For me I feel that we shouldn't need an incentive to drop totems, its part of our class. Remember that totems are static, they have a set range, and their masters can die. I often run with 3+ shamans in a raid and i try to make a point to drop my totems away from the totemfest in case someone dies or the raid needs to run around. Sarth, Maly, and Grobbulus are the easiest examples of this and I keep thinking of more examples as I write this that I won't care to list.


[e]Typo

While there is merit to dropping our baseline totems on movement fights, the benefit of dropping the specced totems to raid DPS should outweigh the loss of a specced ele or enhance DPS from using those GCDs to drop totems. The pre-placement of the totems does help even out that transition in a movement fight, but it is a very marginal benefit at best.

Having a personal benefit to drop a totem in which little to no raid utility can be derived from dropping that totem seems to be more ideal.

I feel this is an agree to disagree situation, An Ele or Enh will always take the time because their spec's provide the max dps for the particular totems they provide. No matter who they are grouping with.
But this is a Resto Thread...
You shouldn't need a carrot hanging at the end of your totems to get you to drop them, since you have the other shamans to make your life easier, you can focus more on healing. Trying to maximize someone else's DPS is commendable...but it's not that big a deal for DPS to drop totems, I feel its a bigger loss for a healer to drop a totem(although it's gotten better since 1sec totem GCD) than a dps.

I think you've hit on something important here, but it's not the point you were trying to make. Mana spring is simply way too powerful in its current incarnation.

Let's take a theoretical 25 man raid with 5 resto shaman stacked in the same group and dropping mana spring. Each shaman would have 530 mp5 from mana spring*, 100-140mp5 from water shield, 91 mp5 from BoW, and ~300 mp5 minimum from replenishment. Thats approximately 1000 mp5 without any mp5 from gear, no mana gains from water shield orbs, no mana potions, and no mana tide. (*Note that in this situation mana spring is providing around 75% more mana than replenishment.)

How is Blizzard supposed to run this group out of mana, barring fight mechanics like General Vezax or RoS phase 2? With the current 3.0.8 mechanics, they can't, which is why mana spring will be nerfed. Even mana tide is approximately 100 mp5 unglyphed with a conservative mana pool of 25,000, so expect to see some kind of mana tide nerf as well. The only reason why we these mechanics have been allowed to stand for so long is because none of the content is challenging enough in terms of mana usage to warrant guilds actually going out of their way to stack resto shaman. 3.1 will bring challenging encounters and healer mana regen nerfs that make mana spring/tide stacking look a lot more attractive than it does right now.

That being said, Blizzard has stated that they are happy with Resto Shaman mana regen, so I would expect to see us get some kind of buff to personal mana regen to make up for the incoming nerf.

Edit: Just so that you don't think that I'm being completely ridiculous, even two resto shaman in the same group are able to provide each group member with more mana than replenishment for all obtainable mana pools.

Note that in this situation Five mana springs combined is providing around 75% more mana than replenishment, just to be clear.

The problem is that Mana Stream/Tide stack with themselves and every other form of regen. A resto shaman effectively provides 69% of a Replenishment to his group (106mp5 from Stream, 100mp5 from Tide). Blizz has stated that mana regen is balanced around Replenishment in 25mans. A group without a resto gets 1.0 Replenishment. A group with a resto gets 1.69 Replenishment. Stack two restos, and the group gets 2.38 Replenishment. etc...

i followed up your post on the main forums with some suggestions. But it seems to have dropped off the main page quickly.

Currently, Shamans gain 100 MP5 from Water Shield and 85 MP5 from base Mana Spring. Restoration shamans can gain an extra 30 MP5 from Glyph of Water Mastery and 21.25 MP5 from Restorative Totems for a total of 236.25 MP5.

The most elegant solution that Blizzard could implement would be to have Mana Spring no longer stack with BoW and make the following changes to keep shaman regeneration the same as it is now:
1. Water Shield becomes 185 MP5.
2. Glyph of Water Mastery becomes 15%.
3. Restorative Totems becomes a 3 (or 5) point talent that increases base Mana Spring to Imp BoW levels as well as increase Water Shield's passive regeneration by 10%.
4. Mana Tide is no longer a totem but a self-buff with the same current effect.

If my math is right, all shamans should have a base 185 MP5 as they do currently, and Resto shamans should be able to get a comparable level of self-buffed regen as they have currently (185*1.15*1.1=234 MP5).

EDIT: Wrong glyph name.

Just realized they could also just make Glyph of Water Mastery 25% or leave it as it is without changing Restorative Totems (total of 231.25 MP5 or 240.5 MP5 respectively), but spending 5 talents for the same effect that Holy Paladins currently only spend 2 points on just to have access to Mana Tide leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A 3 point talent with a small personal benefit works best in my opinion.

From: Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring Totem
I expect mana-tide will be reworked as well. If the goal is to avoid shaman stacking for mana regen, then mana-tide has to go as well.

