The additional mana restored by Mana Spring Totem makes this a useful talent for raiding. Its usefulness is greatly diminished in PvP.
Spending three points in this talent allows the shaman to choose Mana Tide Totem further down the restoration tree, making this a standard talent for Restoration PvE builds. Together these two talents allow a Restoration shaman to restore a large amount of mana to himself and his group members.
Patch 1.11.0 (2006-06-20): Added. The two talents Improved Healing Stream Totem and Improved Mana Spring Totem were merged. Patch 3.1.0 (2009-04-14): Reduced from 5 points to 3, and values changed.