I started a Mixed group

[Basilikos]

And it's showing potential. I'm running an Unholy Deathknight, a Holy Priest, a Fire Mage, a Balance/Restoration Druid, and an Elemental/Restoration Shaman. I really need to stop playing with them and get my Shaman group to 60 since RAF is up in a few days (they're sooo close, too). But that's another story...

I thought I'd share a few things with everyone here about how well this worked out for me. Granted, I've just RAFed this team out of nothing (excluding the Deathknight and a couple of characters I had stashed from my singleboxing days) and I'm currently going through instances between 40 and 60. I don't have that much experience with TBC content, but from what I'm hearing about WotLK, this group is going to handle instances like they're all cakewalks. But that's also another story ...

Before I start all this, I ought to say that I'm a hardware boxer with experience using programs such as HotKeyNet (good program, by the way). Because of that, my configuration allows me to get the most out of a group like this. The DPSers are all on the Vetra keyboard multicaster. The Healer has been taken off of the multicaster since I just don't see a way for that to go well. That, and the healer really only has one bar with target macros as the heals. There is another bar with the "special" abilities as well. The hardest thing about figuring all this out was seperating the character's abilities into categories such as pre-combat, post-combat, small damage, large damage, "specials," crowd control, etc. Then, they are placed in the same spots on the DPSers action bars. Obviously, that helps quite a bit with pulls (set the targets of each of the characters, CC, then proceed with the fight as normal).

Like I said before, the healer funamentally targets and heals. I've used all the F-keys for other things, but that's alright since I never could keep track of the party member order anyway. I'm using target macros that correspond to each of the characters in the order that I like best.

Clearly, the Deathknight is on my main set of controls since his combat systems requires the most attention out of any of these characters. He's specced Unholy for the AoE, and I'm pretty happy with how it's working out so far.

At this point, I'm getting into level 50 and over instances just trying to get my coordination skills up to par. So far, the more irritating part of this whole effort has been setting up pulls and totems. It's not hard to decide what abilities to use in any given situation, it's the DAMN PULLS. But I suppose I'll get better at it as times goes on.

Right now, I'm looking for flaws in my configuration that might cause me problems later. If anyone has anything to suggest, I'm happy to hear it.

[wowphreak]

Any major flaws yeh got will start to show up in instances.

Can yeh move all yer chars while in combat?
Can yeh deal with yer tank being CCed?
How well can yeh recover from an aoe fear?
Can yeh deal with one of yer chars being MCed?

These are some of the things yeh will have to contend with

[krum]

I've always run mixed groups. I think it's really the way to go, although I find 2 shamans to be close to ideal so it's not a complete mix.

[RooTxBeeR]

I give you props man, anyone who can run a mixed group successfully is great at this, i can barely contain a 5 paladin group. Also I suggest for your priest, have macros that select 1 character then have the healing/purify/shield w/e near it so you can just hit 1(target tank) 6(heal, instead of having a macro to target+a certain heal of each cahracter. I did 1-6 target main/healer/dps1-3 then 6-0 is flash/main heal/shield/purify

[Basilikos]

I give you props man, anyone who can run a mixed group successfully is great at this, i can barely contain a 5 paladin group. Also I suggest for your priest, have macros that select 1 character then have the healing/purify/shield w/e near it so you can just hit 1(target tank) 6(heal, instead of having a macro to target+a certain heal of each cahracter. I did 1-6 target main/healer/dps1-3 then 6-0 is flash/main heal/shield/purifyI'm glad to see someone else thought of it this way - I was getting worried that I was doing something bizarre.

[Basilikos]

I've always run mixed groups. I think it's really the way to go, although I find 2 shamans to be close to ideal so it's not a complete mix.Here's a question for you. My Elemental Shaman has Totem of Wrath in his spec, but he's also got the standard Flametongue Totem. I love the crit chance and everything else that comes along with Totem of Wrath, but the spell power boost from Flametongue is nice since it's good for healing AND dps all at the same time. My group has threee characters that will be able to heal effectively (although the holy priest is going to rule them all). Do you run into situations where you would prefer one over the other? Of course, this might not be an issue for you since you're using two shaman.

Just thought I'd ask.

[Basilikos]

Any major flaws yeh got will start to show up in instances.

Can yeh move all yer chars while in combat?
Can yeh deal with yer tank being CCed?
How well can yeh recover from an aoe fear?
Can yeh deal with one of yer chars being MCed?

These are some of the things yeh will have to contend withMoving characters in combat - yes. Syro's videos helped with that. They can easily avoid any nasty effects coming their way.
Tank CCed - I guess it would depend on the type of CC. The tank is AoE, so as long as he can cast, sure.
AoE Fear - Time will tell. I would imagine this would have to do with how far away everyone runs. I would imagine that the worst-case scenario would involve pulling aggro back with the tank and getting the healer in range. After that, I'd just pull the others back as I could.
MCed - Pretty well. I have a few characters that could heal competently, so the worst case would be the tank and I'd have to just go on the defensive while that happens.

Thanks for the pointers - I'll have to test my mettle against all that some time.

[TheBigBB]

I run a group similar to yours, and another mixed group with some different DPS but same philosophy. I use the same basic structure you use, with a lot of keys with different functions to give me more control over what's being casted, and with the healer using her own set of keys to avoid spamming healing when it's not needed. It works amazingly well, and I am really happy to see someone else setting themselves up for a very versatile and powerful PVE team.

