Resto Shaman and four Combat Rogues

[pearldrake999]

Well simply it would consist of four damage dealing rogues and a single shaman that focuses on healing with added support from different totems. The shaman is good because of main armour, a shield and the good single target and AoE healing it possess.

The totems.

Earth-Tremor/Strength of Earth
Fire-Flametongue/Searing
Air-Windfury
Water-Healing Stream/Cleansing

The totems buff the group and along with the healing, and for the less experience of us, ungodly amounts of chain heal spam the rogues and shaman should hopefully stay in one piece.

The rogues pose a challenge because they are melee, but with recent additions of the interact with target function this has been overcome, another problem is stealth as it slows the rogues down and the follow may break.

The rogues will be combat specced and will most likely use Fan of Knives and Killing Spree to basically unleash huge amount of AoE damage. Not only that but it may be possible using this to have all rogue poisons active on a single person, or a group using this and Fan of Knives.

Image your fighting and suddenly the opponent gets a debuff that…

Deadly Poison-Nature DoT that stacks up to five times.
Instant Poison-Instant Nature damage.
Wound Poison-Instant Nature damage and reduces healing by 50%.
Anesthetic Poison-Instant Nature damage and removes an enrage effect.
Crippling Poison-Reduces movement speed by 70%.
Mind-Numbing Poison-Reduces casting speed by 30%.

mmm…tasty. Yes please.

So after adding those 6 to you rogues weapons you still have 2 weapons free to put emphasis on one effect over the others, or you could simply mix and match to your liking.

So, you run into a room full of the opposition. You throw down your totems, start spam healing and soon enough you have just activated your trinkets and gone and activated Blade Flurry and Killing Spree.

Gratz, you just gave 20 attacks out with both weapons to the room, which in turn trigger an extra attack to a nearby target, which in turn activate all those poisons, and you then finish off stragglers with FoK.

Anyone like my idea?

[Ualaa]

Asonimie is experimenting with 4x rogues on the PTR.
And is leveling 4x rogues, for arena play, on the live servers.

There are a few threads for melee boxing, in the PvP forums.
The comp of 4x rogues looks pretty good.
There are some videos too, which are nice to check out.

For world pvp/battlegrounds, controlling the DPS and Heals will work.
I would suspect playing everything will handicap you in arena.
Not sure if the team could do heroics, if you're into PvE stuff too.

I would probably go with a druid for the healer.
Wild Growth is a good AoE heal, just like Chain Heal.
You can stack HoTs and instant heal.
And you have high armor in Tree form too.
Losing the totems hurts.
But you gain stealth, across the entire team.
It is a consideration, at any rate.

[Fuzzyboy]

Like Ualaa says, stealth is a big factor. You're basically trading off tremor for stealth (a bit simplified, but you get my point). With a non-stealthed healer you'll basically put a big bullseye on him - and tremor doesn't do any good if the shaman is dead :-P Also, resto druids are just a good healers as resto shaman, and because chain heal needs to be targetted, resto shaman requires a bit more (although not unmanagable more) micro management.

It come back to what you aspire to do I suppose.

For arena, I think Kromtor is the only guy so far having had success in arena without a dedicated healer and he did so with 5 dps. I'm not saying it can't be done, but for arena you may want to consider just doing the 4 rogues and having someone else controlling the healer.

For BG's I think that stealth (heavily) outweighs any benefits the shaman brings. Another thing is that you can dual-spec the druid feral and do at least some PvE content for gear with a tank (although you'll have to outgear instances by a big margin to be able to do them).

[shaeman]

Another vote for druid as the healer.
Stealth opens up so many options.

Rogues are designed for hit and run. Pop up - cut something to death then disappear into the shadows. Leaving the enemy scouring the area looking for them.

Running around with a massive shaman marker will negate that surprise.

