Since not everyone is fully aware of shaman mechanics and abilities I will make a brief How To about totems.

Totems are divided in 4 diferent categories, each representing one element (earth, fire, water, air) and only one totem of each element can be active at a time. Benefitial totems use aura type buffs centered on the totem, so they are inmobile and independent of the shaman. This means a groupmember can benefit from 0-4 buffs based on their position and number of active totems, while no shaman buff can affect players outside the group ever.

Quick list of totems

There are a lot more that these, this list shows the most commonly used.

• Earth: dmg reduction, str buff, taunting totem, snare.
• Fire: single AE dmg, pulse AE dmg, single target nuke, weapon buff.
• Water: mana regen, health regen, poison/disease cure pulse.
• Air: Agi buff, healing/spll dmg buff, 20% less threat, weapon buff.

Resist totems

shaman have 3 resist auras, fire, frost and nature. Unlike the paladin resist auras, these can be all active at same time. While situational, fire/frost during aran works quite nice.

Special totems

There are a few totems wich effects are unique to shaman and relatively unknown for most players and raid leaders on the aliance side:

• Grounding Totem (air): this totem will redirect a harmful spell casted on a party member to itself every 10 seconds. While dificult to time it right, it can be used to prevent some of the nastier spells on some encounters, like last night maiden where it saved 4-5 holy fire nukes and made dispeller life easier. One interesting feature is that non damaging effects, like curses or dots with no initial damage, dont destroy the totem so 10 sec after it can absorb a new one.
• Tremor Totem (earth): removes fear, charm and sleep efects on party members every 5 sec. All totems that have a 'pulse' effect like this one do a pulse as they are used, this means this can be used as fear cure as long as the shaman isn't feared at the time.
• Tranquil Air Totem (air): reduces threat caused by party members by 20%. This beauty stacks with BoS giving DPS a wide margin to do their stuff on 25 man raids where is likely to have paladins around, or replace BoS for 10 man runs when no paladin is present.
• Heroism (none): increase party members melee, ranged and spell casting speed by 30% for 40 secs. While not a totem, this is a group based buff unique to shaman and kinda fits here too.

All the above are base skills and are available to every shaman no matter spec.

What the diferent specs offer then?

• elemental: ranged dps and spell crit totem.
• enhancement: melee dps, enhanced buff/weapon totems, 10% AP buff.
• restoration: improved healing, mana regen totem, earth shield and mana tide totem.

Hope this helps with some doubts about shaman and gives more trouble to raid leaders on how to use them If you have questions about more specific stuff I might be able to help, specially enhacement and restoration related.