New totems aren't so bad after all

Well it seems I was a little pre-emptive in judging the utility of the new totem bar. I had updated all of my addons and hadn't realized that Dominos had incorporated a totem bar with the new format, and I now blame Dominos for making it suck.

Regardless, shortly after making my first "new totems" post yesterday I read on plusheal that a beta version of Totem Timers was functional with the new totem UI. Yay!!!

It works great, and has some improvements to the weapon imbue timer/cast thingy. I'll post a screenie when I get home from werk.

You can click-drag totems from TT the same way the spellbook works, but this is wholly unnecessary as it's super easy to make totem sets. Right click the "Call" you want and the according totems come up. Right click a totem of a particular school to set it to the "Call" that was selected.

Get TT beta and you will be lovin it like JT when he sold out to McDicks!!

Mmmmm, McTotems....

p.s. Thanks to Ruune from http://shambling.wordpress.com/ and an anonymous commentor for mentioning that the default Totem UI is working for them. Had i not serendipitously figured it out myself last night, I may not have known otherwise except for you 2, so thank you! :)

The new totem bar sucks ass

Ok first before we even discuss totems I need to stress that the Gem Faqts is incomplete for 3.2 as there have been a number of mixed colored gems added. For the most part, the gem chart is accurate and the rest of the information on how to max gem your toon still holds true.
Moving on;

The new totems interface sucks ass (for now at least).The only thing I like is the ability to drop all 4 totems at once, other than that things are cumbersome and NOT an improvement.
Previously, I used Totem Timers addon.

Quite simply you hover your mouse over an elemental school (earth, fire, water, air) and all the totems in that school would pop up. You would left click on a totem to cast it, but even better, you would right click on a totem to add it to the "All in One" totem macro.I'd pick a lineup of totems and mash the Totem macro as I approached melee range and wouldnt really waste any GCD time other than having to refresh the totems 5mins later.99% of the time I run Imp. Windfury totem, Imp. Strength of Earth, Healing totem and Imp. Flametongue (to boost buffs) and most of the time pull up flametounge to drop Magma Totem.If I had to run mana spring, or cleansing totem, or a resist totem I can simply right click the totem I want and it's added to "the macro".

Nowadays if I want to add a mana spring or a cleansing totem to my totem lineup, I have to click drag the icon for said totem onto my new totem bar, and this is where the problem is....Where is the totem icon gonna come from? I have to root around in my spellbook because I have no desire to have a huge grid of every available totem on my screen just so I can click-drag them over to the new totem bar situationally.

I do have the situational totems on my action bar so I can mash numpad7 for a quick grounding totem, or mash ctrl+num4 to drop a stoneclaw totem when I am questing on foot and too lazy to kill something, and I could drag over my cleansing totem onto the new totem bar for use in a lineup, but then if I need to refresh it in a hurry, it won't be there on my memorized keyboard hotkey ( I like to refresh cleansing as needed, rather than wait on the pulse if the timing was bad on a poison)

I really don't see a need for multiple "Totem sets", in my mind there is only one "totem set"-the one I am dropping.As such I only use Call of the Ancestors, I have no use for the other 2 calls other than being lazy and keeping my resto totem lineup saved on one of them.

Everything will be fine when Totem Timers addon incorporates their right click feature into creating a "Call of XX" or allows the totem icons to be click-dragged the same manner as the icons in the spellbook. Until then I shall QQ.

Gem Faqts Addendum

I've updated the gem chart from this post to cover somethings I overlooked and some things I was not aware of. Thanks to Lilitharien & Janaan for info on Discipline Priests and Blkthunder for noticing an oversight with tanks gemming in red slots. (thanks plusheal.com!)


I'd like to reiterate that this chart is about gemming for MAX capacity, so generally this follows a pattern of max EP values (equivalency points), and one of the 4 exceptions to gemming differently is in the case of balancing stats.
With this in mind I want to mention healer meta gems, and why Ember has been added as an option (and possibly an upgrade) to the Insightful meta. The reason is that it is increasingly trivialized for healers to manage mana with Ulduar gear. I think even with Naxx 25 gear this is nearly the case. My healset is mostly naxx 25 and I don't really have mana issues on any Ulduar fights and I am far from the best geared healer. I will hold off til 3.2 to replace the Insightful with Ember altogether, afterall the chart is about maxxing out and those too lazy to read the instructions will just have to suffer with gemming Ember metas prematurely.

Lastly, not a single Enhancement Shaman noticed my obvious dupe of making Agi the #1 gem for us. This is probably because not a single enhancement shaman actually reads this blog..
Anyways, gems your Enh Sham alt for ATK after capping Exp and Hit !!!


As a sidenote I'd like to mention that I FINALLY have a helmet worth wearing. I've always hidden the helmet as it has always made me look super gay. I'm not homophobic. Even my gay brethren don't want to look super-gay (unless it's the moustache parade)

I used to rock the Cinched Mullet(with a blade at the end)

This way I could whip my head around like a rabid mustang for extra dps, slashing and whinnying like the wildest of horses. The good times, they were good.

Sometimes I tried my helmets, but invariably, Blizz would let me down.

They tried to make me look like Batman, when clearly, I don't wear hockey pads.

Finally, last week I got a helmet from Ulduar that is the 1st helm badass enough to don my dome.


I dont care what its called or what the stats are because clearly, it is Bad-Ass, and I sound like Darth Vader when I wear it.
Something my guildmates may not be fond of in Vent............
Whatever, I AM UR FATHER!!!!!!