There comes a time in all shaman’s lives when they must learn to harness the power of nature and wield powerful totems. As they grow in power, so do the opportunities to use these instruments of healing, protection, and destruction. In the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, the shaman will be able to quickly place totems of each element, aiding them in managing these powerful focuses of nature.

We wanted to provide some insight regarding the upcoming shaman-specific interface addition, the Totem Bar. Shaman will be able to utilize this new bar to manage their fire, earth, water, and air totems in a more accessible and convenient way. This bar will appear on the left-hand side above the standard toolbar, similar to warrior stances or druid forms. The bar contains space for four totems of the player’s choice, one of each element. Clicking the respective button will drop that totem. To the right of the four totems is a button for Totemic Call, which we have renamed Call of Earth. To the left of the four totems is a new ability named Call of Fire which will drop all four totems on the bar at once. The mana cost is the same as if the shaman dropped all four of the totems one at a time. However, it takes but a single global cooldown.

Questing shaman will be able to quickly move their totems of choice forward, while a shaman in an instance, Arena, or Battleground will be able to replace their totems if they have to move or if the totems are destroyed.

Shamans will also be able to customize their bar to set Call of Fire to drop less than four totems if they choose. Access to this functionality is made available at the same level as Call of Earth (currently level 30.) At higher levels, Shaman will gain two additional spells, Call of Air and Call of Water. These function exactly the same as Call of Fire, essentially giving the shaman three different sets of totems that can be placed at once. New key bindings will also be made available for all of these slots.
As with all new content under testing, we want to caution players that, as a new part of the interface, there may be additional changes during the period of the PTR until the release of the Call of the Crusade content patch. We look forward to constructive feedback once it is available for testing.


Update 18/06/2009:
The developers have answered a few questions and provided some additional information on the new Shaman Totem Bar:

Q: Will we be able to change the preset totems in combat or arenas?
A: You can change them whenever you want. You can also set up the bar to drop 2 or 3 totems if that's all you want for the situation. They also work with dual-spec so you can effectively get 6 different totem configurations and all are easy to change. We also included more key bindings for the new slots. Most shamans in our tests just move their totems off of their action bars. It depends a little on how many different totems you need at a moment's notice. It might be harder to remove the totems from your bar if you PvP a lot and need a specific totem often.

Q: How will totems with a cooldown function? Will it drop a different totem? Drop 3?
A: If a totem is on cooldown, it will drop what it can, so you might get 3 out of 4. If you don't have enough mana however it won't drop any rather than try to guess which ones you want. You can still cast totems manually by just clicking their button too.

Q: Is there going to be any changes to the range, survivability or health of totems in general?
We are not going to make totems hard to kill, however we might make an exception for Mana Tide.

Q: Is there going to be a change to the mana cost of totems in general? Perhaps a refund when we cast new ones, as if we had despawned them with Call of Earth?
A: No. Call of Earth still provides the partial refund however.

Q:Will the Calls be subject to the current 1 second GCD totems have, or the 1.5 second GCD the rest of our abilities have?
A: Even if it's 1.5 sec it shouldn't be as big a deal because you will rarely ever be casting one totem right after the other (you will drop them all at once now).