Quote Originally Posted by 'Fursphere',index.php?page=Thread&postID=157704#po st157704
More or less immune to:
Fear
Poisons (totem + spells)
Diseases (totem + spells)
Anti-Spell caster (grounding totems)
Paladin can cleanse magic debuffs.
Resto Shaman can cleanse curses.

...and you can do all this at the same time with multiple Shaman.

Ultimate anti-wipe (each member can rez and heal, and even auto-rez)
What you give up in top-end DPS, you gain in massive utility.

I've toyed with swapping in a Hunter for a Shaman, or a Warrior tank instead of the Paladin. The "net gain" is always negative.
Except for multiple groundings, you can achieve that with a resto shaman as well. Tremor totems stacking isn't of much use in PvE and I've yet to be in a PvE scenario with my team where one disease or poison cleanse totem didn't satisfy my needs. Not only are the shaman lacking dps at the moment, they're also harder to dps with. My moonkin with /castrandom wrath, starfire is out-dps'ing my shaman with manual FS-cast + lavaburst / LB / CL by 500 dps.

Hunters have massive utility as well, I'd dare say on par with a shaman and they add a lot to the equation as well. Feign death is very nice. Pet utility is immense with three hunters, both in terms of offtanking and aggro management, but also special abilities: stun, disarm, slow, spell interrupt, casting speed reduced, root, atk debuff, atk buff etc.

I'm not saying the shaman is dead - simply that other classes can offer the same advantages and utility and sometimes more.

Edit: Wrong statement removed.