Cataclysm: Comparing Multi-Class Melee With DK + 4 rets

[Shodokan]

I am trying to REALLY find a reason to go with a multi-class team. But i'm not sure if the challenges added by the multiple classes would be worth the hassle. I know MOSG and ZUG run multi class teams... so what are your outlooks on things? I mean the whole totems thing for anti-fear is kinda big IMO. But then again you can just sub out one ret for that i suppose. What do people think that multi-class will have over 4 rets + dk... especially since healing is being toned down overall?

[zenga]

pvp or pve?

[Shodokan]

pvp or pve?

This was posted in the PVP section for a reason >_> (Not to sound like an ass)

[zenga]

My bad. I clicked 'new posts' to have a read while lvling my herbalist. Was almost 6 am and missed the section. Therefore i'll refrain from comments till i'm awake :P

[Ualaa]

There are two compositions which have proven strong, boxed.

Four shammies, because of the totem farm.
This is usually accompanied by a healer, played by someone else.
We get fear immunity, a lot of buffs and resistances, heroism/bloodlust, purge, and controlled burst.

4x Ret's, with the DK is a more resilient team, higher armor and such.
Plus they are in your face immediately.
The loss of cleanse will make fear a nastier mechanic to face.

A mixed melee team... something like:
- Death Knight
- Enhancement Shaman
- Warrior
- Ret Paladin
- Ret Paladin or Feral Druid or Dedicated Healer?

You gain Tremor for the vs Fear.
And several buffs.

But lose the passive heals of Divine Storm as well as Art of War heals.
Not sure if the other teams have enough healing to be in the same ball park as the DK/Ret's.

[Myc]

Ive wondered the same thing,
I think in pvp it will be a 50/50 (more of a 'preference' on what team you like to play) No dispell succkz =l but trinkets/bubbles can make up for fear. but who knows what new PVP gear to help you will in CATA.

tho for PVE if you lost 1 passive healer seems like you would need to get a full time healer or another class that can off heal (shammy/spriest) to make up for it unless you have the content significantly outgeared.
I have thought about mixin my team up something similar to Ualaas post for PVE but I don't think it would be fun in pvp

[Mosg2]

The swap from one Ret to a Warrior is, for me, a required step of evolution for this team. All told your damage output will more-than-double--MS doesn't just halve incoming healing. It shortens the reaction window your opponents have where they can credibly fix the incoming damage you're putting out. This immediately disqualifies many, many teams from being able to beat you.

The Shaman is, to me, another step of evolution. Being able to Purge Hand of Protection off of a target is *HUGE*. Instead of there being no good target when there's a Paladin on the other team due to HoP you can pick almost anyone. Totems are a Big Deal (Tm).

All that having been said... In Cata I think that Dk+Rets or Warrior+Rets is going to be superior. If this PBAE pulsing heal is even *decently* powerful... 4x of those plus either an MS'er or the DK with the no-healing strike is going to be awesome. Of course, maybe burst won't be a viable strategy in Cata and we'll all be playing Druids.

I've got a hunch about 4x Druids :)

[Shodokan]

The swap from one Ret to a Warrior is, for me, a required step of evolution for this team. All told your damage output will more-than-double--MS doesn't just halve incoming healing. It shortens the reaction window your opponents have where they can credibly fix the incoming damage you're putting out. This immediately disqualifies many, many teams from being able to beat you.

The Shaman is, to me, another step of evolution. Being able to Purge Hand of Protection off of a target is *HUGE*. Instead of there being no good target when there's a Paladin on the other team due to HoP you can pick almost anyone. Totems are a Big Deal (Tm).

All that having been said... In Cata I think that Dk+Rets or Warrior+Rets is going to be superior. If this PBAE pulsing heal is even *decently* powerful... 4x of those plus either an MS'er or the DK with the no-healing strike is going to be awesome. Of course, maybe burst won't be a viable strategy in Cata and we'll all be playing Druids.

I've got a hunch about 4x Druids :)

Alright, it seems everyone is set on the rets/dk.

Thanks for the advice. Now to find another team to do...

[Boylston]

I started looking at this in another thread, but I've come to the same conclusion as mosg2... It's all going to be about 2 things:

The general mechanics of PvP in cataclysm-- health pools, DPS levels, healing effectiveness. Basically, how quickly will a 4.5 DPS team be able to burn down a single player, both with and without healing support. Also important will be the overall effectiveness of AoE abilities vs. single target powers.

The second is going to be the effectiveness of Healing Hands, the Paladin PBAoE healing stream type ability. Since the blues say it will work a lot like Healing Stream totem, one can guess that it WILL stack when used on multiple pallies and there's a decent chance it will probably be better (even untalented) than Healing Stream totem since it will be on a CD.

