Do Shamans have a place in end game content?

[Kevin]

No, it isn't an awesome point.

Why on Earth would I use a talent build which, quite frankly, contributes almost nothing except for class skills and spells? Retribution paladins have two things: They refresh all judgements and they have a +crit aura. That's it. And if you're the only paladin in the raid, the first thing is useless.

I want to be useful and desired when I join a raid--and I want to be that based on the choices I've made, not just my base skills which anyone of the same class will have. If that's the only reason why a Retribution paladin is taken along, he might as well spec Holy and actually contribute something useful aside from buffs and cleanse.

I'm wonder if that is all they need. The buffs and the cleanse. They don't need the extra healing or the tanking. In that case a ret pally would be better because they do offer more DPS than the other specs.

While paladins stack well, when looking at buffs up to 4 (Might/Wisdom, Kings, Salv, Light) and a 5th can add a little buff value. 3 is generally fine to get all you need out of them because Light is only valuable of the paladin is doing a lot of healing. With consumable chaining the paladins longevity isn't really much better than a holy priests and if you are min maxing, you are chaining consumables. And a holy priest still brings more to the healing equation.

There are some things that a paladin tank does better (they can do really nice things on an AoE pull but a ret/prot build can do that job as well as full prot) than druids or warriors. But if you have solid warriors and druids than you don't really need the prot pally.

So if you really only want them there for the buffs and the cleanse since there are better healers and better tanks if you min/max or if you are adding a 2nd or 3rd for buffs and you have a holy and or prot paladin already, then yes a ret paladin offers more, because the extra layer of buffs makes up for the DPS that you lose by not bringing another pure DPS and having extra tanking or extra healing you don't need is more of a waste since they can't offer as much DPS as even the low DPS ret pally can.

If you figure that the 25 man is 2 of each class for a base 18 + an extra druid and priest for healing and you are just looking at what to put in those 5 other slots and if you figure both pallies are already holy pallies you are probably already covered on healing because you should have at least 2 of the priest, 2 of the druids and the 2 pallies and I'd figure at least one of the shaman has heal spec'd. That's 7 heal spec folks at least already. So if you want that 3rd buff layer from the pally then yeah you probably want a ret pally for it because they will actually add more than another healer or tank you don't need.