Newb query about heroic squad setup

[Lilal]

Hi,

I've been lurking here awhile and have tried multiboxing to some success (limited only by an old computer which i'm upgrading as we speak)

I'm looking to get a 5man squad that will complete most/all heroics, and noticed that the majority of squads I see on here are 5 shamans, is this only because they can heal/dps in same spec? I guess this makes them easier to control than tank/healer/3dps etc.

As a question to any of the 5 shamy owners have you found any limitations on what instances you can/can't complete, do some bosses one shot you still?

As a side question, has anyone ever healed a 25man raid with 5 shamans? Wondered how the organisation works with that, or if it's too random heals to control 5 at once.



Thanks Lily

[Gallo]

5 shamans can only do a few heroics... and can only do it by kiting.

To do heroics effectively, and traditionally, you need a "real" tank. A lot of people like to go with Pally tanks as their AOE tanking ability is far superior to Warrior and Druid.

Pally Tank + 3 Mages (CC) + Holy Priest
Pally Tank + 2 Mages + 1 Warlock + Holy Priest

Those are 2 of the more common Heroic-centric groups discussed. They provide plenty of DPS and CC. If you plan on PVPing at all, keep it more simple with the Pally Tank + 3 Mages (CC) + Holy Priest combo so that you can take your 4 casters into a BG.

[Xorn]

Sorry for hijacking your thread, but I thought it might be more effective to use an already existing thread regarding the same topic I wanted to write about then creating another thread. ;)

I would like to know what people think about my setup I am about to level right now and maybe discuss the pros and cons a lil' bit.
As you can already see in my signature, I try running with a Paladin Tank, a Paladin Healer, two Shadow Priests and a Warlock, my former setup featured three Shadow Priests but let me explain the whole thing.

Protection Paladin: not necessary to say anything here, great AOE tank - making up for the missing CC in my setup, I hope
Holy Paladin: the idea behind a paladin healer was, that he would never go OOM because of my shadow priests in the setup (+ the spamable and cheap Flash of Light) so I could, for instance, have better chances with some encounters - of course the paladin comes with the complete lack of AOE heals ... not sure here :/
Shadow Priests (2): good DPS, nice manareg + healthreg (+additional manareg for the two paladins), no AOE, no *real* CC (shackle only works on undead targets)
Warlock: my newest addition in the setup (took one shadow priest out of the group) because I thought a complete lack of AOE would be somehow fatal and the best caster I could take to support my shadow priests of course would be the warlock, Curse of Shadows + destrospec for improved shadow bolt and simplified game play (minus watching the durations of several dots with different durations)

So, in my small world, I think the setup is quite good regarding the great synergy my character / class combinations are creating (/granting each other, maybe a better choice of words?).
At the moment my protpaladin is 57 and the rest is somewhere about 17 and 32 (I was testing the AOE leveling in instances so I couldnt take all my toons with me and stuff ... long story ^^) so I would like to be completely sure about my setup, the pros and cons before I *really* start to play with them.

My target is to play every instance (no PVP) on normal and of course Heroic Mode, since I have no or let's say weak CC (warlock fear) I could imagine, that some instances would be impossible but I really can't say for sure because I never ever played with a protpaladin before and never had one in my groups while I was playing only one character back in the days ...

Any thoughts?

(I hope my english is understandable "enough", I am not a native english speaker but I tried to avoid mistakes of any kind of phrase out everything correctly.. :D )

Xorn

[aetherg]

You need a tank, and a paladin is the best 5-man tank available, for many reasons. As for the rest of your group, it's hard to beat four shamans. They have both single-target and AoE DPS. They have great synergy and utility via totems. Tremor and grounding totems absolutely trivialize many fights. They can heal extremely well even in DPS spec. They wear mail. They also work particularly well with pally tanks, thanks to Mana Tide and Totem of Wrath.

[kayb]

Xorn: For that particular setup I would definitely go with a shaman healer. It just brings so much to the table.

