Is the (Shadow)Priest the better Mage in WOW?

[Treesh]

If I can poly it, chances are it can be sapped and MCed, too.  The only difference between poly, sap and MC is that poly hits beasts as well as humanoids.  You know how many elite beasts there are in the four endgame instances and Dire Maul?

One.

The spiders in LBRS are it.  That's "so many targets" compared to sap and MC? 
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And there is much more to the game than just the endgame instances and Dire Maul. Since sometime after Gnomeregan, Aleri has had two mages with her group for most instances. Having two sheepers who know how to work together has made many instances run so much easier. We almost never wipe and only on rare occasions do I have to completely hunker down and go into absolute heal bot mode. Having run Razorfen Downs and not being able to have more than one sheep or sap was much trickier and riskier. We also didn't have a priest with us to shackle (I was playing my rogue, not my priest). We only really managed to do it well because we had an overlevelled mage and warlock with us simply because of their AoEs. My rogue shut down the casters (Cheap shot, kidney shot, and improved kick) while they AoEd everything beating the crap out of the tank.

Anyway, after all that rambling, my main point is that there is so much more to the game than level 57-60. You cannot discount the usefulness of classes for the rest of the game simply because of how things work at the end game stuff.