Requesting feedback re: team member reassignment for northrend instance runs

[echo]

Background: I tried running running UK with my 5 shammy team and it was very rough; I wiped way more than I normally do, so I would like to reassign my team members to optimize the teams for instance runs in northrend as I think that will be my primary means of leveling as I hate collection quests with a passion. (follow up question: with rested experience, is this method a good return on time investments? or am I better off ae grinding or just doing kill only quests? which is faster?)

To: Those who have had experiences with boxing northrend instances, if you can help me with reassigning members of my current teams so that they will be viable for the majority of instances it would be much appreciated. (if you can provide rationales for the group composition and which group would be perfect for certain instances that would be a bonus, but by no means required) :)

Current teams: (all 70+, within a level or 2 of each other)

5x Paladin
5x Deathknights
1x Warrior, 3x Warlock, 1x Priest
5 shaman
4x hunter
5x druid
4x mage, 1x priest

(and a priest / rogue that are basically played solo, but can be subbed in if they would be useful)

p.s. Ideally, I'd prefer something simple like maybe 4 dps/tank of the same class with a different class as the tank or healer, just to make it easier for me to tune the macros, but if the synergies provided by a mixed group is too good to ignore, that'd be good to know too. I've been slacking with wow lately so my knowledge of endgame wotlk spells/talents/instances/tactics are very limited. I'm hoping to be able to feed off the experiences of those who have already been there, done it, and bought the t-shirt so I dont have to learn things the hard way and make changes again later on.

p.p.s. When is dual spec coming out? I'd love to be able to keep them spec'ed both for instance runs and then a homogenous spec for pvp burst damages. :D

p.p.p.s. on an unrelated sidenote, any idea where is the best place to farm up the schematic for tbc mana/hp potion injectors? I have literally hundred of the tbc potions from leveling up these teams that are taking up way too much bank space. :p

[JasonB87]

For group comp. you could easily do pally tank + 4 shaman or pally + 3 mage +priest/shaman. There are a lot of combos. I'd probably say pally + 4 shaman would be best. With this you can have them all heal the tank and still have 4 dps.

[Aradar]

I believe all heroics except Oculus have been cleared by the following teams:

Pally Tank, 4 Elemental Shaman
DK Tank, 4 Elemental Shaman
Pally Tank, Resto Shaman, 3 Elemental Shaman
Pally Tank, Resto Shaman, Boomkin, 2 Elemental Shaman

Allthough other various combinatinos are making serious progress.

So go with what works and pick one of those comps. I myself run Pally Tank, Resto Shaman, 3 Elemental Shaman and have cleared all but 2 bosses outside Oculus. In hindsight, I'd probably add a boomkin for the additional spell damage from their earth and moon talent but I don't feel like leveling one. DK's can also provide this benefit from their Ebon Plaguebringer talent but I'm kind of partial to my pally. One of the warlock curses also adds this benifit.

As for dual-specs, don't hold your breath.

And lastly, both plans are BoE world drops as well as BoP drops from the last boss in Magisters' Terrace. Whether they drop in heroic or normal, I'm not sure. Can't seem to find anything that is definative.

[echo]

Thank you both Jason and Aradar for your help and feedback, it's very nice of you to take the time. But I was too vague (what I get for posting after midnight)

Clarification is that I want to make use of the majority of those teams. Maybe assemble at least 4 -5 teams with those people, so that I can get as many of those to 80 as possible so that I can begin cranking out a massive number of easy to do dailies.

With that in mind, how would you assemble the teams so that the most number of toons get used and that all teams are viable? That's where I'm getting a bit stumped. :/ (my goal is to speed up the grind for these characters to 80, not to complete the instances as I'm sure that will come in time. But trying to level up all of these toons to 80 without the exp boosts that come from the collection quests is like watching paint dry, only slightly less fun.)

[Aradar]

Got ya. Well obviously if you selectively quest to avoid collections your group compositions don't really matter. Just go all DPS.

On the other hand, if you want to level through instances, I'm going to make some assumptions, i.e, you want a holy trinity with no melee dps. With that said, you ignore the rogue leaving you with 35 toons/7 teams. Also that means your DKs and Warrior have to be tanks since they can't heal or do ranged DPS which gives you 6 tanks. For your 7th tank, I'd pick one of the pallys. Now your pallys can't do ranged DPS either so the remaining 4 would be healers leaving you with the option of priest/druid/shaman for your other 3 healers and then everythnig else would be ranged DPS. Mix and match at your leisure.

However, as seen on these forums, people are running tank/4 dps, healer/4 dps and melee dps setups so your options are pretty much endless.

[JasonB87]

Well if you plan on instancing them up here are some combos I see for teams:

tank healer dps
1 pally 1 priest 3 warlock
1 pally 1 priest 3 hunter
1 pally 1 shaman 3 shaman
1 pally 1 druid 3 mage
1 warrior 1 hunter 1 druid 1 deathknight 1 paly

This would get you 25 80's out of the 39 total assuming the trinity setup is prefered. The rest you could grp and quest.

