This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.

Quick Facts

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by 9771

My Favorite way to kill a paladin or start a fight with a warrior.
Pallas like to hold off their invuln bubble till they get to low health, so drop one of these when they get to <35%HP, cast lightning or Stormstrike, then Earth Shock. I can usually take one out before he knows what to do.
For warriors, they always charge stun, so let the totem start its timer while you wait stunned. More useful with the talent, I rec. 1 or more points or players tend to run away.

Comment by Kaoswarr

the best way i've found to use this (soloing) is to pop a lightning bolt and imidiately tag this instant on the end of the spell, if you time it right it should go off right about the time they get close to you. If your really sneaky you'll have already gotten another lightning bolt and a shock off before the totem nova's.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by 9531

You need the fire totem item in your inventory to use all fire totems.. i'll be posting this on all fire totem abilities.

Comment by Jahala

What I would like to know is how much this totem benefits from spell damage. Any input?

Comment by Taemojitsu

Unfortunately, this spell suffers at lvl 70 from two scaling flaws: the standard AoE scaling of 1/2, and hybrid penalty of being forced to collect multiple stats. The first means that AoEs are balanced for a nominal amount of spelldamage, usually 'blue-quality' gear with average stats, which for TBC means maybe ~400-500 spelldamage. Any spells with inferior scaling from gear will benefit from additional scaling from ranks for this reason, but this only balances these spells at a certain level of gear. Past this point they will have reduced effectiveness compared to other spells. The second means that any shaman that does not gear themselves as pure elemental will have a substandard Fire Nova Totem, compared to what its comparative damage was at, say, lvl 50. A resto or enhance shaman's Fire Nova totem might do just 750-800 damage, which is about half of an average lvl 70 nuke spell (Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, etc) in comparable +damage gear; at lvl 50 it easily did the full damage of a standard nuke.

(Compare Fire Nova Totem (Rank 4), trained at lvl 42, vs Shadow Bolt (Rank 7), trained at lvl 44; or other, similar abilities and spell ranks.)

However, given that it's the only burst aoe damage a shaman has other than Chain Lightning, it's still useful despite how gimped it is by Blizzard's scaling. Any shaman who PvPs in AV should be proficient in using this ability to solo groups of guards. Your exact pattern may vary, but I found this to be useful:

1) running towards undefended GY flag: drop preemptive Grounding Totem (in case you get ambushed by a caster) or Wrath of Air for extra burst and either Mana Spring or Poison Cleansing, again depending on whether you expect a rogue.
2) if you are racing against a respawn wave timer, get ~20 yards away. If you are trying to kite them away and avoid attention, get to max range.
3) pick a guard that will let Chain Lighting jump to aggro all guards if you prefer, or less than that if you have time to solo pull them.
4) cast Chain Lighting at selected guard.
5) if you are at max range, follow this up with a Lightning Bolt on the same guard and immediately use Frost Shock. If you started at close range, skip the LB and just use Frost Shock.
6) turn around as fast as you can and run away, casting Earthbind Totem as you do so.
7) immediately follow this with Fire Nova Totem, continuing to run away. The timing on this depends on whether you have points in imp fire nova totem tho and how far away you were to start with.
8) by now, the cooldown on Chain Lightning is up. As soon as the GCD for Fire Nova totem cycles, immediately turn around and cast Chain Lightning on the guard with the highest remaining health (which you should have selected while running away casting totems).
9) use a shock to finish off a guard. Fire Nova Totem should tick its aggro pulse BEFORE any guards reach it, exploding a second or two later after they've reached it on their way towards you, with Earthbind ensuring that the closest guards don't run past it before it blows up and you have time to kite.
10) half the guards should be dead by now, drop a Searing Totem or use melee if you're enhance, kiting past the Earthbind on your way to the flag, or use shocks/nukes to finish off the remaining guards. Drop another Grounding if you're out of range of the first one, and cap the flag. ;)

Comment by 118811

Lol, I thought it was a screenshot of Sauron's eye, instead of a Fire Nova Totem. I guess I should start goin' to bed earlier...

Comment by Robyn

Also it pays to be careful with using this in instances... the 4s delay can cause you to pull adds on occasion.

The fact that normal mobs seem to love attacking this totem pre-emptively is very annoying indeed... it makes using this totem effectively cost 2x GCD plus extra mana, plus extra thinking time, in any normal pve situation where you'd want to use it. My experience is that casting an extra LHW or 2 is a better use of time and mana in those cases.

Comment by Blackheart6004

This change has now been applied to Patch 3.3.0 PTR notes:

Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

Comment by 385742

Coming in 3.3, this totem will be turned into a spell of it own, making a fire totem do the fire nova totem's booms, without consuming totem!
Totally awesome!

Comment by 483645

Just wanted to comment on the pvp aspect. From what I can see, it appears this ability will not stun targets like the old talented fire nova totem, which helped a lot in pvp.

Comment by 4634

If glyphed and talented (to 3 seconds) this can be used to make shaman AoE competitive with Mages, Warlocks and others.

