My final planned 10-man boxing group

[TheBigBB]

After spending time on heroics with my first team of 5, I am leveling the second team now and my final 10-man raiding box team will have the following classes. I will explain my reasoning, and please give me some input on if I've overlooked anything essential:

2 Protection Paladins - Paladins stack well, frontload their threat, and in 10 mans, having one tank and the other not tank is as easy as just clicking off the Righteous Fury buff from one paladin. No need to even change their attacks at all.

2 Moonkin Druids - Moonkins are just so powerful right now with very few weaknesses, and having two innervates will extend my healing dramatically, not to mention battle rez.

2 Holy/Disc hybrid Priests - Priests are the masters of AOE healing when glyphed right, and allow me to sometimes make strategies where I eat damage rather than avoid it to simplify and speed things up. I am not taking Circle of Healing anymore. I am using a glyphed Holy Nova and using the talent points I save to dip down into discipline for the % stat buffs, so the priests will have even more longevity. Glyphed Holy Nova actually heals better than COH.

2 Elemental Shaman - Two sets of totems will stack because I can use different totems on each shaman, and I'll always have a heroism up. Despite what people say about shaman DPS, heroism and totems add so much utility that even if these two are sitting dead last on the damage meter, I guarantee that they will be the MVPs of my DPS team when you calculate it out. Besides the damage increases, you can't even quantify how overpowered priest AOE healing gets when it's on heroism. It's the difference between life and death sometimes.

1 Arcane/Fire Mage - Good DPS, a crit buff, water, portals, spellsteal

1 Destro Warlock - Curses, stones, imp health buff, good DPS

[Owltoid]

Wow, sounds like a great combination. I can't think of any major buff that you're missing and it seems like your damage output will be pretty optimal. Good luck!

[TheBigBB]

Wow, sounds like a great combination. I can't think of any major buff that you're missing and it seems like your damage output will be pretty optimal. Good luck!I guess that hunters have a ferocious inspiration buff, but I'm finding that the range limitations on a hunter could be a big problem, and hunters seem to be affected by whatever bug it is that makes them occasionally run off on their own.

I also don't have a mana battery class (which the hunter could be), but the DPS I have just aren't going out of mana with mana spring totem and prayer of spirit up - especially not if they have wisdom. So innervate will be fine.

[Stabface]

Aren't they putting a cooldown on CoH ?

[TheBigBB]

Aren't they putting a cooldown on CoH ?Exactly, that's why I'm not using COH anymore.

[Stabface]

Hehe yes I see that now... sorry no coffee today lol.

[Zub]

if you ever need a mana battery, you can always make a priest shadow, and use a paly or druid to heal

[emesis]

Especially with dual-specs on the ways, this looks like a tremendous combo. You can switch one pally from prot to ret when you only need one tank.

[TheBigBB]

Especially with dual-specs on the ways, this looks like a tremendous combo. You can switch one pally from prot to ret when you only need one tank.I do have a rogue on Pally #2's account which might be used for that role at some point if it becomes a liability to have the extra tank, and if I feel like leveling it.

[Seneca]

Especially with dual-specs on the ways, this looks like a tremendous combo. You can switch one pally from prot to ret when you only need one tank.I do have a rogue on Pally #2's account which might be used for that role at some point if it becomes a liability to have the extra tank, and if I feel like leveling it.I think emesis was suggesting the ret paly for the replenishment effect of judgement of the wise. Overall the group looks perfect, it takes what I believe to be the ultimate 5 man team and extends it (Prot paly, 2 shaman, boomkin, disc priest). I can't agree more about the disc priests, I'm running one now, briefly tried holy for CoH and even without the nerf I prefer glyphed Holy Nova. I've linked this before, but I'm going to again because its great for building groups is: MMO Champion RaidComp ('http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/'). I personally wouldn't put a hunter in there, stacking casters is dangerous for magic immune mobs, but they buff each other to ridiculous levels.

[homerjunior]

You basiclly need a holy pally priests will go oom esp without a mana battery also a good idea is to change a shaman to hunter(Surv)

[Seneca]

You basiclly need a holy pally priests will go oom esp without a mana battery also a good idea is to change a shaman to hunter(Surv)
I have to respectfully disagree. Two shaman dropping mana spring, blessing of wisdom, shadowfiends and two innervates, I'd be surprised if they ended fights with less than 80% mana. Speaking from experience, my disc priest is amazing for mana efficiency, and ends just about every boss fight with 95% mana (without needing innervate or shadowfiend).

Also, what would a hunter bring other than replenishment? A dual-spec ret paly can provide that soon. Two shaman are required for optimal heroisms and having both strength of earth and stoneskin is nice. I like theorycrafting this stuff, but its just my opinion at the end of the day. A hunter certainly would bring a bit of versatility, auras are quite nice I guess. If I was running 10, I would look for every opportunity to keep it simple too. Keeping it all as caster dps helps for that.

[TheBigBB]

I'm making a talent change. I realized that the crit debuff (like that applied by scorch) DOES stack with moonkin aura, and with the help of Elitist Jerks forums I changed my mage to a 21/0/50 frostbolt spec. Supposedly I don't even need to worry about ice lance with this spec; they insist that casting nothing but frostbolts will actually be my best bet for DPS, plus the elemental for mana regen and DPS. I tried it out and it works great. I can just switch to a frostfire macro in the case that there's an immune mob.