You can theorycraft all the synergistic buffs of running different mixed teams (see list below for most of the big buffs), but I really think it will come down to Healing Hands' effectiveness. If 4.5 DPS of DK+4xRets can "get it done" in terms of quickly killing people in the BGs, then I think having another mobile, group heal is going to make the team very, very robust.

RIght now, people who are reporting success with mixing up the team more are taking advantage of the obvious adds that an Enhance shaman and Arms warrior bring to the table.

Str/Agi Add: DK Enh
10% AP: DK Enh
10% Haste (Melee): DK Enh
Ranged Snare: DK Enh
Death Grip: DK
10% Stats: Ret
AP Add: Ret Arms
3% Damage Add: Ret
3% Haste: Ret
3% Crit Taken: Ret
Passive Healing (JoLIght): Ret
Passive Group Healing (DS): Ret
Snare Resistance (EB Totem): Enh
Ranged Root: Enh
Offensive Debuff (Purge): Enh
PBAoE Snare: Enh
Bloodlust: Enh
3% Physical Damage Taken: Arms
PBAoE Fear: Arms
Remove Invulnerability: Arms
50% Healing Debuff: Arms
Major Armor Debuff: Arms
Minor Armor Debuff: Feral
Group Speed Boost (CD): Feral
5% Crit (Melee): Feral
Flat Stat Add: Feral
Pasive Healing (LOTP): Feral


Long term, I keep asking myself what the best BG team is going to be as well. I think I'd like to be done with arenas and focus on BG play as a gear/rating path. I've become a fan of melee teams for BGing, like a lot of you, so I'm trying to get my act together as we see how the expansion will unfold.

I also wonder about 4-5 druids in the BGs. The ability to stealth a whole team seems like a huge advantage, and one nice aspect about druids is that they are SO flexible for PvE/PvP. Can run boomkins if that works well, cats, bears, healers.... just every option available. Even if kitties are not the end-all, be-all DPS for multiboxers, there's something sexy about being able to stealth your team everywhere.

Argh, choices!

[Ualaa]

Well, comparing Arena to Battlegrounds...

You are not limited to the number of arena matches you can play in a given week.
So, in theory your team can gain or lose a lot of points over the course of a week.

In battlegrounds, we will be able to gain points six times in a week.
Not sure if that means the first six games will count, and after that there is no option for rated play.
Or if we will take the points for the six best games over the course of that week.

They did mention it will be impossible to lose rating in battlegrounds, which is a big plus for BG's.

Not sure if they'll cap the amount of arena you can play for points in a week.
If placing a limit on BG's, to prevent it from being a grind is their direction, arena can be just as much of a time sink over the course of a week.

[Mosg2]

I don't think they've definitively stated how many rated BG matches a week you can do. It may be that you can do an unlimited number but you only gain rating for the first X number of wins. If that's so... It's just a matter of time for *any* team you run.

I've spent a *lot* of time thinking about this and what I've come up with is that 1) melee teams just plain are better BG teams than casters, and 2) a two-class mixed team or a pure team is going to be for the most part worse than a mixed class setup.

As to 1): Casters by their nature are defensive. They will rarely choose to be in melee range of anyone. This makes the melee's threat bubble a "denied area" of sorts for you. You're forced to maneuver around melee classes. Melee on the other hand... You're playing the other side of the coin. You're forcing *everyone* to maneuver around you. No melee wants to be focused by you and neither does any caster.

As to 2): Providing that the /click sequence functionality remains unchanged I see very little reason to run a single or dual class setup other than aesthetics. I personally prefer the *look* of a pure or dual class team but there's no question in my mind how much more effective a mixed-class setup is. /Click trivializes your damage rotation which leaves you to just focus on cooldown-based offensive and defensive cooldowns. Running Dk/War/Sham/Ret/Ret in BG's is just absolute steamroller--Even more so than just DK+Rets.

With Cataclysm I think things are going to turn out pretty decisively: If Healing Hands x4 stacks and is significant then War/Rets or Dk/Rets will be better. If it turns out to be a wash healing wise because of nerf to healing via Divine Storm then I think a mixed team with more tools is going to be better.

In any case... My plan is to boost my Druids up in the mean time :) I've got this hunch that they're going to be awesome in Cata rated BG's. They can rez, stealth, caster dps, melee dps, innate huge run speed, heal etc. With the simplification of Earth and Moon... Who knows?

Oh, and I might get my Rogues from 71 to 80 :) That 3x Rogue test realm video was awesome!

[Shodokan]

Well, comparing Arena to Battlegrounds...

