I know I'm a little late to the party and I do agree with most of the criticisms of the PHBII classes; however, I would like to point out an avenue of discussion for dragon shaman. The book came out in 2006 and the Draconomicon came out in 2003 with the introduction of metabreath feats. While I can agree that the dragon shaman is a little lacking in most areas, it was given a 1d4 breath that specifically qualifies for these feats unlike the per day versions of half dragon, dragon disciple, and dragon samurai or the at will version from the dragonfire adept.

So while yes the dragon shaman is indeed not quite as excellent at other roles I must disagree that it's a boring class. Most classes don't usually start becoming interesting action wise until 6th level anyways and that is the first level you can qualify for a metabreath feat and they are powerful and can make the class' primary active ability quite the interesting tactical tool. Metabreath feats combine with breath channeling feats quite nicely too.