1 Pally + 4 Shamans - ready for WOTLK heros?

[torytrae]

Hi there,

after some months brake I wanna return to MBing. So, now i am thinking about the setup:

1 Prot Pally
4 Shaman (1 Heal, 3 Ele)

Should work fine, what do you think?

Before I had 5 Locks, but without a tank and dedicated heal you cant do heros.

[Ozbert]

I too have been considering this setup. I have five shamans at 70 and a paladin that was single-boxed to 80 and is geared for tanking raids. I was going to substitute one of the shamans for the pally and respec another shaman to resto, and then drag the shamans through instances repeatedly to level them to 80 and gear them up along the way. However, it's been suggested that just having four elemental shamans casting staggered lesser healing waves on the tank as part of their DPS cycle would be perfectly adequate. Something like:

Shaman 1: LHW, LB, LB, LB
Shaman 2: LB, LHW, LB, LB
Shaman 3: LB, LB, LHW, LB
Shaman 4: LB, LB, LB, LHW

I don't know if this would be enough. Once I get around to testing it, I'll feed back.

[torytrae]

Thanks for the feedback Ozbert.

Yes, this cicle sounds reasonable. Looking forward to your testing results :)

[Kicksome]

I'd suggest 1x DK tank and 4x shaman. The DK tank gives all your shaman 13% more damage, since he brings ebon plague debuff to the group. I have a 80 pally tank, 80 druid tank and 80 DK tank. Even though my pally is better geared, the DK tank is by far my favorite. The druid tank sucks since he has no good AOE damage.

[beyond-tec]

Paladin:

- Blessing of Kings
- Blessing of Wisdom
- lots of seals
- Judgements of the Just slow down attack speed of the enemy
- Heart of the Crusader = +3% Crit

<3 Paladin :-D

[Kicksome]

Well, Ebon Plague gives you 13% more damage on each person, which is equivalent to having 1/2 extra DPS in the party. This is by FAR the best buff to bring in the game for shamans. And DKs spread it to all Mobs around them, which druids and locks can't do. AND the faster something dies, the less damage you take, and the less mana you use. So this is a huge benefit, and goes way beyond "my dps increased"

OR you can bring a pally, and spec down the ret tree and get Heart of the Crusader (and I have never seen a viable prot spec with this talent). and get an extra 3% crit, assuming you judge that specific mob your targeting.

And you can either kings OR wisdom your shamans, none of which increases DPS.

1) DKs do more DPS as tank IMO (~300 dps), and I have a 80 prot pally and 80 DK to compare.

2) My shamans do at least 1000 more DPS total since I have Ebon Plague that the DK brings

3) Wisdom and Kings do nothing for your DPS, they help mana regen OR survivability, both which are a non-issue on the heroics I run. Even timed Strat isn't a problem with mana regen.

4) DK brings horn of winter, so that's one less totem to drop

5) DK has 15% run speed increase to your party. Which means you move faster walking, which is great for instances like Strat.

Pally benefit is:
1) Wisdom on the shamans (you give up a lot to spec kings, so most prot pally's dont).
2) Mount speed increased by 20%, but this usually causes problems since you lose followers
3) Nice to be able to res on the pally
4) Pally taunt grabs multiple targets
5) If you ever want to play solo, it's probably easier to get a group as a pally tank vs DK tank, since there are so many DKs around.
6) Pally's also have an aura, like devo or shadow.

[puppychow]

Pallies have better initial threat and single-target threat, after 15 secs it really doesn't matter all tanks are equally good (pallies actually are probably the worst at sustained threat over long fights).

All things being equal, a DK is slightly superior to a pally tank right now imo. And I run a pally tank, mage, resto shaman, and 2 ele shaman group that has cleared every heroic almost (oculus/HoS not done). You will do fine with a pally tank too, and in the future you can dual spec talent him as holy or ret for solo play, whereas DKs are pretty much only tank/DPS (but very high DPS!).

It takes only ~20-30 hours to level a DK from 55 to 70, so imo if you are just starting out I'd go with a DK, since by the time either hit 80 they will be geared the same.

[Kicksome]

The thing I really hate about my pally tank is that they run out of mana and you have to drink after a fight, not all the time, but sometimes. Or if you go in a fight with no mana, you're in trouble - you can't get inital aggro and your dps can get swarmed. That doesn't happen with a DK.

I've tanked 25man naxx with both my DK and Pally tank, I've never had any real problems holding aggro. With my Druid AOE threat was a big problem though.

Like Puppychow said, you'll be fine with either, I've cleared everything but Occulus with either my Druid as tank, Pally as tank or DK as tank. You have to love the dps a DK brings, it's very noticable. I think you'll find a lot of similar threads saying the same thing.

