Obviously 5 shaman = 5 sets of totems, which is awesome in later levels but not so much in the very beginning (until you get the fire totem for 5xSearing totem/Fire Nova/Magma)
I'm not sure how I would level them, I leveled mine as enhancement (2 different shaman, both solo until level 50) which wouldn't have as much downtime as elemental would and it's a lot faster killing things than being restoration.
The deadzone might be a small issue if you're meleeing everything.

The earth elemental is an earth totem spell you receive at level 68. Lasts for 2 minutes or until it dies, 20 minute cooldown. Has an AE taunt and does melee damage. A decent totem if you're soloing an elite without a tank, as long as you remember to heal the elemental when it gets low on health, and as long as the fight doesn't last over 2 minutes. The counterpart to that is the fire elemental which has the exact same cooldowns but does a fire nova and fireblast until it runs out of mana. You can't have both up at the same time, but can drop one after the other.