Quote:They also last 15 minutes (minimum for paladin blessings). Totem durations are much much shorter.
Yeah, I really wanted to preserve the differences between totems and blessings. The mechanics of a paladin and a shaman are very different in a 5-man and they should be in a raid, too. That's why my suggested range is only 20 yards and why it's not all totems, just some of the DPS and mana buffing ones. That allows the raid to benefit without taking away the choices about which group to put the shaman in, where he should stand, what he should wear.
This probably means that alliance is still easier when raiding the current content, but because the factions are not identical, every encounter is going to be easier for one side or the other. The long-term solution (once totems can reach more people) is to design equal numbers of pro-alliance and pro-horde encounters.