If you looking to quest to 80 truthfully any combo will work.

[echo]

Thank you both once again :) Nice to have advice from experienced folks. Gonna go try out some of the suggestions. But the consensus seems to be a mix of at least 3 classes per team? I assume this is for talent/spell synergies so I'll get off my butt and do some research on that. Thanks and have a great weekend!

[puppychow]

You may want to step back and think about what you really want to DO. If you only enjoy leveling then yeah leveling all those teams in various combos (tank, healer, DPS is basically the best) in quests & instances will be a blast. It'll take probably a year to get em all to 80, but things will be different enough.

End-game in WOTLK is very rich, there is a lot to do although most of it you can burn through in 4-8 weeks of daily play -- namely getting a few (5-8 new ones) factions to exalted for items/recipes, running all the heroics daily for badges/shards, buying badge gear (about 200 badges worth of good gear to buy atm, more in future patches), Wintergrasp PVP fun, dailies, profession dailies, leveling profs to 450, etc, etc. Its pretty extensive and I spend 2-3 hours a day on just a single team and cannot come close to getting everything I want done. Not sure how you could possibly do it with multiple teams.

Not to mention the raid zones in WOTLK are fairly easy and you can pug them all, unlike TBC. I haven't yet multiboxed all of them, but every single one of my characters has cleared every 10 and 25 man raid zone except Malygos. Its a lot of fun seeing all the raids, Naxx25 can run anywhere from 3-8 hours so its not super short - the other two raid zones are each 15 minutes or so however.

Point is you may want to seriously consider just picking one team, leveling them to 80, running heroics, getting reps up, doing raids, etc. That will consume virtually all your play time for at least 2 months. By then the next major content patch might be coming down the road, which will definitely have a new 10/25 man raid and may include new dailies, faction, 5 man, etc. I'd guess we'll see the next expansion in 12-16 months as well.

I leveled ~15 toons to 60 when RAF was active (one team per weekend basically) and virtually all of them have sat at 60 for the past 3 months :( Even now I doubt I'll ever touch any of them, I am leveling a single Deathknight to try out the new class, but theres always some heroic I want to run on my main team, and then Wintergrasp goes hot, and then... :)

[JasonB87]

Yea that's the underlying idea behind the teams I put together. They offer simple macros along with being able to use the same macros between teams, like the paladin tanking one. Also with using 3 of the same dps there's less micro management.

I'm actually doing what puppychow has stated and only leveling one group up to 80 because I know once I hit 80 I'll have my hands full. Plus with the toons that I have gifted levels I have almost a second team ready to go if I ever get bored with this one.

But it all depends on what your goals are.

[echo]

See, THIS is why I posted. I didnt know what end game is like, and I just wanted to cover myself in case my class got nerfed hard I will at least have alternates to play. But this is GREAT info to know, and I think I will just tighten it down to 2 teams then. a PVE focused one and a PVP focused one. PVE is pretty simple based on the feedback I got so far, the holy trinity setup seems the way to go apparently. I'll just go and research some more for a pvp group before I post here again for feedback.

Thanks for taking the time to pass on your experience Puppychow, you probably just saved me a bunch of time. :)

[ss2]

I believe all heroics except Oculus have been cleared by the following teams:

Pally Tank, 4 Elemental Shaman
DK Tank, 4 Elemental Shaman
Pally Tank, Resto Shaman, 3 Elemental Shaman
Pally Tank, Resto Shaman, Boomkin, 2 Elemental Shaman

Allthough other various combinatinos are making serious progress.
You could also add protection paladin, resto shaman, moonkin, frostmage and elemental shaman to that list

Frost mages are absurdly easy to use efficiently with macros, like tbc shaman easy. Water elemental/icy veins then Frostbolt x infinity, plus they add 10% crit for the party and 3% more for one person.

[echo]

Ty SS2 for the tip! I might respec my mage then. I was thinking of the following setup

Prot Pally
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000001402053 200314051533012321550000500032000000000000000

Resto Shammy
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000302250300 000000000000000000050230331350313041022331251

Balance Druid
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/druid/talents.html?tal=503200312533103301330531103100000 00000000000000000000000020500331200000000000000000

Demonlogy Warlock
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000003500 301125212250313523130125003005020000000000000000

Arcane Mage
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=235325203102330153323102515321000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000

But if a frost mage is easier to mindlessly control, that's good to know beforehand. Would the arcane build I linked be comparable in terms of use of use and dps output? if not, can you recommend a good multibox frost build that's easy to control as you described? I spec'ed

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=230025002100320100000000000000000 00000000000000000000000003503030310233100220152201 350

to minimize talents that are of little use in pve environments and those that I have to keep an eye out for like brain freeze. Will I limit my dps too much though by doing so?

