Heroic runs 1 DK tank 4 dps shammys or sub out a dps shammy for rest shammy?

[blbjtb]

Lol this next part of this question feels like a school question...

Explain your answer...

at least 3 paragraphs 500 word minimum (LOL JK)

[GizmoxLoW]

I dont run a Dk but a pally tank with a resto shaman and it makes heroics a heck of a lot easier, sure it can be done with 4 as dps and throw a small heal here and there. Earth shield and healing stream totems usually keeps my palidan topped off until i reach a boss

heres my resto shaman spec

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Azgalor&n=Udderduum

i still specced into elemental and if you look the only things im missing that would make a difference would be Elemental mastry and lightning overload. reason i say this is sure, im getting less dps from one character but if your ripping through trash like tinfoil why not make some of the boss encounters less stressful with some extra heals. Specially with riptide, think mine ticks for 1k-ish

[puppychow]

Try heroics with 4 ele shammies, you can do a bunch of them that way without a problem. Eventually however you start wiping a lot on the harder heroics, and you will find having a resto shaman can help out a lot. It really is doable either way imo, it does require adapting quite a bit to put a resto shammy in the group. Some people use /stopcasting macros and have seperate buttons for heals, I don't use that since I found GCDs were causing my heals not to go off (dunno how the ones that DPS & heal deal with that). It does take some time to adapt if you respec one to healing, but I think most of us clearing the harder heroics (Anub/Old Kingdom, Stratholme, Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnacle, etc) found it very helpful.

If you haven't leveled any to 80 yet, you may want to think about multicomp too. imo a priest makes a superb healer when geared up, better than resto shaman for multiboxers. Also a mage or boomkin is nice in the group as well.

[GizmoxLoW]

Some people use /stopcasting macros and have seperate buttons for heals, I don't use that since I found GCDs were causing my heals not to go off (dunno how the ones that DPS & heal deal with that).my healing macro is
/stopcasting [harm]
/target tank
/cast healing wave

with the [harm] my shaman will stop casting an offensive spell at my target, target my tank then start healing

[Hachoo]

I have no issues running heroics with a DK tank and 4 elemental shamans, and the entire thing will get even easier in 3.0.8 with the DK tank buffs and the elemental shaman DPS buffs.

[Niley]

basically it goes down to this

With resto shaman, Your other shamans never stop dpsing, gives You much more survivability and really makes heroic easier, much much easier. My dps in heroics is same with 4 eles, as it is with 3 eles/resto. Four elemental, at some point in the game might be better, when every heroic gets easy.
Also thanks to resto shaman I completed every damn heroic(ocullus not included) still wearing lots of 70 gear, I tried with 4 x ele(which is the set up i used for all of tbc) and well...failed, there was so much healing required that my shammies would go very low on mana, or all they could do is all 4 spam heal me without doing any dps, my resto can just es/rip tide/ spam heal and not go oom...and resto can still dps pretty well, my does around 1400 dps or so.

[Hachoo]

I don't seem to have that problem (never run out of mana due to healing and never have problems healing in time or anything). Not sure what the difference is... methods I guess.

[puppychow]

How many heroics have you cleared though? Azjol'nerub, Violet Hold, Halls of Lightning, Stratholme, etc are quite a bit more difficult than UK, Gundrak, and Drak'tharon imo and really start showing off the power of a resto shaman. I couldn't really imagine doing Violet Hold w/o a resto, he just spam chain heals on the shadow boss for example while my other guys race to DPS.

[Youngceo]

In my experiences I had no chance of doing any heroics without a dedicated resto, as much as I would like to have 4 elementals it just aint gonna happen in heroics for awhile.

My tank aint at the defense cap yet but is decently geared, enough for heroics anyway, however he still needs constant heals, 4x LHW now and then just doesnt cut it, especially on boss fights where 3-4 hits and theres nothing left of you.

Also with some bosses you just cant afford to stop all dps and go healing for abit, especially with bosses like Trollgore who have a buff that stacks their damage over time, you need to dps them down and quick.

[Youngceo]

my healing macro is
/stopcasting [harm]
/target tank
/cast healing wave

with the [harm] my shaman will stop casting an offensive spell at my target, target my tank then start healing

Just tried the stopcasting [harm] and it didnt work for me, if I spam the button they still stop casting the heal so it never gets off?

[Multibocks]

I have done all heroics that I have tried (ok I know I cant do occulus) with the exception of AN and UP. AN just bugs out too many times to waste my time on it. UP is the only one I truly fail without a resto shaman. I believe my problem in the skadi gauntlet is due to my software setup than not enough healing, though. My advice is to go with whatever sounds more fun.

[Hachoo]

In my experiences I had no chance of doing any heroics without a dedicated resto, as much as I would like to have 4 elementals it just aint gonna happen in heroics for awhile.

My tank aint at the defense cap yet but is decently geared, enough for heroics anyway, however he still needs constant heals, 4x LHW now and then just doesnt cut it, especially on boss fights where 3-4 hits and theres nothing left of you.