Has anyone tested Healing Stream Totem on PTR? What do the ticks look like? I imagine we will see a lot more of this in raids.

I'm thinking healing stream is healing the entire raid for 18k each or more over a 3 minute fight. That's pretty significant

I dislike healing stream, though, because I don't think it is very effective healing. From watching incoming heals in Pitbull and my own, I'd guess most heals that are aimed to top someone off overheal by maybe 500-2500. If that target gets a few ticks of healing stream in ahead of time, that topping-off heal will still overheal, and you haven't saved all that much.

That's an interesting point. I just don't see what other water totems to drop most of the time with the BoW/Mana Tide changes. I guess it'll still be worth dropping Healing Stream Totem since the mana / heal cost is low. I'm still curious to see what HS totem provides in a boss encounter on PTR.

Oh, I agree with the point that's there's not much else to drop. Mana Tide, while becoming more necessary with these changes, is also becoming more expensive. Those 5 points in restorative totems, from my point of view, are almost useless for personal benefit now in a 25 man raid, or a 10 man raid with two pallies.

Dupe

Most of the people in here were on the same opinion, that mana-regen is unimportant for our class as from on a certain gear-level and in most of all cases they were right. Asuming that reggen-stats should be base-stats for all Healer the actual situation was kind of ridiculous. So take this change as a kind of challenge. Maybe we'll have to tune our gear more carefully in the future and we'll still have oportunities to decide, where parts of our reggen will come from (glyphe, gear, sockets, a.s.o.) and finally it should be enough for those who know to play their class.

Beside imo Blizzard takes this "bring the play, not the class"-theme too far. We never brang tons of shamans into our raid because of manaspring-stacking and those who did .... I'll better be calm ;D.

The bad thing that is highlighted with this change is the annoyance of spending 6 talents points for Mana Tide. Restorative Totems has lots most usefulness considering the talented BoW is better than the talented Mana Spring. I honestly fail to see how they could 'argue' balancing the two mechanics. BoW is a buff that persists through death, has a duration long enough to last an entire boss fight, can be cast prior to the fight therefore costing zero mana. This compared with our totem that is static with a 40 yard range, lasts a pitiful 5 minutes and costs more mana than BoW to place.

I feel Blizzard didn't think when they proposed this change; unless they have *big* plans for Mana Spring, Healing Stream and Mana Tide I doubt it will be worth picking up Mana Tide anymore. Besides Mana Spring, the only water Totem I can see having some viability is the Cleansing Totem, but that will only be required if it is raid wide and pulses at a relatively (2-3 seconds~) good rate.

Spring provided greater return of mana per individual than a single BOW buff. The mana cost on dropping spring is negligible in terms of our own regen combined with raid buffs. The big plans to Mana spring are to have it provide the same buff as BOW and raid wide. This change seems to be targeted to benefit 10-man raiding because if you bring one paladin and one shaman, then you will have two paladin buffs covered thus providing the ability for the entire raid to have whatever other buff is necessary for the encounter.

We usually run with no less than 2-3 paladin and 3 shaman in our 25-man guild runs and although this number may fluctuate from guild to guild, it is pretty safe to say that all the buffs can be covered with this change.

I have never considered putting the points in restorative totems as a great benefit compared that single point in mana tide. The points in restorative totems were just a means to the end to obtain that mana tide totem. I expect that mana tide will be changed because of the group nature of the buff and huge unique utility it provides.

That's a bit silly. In 10 man you provided mana spring to half the raid, and generally you probably have at least 3 or 4 people who don't suffer going OOM so it's irrelevant they are not in your group. The cost of the BoW buff is also unimportant, as it can be pre-cast before a fight and then the pally just need to drink, so that comparison is also pretty pointless.

Restorative totems was a weak 5 point talent, as you mention. Now it is an almost ineffectual 5 point talent, and I expect it will be reworked before 3.1 comes out.

In 2 pally raids this is loss of about 105 mp5 for the shaman, which is not insubstantial. Don't forget this aspect.

I think one advantage of our Mana Spring totem compared to Blessing of Wisdom, is that if someone dies mid fight they don't have to be rebuffed if they are battle rezed or reincarnate. I am interested to see how our talent tree changes because of this change. I generally feel like our current tree makes talent point usage very tight and I have to sacrafice a few talents that I'd really like to have. This change may free up a few points that could make up for the nerf slightly.

/Edit: Don't stop, nothing to see here.
Memo to myself: don't post before having my two cups of coffee.

BoW is a buff, not an aura, thus not effected by range.

I thought all totems were changed to 40 yard range in 3.0 and they removed the talent in Restoration (or changed it) that provided increased range on the aura provided by the totem. Am I imagining this?

Totem range was increased and the talent was removed. They were increased to 30 yards from 20. (Although there were some totems that had tooltips listing 10 additional yards like tremor totem)

Not the most informative post, but there will likely be changes to Restorative totems.
Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Whats happening to Restorative Totems?