Well I think your first problem is your Groups are horrible.
How I would do your groups:
Group1 Tank Group:
Main Tank
Off Tank
Warlock
Druid
Hunter (Survival)
Group2 Healer Group:
Paladin
Paladin
Paladin
Priest
Shadowpriest
Group3 Melee Group:
Enh Shaman
Fury Warrior
Rogue
Rogue
Feral Druid
Group4 Caster Group:
Mage
Mage
Mage
Shaman
Shadowpriest
Group5 Caster Group:
Warlock
Warlock
Hunter (BM)
Mage
Shadowpriest

The only hard part when doing that was finding a spot for the Survival Hunter
For the Group1, you have all your tanks, they get Cmd Shout, Blood Pact, Battle Shout, Imp. The Survival hunter doesn't really fit into any of the groups, but at least here he gets LotP.
As far as group 2 goes, your healers really benefit from having the extra mana from Shadowpriest. Quite possibly you could always swap the Survival Hunter and a Paladin, giving the tanks Aura and letting the hunter have extra mana.
For Group3, I didn't change anything.
Group4, however, I don't understand why they needed 2 shadowpriests in their group, plus giving them the extra damage from WoA + Heroism is a large boost to DPS
Group 5 was sort of the "Leftover" group, putting the auxillery casters in there. However, they can all do a decent amount of damage still, plus the utility of the Shadowpriest. Also don't neglect the fact the hunter gives Ferocious Inspiration. It's pretty similar to your Group 4, however I wouldn't reccomend stacking 2 shadow priests in groups (except in special circumstances).

All things considered, your shaman really shouldn't be dropping GoA totem in their groups. Melee DPS benefit more from Windfury, (save the Shaman and the Feral Druid) and as a hunter you don't benefit from SoE totem.

Yes, as a fire mage on mag 1 shadow priest gave me almost enough mana to not need consumeables (and although I was clicking, my cube was in range so I didn't move much). The only mage spec that benefits from more than 1 shadow priest is full arcane, and the DPS increase from that extra shadowpriest (and the spec) is probably not worth losing a shadow priest in the healer group. I mean if your casters need mana, you're healers are probably starving for mana.
Requesting shadow priests so you don't have to use consumeables isn't the way to make progress, especially when you don't have a shadow priest for every group full of mana users, which naturally means you need more than 3 shadow priests in the raid to even consider pairing them up, which is a very rare situation. And I'd proabably pair them up with healers before I'd pair them up with DPS. Let's face it, healers run oom faster than DPSers except in few extremes such as AB spamming mages.
Also read the warlock thread regarding improved shadowbolt, I still need to check if MB/SW are even worth using (from a total raid DPS prespective), as consuming the imp SB debuff not only reduces warlock and DoT DPS, it also reduces your mind flay DPS significantly.
As for survival hunters, they do not provide any party buffs afaik, so the benefit they provide is completely equal regardless of their party... So the only thing that comes into consideration is what would give that hunter the most DPS and how much DPS it would cost by moving whoever he was replacing in that group. Since survival hunter is generally lower DPS than other classes afaik, he'll probably be the last to be put in a group, often resulting in being in a group that "makes no sense".
I'm usually all for stacking mana for healers first as they have more issues than DPS (both using equal amount of consumeables) and only then DPS. However we usually have our caster group in the form of shadowpriest+moonkin+ele shaman+mage+mage (although I would happily sub a mage for a destro lock as on top of his extra DPS he also gives the raid more imp SB uptime being in that group, but we never even have 1 destro lock, and I'm not sure making a mage lose 8% crit 3% hit is worth it just to give an affliction lock 8% crit 3% hit).

I realized that after I posted it. It's been quoted and I didn't want to edit the post, but it's a general idea of our set-up. I was hoping to get responses on what guilds do with shadowpriests and if they actually use a survival hunter.


For all of you posters who use a survival hunter, what's their agi at raid buffed (w/o GoA I assume).

Our two tanks prefer WF over GoA for threat reasons. The feral druid in that group generally tanks trash, so I think he is there for Devo/Imp but I could be totally wrong.

To give a number to a typical RDPS contribution I'll share my numbers:

I've got a lil over 1000agi raid buffed (agi elixir, gift of the wild, and bok), we'll say straight 1000 to make the math easy. Our raid typically rolls with 8physical dpsers, 10 if you count pets (and you should). My EW is up almost 100% of the time, and is worth at least 250 AP. So, for our typical raid makeup my EW is worth 2500 AP. Using just the 14AP=1DPS rule for white damage that's already 178DPS. The reality is that 14AP is worth more than 1DPS when you account for crits and special attacks (I gain about 1.7dps from 14AP on just my auto-shot damage, counting specials it would be even more).

So, in order for a respec to BM to be worth it to me I would have to be gaining at least 178DPS, likely much much more.

As for group makeup, the curse and the boon of a SV hunter is that it doesn't matter where you place them, they are still going to benefit the raid. Ideally you'd pop em in a group with a feral druid, a shadow priest, an enh. shaman, and a BM hunter, but really I doubt the opportunity cost of that group would be worth it in the end. Even an enh. shaman alone might not be worth giving to the SV hunter if it's gona cost your rogues WF (enh. shaman GoA is 110agi for the fully buffed SV hunter, so with the above numbers that's 275 more AP for the raid, so 19dps, I guarantee you that your rogues get more than 19dps from WF). So where do you put the SV hunter? With a feral druid if you can (5% crit is actually very significant for his dps and longevity if he has TotH), maybe with a spriest if there is room, maybe with the BM hunter for FI if there is room there.

Anyways, I'm rambling, those are my thoughts.