Are All Ranged DPS Created Equal?

[jrkilroy]

Hi there. I'm hoping to open up my new accounts and start my new team today. I am spending my lunch pondering my class choices and I'm thinking I'm going to start with tank/healer/ranged DPS.

Shammies seems to be excellent ranged because they can apply buffs at the same time.

Besides this, do any of the others bring anything really interesting? Any 3 matching DPS that should be avoided?

Thank you for your advice.

[Shodokan]

3 mages should bring the most DPS to the table, but no they aren't created equal as some have buffs and some don't etc.

[Ualaa]

They're not all created equal...

Druid (Balance)
- These require you to manage your Eclipse proc (switching between Wrath/Starfire) for optimal dps, which can be a pain while boxing or with multiple druids.
- They get you Innervate, Battle Rez, Normal Rez, Mark of the Wild (strong buff), Increased crit chance, 13% increased spell damage, very strong AoE options... This druid can heal too, but has to drop out of their DPS (Moonkin Form).

Hunter (Any Spec)
- Hunters have decent single and aoe dps, can buff your Nature Resist, increase the parties out-of-combat run speed, have a pet...

Mage (Any Spec)
- Arcane is probably the highest DPS toon for heroics. Frost gets you a lot of snare/freezes, which can rock for an all caster team. Fire is good burst too, but procs to manage.
- Mages have sheep, an intellect buff, can amplify/dampen magic, bring portals and conjured food as utility benefits too.

Priest (Shadow)
- Haven't played with shadow priests much, but they get you Replenishment which is mana regen, can passively heal the party as they dps.
- They bring Fortitude (hit points), Spirit buff, PW: Shield, Fear Ward, Mass Dispel etc to the table, and in a pinch can heal if necessary, but that drops them out of shadow form.

Shaman (Elemental)
- A strong choice, because of the totem buffs. This caster has mail armor and a shield, making them tougher against melee.
- They put out a lot of burst, deal decent damage, can buff Nature, Fire, Frost resists, summon a tanking pet or AoE damage pet, while they don't have Fortitude/Kings/Mark/AI type buffs, they add more then any other class to buff melee or caster dps.

Warlock (Any Spec)
- Affliction is dots, which is mobile damage... against trash they won't appear to have high damage, but on bosses they're up there with anything. Demonology is between the other two, in style and with decent gear up there in damage. Destruction plays like a mage.
- Any spec gets 13% spell power, via Curse. They bring Soul Stones, Health Stones, a buff from several of their pets, Party Summoning, Underwater Breathing...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Probably the biggest reason people tend to choose shammies is totems.

Anti-fear totem
automatic disease/poison cleansing totem
healing totems (group renew, basically)
+spell damage totem
AoE and tanking elementals
spell absorb (grounding totem)
AoE snare

The anti-fear (staggered tremor totems), healing stream and auto-cleanse totems are probably the most useful for preventing the kind of uncontrolled craziness that makes things harder to 5-box.

Mages are the easiest raw DPS output when gearing up. Shammies are probably the highest utility from totems + heals + wipe prevention. Hunters are the easiest to manage in terms of tank aggro with Misdirect/feign death.

[jrkilroy]

So which one is the "IWIN" button? ;)

How viable is mixed party for 5-box newbie? Would I be asking for trouble with having to sync all those rotations?

Thank you again.

P.S. This is a very friendly forum! Thank you for all your help!

[crowdx]

My first team was pally tank, 2 warlocks, hunter and resto druid and I liked that setup. Now I just started running a shammy team through heroics and I have to say they are MUCH easier to use than my main group. The big plus I am seeing is their AoE damage with chain lightning and also their buffs are a big help in some instances (Anub with the poision) .
Overall with a group of shammies the macros are very easy and no procs to worry about.

[Chowdog]

I have my mage team approaching 70 now. Started a hunter team but after playing the mages I dont think I will pick up the hunters again. I am playing all frost atm and its a freaking breeze. I will try out arcane when I hit 80.. Easy to manage rotation on arcane and a ton of dmg..

[Ualaa]

I'd say the easiest team to start with would be:
- (Prot) Paladin tank.
- 3x or 4x Elemental Shaman (dps)
- If you go 3x Shaman, go 1x Boomkin or 1x Warlock for the 13% spell power buff (warlock is better, in that there is no Eclipse to manage).

