Basically they have loads of little things that make them, well, almost a cheap class.

1) They can heal themselves, which is normal for priests and druids, except they also can wear mail armour after level 40. Plus they get a big shield, so take a lot less damage.

2) They can resurrect themselves. They can do it only once an hour, but if you’re soloing then that’s about the rate of death anyway unless you’re doing a hard quest (so no corpse runs)

3) Totems are cool and provide various buffs and debuffs.

4) they can rez other players, and the self-rez can avoid the whole team doing a corpse run, so they’re handy in a team

So yeah, fine solo. Only level 14 or something with my alt shaman, but it’s fun. Thing about pets is Warlocks and Hunters can’t really heal themselves, so that doesn’t mean a pet is the be-all of soloing.

In short: roll a druid.