[Extunarian]

Maybe I don't play my character right, but at pretty much any given level from 1-54 a mage of equal level could solo more efficiently than my shaman.

At 54 my pet tops out at level 36, hits for 51 and costs 500 mana. Since the mana cost is so high you don't want him dying so you toss on regrowth & talisman, and his DPS is so low you need to give him STR+haste. You also need to slow every mob the dog will tank, and then root because the pet can't out-agro our Slow, so suddenly your 'manaless dot' is kind of expensive to maintain. Did I mention it hits for 51? Sometimes?

A 54 mage gets to choose from a level 46 water pet, air pet or earth pet, but probably will just chain cast his level 42 fire pet of facerape with built-in DS for 200 mana a pop.

Necros too are more efficient than shaman when it comes to bringing down single mob after single mob after single mob.

Of course a druid doesn't need to worry about a pet because they just quad for 3 minutes and then turn into a tree and go do the dishes for 6 minutes. I'm not even sure why you would want a pet for quadding. And though I've never parsed it, I would bet that a druid's DS adds more DPS to a group than a wimpy shaman pet.

Basically, you can always overlook the deficiencies of another class and think 'wow my paladin would be so much better if it just had feign death. SK's are so overpowered!' but you'd be discounting the price they had to pay in another area for that skill.