I doubt dps shaman die very often, as they can kill faster. maybe if they get a tone of adds. The cool thing about my resto is sometimes I'll pull like 5 mobs on me when competing for mobs in that cave for the hodir quest. I can handle it. Not sure about dps shaman though.
One point I made small reference to above is alot of quests don't involve significant killing. Not like the old classic wow days. So the biggest time sink isn't drinking (water shield should alleviate most of this), but travelling and finding out where you are supposed to go for a quest.