With regard to your suggestion: SHaman need NOTHING. Not a damned thing.
Shaman were strong in 1.0 - only the abdundance of -svs gear made it hard on players like me (ie newbies because I was back then) to kill people. I still had no problem fighitng a running battle vs a fae invoker in 1.0 with my shaman - however I could barely land anything and going through 1000mana in heals/mals isn't as much fun when only one mal lands.
With the elimination of most -svs gear in 2.0 shaman's powered on. Ivilizik and I knew this would be the case - he powerranked to lvl 50 and I deleted my shaman at lvl 30 when I lost interest. Ivilizik killed almost everyone - only Onileon sucessfully stood up to him and that was becasue Onileon avoided a lot of fightint for 4 - 8 weeks while he wandered about id'ing all the new eq, then put himself together a nice saves/hp set and began his reign. Jhyral wasn't one of only a handful of players to be given the 'Elite' title for nothing.
Then -svmal eq got increased (as it was sadly lacking in 2.0) HOWEVER for some unknown reason deterioate was changed to take MORE saves off the higher your targets saves. Now, I thought this was strange - as shaman have no issue landing with a +3 mal lvl advantage (that is if they dont know where to find their +spell eq). So now, if you have high saves you get more taken away. It still doesn't make sense to me and contributes to my opinion that shaman are far too powerful.
In case you haven't dont the maths, if you have -60svmal I can get you back to about -30svmal relatively easily. At -30svmal a shaman will land on you LOTS and LOTS. More than enough to cause your untimely demise.
Now, for you to come here and say you are having an issue means one thing - you lack skill. Sorry there isn't a way to sugar coat it.
Shaman are killers. Shaman suck to face because the longer the battle goes on the more the advantage swings their way. If you don't take them hard and fast you're never going too.
L-A