Unfortunately, as much as I want to believe my
Pugilist/Dragoon/Masurou
Shaman/Necromancer
party would work at later levels, the party is simply unable to heal enough to get through the lower levels. Shaman in particular just does not make sense to me as a class. It's heals are so weak compared to similar classes like Dancer and Trabadour and at least before speccing, doesn't have any tricks of its own to make up for the lack of healing.
Like what the hell is a Shaman even meant to do in the early game? Buffs are always nice, but TP costs at low levels are too high for them to be consistently used. Also, in my experience, buffs only really come into their own in middle game onwards once you've been able to invest enough points into the buff. When all you have is a couple points in an attack buff, you're really not doing all that much.
I've thus changed my team to the following
Pugilist/Dragoon/Masurou
Necromancer/Rover
Healing is much more in control now and I'm actually making decent progress. That said, I'm a little bit concerned that Nec and Rov are going to be stepping on each other's toes since they are both pet classes. Especially since I'm planning on speccing my Necromancer into an Evoker, which relies on having as many wraiths as possible