[Coltimar]

One trouble I have with my mixed group is setting my macros up as they level so things are balanced. Channeling spells threw me at first, until Jamba and the 'follow after combat' feature. It's also tricky to keep up with everyone's class specific quests, but very fun. I love my mixed group: Pally tank, Pally healer, Shadow priest, Destro lock and Frost mage. While my Pally + 4 shaman group seems to flow better and I really have that down to a science, my mixed group is more fun to watch, lol.

[Hor]

Interested to see how this works for you, I'm working on a mixed group myself atm Warrior, Arc Mage, Aff Lock, Boomkin, and Resto Shaman. Still tweaking some things, and I have a few other classes I "can" sub in if needed like a Holy priest, but I'm still levelling so we'll see. Definitely keep posting with any thoughts or issues you run into with your setup.

[SlayerX]

I use to run a mix myself 1-70. I ahd a holy priest, prot pally, 2 demon locks, and a frost mage. It worked out pretty good, could do isntances and all. I took my wow break ebfore i got to try heroics thou.

I'm thinking of trying a prot pally, frost mage, demon warlock and two shaman (with a hunter to possibly sub in for a shaman)

Now to just mess around with some macros and set up keys/x-keys, thou the more i dlo it lately the more i move away from the x-keys.

[Talamarr]

I love mixed groups and wouldn't do it differently. However, I'm only running three at the moment (prot pally, bm hunter and elem shaman). I love it.

For PvE I've simplified it down to some macros for pre pull (buffing and totems), a spam macro for dps in combat (includes, tanking rotation), a macro or two for healing up the group and a "oh crap" macro (DI the shaman, feign death).

For boss fights I rebind my dps spam key on my elemental shaman to a healing macro that looks like this
/castsequence [target=focus] Chain Heal, Water Shield

Water Shield? Yes, water shield. Since I'm spamming I don't necessarily want to spam chain heals as I might not need that much healing so I add the appropriate number of Water Shield casts (since they cost no mana) to invoke the GCD a few times and space out the chain heals. That way I can just spam away.

[TheBigBB]

I love mixed groups and wouldn't do it differently. However, I'm only running three at the moment (prot pally, bm hunter and elem shaman). I love it.

For PvE I've simplified it down to some macros for pre pull (buffing and totems), a spam macro for dps in combat (includes, tanking rotation), a macro or two for healing up the group and a "oh crap" macro (DI the shaman, feign death).

For boss fights I rebind my dps spam key on my elemental shaman to a healing macro that looks like this
/castsequence [target=focus] Chain Heal, Water Shield

Water Shield? Yes, water shield. Since I'm spamming I don't necessarily want to spam chain heals as I might not need that much healing so I add the appropriate number of Water Shield casts (since they cost no mana) to invoke the GCD a few times and space out the chain heals. That way I can just spam away.

You could just put commas after the Chain Heal to cast nothing every few keypresses. That way you could still cast Chain Heals more quickly by spamming the button faster.

[Talamarr]

You could just put commas after the Chain Heal to cast nothing every few keypresses. That way you could still cast Chain Heals more quickly by spamming the button faster.

yea, I tried that but I've got it bound to my mouse scroll and I'm spinning that bad boy pretty quickly. Commas have nothing on my index finger ;)

[Rin]

Mixed groups are truly powerful; I'm running a group that consists of an unholy Death Knight, a protection warrior, 2 BM Hunters, and a Holy Priest. I haven't ran into anything that the group can't trash. Even some of the earlier fights that I had difficulty with as a team of 4 shaman + paladin really became trivial with the mixed group. One fight that comes to mind is the Nazan fight in Ramparts. When I was around 62'ish with my shaman + paladin team, I would typically lose one or two people once I got the fight down; just learning the fight and dealing with the huge AOE damage was not a trivial task (I probably wiped 9-10 times learning the encounter); I honestly believe that the ramparts was the *hardest* (yes, even harder than Sethekk) instance that I ever delt with as a multiboxer with the shaman + paladin team.

Now, on the flip side of the coin, I did the ramps with my mixed group. On my first attempt I simply walked through the encounter, no deaths, had everyone attacking. On my 2nd attempt at it, I killed Vazruden with my team, and then I let my pets kill Nazan. Needless to say, they walked away with 80% hp each (1 core hound, 1 devilsaur doing the fight) - they needed 0 heals, 0 buffs, etc. It was amazing.

With all of the amazing capabilities that a mixed group brings to the table, it's no wonder why an encounter can be trivialized by adding multiple classes. My 2nd team (the other half of my 10-box setup) is fairing well too; it consists of a Protection paladin, 2 Arcane Mages, 1 Resto Shaman, 1 Balance Druid. Encounters are a little bit tougher with this group (as you can imagine), but the dps is much higher with the 2nd team than the first. It's also nice not having to worry about agro as much as with my first team (1 tank = easy agro control ... 2 "tanks" + pets = easy agro control once you get the macros down for it).

Cheers. :)

[Talamarr]

2 BM Hunters

My bm hunter, who was 68 when wrath was released and is now modestly geared level 76 is a freaking DPS machine! I can't imagine what two would do.