once again, feedbacks appreciated. :)

[ss2]

I recommend something along the lines of this ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000050053 503310251533312321550300000000000000000000000') for a paladin with the last two points going where ever you see fit
resto shaman, something like this ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000005050330 000000000000000000050035301055010501122331251')
balance druids are debatable, but I've never found the extra hit from 3/3 from improved feari fire to be needed in heroics while 2/2 balance of power is very useful, and gale winds is good if you plan to use hurricane.
I've never had a warlock, but I imagine 5/5 demonic pact is better than flametongue totem

I've never spec'd my mage arcane because I don't believe they give a 10% crit chance for the party on a target like fire/frost mages do (I could be wrong)
Your frost build looks fine, except I HIGHLY recommend putting 3/3 into winter's chill.

My mage has brain freeze, but I never use it while multiboxing. If you're like me and want to dps with the repetitive mashing of one key then the 15% of a free fireball isn't worth trying to work into a macro.

[Aradar]

I recommend something along the lines of this ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000050053 503310251533312321550300000000000000000000000') for a paladin with the last two points going where ever you see fit
resto shaman, something like this ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/shaman/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000005050330 000000000000000000050035301055010501122331251')
balance druids are debatable, but I've never found the extra hit from 3/3 from improved feari fire to be needed in heroics while 2/2 balance of power is very useful, and gale winds is good if you plan to use hurricane.
I've never had a warlock, but I imagine 5/5 demonic pact is better than flametongue totem

I've never spec'd my mage arcane because I don't believe they give a 10% crit chance for the party on a target like fire/frost mages do (I could be wrong)
Your frost build looks fine, except I HIGHLY recommend putting 3/3 into winter's chill.

My mage has brain freeze, but I never use it while multiboxing. If you're like me and want to dps with the repetitive mashing of one key then the 15% of a free fireball isn't worth trying to work into a macro.

Just keep in mind if you go with an Elemental Shaman that has Totem of Wrath, it doesn't stack with Heart of the Crusader which is included in this tank build. As for the Restoration Shaman, I heal my tank with Healing Wave since nothing is generally in range to feed off a Chain Heal, thus making the talent Healing Way very nice especially next patch when it's 18% after the first heal instead of stacking up to it. I personally don't have Riptide either for the same reason but I guess it's just preference, since ss2 has proven he knows what he's doing.

[puppychow]

You also have to consider whether or not you are going to "drive" your mage (druid, etc) solo. For example for mages, frost is the best multibox spec, since it gives 10% extra caster damage and its very easy to control/macro. HOWEVER, frostfire bolt spec (0/53/18) is vastly superior to frost for raiding DPS, especially once you hit 1600 spell dmg and 30% crit levels of gear. So if you plan to spend a bit of time raiding in guild or in pugs, you may just want to spec 53/18 since your DPS will be quite a bit higher when grouped with others. On the other hand, arcane is a vastly superior spec for arena, so if you are going to arena with friends then arcane is way better.

Just figure out always first what the thing you want to do most is - arenas, battlegrounds, wintergrasp, farming gold, heroics, regular instances, raiding, etc. "All of them" isn't really a valid answer, you are going to gravitate to one more than the other. I do all of them, but my team is setup more for heroic farming and doing raids with my mage/pally more than anything else, so I have a very geared tank (prot pally), a very geared AOE healer (resto shaman), a mage (teleporting/food), and 2 ele shamans (may replace one with a boomkin) - remember, the challenge isn't going to be the current 5 mans, but the NEXT 5 man that opens up in a few months.

[echo]

Wow, thanks to you all for taking the time to review everything I said and giving me the benefits of your experience! I'm gonna go digest everything I read just now and play around with the teams in nexus/uk to see which is the easiest for me to run with. (btw, ty for the heads up about the buff stacking aradar! I did not know that they didnt stack) :(

and actually I think I will have just 2 teams or so for variety that I will actively work on, and with all my leftover toons, I will play maybe one or two of them solo and gear/talent/setup specifically for solo play. (multiboxing is fun, but being so independent with your own team makes it harder to get to know the other players since I dont have to interact with them at all if I dont want to. maybe playing soloing will hopefully allow me to meet more nice people to group with in the future)

last clarification, the 10% to crit for fire/frost mages that everyone is talking about, you are all referring to winter's chill stacked 5x right? and the fire equivalent? that's the only thing that I can think of, if I'm missing something please let me know. thanks in advance! :)

[ss2]

Winter's chill x5 or 5x scorches with improved scorch give 10% crit
My last post was assuming you were going after a heroic team with no elemental shaman in group~

I personally heal my tank with earthshield + riptide and throw in a healing wave if needed, and then the group (which are stacked up and auto following my tank) get slapped with chain heals when they're not at full, but that's all preference really.
tbqh I wish I had a priest healer but I'm completely burned out on leveling characters :(