So I've been leveling my two shammy alts with my prot warrior boosting em in instances. lvl 64 now. Ramps, bf, coilfang runs, and mana tombs / crypts.

Now that I'm getting the feel for it. I definitely think for 2 manning stuff, the paladin would be better with, beacon, cheap but big heals, instant heal when needed (on the run), kings / salv, and very hard to kill.

However healing others running with you would be very hard with a pally (judge light + glyph for holy light with a smallish AoE heal is about it). I also think it'd be very hard to heal significant party damage with a druid as your second box. Even though trees excel at raid healing, it takes quite a bit of micromanaging and would be extremely difficult to manage more than wild growth on other party members.

Now... as for shammies, I think this is where they can really shine. Glyphed and spec'd for chain heal could easily keep your party members up in a heroic run unless you can't maintain aggro with your tank of course. I don't think they can compete with a tank + healadin for two manning stuff, but when you pull others into the group for heroics, raids, etc. I definitely agree than shammies are win.

If I don't get too bored before I boost my two shammies to 80, then I'm planning to take them hybrid resto/elemental. I figure that combined they'll be just as good as a dedicated healer and just as good as a dedicated DPSer. Which will be make reg runs a breeze, and many of the heroics 3-mannable (and easy enough to pug 2 deeps for those you can't).

I also think they'll be fine in quite a bit of raid content. Fights with major movement will be tough, and you wouldn't want to be the only healers in the raid. I think you'd still want 2 dedicated healers and they could act as off-heals + dps. That way if you lose control of them or mess up it won't cost the raid too much. Plus 2xtotems is very complimentary. You have quite a bit of raid utility.

For managing the stop and go, I just mapped a macro that makes them follow each other (essentially they stop) that is maped to the same key as my warriors charge keybind. Works pretty well so far. Keeps me in range of the totems, and they can bolt + heal out of most AoE / cleave damage. Reincarnate is amazing too when you're not using a pally tank at least.

I'll still probably move my druid over for some 2 man fun, so we'll see how that goes.