if i understand what your saying, might i suggest trying the following:

set up one button (the same on all characters) with different totems on each character? let me explain.

say action bar button one is bound to 1 . in the slot your put Mana spring totem f.x for your main (what do i know:P) and on another toon you place a different totem in the same slot, with the same binding.
you could easily make 2 or 3 buttons for some easy Totem havoc.

fx. i have it set up so that (im still low lvl) that numpad 4 casts Stoneclaw totem on main, healing totem on toon 1, and fire totem on 2 and 3. since some cooldowns apply to many totems, ive also set up numpad 5 and 6 like this, just in reverse order
to compensate for the cooldowns, and make it rotate between them to maximize the usage. (really great in instances, where you wanna keep up the CD totems as long as posible)

Calcifer