3x Shaman can handle healing for all 5-man content.



However, if you want your first team to be able to both PvE and PvP well.

Swap out the Paladin for a Druid.
Feral is almost as good of a tank as a Pally, a little harder to macro but still very strong.
And then dual-spec the Druid to Boomkin, and run with all casters in battlegrounds.

[SideWays]

So which one is the "IWIN" button? ;)

How viable is mixed party for 5-box newbie? Would I be asking for trouble with having to sync all those rotations?

Thank you again.

P.S. This is a very friendly forum! Thank you for all your help!

There is no real "IWIN" button (class^^). Mixed teams arent much harder to manage than one-class teams. Click macros make DPS management very easy. If you are using ISboxer healing is no problem either. I started with a shaman team but if you know more than one class mixed teams are no problem ;)

[Ghallo]

There is no real "IWIN" button (class^^). Mixed teams arent much harder to manage than one-class teams. Click macros make DPS management very easy. If you are using ISboxer healing is no problem either. I started with a shaman team but if you know more than one class mixed teams are no problem ;)

I've played a mixed team from the beginning. While the combinations are endless, I love having 3 warlocks and a resto shammy. Some fights I want a priest healer and other fights I am really glad for the shammy healer - it really is very situational. However, I always love having my Warlock DPS. Seriously, they are very boxer friendly - with 0|41|30 their Felguards each do 500-600 DPS and they have 3 really damaging dots (2 of which are instant cast). Soul Stones make it easy to recover from a wipe, and summons make it easy to go back and repair.

SoC is my single favorite ranged AoE as a boxer. When I play solo, targeted AoE's are fine - but they are very unfun to box. I can simply spam SoC at whatever target I am banging on and between 3 Felguards and my pally the 1k damage mark is always hit before the next SoC comes in. This flattens trash fast, which makes instances fun :)

Every group combination can work (now). Blizzard has made just about every class combination "viable" as long as you are using the class correctly.

[crowdx]

I ran with a resto shammy with a 5200gs last night and he was very effective healing, we actually did Nexus in less than 20 minutes, jsut chain pulled through the place and made sure everyone kept up, the second boss only got to do her split phase once, was a really fast run which was very much helped by the great resto heals.

[jjflanigan]

I'd say the easiest team to start with would be:
- (Prot) Paladin tank.
- 3x or 4x Elemental Shaman (dps)
- If you go 3x Shaman, go 1x Boomkin or 1x Warlock for the 13% spell power buff (warlock is better, in that there is no Eclipse to manage).

3x Shaman can handle healing for all 5-man content.



However, if you want your first team to be able to both PvE and PvP well.

Swap out the Paladin for a Druid.
Feral is almost as good of a tank as a Pally, a little harder to macro but still very strong.
And then dual-spec the Druid to Boomkin, and run with all casters in battlegrounds.

Out of curiosity, why would you say the feral tank would be harder to macro than the paladin? I see the majority of teams being pally tank + what-ever (4x shaman, or what-have-you). Currently I'm running a bear tank with my shaman and I have 4 total abilities to keep track of with the bear. In all honesty, if you get a nice weapon, you can toss out a faerie fire, and then just spam swipe all day and not have to use a single other ability on the tank.

My bear is currently running at about 5500 gearscore, and I just spam swipe in combat (single target, or AoE). This let me put my shaman spells onto my numpad rather than using a click macro and I got their single target DPS up to around 4k on each of them in heroics. Being able to fully control the use of wind shear, flame shock, lava burst, LB and Chain made a HUGE difference in the dps they put out (went from 2100 or so using the click macros to right at 4k using numpad sequencing).

Granted, I may not understand paladins well enough to understand the major reasons to use them as a 5-box tank, but, for me at least, bear tank is amazingly easy.

[jimbobobb]

Out of curiosity, why would you say the feral tank would be harder to macro than the paladin? I see the majority of teams being pally tank + what-ever (4x shaman, or what-have-you). Currently I'm running a bear tank with my shaman and I have 4 total abilities to keep track of with the bear. In all honesty, if you get a nice weapon, you can toss out a faerie fire, and then just spam swipe all day and not have to use a single other ability on the tank.

