. I tested this just now to confirm

The same was true for Tremor Totem, until 3.0.2. You couldn't cast it when feared so it was harder to notice, but if only party members were feared and not yourself you could clear it instantly. In start of TBC or so the timer was changed from 5 to 4 seconds. In 3.0.2, tremor was changed in an undocumented way. It now seems to clear fears almost instantly. Maybe it ticks every second, maybe it doesn't work off a tick mechanic at all.

Grounding Totem is indeed changed to only get destroyed by dmg spells. The 10 second cooldown appears to be working right now though, that was also bugged in start of TBC so even if you spammed a dot it kept absorbing them.

So maybe the OP could change the title of this thread in "Grounding Totem changes in 3.0.8"?

tremor totem still gives pulses, but i'm assuming its every 1-2 seconds (from experience).
it used to have a lot more time between pulses, but then shaman were QQing that we would always get feared out of range of the totem before it would break the fear.

My mistake - I meant mana/healing

Keep in mind that if you have multiple stacks of a poison that it will take several ticks of the totem to cleanse all of them. Perhaps you were just looking for the poison debuff to disappear immediately and you didn't notice that you had more than one stack.

As for the grounding totem stuff, I wasn't aware of those mechanics but it is interesting. Where are you getting this information, by the way?

They removed the stacking aspect of cleansing with 3.0, now each pulse removes 1 poison no matter how many stacks it is at.

Grounding is pretty easy to test, find a shaman, mage, warlock or druid and ask them to hex, poly, fear or cyclone you with a grounding totem up. The spell will be eaten but the totem will remain standing. Have them recast it on you right after and you will be CCed and the totem will still be standing there. Then have them cast a damaging spell and the totem will eat it and be destroyed.

The only thing I haven't had a chance to test yet (cause I just thought of it last night when WG started and then forgot about it till just now) is whether Stoneclaw will make it so that if the direct damage is lower then the absorption from the stoneclaw effect if the totem will remain standing.

I'll test that when I get on later, because it seems to me that I had seen otherwise in Naxx in recent weeks as well as in PvP.

No, that was just a rumour. Doesn't remove more than one stack of scorpid poison (hunter pet) per tick at least. Tested it in 3.0.3

The cleanse-stacking issue was something that was planned/mentioned for a 3.x patch. It definitely wasn't in 3.0, and it wasn't in right up till this week when 3.08 hit.

Yeah it was in the notes.

I always thought it was 120 seconds pre-patch.

Totems no longer randomly die on grob.

This must be a hotfix or something, because I was still getting totem deaths on Saturday.

You sure?

Haven't had totem deaths since Grobb 25 on Tuesday, held true for Grobb 10 on Friday too.

The internal cooldown is definitely lower than 10 seconds.

I also got that feeling in my first test with the other shaman. He wind shocked and then casted a lightning bolt and both spell went into the totem. But on the other side, when I tried to purge him, it was redirected to the totem, then I tried again after around 8 seconds, it dispelled his water shield, 3 seconds later I casted the next purge and it went again into the totem. Maybe direct damage spell are off this cooldown.