I'll admit a lot of ignorance about the Shaman class, especially early in TBC. Obviously Alliance had just received the class and in the first several weeks of the expansion, people who wanted to play a shaman weren't in Hellfire with everybody else -- they were running Uldaman and Zul'farrak. I also never played Horde beyond some server downtime boredom. To be honest, one of the dumbest misconceptions I had about Shammies was that they had a tanking aspect. I used to solo Devilsaurs in Un'goro on my Druid for guardian stones and to practice the whole HoT-tank/dps-stun-heal-root-heal-tank/dps cycle. Then I would run accross a Shaman just standing there with a shield taking hits and burning them down easy.

But even afterwards, when we started to see some well-geared shammies running around Outlands, they all seemed to be Enhancement on my server. I did a lot of pugging and I formed and lead most of the instances I ran while gearing up and I was always reluctant to invite a shammy -- I just didn't know how to use them, what CC they had, whether they would be liabilities in one fight over another Hunter or a Mage. But as it turns out I leveled a new toon alongside some buddies who were rolling shamans together, and we did a lot of early instances together with them primarily as Elemental or Resto and now I'm pretty thoroughly convinced.

I think the Shaman class has only one problem: too much utility. I'm not saying that to say they're OP or anything, but they're spread soo thin along any one dimensions just to be versatile in so many; thus they get a little discrimination from the populace. Nobody complains in my raid, but obviously PvP players have some kind of beef, and I just keep feeling like all these Arena kiddies are going to call down some awful re-working of the Shaman class from on high.

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