Totems: who, what, when, where, why?

Egamad here again now with a guide to totems!

Totems: the who, what, when, where and why of all totems.

As a shaman you will find totems a blessing and a curse: yes they give good buffs, but are they useful? Is it worth my mana? How long will we be in range?

I will run through my totem layout for the "Call of the....." totem sets you get as you progress. Also what you should have hot-keyed as you will need them but they may not be the one you dropped.
What you want to do for your Totem Sets is nearly entirely level based, as the Outland instances have more poisons and fear than the early Northrend runs. As such you will want Tremor totems and (as Resto you should have specced) Cleansing totems in 1 or more of your sets. Also its good to keep both of these hot-keyed, as with Azjol-Nerub and Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom there is poison effects through out these.

What I am finding good is to have a Melee DPS set, Ranged DPS set, and then a mixed set somewhere in between, or stacked with Tremor and cleansing. Which set you use depends on many things: 2/3 DPS are melee, tank is doing good DPS, or caster has enough DPS he doesn't need help, things like that, or whether you want the caster bonuses to yourself to help heal its all up to you.

I would not recommend dropping a set each pull, maybe a Stoneskin (armor totem) if you need, but you move to fast for it to be worth dropping a totem to kill something in 20 seconds and leave the area. Save it for health as most people wont notice and others wont care. Totems to me are more for boss or OH F***! moments where you need them.

There are many sets, many good uses, many pure DPS sets, many caster based, its up to you, this is just my findings according to how I play. Come back next time for more detail on each totem as we progress, the pro's and con's the do's and don'ts the oh you get the point.