Stealthy- thx for the suggestion; would the 45% saving on shocks (I don't use them that often, just a flame shock opener) be better than the loss of only 1 point in convection (I have 5 now, yet do get low on mana after each trash fight) ?

I did try 1 resto, but not with my regular full team but a mix of my 80 druid as a tank, my mage enchanter, and the dk and 2 shammans and I had fun 5 boxing the begining of Kara, got Mongoose there from Moroes which was my goal (maiden kicked my ass because I tried to zerg/brute force her and that didn't go too well; I did manage to brute force the opera and got Big Bad Wolf who killed everyone but my tank (because I'm not setup to run around with any toon but my main - then I left kara); and then went on to start the Shattered Offensive dailies (yes I know; never got around earlier; quiet place nowadays) and had a lot of fun doing magister terrace for the first time (I did manage to wipe on the last boss once, because I went in not reading about what would happen; and nearly wiped (all died but my 80 druid) on the big elemental like boss too) - I'm doing that to convert the void crystal into large prismatic shards.

During those I was a bit underwhelmed by mana tide totem; it doesn't bring up that much; I guess maybe I should just get used to having my mage give a stack of food to everybody and macro/key in some eat/drink - that or get better mp5/spirit gear

ps: my regular shaman was dead last in dps during those runs; my DK was #2 in dmg, my mage #2 in dps despite being 72 when the others are 73 (and my 80 obviously #1 despite being the tank) - but the 8 totems buffs/utils were nice - maybe my rotation is pretty bad though I guess the issue was I AOEd a lot with the other 3 and the shammies don't have aoe (I guess I didn't drop magma or fire nova, prefered to get wrath and flametongue up instead (benefiting the others))