You are not limited to the number of arena matches you can play in a given week.
So, in theory your team can gain or lose a lot of points over the course of a week.

In battlegrounds, we will be able to gain points six times in a week.
Not sure if that means the first six games will count, and after that there is no option for rated play.
Or if we will take the points for the six best games over the course of that week.

They did mention it will be impossible to lose rating in battlegrounds, which is a big plus for BG's.

Not sure if they'll cap the amount of arena you can play for points in a week.
If placing a limit on BG's, to prevent it from being a grind is their direction, arena can be just as much of a time sink over the course of a week.

I'm going to assume they will limit the points to the amount you can get from like 1500 and only give titles and other rewards for higher.

[deadguyfred]

The swap from one Ret to a Warrior is, for me, a required step of evolution for this team. All told your damage output will more-than-double--MS doesn't just halve incoming healing. It shortens the reaction window your opponents have where they can credibly fix the incoming damage you're putting out. If I read correctly, in Cata Warrior MS effect will reduce healing to 20%,

[Shodokan]

If I read correctly, in Cata Warrior MS effect will reduce healing to 20%,

This is true.

[Zugdud]

Greetings,

My current team is:

Arms Warrior (UA/Prot for PVE tanking)
Enhance Shaman
Ret Paladin
Unholy/Frost DK
Resto Druid / Holy Paladin (mood depending)

For BGs I find it easy to box the dedicated healer, however in the Arenas I only 4box the melee and have my buddy playing a Disc Priest covering primary heals. To be honest, I think boxing dedicated heals could work fine if you wanted to try it for 5v5, granted it would add some difficulty for sure, but I do think it's doable. The team has been alot of fun, i'm not going to make Gladiator, but i'll get all the s8 loot which is a good enough victory for me.

The strength my lineup in arenas is that you have the full spectrum of snares (ground, targeted, daze) debuffs (MS) and offensive dispell (Purge, Shield Slam) added to that is a huge "toolbox of clutch abilities", i'd give you a list but i'm sure your already well aware of them. I don't believe this is an optimal setup for farming BGs because the "big toolbox" is not necessary when your facing unorganized zergs of BGers. Shutting down a healer for just a few seconds with a CC chain while you survive the other teams burst in an AMZ can decide a match in the arena, but with the ongoing nature of BGs cooldown timers play a much larger role, raw damage output, survivability, and mana endurance seem king...leading me to believe that a stacked ret team would be a superior lineup in my opinion if your primary interest is BGs.

Anyway, my outlook of my team is that it's fun and viable now, and will probably be fun and "viable enough" in the future. To me, the most important quality of a team is that it maintains my interest, a team never played can never progress. The great thing about this lineup is that there are so many variations with how you can spec everyone out, there is endless room for theorycrafting and tweaking. For Cata, i'm not really sold on any specific lineups as I will reseve judgement and leveling efforts until I get my hands on the beta. Currently, I am leaning towards a mixed caster team of some sort

[Clovis]

I was really intrieged by the quad-rogue video from the test video -- I really wanted to give it a shot but given that it took 3 months to level 5 shamans to 80 I really didn't want to start over.

But now that I haven't played WoW in over two months and I'm probably not coming back until Cata or just before (multiboxing is a fall/winter hobby for me -- I spend every weekend in last spring through late summer playing paintball, riding my motorcycles or fly fishing and occasionally doing stuff with my wife ;) )

Anyhow, whole appeal of rogues to me all though I've never played one to 80 has been the ambush and quad rogues just amplifies this. I didn't think it would be viable in the arena but in BGs its another story.

Then again my quad shamans are very viable in BGs -- I would roll with a seperate healer and we could dominate the field, or at least one location of it. In WSG I found the best thing to do was to usually hang out just outside "our" tunnel to kill the flag carrier with my cool downs (instant lava burst + pyro rockets) -- I could chase them down with rocket boots :)

AB and EOTS I would move from node to node capping it and grabbing the flag.

So anyhow, right now there's a few viable routes. I think the biggest problem (for me at least) would be effectively controling and using abilities on a multi class team. With 4-5 shamans I had each set up exactly the same so to me it was like playing a single shaman but with a trailer (the shamans in tow) and a lot more fire power.

This is making me want to reactivate my accounts.. lol. My wife never liked the $75 a month but now that I'm spending a lot more just in paintball every month she told me to tone it down to every other weekend (you figure a case good quality paint is $55 and this is 2000 balls which for me is two days of playing typically) Through in air refils of about $6 per day (all though usually my "big tank" (a 90CuInch / 4500 PST Ninja) is usually enough to last the whole day -- sometimes I switch to my older 3000psi tank for the last few rounds).

