Wendigo Totem has fallen off since FG, but FoA has really taken it to a whole new level where the totem doesn’t feel worth it at all even if you can get 22/12 Blood Pact. The prevalence of:
Pools that give 50%+ damage reduction debuffs to the player and allies (including pets).
Delayed burst and/or multi-projectile attacks that are absolutely lethal if the player stays within the totem area (examples: Gargobol, Kaisan, the Bloodbound Nemesis and pretty much every Celestial FG and forward)
Makes it so that the very same battles where you need Wendigo Totem to protect you are the same battles where staying within the Totem’s radius is more deadly than if you didn’t rely on the Totem at all.
I’m pretty sure there’s no “immunity to damage reduction” that could be coded where Wendigo Totem at least prevents you from the worst of these effects, but as it is, Wendigo Totem needs some serious juice in order for the defensive benefits to be worth the inherent dangers of staying close to the opponent.
Inquisitor Seal is - template wise - the same as Wendigo Totem, and it suffers from the same problems; even more so since Arcane Empowerment is far worse than Blood Pact and there’s no pulse healing that keeps your Health up.
These two skills should allow you to tank stuff. Wendigo Totem needs some % damage reduction which Shaman does not have at all. Seal needs more of every stat. And crucially both need lower cooldown and more area. And most of all the delay before they start to work should to be minimal. Now it takes far too long.
Also, give it something to signify the border of the effect. At least with seal you roughly know where it starts and where it ends (and even that is imprecise).
Feedback on my suggestion was… lukewarm.
But I think this is even more relevant now after FoA release.
Wendigo totem is different because the effect STACKS if you have multiple of them out (The damage to enemies and the healing, not blood pact’s bonus). It’s technically a ground effect, so It’s closer to Sigil than it is to inq. Seal.
In both cases though, those skills reward you for staying still and hold your ground… which is tantamount to suicide in the new meta the game offers, full of movement runes, speed bonus, attacks to dodge and evade actions…
IMO all of Wendigo Totem’s woes would be fixed if it lost that absolutely laughable AoE restriction. The fact that you can’t place it at anything resembling distance…ok, I can tolerate that, I wish it wasn’t like that if there are still items around trying to increase its damage for some reason (not sure why when the 100% TDM from Spectral Warmaul went bye bye, killing any hopes for even a meme-tier Wendigo Totem build) but whatever. But the fact we basically have to be hugging the totem to receive any benefits and the fact ENEMIES have to be hugging the totem too for the heal to do anything…that’s beyond outdated. 5 meter range is a yoke. The game’s swarming with area denial, with the literal heavens brought down on our heads by the average Asterkarn bird and the Dread and Beronath making entire time zones uninhabitable, and here we are with a 5 meter totem that protects us against burst not at all. That’s fine, it doesn’t have to. But then it needs to let us actually move around a bit so we can avoid the burst and keep fighting. Double (or more) the AoE for the damage, the heal and the buffs and it might actually be a pretty feelgood skill and could potentially even become a future damage source if new itemisation supports it properly.
For Seal, I was actually pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness on my last build (Unwound Fate Runekeeper, PSA: the build sucked). It actually let me stand up to Uber Mog’s human form at fairly close range and not get instantly shotgunned. But I agree that its mechanics do not mesh with the current environment at all. “Arming time” is a nono (goes for Runes and Arcane Bomb too given how much running around is needed in many situations) and that massive cooldown even more so. The idea of just standing in seal for 6+ seconds straight went out the window the moment Sunder was introduced. Right now if you’re not playing a 2h build to get access to Runic Seal you basically have to remember where your seals are and run between them cause forget summoning one in a pinch, it’ll be on cooldown for like 2 more seconds and then you have to wait through the activation time before your “defensive mechanic” finally kicks in. Only for you to be forced out of it again 2 seconds later.
Not sure if the engine is capable of it, but I would love if the totem grants you a delayed incoming damage mechanic. Dangerous oneshots seem to be the bane of “stay-in-place” builds/skills so it would solve one issue, and the existing delayed damage pushing you to leech more to counteract it seems to fit thematically.