[Nolife]

How about swapping 1 rogue to feral? 5% crit for 3 rogues is really nice and ofc increased dmg from bleeds helps a bunch. Even though druid rotation is really complicated, you can still macro for decent dps.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

How about swapping 1 rogue to feral? 5% crit for 3 rogues is really nice and ofc increased dmg from bleeds helps a bunch. Even though druid rotation is really complicated, you can still macro for decent dps.
I think I'd rather have the extra escapes/utility of that 4th rogue rather than 5% crit on a toon that can't break anything but roots.

[Ualaa]

Depends I guess.
From the original post, I'd guess the focus is on pvp.

Two druids and three rogues gets you a tank and healer option for heroics.
Which open up a ton of gear choices, and badges can buy decent pvp gear too.

You can still go with 5x melee, or 4x melee and 1x healer options.
Everyone has stealth, and you have two rez options and two battle rez options.
And a lot of healing if you need it.

You're already managing two classes, so it shouldn't be much harder to play with.
For arena, I would think you'd need someone else to play the healer, either way.

It all depends on what you want to do, in game.

[Shodokan]

With the nerf to FOK i'm not sure rogues are worth it anymore. Unless blizz is re-buffing it in 3.3

[Ualaa]

Check out the pvp forum; Asonimie is playing 4x Rogue for arena.

On PTR, with full pvp gear they rock anything.
On live, they're 80th and gearing up.

There was a video of the PTR battlegrounds.

Basically you have the Blade Flurry + Killing Spree option, which should kill just about any pair of characters if isolated into groups of 1 or 2.

Down the road, Mutilate spec.
Cold Blood + Mutilate, is 2 critical openers per rogue.
And 4 combo points each, because of Seal Fate.

You'll apply Wound Poison (Mortal Strike), Crippling Poison (Snare) and Mind Numbing Poison to every target pretty quickly. And then Deadly Poison or Instant Poison for extra damage.

Plus, a rogue with cooldowns can decimate just about anything.
With four rogues, you have 4x the cooldowns to play with.

Cloak of Shadows + Vanish, will get you stealth sometimes, even if it is bugged.
You have 4x Dismantle on round-robin, which destroys melee.
Kidney Shot and Kick should make casters very unhappy.

Blind is a strong crowd control, provided your allies don't break it.
Given you are everyone, that's much stronger too.

[Shodokan]

Check out the pvp forum; Asonimie is playing 4x Rogue for arena.

On PTR, with full pvp gear they rock anything.
On live, they're 80th and gearing up.

There was a video of the PTR battlegrounds.

Basically you have the Blade Flurry + Killing Spree option, which should kill just about any pair of characters if isolated into groups of 1 or 2.

Down the road, Mutilate spec.
Cold Blood + Mutilate, is 2 critical openers per rogue.
And 4 combo points each, because of Seal Fate.

You'll apply Wound Poison (Mortal Strike), Crippling Poison (Snare) and Mind Numbing Poison to every target pretty quickly. And then Deadly Poison or Instant Poison for extra damage.

Plus, a rogue with cooldowns can decimate just about anything.
With four rogues, you have 4x the cooldowns to play with.

Cloak of Shadows + Vanish, will get you stealth sometimes, even if it is bugged.
You have 4x Dismantle on round-robin, which destroys melee.
Kidney Shot and Kick should make casters very unhappy.

Blind is a strong crowd control, provided your allies don't break it.
Given you are everyone, that's much stronger too.

Well... Do you think that say for 5v5 you can get to your opponents before you are spotted by another stealthie? I mean basically cheapshot > mutilate > cold blood > evis would kill any single character for the opener.

For 2v2 you could both be combat and obliterate someone really quickly... Especially if you use trinket + blade fury + SLOW maces + killing spree

[yaki]

With the nerf to FOK i'm not sure rogues are worth it anymore. Unless blizz is re-buffing it in 3.3

They're still lol to box on the battlegrounds. It's a one-trick team, but it's still funny.

I'm all for a FOK nerf though. I'm tired of everybody and their dog having massive AoE, that's supposed to be mages and only mages, and they're supposed to be easy to kill before they get near my team.