But anyhow, that's around $130 a month excluding if there is a field fee ($12) -- lately I've been playing woods ball with friends and we just bring our own scubba tanks ;) -- on top of everything else. Anyone else play woods ball?

[Mokoi]

I have to say about Divine Storm healing.

They are toning down healing from spells which require a tone-down. i don't think there is a flat carpet reduction in healing, but they are forcing the large, ridiculous heals down. Like priest bubble, greater heals, instant heals etc. i don't think that the passive healing from DS will be hurt too much, and the reason people stack paladins is for the aor tof war procs, and instant 15k heals on a toon of our choice, or 3k on each toon. That is one of the most impressive aspects, and in Bg's its less of a problem, but with a warrior and a DK in a 5man team you lose a lot of those heals. if you add a shaman in there too, I dont see how you heal your team effectively enough in arenas. I mean it gets done, and good on that, but I must be missing something lol.

MS going down to 20%? damn lol.

[Ualaa]

I don't think they've definitively stated how many rated BG matches a week you can do. It may be that you can do an unlimited number but you only gain rating for the first X number of wins. If that's so... It's just a matter of time for *any* team you run.


They have definitively stated, we can gain points from six rated battlegrounds per week, with the limitation of six specifically so people won't feel like they have to grind battlegrounds all week to stay competitive.

They have not stated if this will be the first six rated BG's of the week, or the best six, or really anything in regards to which six games these will be.

[Boylston]

A couple thoughts... Pulling rets out is more than just adding other classes' buffs, and a lot of people overlook that. The multi Art of War procs, multi auras, DS/DS rotations, perfect synchronization of ability usage/damage timing, etc-- all these have an impact.

I think the perfect mixed class comp (something like DK, Ret, Enh, Arms) works best when paired with a dedicated healer in arena... You get the best of all the buff/debuff synergy AND you no longer have to worry about providing your own heals.

Again, for all these discussions, it is "too soon to tell". Cataclysm PvP dynamics may dictate that we NEED more DPS/debuffs in order to get people down fast, or DPS may not be an issue and we'll choose to roll with more defensive makeup. WotLK was a huge change when everyone seemed to get AoE abilities AND they were all reasonably potent. Same thing could happen again in reverse--- changes that made AoE less of a real problem and more of an annoyance might diminish the need to have strong group heals.

DK's healing negating power might stack and we'll all swap over to that I-Win combo. You never know...

[Shodokan]

A couple thoughts... Pulling rets out is more than just adding other classes' buffs, and a lot of people overlook that. The multi Art of War procs, multi auras, DS/DS rotations, perfect synchronization of ability usage/damage timing, etc-- all these have an impact.

I think the perfect mixed class comp (something like DK, Ret, Enh, Arms) works best when paired with a dedicated healer in arena... You get the best of all the buff/debuff synergy AND you no longer have to worry about providing your own heals.

Again, for all these discussions, it is "too soon to tell". Cataclysm PvP dynamics may dictate that we NEED more DPS/debuffs in order to get people down fast, or DPS may not be an issue and we'll choose to roll with more defensive makeup. WotLK was a huge change when everyone seemed to get AoE abilities AND they were all reasonably potent. Same thing could happen again in reverse--- changes that made AoE less of a real problem and more of an annoyance might diminish the need to have strong group heals.

DK's healing negating power might stack and we'll all swap over to that I-Win combo. You never know...

That "i win" combo is a single gimmick. Overall a team with a SINGLE gimmick won't do very well. But i assume it could be fun to hit someone and be like "you die 2 second later." I don't think there is much synergy between 4 dks.

[Boylston]

That "i win" combo is a single gimmick. Overall a team with a SINGLE gimmick won't do very well. But i assume it could be fun to hit someone and be like "you die 2 second later." I don't think there is much synergy between 4 dks.

Depends on the magnitude of the gimmick. Obviously, the devs have stated the DK talent trees will be completely overhauled and tanking separated out to the blood tree. It's the hardest class to theorycraft at this point, in my opinion.

I will guess that the DK's nifty anti-heal ability will do a fairly large amount of "damage" if you consider the sum of real+anti-heal as "damage". If it did stack, one could imagine it being a very potent combo. In today's values, imagine if you could use an ability across multiple characters to negate 20-30,000 points of heals. Would that "gimmick" be significant reason to run an all DK comp.... Might be! (Probably would make Healer+4xDK pretty uber in arenas...)



Fundamentally, I agree with you. :) Any time there's new abilities or gameplay mechanics that go in, I think there's a chance that it turns our best comps list upside down.

No one ever thought melee boxing was possible, and 4-5xHunters was a pretty popular comp that myself, Ellay, Vyndreamy, and others explored at the end of BC...