it's absolute bullshit that shaman is overpowered at all. shamans are easily killed by warlocks, rogues, shadow priests... hell, any class that knows how to counter their abilities (luckily, they actually stack up ok against paladins. a group without a shaman pretty much has to have 3 people at the least focus fire on the pally to kill him/her). the only way to beat a paladin is to outlast them, which basically no class can do except a high int/spirit shaman. there's no counter for divine shield or lay on hands (which is just retarded at higher ranks since you can use it with ~30 mana left and GAIN mana back from it in addition to the full HP heal), and there's no use for lay on hands in pve whatsoever so it's always ready for pvp use. shamans can't do any one of their three strengths (healing, melee, casting) better than the best of that class (priest/druid, rogue, mage/warlock/shadow priest) and there are tons of counters for every ability they have, not to mention totems are gimp as hell in pvp with the exception of earthbind and grounding totems.
people have been whining about shamans as "overpowered" for a longass time in beta, mostly complaining "omg they have mail and shields and can heal" without doing any number crunching or admitting that paladins get plate, shields, and can heal. they bitch about their spell damage, but because shamans take tons of damage from any caster class or rogue, they have to focus more on heals. and the equipment bitching is ridiculous when, if shamans didn't have shields or mail, the horde would have one endgame mail class, and one shield class (and, like in beta before the level cap was raised to 40 and shamans could train mail, there was no use for all of the +int/spirit mail that dropped).
in the endgame, a shaman is good for a few totem buffs that give resistances and as a backup healer, while a paladin has auras that give the same strong resistances in auras (and, in fact, gets a shadow resistance aura, which is far better than the nature resistance totem that shamans get), the best armor in the game, and massive damage against undead (who make up a majority of mobs in 2 of the 4 top instances in the game at the moment). So a paladin in the endgame can be a main tank or a very durable offtank, can heal almost as good as a shaman (their big heal casts faster by default and for only about 100 hp less on average) and are a major reason to be brought along in pve just for their damage against all of the undead in scholomance and stratholme. shamans can't tank period in the endgame - mail gets chewed up fast by level 50 and up elites (just not as fast as cloth and leather).
divine shield is just a bs move in pvp (it's ok in pve since it dumps aggro on everyone else, though this also makes it useless in a lot of respects so like LOH, it's almost always cooled down for pvp exclusively) and either needs its duration shortened, status cleansing effect taken away, or cooldown lengthened. I mean, my warlock has death coil, which at rank 1 does about 300 damage and heals me for 300 (if it does that much damage) and has twice the cooldown of divine shield. at the highest rank it does 470 base damage (by 60 it might, maybe approach 500ish) which is nice, but rarely used due to the cooldown and massive hate it generates. a warrior has retaliation, which counters every front/side melee attack for 15 seconds, or recklessness, which increases critical rate, makes them immune to fear effects, but also makes them take 20% more damage for 15 seconds. and both of these abilities are on a 30 minute cooldown, which is even linked so that if you use one you can't use the other. oh, or they can do shield wall, which reduces all damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds, and is linked to the same 30 minute cooldown. I think the only class that gets a skill that's almost as good as divine shield (but is countered by the warriors' overpower skill, unlike divine shield which has no counter) is the rogue, with evasion (+50% dodge rate for 15 sec. and a 5 minute cooldown) and vanish (essentially auto re-stealth for 10 seconds and breaks snares, 5 minute cooldown - countered by any DOT effect or just having some improved stealth detection, available from many different sources like alchemy, engineering, warlock pets, a quested noncombat pet available to high level players, and hunter skills). the shaman's long-cooldown ability is just something used to save a group from having to restart in an instance if they wipe - a self-resurrection that's not only weak, it also incurs 10 minutes of resurrection sickness, so the group pretty much has to wait for 10 minutes before they can resume. druids get a combat resurrection with a half hour cooldown, and it also requires reagents... so it's not a great spell, just a failsafe if for some reason all but the druid die in the group.
jesus, I've gone on a huge rant, sorry for the long read. but the point of it is that divine shield is way overpowered in pvp and nigh on useless in pve (except soloing, I guess) along with lay on hands, and the only defense is that they have long cooldowns... while any other class with long cooldown abilities (which is basically everyone but the mage, priest and hunter) has either far worse abilities or counters for those abilities. They need some nerfs just to be balanced in line with the other classes.