Also with some bosses you just cant afford to stop all dps and go healing for abit, especially with bosses like Trollgore who have a buff that stacks their damage over time, you need to dps them down and quick.Not sure why you had no chances. And trollgore...Ive never wiped on him or lost a single character. I didn't even know he had a stacking buff - but this actually negates your entire point. Having 4 DPS will do more damage even if you have to stop occasionally to heal then having 1 resto that spams heals and 3 dps that never stop. This is the whole point of having 4 dps - faster damage and less focus on healing. I never use /stopcasting in my heals because I've never needed it, therefore I don't actually interrupt my DPS, I just insert key heals smoothly in between some dps spells - have not had a problem with this yet. Also, 4x LHW heals me to 100% full - generally I get healed for 4k+ per shaman, and most of the time I'm not down more than 16k health when I heal, so that brings me to full. 1 set of LHWs only takes 1.5s to cast, its NOT that big of an interruption.

As far as heroics, there are people that DO have resto shamans that can't finish gundrak or UK so I'm not sure why you'd say they're easy and other heroics would be required (this is not to the person I'm quoting this is to someone else that posted about that). Most of those other instances that have issues have nothing to do with not enough healing and are mostly about positioning, movement, mana efficiency, etc.

Like Multibocks says, its really preference. Having a resto shaman is gimp as hell for battlegrounds or any other pvp so I prefer to keep my 4 shamans elemental. It took me months to actually add a tank instead of just using 5 shamans.

[blbjtb]

So Hachoo your having a positive experense doing 4 dps I might have to give that a shot.. Here is my thing I dont give a rats ass about touting off OMG IM soo uber cause I beat all the heroics multibox Really could care less about that... (Now please dont take offense to that statement if you are one of those people you are just obviously better then I am or then I could hope to be.) I just want to be able to run 3-4 Heroics a day or so effectivly Im not doing it for the loot im doing it for the Badges that being said what are the top 3-4 EZ PZ heroic runs that my band of retards could run?

[Hachoo]

Well I can tell you I can run Heroic Gundrak, Drak'Tharon, and UK with 0 issues and quite fast with 4 elemental shamans. I'm about to add Culling of Strat to the list which should be decently easy and then might try HoL. From everything I've heard about CoS and HoL they are easily doable with no resto shaman (and CoS would probably be easier to finish a 25 min timed run with 4 ele anyway).

[GizmoxLoW]

my healing macro is
/stopcasting [harm]
/target tank
/cast healing wave

with the [harm] my shaman will stop casting an offensive spell at my target, target my tank then start healing

Just tried the stopcasting [harm] and it didnt work for me, if I spam the button they still stop casting the heal so it never gets off?lets talk in PM's

[puppychow]

you have to use /assist macros for that to work, if you just use [target=focustarget] type DPS macros it won't work.

The easiest heroics imo are Gundrak (~40-60 mins for 5 badges), Drak'tharon (3-4 badges for around the same time, i'd skip Novos imo unless its really easy for you), and maybe Halls of Lightning esp if you do the Sons of Hodir quests.

Utgarde Keep is easy but its way out in the middle of nowhere, like Nexus. Spend a lot of time just getting there unless you keep two guys parked nearby for summons. You could hit that and Pinnacle

Violet Hold is hit and miss, some days its super easy and I 1-shot everything in 30 mins, other times I wipe on trash. Try it out if you are all hearthed in Dalaran, its 20-30 mins clear for 3 badges and good rep.

Things are gonna get a lot ezier too in next patch, you can buy a really nice helm for 40 WG tokens, a nice trinket for 15, and a decent pair of boots for 15. Plus higher ele shammy DPS and magma totem is great AOE for the non-wrath shammy, very useful on trash.

[Hachoo]

Also keep in mind travel time really doesn't matter much if you have your epic flyers. Flying from Gundrak to UK takes me just a couple minutes on epic flyers - the travel time isn't worth being concerned about.

[Catamer]

I run with a pally myself. I vote for the resto shammy.
I used to be 4x dps but it was night and day when I switch over to 3dps and a resto.
for questing my resto does DPS as well
for Heroics my resto only does heals, 95% on my tank and 5% of chain heal on herself to top off the team.

sometimes my resto gets a little borde but we have talked it out....

[Multibocks]

Well I can tell you I can run Heroic Gundrak, Drak'Tharon, and UK with 0 issues and quite fast with 4 elemental shamans. I'm about to add Culling of Strat to the list which should be decently easy and then might try HoL. From everything I've heard about CoS and HoL they are easily doable with no resto shaman (and CoS would probably be easier to finish a 25 min timed run with 4 ele anyway).

Not to brag, but I crushed CoS. First time I ran it had no wipes and no deaths. Now trying to hit the 25min timer, well you are going to have some wipes because you have to hurry and hurry means being a little careless. This is the one instance where I think that having a paladin is very nice. Damage aura up and the shaman will get mana back from zombie hits and the zombies will die in a few hits. It's a great way to keep max mana the whole run. I havent bother to do heroic HoL as the instance feels like its a long flight from Dalaran, which is why I also skip Nexus. :thumbdown:

[jono]

my healing macro is
/stopcasting [harm]
/target tank
/cast healing wave

with the [harm] my shaman will stop casting an offensive spell at my target, target my tank then start healing

Just tried the stopcasting [harm] and it didnt work for me, if I spam the button they still stop casting the heal so it never gets off?lets talk in PM'sI would also like to know how this works, it could be very handy as i find myself spamming the heal button and nothing gets cast as i keep triggering the /stopcasting

Edit: Never mind got it working fine.