[Shaitan256]

Hey TheBigBB,

I really like your plan, on doing 10 Man content, I looked up some Naxx Bosses and some are really "MB friendly" ok Movement is still in there, but some are really doable. Wish you luck with this.

I plan on starting a second team if I get an apprenticeship this year :)cahnces looking quite good for my, can'T look better.

Really like to see your progress, keep it up :)

[Coltimar]

Nice setup! I am trying to get my team up together. I do kara/za atm for practice. 10 Main control is a bit tricky.

1 prot pally
1 unholy DK
1 shadow priest
1 holy pally
1 boomkin
2 ele shaman
1 resto shaman
1 arcane/fire mage
1 destro lock

I have another ele ehsman, a BM hunter and a holy/disc priest to sub in but the latter two are still sub 60 :(

[heffner]

Just to clarify your mage spec change, is it due to not being able to easily micro-manage the offensive spells (i.e., just button spam and never look back)??? I have been trying to educate myself on the best spec for my mage so I can maximize DPS with just button spamming. The same for all my DPSers really (elemental shaman and boomkin). For example, for my Boomkin I skipped Force of Nature because I don't think I could easily implement that.

Anyway, I look forward to reading about your progress. I never imagined 10-boxing would be so "popular", I think it would give me a seizure.

[TheBigBB]

Just to clarify your mage spec change, is it due to not being able to easily micro-manage the offensive spells (i.e., just button spam and never look back)??? I have been trying to educate myself on the best spec for my mage so I can maximize DPS with just button spamming. The same for all my DPSers really (elemental shaman and boomkin). For example, for my Boomkin I skipped Force of Nature because I don't think I could easily implement that.

Anyway, I look forward to reading about your progress. I never imagined 10-boxing would be so "popular", I think it would give me a seizure.If you go all out arcane you won't apply the crit debuff unless you apply scorch; same with a fire spec. Frost gets the debuff simply from casting spells on a target.

Also, with both of those specs your best DPS is heavily reliant on using those chance on cast moves which give a free instant pyro or super-haste arcane missiles. Frost spec has the free fireball, but it's not as important. So if I ignore the fireballs I'm not losing as much DPS (or any DPS) as compared to ignoring a free pyro. Also, the water elemental is very useful to have to help my mana. And ice lance will be hard to use right, but most bosses won't get frozen anyhow.

Also, to clarify, it's not that I am totally incapable of using those procs, it's just that with 10 characters it would be very difficult to manage it most of the time. I do not button spam as a rule. I always have my healing and tanking on separate keys from the DPS; I barely even macro the tanks. I play them like normal. I also have spellsteal/insterrupt/purge bindings and a key to do nothing but instant casts. All that good stuff. :-)

[offive]

Regarding mages, I run two in my main team. I did have them all in the FFB (fire) spec and found it to be lacking. They are now spec'd Frost with a side of arcane (focus magic on each other). I found about a 500dps increase on each and much simpler management. I think torment of the weak has been changed (to include thunderclap) so I should see even more dps.

Overall I like your 10box build, although I think having a DK OT would help in say Eye for the DG. Also keep in mind that 3.1 might throw a monkey with a wrench at you if they tweak boss encounters to make life harder for raiders. So maybe boost up a optional tank to give yourself more options in case one class helps out on a specific fight. Just trying to keep your options open, as Blizz seems to like to buff and nerf classes and I would hate to see you get stuck with a class that got changed for the worse.

[TheBigBB]

Regarding mages, I run two in my main team. I did have them all in the FFB (fire) spec and found it to be lacking. They are now spec'd Frost with a side of arcane (focus magic on each other). I found about a 500dps increase on each and much simpler management. I think torment of the weak has been changed (to include thunderclap) so I should see even more dps.

Overall I like your 10box build, although I think having a DK OT would help in say Eye for the DG. Also keep in mind that 3.1 might throw a monkey with a wrench at you if they tweak boss encounters to make life harder for raiders. So maybe boost up a optional tank to give yourself more options in case one class helps out on a specific fight. Just trying to keep your options open, as Blizz seems to like to buff and nerf classes and I would hate to see you get stuck with a class that got changed for the worse.Yep, I have an alt team ready to go already (68-70s) which has a rogue, DK, warrior, hunter and either a holy pally or resto shaman.

[TheBigBB]

http://www.wemultibox.com/blogs/thebigbb/army-dreamers-10-box-raid-team-hits-80

Well I got them to 80. Both groups instance great on their own, and I have a pretty great plan for 10-boxing raiding. I hope to be doing level 80 10-man raids for real within the month.

[Bigfish]

I find putting my Pyroblast on a 12 second artificial cool down more or less lets me take advantage of the Hot Streak procs.

[TheBigBB]

I find putting my Pyroblast on a 12 second artificial cool down more or less lets me take advantage of the Hot Streak procs.Good point, although it'd be a disaster if it ever did end up being fully casted, however rare that may be I don't know. I do like the frost spec quite a bit, especially since Blizzard insists on putting replenishment in the frost tree, and they are rebalancing mana regen game around it.

[d0z3rr]

I was going to suggest a frost mage for replenishment, but then read you switched it :)

My planned 10box group will be:

1 paladin
1 mage
1 priest
2 boomkins
5 shamans

I couldn't decide on a tree for heals, or the priest.....I used to be a kickass priest in my soloboxing days, so I'm already used to healing as one. Never healed with a tree before.

[Diwa]

^ You need OT on some of the 10man bosses