The Life shaman is very good. You could build a variant of the Oradin build with it.
2 levels of Paladin + Shaman. We'll call is Shamadin.
Well, possibly more levels of Paladin. That really just depends on how good you want your lay on hands to be. It works by you life-linking party members, then healing yourself.
If you want to go straight shaman, you'll want to consider Heavens as your go-to wandering spirit. Primarily because of Heaven's Leap. An ability that can port yourself or any ally within 30 feet of you as if Jester's Jaunt was cast. It was godly in playtesting, and it remains a solid as a rock option when you don't know what to expect. Also, the spirit power of Stardust is pretty much Glitterdust but without taking a spell slot or spirit magic slot. Very sound option.
As an added note, spell failure only applies to arcane casters. Divine casters never have spell failure chance through armor. So you could take that level in Paladin and not worry about your spells not working.
Ok, for shaman spells you have to understand that your regular spell slots/bonus for stats only apply to spells on the shaman list. The Spirit Magic feature only produces one spell slot for each spell level solely to cast the spells mentioned in your Spirit's list. It's an added bonus.
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Theorycrafted pure healer
L4 Human Shaman (Witch Doctor) w/ Life Spirit
WIS > CHA > CON (if you plan to Shield Other)
Feats: Extra Channel, Fey Foundling, Selective Channel
@L4 you will:
Channel as Cleric of your level: 1 + WIS MOD/Day (& +2 from Extra Channel)
and
Channel as Cleric (Level - 3): 3 + CHA MOD/Day
Pick Hex Vulnerability spell and Healing Hex. Normally, Healing Hex only works 1/day on a creature. Hex Vulnerability makes the targeted creature become susceptible to a repeat use of your hexes, even if you could not otherwise target that creature with a particular hex for a certain time period. With a duration of 1 rd/lvl, at mid-levels and above, you can use this to fill up L1 slots and use healing hex repeatedly on a creature after fights if pots or wands are low.
After this, you can dip paladin for 2 or 4 levels, and return to Shammy...or just stay straight Shammy.
edit: Heavens Shaman Playtest
Yeah, the features do leave something to be desired. Really do think the Shaman should have been an all or nothing class for its powers. Either a prepared charisma caster with hexes and other spirit boons keyed to the stat, or nothing keyed to it.
I probably would have also taken the channel usages being 2 + Charisma modifier as an intermediary between the cleric and oracle channel uses.
Oracle Lifelink works when the linked ally has at least 5 hp under their full total. Shaman Lifelink works when the linked ally is literally at -5 hp or lower. One can top off, the other just stabilizes.
It's partly the fault of the guys in the playtest, myself included. We pointed out that nearly all the hexes and abilities the spirits gave were merely a copy and paste of the Oracle Mystery powers. This was quite evident with the Lore Spirit in the playtest, which even had the Intelligence booster of the Lore Mystery. The intent of the statement as of that second round of playtesting was to lessen some of the MAD issues the Shaman had, and to make the class seem more than a mere amalgam. Make some hexes that were more original than the copy/paste, reduce the need for Charisma.
There were things done to expand on the character in the ways we were asking for, but some things kind of went south. The extra hexes that are independent of the Spirit chosen were the positive side. The loss of the Dex replacement for the Nature Spirit and the Life Spirit's Lifelink ability changes were clearly under the "things went south" category.
I do think, however, that the devs may have just missed something due to a more ongoing question about the Shaman's spell list. Maybe a typo occurred that nobody caught or particularly felt worried about. Maybe someone was tired when a round of internal testing was finished and didn't quite put in that bit of input that would have changed it. We don't know. I really don't know how tired the development team at Paizo gets from doing this and then dealing with a laundry list of complaints from customers.
If you're not doing this for PFS, then I'd suggest talking with your GM about houseruling the Lifelink to work like the Oracle's. Maybe talk about the Channel thing as well.
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I'm actually looking not at life shaman, but at the possibility of being a life mystery Oradin with the Spirit Guide Archetype. I'm trying to still wrap my head around the wandering spirit concept. As written, it sounds like you can choose a different wandering spirit to bond with each session. Is this correct?
So... you could go Heavens for the teleport, or nature to erode constructs. I'm still trying to figure out if Lore will actually give you an number of arcane spells known up to your charisma modifier, as written in hex. If so... wow. This could be the most flexible oracle archetype ever.
Hmm