Comment by 476166

Resto Shammies rejoice -- if you never find yourself going OOM, and you have no issues multitasking, you can use this every CD to do some extra AoE damage and get that damn trash down. I typically drop all 4 totems as close to the enemies as possible after the tank draws aggro. With it's new 10-minute CD, Fire Elementals can be very helpful too. It's pretty wild seeing yourself as 1 or 2% of the group's DPS (if it's more than that... LFG has been very unkind) while still maintaining heals.

Again though, this is for Heroics or places where you aren't worrying about mana or people dieing; if you're confident in your healing, you usually won't be. Play and test around with it first to see how well it works for you. 1k mana is a lot to blow away, and I doubt your group will be happy if they wipe because you went and tried to be a very, very poor DPS.

Comment by Toldry

Fire Nova doesn't seem to be able to do damage on raid bosses..
Does anyone else have this problem?

Comment by bearkin

Fire nova is cast as a spell off of an existing fire totem. Fire nova totem no longer exists for player characters. It is also an instant cast spell.

Comment by Vorph

Even used without the glyph and the talent that reduces the cooldown, this spell can deplete the mana of an Enhancement shaman really quickly, when combined with Chain Lightning and multiple drops of Magma Totem in the same fight. You may have to use Shamanistic Rage fairly often to overcome the mana depletion this spell causes.

Comment by 320682

Would this spell be worth it to cast on raid bosses as an enhance shaman when everything is on cd and no maelstrom x5? Or does the mana cost out weigh the extra dps?

Comment by 450260

In heroics, I'm normally at 5-6% of the damage done on trash and 10-15% on bosses as a resto shaman (about 800 to 1400 dps on boss fights, depending on how often I have to cast a heal). Aoeing on every pull as a resto shaman will give you mana issues - chain lightning, and fire nova are both especially good at draining your mana. My lower dps on trash than on boss fights is due to #1 the mobs dying too fast #2 dpsing trash being an unnecessary use of mana and #3 trash mobs aren't worth paying much attention to.

Against trash mobs only if the tank gathers keeps them in place, fire nova takes higher priority over lava burst (and both are behind healing, of course). If the mobs are moving around a lot or aren't bunched, a flame shock + lava burst is a better way to dps.
Against a single mob, doing flame shock + lava burst is a better use of your time between heals.
If you have a tank that isn't chain pulling, its very easy to place this totem properly. But if you are doing a heroic these days, and the tank isn't chain pulling, then you've probably got an undergeared tank.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now for talk about all specs, not just resto:

This spell is quite useful in clearing trash in ICC. The ones before marrowgar, before gunship, before festergut & rotface all actually stay in one place long enough for fire nova to be useful. It's not really useful on any of the boss fights, even fights where adds spawn. The adds on Deathwhisper, Saurfang, and Putricide tend to move around too much for fire nova to work. Right when the blood beasts spawn on Saurfang, you could get a well timed fire nova off, but after that, its useless to try and fire nova an add that is being kited. I could see Fire Nova being useful on Marrowgar on 25 man (when there are multiple bone spikes which would be in range of a fire nova) because people usually bunch together for bonespikes and bonespikes don't move. Against just one bone spike + the boss, I don't know if it'd be worth it to do fire nova instead of just single target dpsing. So basically, this spell isn't worth putting on your action bar for boss fights.

My mage has a single target dps action bar and an aoe action bar, and I'd recommend that any dps arrange their action bars that way. You don't need any of your aoe abilities on boss fights, and you don't need any of your cooldowns on trash. Not all trash pulls are AoE pulls, so you need at least some your single target spells on the trash pull action bar. I'd recommend this spell only be used on your aoe/trash action bar, and not on your single target & boss fights action bar.

Comment by dreadblood

helpful in lower lvl BG's, I often find that when i'm defending and a player comes if I put my flame totem in strategic position, they run past it on low health while running from me, while they run past click this and they die when they least expect it

Comment by 626713

And where is the searing totem to use this spell in cata? :(
Should be very usefull for the shaman enh rotation =/

Comment by 55524

Single macro to handle AE.
*designed with the enhance shaman in mind, for whom magma does more damage, and needs to recast magma every 20 seconds.
*theoretically sufficient for elemental and resto as well

#showtooltip
/clearfocus
/focus
/cleartarget
/target Magma Totem
/target Searing Totem
/target Fire Elemental Totem
/target Flametongue Totem
/cast Fire Nova
/cast Magma Totem
/target focus
/clearfocus

if you have a fire totem out, it novas.
if not, casts magma totem.

checks for fire totem by:
1) storing current target as the focus
2) attempting to target the totem
3a) if exists, novas
3b) if not exists, does Magma
4) restores target (by targetting focus)
5) clears focus to keep UI clean.

it all happens very fast, on my machine i dont even see the focus unitframe pop up.

Comment by theliquifier

Does anyone else realize the terrible thing blizzard has done to enhancement shamans?