My bear is currently running at about 5500 gearscore, and I just spam swipe in combat (single target, or AoE). This let me put my shaman spells onto my numpad rather than using a click macro and I got their single target DPS up to around 4k on each of them in heroics. Being able to fully control the use of wind shear, flame shock, lava burst, LB and Chain made a HUGE difference in the dps they put out (went from 2100 or so using the click macros to right at 4k using numpad sequencing).

Granted, I may not understand paladins well enough t o understand the major reasons to use them as a 5-box tank, but, for me at least, bear tank is amazingly easy.

Paladins bring avengers shield, stuns that are better than bears, a simple, no-nonsense, no-thinking tank macro. It's basically just ease of use. Paladins have only one button, and threat is ridiculously easy on a paladin regardless of the content, and it can all be macro'd perfectly.

Sure you can use just swipe in heroics, but try that in a raid, or if you're undergeared vs. your dps, and you will lose aggro. My paladin uses the same button for heroics as he does for icc25, and he never loses aggro on anything, and it's just easier to put all that into a macro for a paladin than it is for a druid.

Everyone recommends paladin because ANYONE can figure out consecrate, holy shield, shield of righteousness, hammer of righteousness, smashy smashy

WIth bears keeping lacerates up, faerie firing (which I hate putting in macros), keeping mangle up, etc etc, it's just more complicated to play the class optimally threatwise

Which is a better tank? Meh go argue that on EJ

Which is an EASIER tank to play well? Paladin

So yes, newwbies, we all think you are wearing helmets and riding the short bus to work, so we recommend the 'there's no WAY you can screw THIS one up' -type tank

[jjflanigan]

Gotcha, so it DOES come down to my just not understanding Paladins :)

I have a bear tank and a DK tank, but, prior to boxing, I almost always played healer classes, so my knowledge of the tanking aspect was very limited. I've tanked up through the first wing of ICC on my bear tank and thought it was stupidly easy (with the exception of ranged interrupts). I may have to go level up my paladin now though to give it a shot.

Thank you (and sorry about the thread hijack)

[crowdx]

My two cents. I have a pally tank and now I have a bear tank. The pally, does avengers shield and consecrate and he has aggro for multiple mobs, the bear does Faerie Fire to pull (or Growl) and then once the multiple mobs come to him he has to spam swipe a couple of times to establish aggro. After that both are very similar, a bear can really just spam swipe and hold aggro in heroics (as long as the group are hitting the target you are on).
Of the two tanks, bear scores more points with me for chain pulling, they can run through mobs swiping as they go and pull aggro, paladins have to drop consecrate or avengers shield which have cooldowns that make it slower for them.
Overall I think both are VERY easy to tank with, now if you want harder then look at a DK or Warrior, much more micro management involved in their rotations to keep threat.
Have fun :)

[Mercurio]

I run 6 different mixed teams, 5 of them level 80 and one team is still level 71. The only classes not represented are DKs and rogues and none of my teams have less than four classes represented.

Having recently spent a while thinking about what I like the best, I would definitely go with:
1) Pally tank
2) Resto shammy or Holy priest healer (both are great, though tank heals are slightly easier with the shammy while party heals slightly easier with the priest)
3) Ele shammy (best off-healer, and for some of the hardest content when your gear is low, a 2nd toon doing a bit of healing is vital)
4) Warlock (best DPS I've found from any class, tons of flexibility)

The last DPS is up for debate, but I'd recommend:
- a hunter for good DPS and much easier gearing up (won't compete for drops with priests, locks, or shammies), or
- a mage for easy DPS, easier AOE, portals

Either the hunter (survival) or mage (frost) give replinishment as well.

One other option you could consider: replace the lock with a druid (maintaining the uber +13% spell damage buff) for the awesome +hit buff boomkins give, but that only helps if you are raiding with your team and the boomkin would do substantially less DPS than the lock.

I would highly encourage you to level mixed classes. With /click macros they are very easy to manage, are tons easier to gear up, give you more buffs, and give you lots of flexibility when you hit 80.

Much better than
"Yo guys, starting up a raid, wanna bring something?"
"Sure, I've got a pally... or shaman"
"Hmm... don't need a tank and already have 4 shammies, need a hunter, mage, lock, druid, or priest"
"Crap, I knew I should have leveled up a mixed group! Well, have fun raiding over the next month while I level up another set of toons"