hello

it's common to see four or five shamans in a group, but I did some extensive Exceling and found out that in actuality ONLY THREE SHAMANS ARE NECESSARY

to drop all totems that have a 5-minute cooldown, no more than 3 shamans are required

with separate Poison Cleansing and Disease Cleansing totems, things were different, but today, even three shamans won't get their totem bars full (4 totems) if all 5-minute totems are to be dropped

of course it's easy to multibox 5-4 of the same class, but totems are no longer the reason to choose pally+4 shammy

if the group is for PVP, then paladin + 4 shaman is actually much worse than 5shamans (ghost wolves useless, must reach melee range with paladin, gives the enemy a clear target to kill first etc)

but if the group is for PVE, a tankadin is a must for heroics

I have this suggestion for maximum resistances:

1x tank
1x shaman (frost res totem)
1x shaman (fire res totem)
1x shaman (nature res totem)
1x priest (shadow res prayer)

holy cannot be resisted, and arcane resistance would be your "weakness"

so the next time you think of a group to level, please consider something else than the stereotypical shammy team or tankadin shammy team.

ps. if you only have one shaman in your group, spec to reduce reincarnation for PvE when you level, saves you a lot of gray hairs