This ability is a great, instant cast form of dps for shamans of all specs, but enhance shamans can't cast this with searing totem out! I'm not even sure which is better, Searing Totem (with Searing Flames and Imp Lava Lash) or Magma/Flametongue Totem and then still be able to use Fire Nova?

Comment by 762419

In Cata heroic boss fights as enhancement spec, I had never found a use for this until yesterday. Normally I roll with searing totem for my lava lash modifier.

I was stuck in a Corborus fight in heroic Stonecore, with the only range dps being a shadow priest. As you would expect we were having immense trouble getting the shard mobs that come up from the the Crystal Barrage ability (they explode when they reach a player).

After failing at trying to help with a maelstrom chain lightning, I began experimenting with dropping a magma and using this. With a good enough healer, I could run across the barrage and drop this in the middle. When the shards came up, fire nova easily took them down to half hp, allowing the spriest to clean them up.

Comment by Pope

In 4.1, Fire Nova will be changed to ignite from our Flame Shock.

So as an enhancement shaman, you can use this easily in any add-situation where the adds are near the boss.
Like Mind Sear, it will damage all targets around, but not the target itself.

What's still unclear is if the damage will increase, if multiple Flame Shocks are running. With a 6 (5 if talented) cooldown on flame shock, you can have multiple flame shocks on adds with high HP.

Comment by iranou

Patch 4.1.0:

Fire Nova has been redesigned and decoupled from shaman Fire totems. Instead, it now pulses the Fire Nova effect from each target that is afflicted by the shaman's own Flame Shock debuff. It now damages all enemies except the target hit by Flame Shock. The ability's cooldown has been reduced to 4 seconds, down from 10.

Comment by TazD579

The new Fire Nova activates off of your Flame Shocked targets, not your Fire Totems. Since Flame Shock has a 6 sec CD in a 16 second duration, can you potentially Flame Shock two targets and then activate Fire Nova causing 2 novas?

Comment by Ordayc

Since most of the comments are outdated, a few notes about the current version:

Fire Nova (FN) will be triggered on every enemy within 100 yds that is affected by Flame Shock. That means you can trigger multiple FNs from a single spellcast. Since each FN triggered deals its damage independently, a single target can be hit by multiple FNs from a single cast.
FN ignores line of sight (LoS), i.e. you can trigger Novas on targets you don't actually see (e.g. while you're hiding inside a building).
With Unleash Flame active, all Fire Novas triggered will benefit from the damage increase.

Comment by guatafu

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=3 Chain Lightning, Fire Nova

Comment by Thottbot

Setting: Warsong Gulch

Characters: 10 alliance players/ 10 Horde players

Situation: everyone tightly close melee fighting

Shaman: lays down one of these babies

it's a recipe for pure delight. guaranteed to make everyone feel good except for the poor suckers that were caught in the blast.

Comment by Thottbot

i love this totem, it rules

Comment by Thottbot

improved starting time(talents) - makes it almost instant AoE... on different CD than shoks

Comment by Thottbot

the totem is called fire totem and you get it from the call of fire quest so you dont need to find a totem for this ability just train and your done.

Comment by Thottbot

i cant cast it y its greyed out? any ideas?

Comment by Thottbot

Use in bg's or duels if u know a rogue is nearby. Takes him out of stealth. Then u can own him.

Comment by Thottbot

My feonce made a shaman and I helped her do the call of fire quest. We are now level 13 and she cannot use her fire nova totem because she has no fire totem tool. The call of fire quest chain is complete. Any ideas?

O.K. We figured it out. Once you complete the call of fire quest, the npc sends you to your trainer to get the spell but you wont have the fire totem. You must return to the quest npc again and he will give you another part of the quest that sends you back to your trainer. Then to the trainer in the capitol city to get the totem.

Comment by Thottbot

^He's right, you have to go back to Temper and he'll give you the ashes that you got earlier and tell you to go back to Tuluun.

Comment by Thottbot

wow this seems kool, ive never played a shaman b4 but im thinking about making 1, plz tell me, how many totems are we able to use at once?

Comment by Thottbot

I think that it is 4.

Comment by Thottbot

I'm level 16 Draenei Shaman.

I have gone back to all NPC at the starting areas and none are able to give me any totem or information.

What is the NPC name or the coords?

Comment by Thottbot

Advantages

-It Does A LOT of damage in a short amount of time.

- Low Mana Cost

Disadvantages

-5 health

-just placing it seems to give it aggro.

Fire Nova

Fire Nova	Level 85

22% of base mana	100 yd range

Instant	4 sec cooldown

Ignites your Flame Shock spell on any nearby enemies, causing each of them to emit a wave of flames that deals 789 Fire damage to every other enemy within 10 yards.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Fire

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

22% of base mana

Range

100 yards (Vision)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

4 seconds

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect

Dummy
Value: 1
Radius: 100 yards
PVP Multiplier: 1
Server-side script

Flags

Related

Contribute