Shaman Totem Mechanics and PvP

There's a lot of discussion going on about how the Totem mechanics are designed to function. According to MMO-Champion, the devs believe that it's fundementally important to know when and where to drop our totems. I have to say I do agree with this. One of the things that kept drawing me to roll a shaman was the cool totems that I got to throw on the ground. And, if I may play favorites for a moment, I think the Draenei totems look SO much cooler! ^_^

Anyways...

They don't want the range on totems to be so big that it just seems like another raid-wide buff. That defeats the purpose of the totem. Then there's the other issue that it takes too long to set and reset totems. I mentioned this earlier in a fight like Emalon where the tanks CAN take a lot of damage right off the bat. I like the proposed idea of dropping all the totems on one GCD, or perhaps taking totems off the GCD all together.

With regard to wanting totems to be removed from the game, I'll answer with this: roll another class. If you want buffs that will stay on no matter where you are, roll a pally/druid/priest. Except for Tree Form buff and Pally Aura buff, all of those classes don't require a distance minimum. I, for one, like totems and needing to have them set up right. It's another challenge.

PvP.

Burst damage is too high. It's *somewhat* difficult to get decent resilience gear to last in an arena fight. Arenas are too fast....

These are all arguments being made.

1.) Burst Damage - Yes, I feel it's a little too high. As a healer (I do arenas on my 880-resilience disc priest), sometimes you wonder how it's even possible to survive when a 2-dps 2's team blow all their cooldowns on you at once. Although that is smart playing, there needs to be a way to combat it. One match: Trees, Mage Clones, Starfall, Water Elemental....all on me at once. I popped stoneform, PW:S, Pain Suppression, Renew, and my PvP trinket all at once. The only reason I survived is because when we faced them again, I knew it was coming. The first time, I didn't have enough time to react and I was dead in about 3 seconds. As for arenas being too fast. Then there you go. However, I like the adrenaline rush. Otherwise, I'd just go do BGs all day. =)

2.) Gear - Arenas are harder. Hence, better gear should come from them. BGs are easy (and even easier to be a moron in), so why should they potentially give good gear from them? Too often do I step into WSG and while me and a tank are going for the flag while the other 8 people in the BG are in the middle trying to farm honor kills. Unless they can reward more honor or extra marks of honor for actually winning the BG the way it's supposed to be won (helping cap towers, capturing flags, etc). They combatted the AFKing a decent amount, but how can they combat stupidity? Why should someone fighting in the road between Blacksmith and Stables be rewarded the same as me for actually capping those nodes? Unless they make HKs irrelevant unless you're within a certain "buff zone" of the flag.