[Kicksome]

A warlock can bring the same - and they've been around forever.Yeah, I was referring to the 13% increase magic damage buff in general - it's the same with lock(forget what spec), druid (moonkin), DK (Unholy).

It's just really nice having 4x shaman instead of a having a lock or druid thrown in just because you want to get that 13% increased damage. I ended up dropping my moonkin, even know he was better geared, just a pain since you have to target the AOE, and now shamans can just throw down magma.

I really like DK + 4 shaman setup. Better than 1xpally, 3x shaman, 1x moonkin by far for me.

[Owltoid]

Check out this short thread discussing DK+shaman vs Pally+Moonkins:

[Moonkin Aura + Heart of the Crusader] vs [Ebon Plaguebringer + Totem of Wrath] ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=19014')

IMO if you're running 3 DPS shamans then you're better off with a DK. If you're running 3 moonkins then you're better off with a Pally. A Pally doesn't really bring much extra benefit to a shaman group (Heart of the Crusader does not stack with wrath totem) whereas Ebon Plaguebringer is very useful to shamans.. Similarly, a DK doesn't really bring much extra benefit to moonkins (they already have Earth and Moon for the 13% damage) but a pally does (moonkins can benefit from Heart of the Crusader)

[Bigfish]

Totally agree. I tried incorporating a warlock for a few weeks, and I just couldn't get a macro I was happy with, or DPS I was happy with.


I don't think you're going to get good DPS out of an affliction lock on anything but bosses. Or if you can live with just 10% you can do Destro or Demo, but I think you just end up with the same problem. Kinda sucks if you're giving attention to an individual lock or if they are your only character, but I've found it to be enough of an incentive to include them in my 10 man without regret.


Won't work without using 3rd party software (keyclone round robin feature).

You can't target and enemy and yourself in the same macro.

You can do it using /click. I haven't tried to do it lately, but I would surmise a macro that clicked two buttons, one a staggered heal button, the other a DPS button, you could achieve the same affect. That's how I have my decurse macro set up, anyway, and it works fine.

[Bigfish]

Its built in. I've done it with no mods, because I hate updating the things every time a patch is released.

[BobGnarly]

I don't think it's as easy as comparing buffs. There are a lot less tangible things that can be just as important.

An example would be, with a paladin, you have a ton more mana regen on your shaman. This not only let's me exclude certain regen talents in favor of more dps oriented ones, but it can also affect my gear choices in the same way. This could mean that the shaman can DPS harder (before buffs) and for longer, which could equal the difference EP brings. I'm not saying it does or doesn't, just pointing out how it's not so clear cut, at least to me.

I also think crusader aura, and HoF and things that won't necessarily increase your DPS are definitely worth something. I find myself often choosing to favor things that other people discard because it doesn't impact the bottom line though, so I'm probably just weird that way. :)

[Hachoo]

I don't think it's as easy as comparing buffs. There are a lot less tangible things that can be just as important.

An example would be, with a paladin, you have a ton more mana regen on your shaman. This not only let's me exclude certain regen talents in favor of more dps oriented ones, but it can also affect my gear choices in the same way. This could mean that the shaman can DPS harder (before buffs) and for longer, which could equal the difference EP brings. I'm not saying it does or doesn't, just pointing out how it's not so clear cut, at least to me.

I also think crusader aura, and HoF and things that won't necessarily increase your DPS are definitely worth something. I find myself often choosing to favor things that other people discard because it doesn't impact the bottom line though, so I'm probably just weird that way. :)All your points about damage/regen can be counteracted. Besides the fact that my 4 shamans will stay at 100% mana most of an instance, theres no way saving 3 talent points will give your shamans 13% extra damage each :) Paladins are definitely good, DKs are good, and I think the general train of thought right now is with 4 shaman teams, DKs are much much better. Pre-WotLK it might not have been the case because mana regen mattered, threat mattered, etc. In WotLK heroics are pretty easy anyway and the only thing that matters is pumping out as much damage as possible as quickly as possible.

Aside from that you'll find many examples on this forum of people giving up their paladin tanks for DK tanks but I have yet to see someone give up a DK tank for a Paladin tank.

For me, having the DK is just a given and I have no desire to play a Paladin. Video proof of DKs being awesome tanks for 4 shamans:

http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/wow/movies/Hachoo-HGundrak-Bosses.wmv

http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/wow/movies/Hachoo-HDTK-Bosses.wmv

http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/wow/movies/Hachoo-TimedCoS-music.avi ('http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/wow/movies/Hachoo-TimedCoS-music.avi')