Edit: I gotta warn you...you're gonna have a hard time in Heroics. I'd think about swapping the lock for a mage just for that one sheep alone, not to talk about the free food/water and portal travel.

I know for instance a pally+4 shadowpriest setup can look tempting, but it's just not practical in the end.

[thinus]

Heroics I haven't tried yet, but I suspect I could pull off:
Arcatraz (final boss encounter is questionable, but I'm sure I could do the rest of it)
Mana Tombs
Shettek Halls
CoT Durnhold (keep forgetting about it)
CoT Black Morass (keep forgetting about it)

Heroics I refuse to even try:
Crypts due to retarded first boss.

About 6 months ago Heroic BM was a major pain in the ass. Has it been toned down?

[Bravo]

I'm so sick of this you need a tank BS.... I run 5 shamans and have been able to clear EVERY heroic I try WITHOUT kitting. Your earth elementals are huge help with a majority of bosses, but once your spell damage gets high enouph there's a bunch your don't need to use them on, on my Botanica video I only used them on the first and last boss.. and I've been able to down warp splinter with out my elementals a few times.


Shadow Labs (may be impossible for a multiboxer due to last boss gimicks, I failed before 2nd boss)

PvE Progress ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=39058&highlight=#post39058')

I've been trying to put up a few videos here and there... but aside from quick pandemonius and the botanica video I've been fairly busy in RL and have lost a bit of interested in WoW... I hope 2.4 will re spark that.

for 90% of the trash mobs I encounter I have all 5 shams pull with lighting and then CL, and then lightning until one of my toons gets attacked, then I switch to: main(focus) heals targetstarget and the adds attack focus's target.

[Lilal]

Hey Bravo,

Nice to see there are some squads that don't need dedicated tanks.

What's your general setup while levelling the shamans, talent wise, do you equip them all the same, or have one a more healy talent etc? Also do you always run them with the same equipment?

Just trying to get a feel for the best way to do it.

Thanks again Lil :thumbup:

[Bravo]

Put the best gear you can on them while leveling, I've always had them elemental. when you start to run dungeons it's best to balance their spell damage as best you can. this is because you want to juggle the agro on the mob... if toon3 is being attacked, the threat margin is so slim on all of your toons, being hit once and slowing down your cast on that one spell will most likley cause another toon to grab agro. The only gear difference I have is toon1 has totem of the plains and the prayer book from lower city rep to help cut down on the mana cost while casting lesser healing wave, which I recommend more than casting healing wave because if your are juggling agro, your mob should be switching targets quickly.... the downside to this is when have multiple mobs attacking differnt targets... I've only recently started to have flawless run where no one dies, but as long as you run some dailies for cash you'll have no problem covering your repair costs, as long as you kill one mob in the pull it'll become easier. You'll build up better gear and you'll be able to run these instances better.

[Lilal]

ty Bravo

Do you think it'd affect the stability of the squad much running 4 shamans + 1 mage, or would the diff. in aggro's, and losing healing/survibility/totems/elemental break the essence of the squad really.



Thanks Lily

[Bravo]

Can't say, never played a mage. But you wouldn't be able to balance out the agro as much. Your mage would either pull too much agro and then defend himself with cloth or do less and if it's doing less, not be able to grab agro. Your spells would be casting at differnt rates. I also have my shocks mixed so 4 cast earth shock, but one casts frost shock which has higher threat and I can pull agro off a charater which might be taking too much of a beating. I'd personaly just level 5 guys then if you want later on mix and match to suit your play style. Just have fun, your playing a video game.

[aetherg]

I'm curious actually; on heroic, he gains an ability that fires bolts at all players outside of his circle every 5 seconds. Can these be absorbed by grounding totem? Pandemonius has a very similar-looking ability that is vulnerable to grounding totem (totally trivializes the fight). If this is the case for Murmur, you could treat this just like normal mode, as long as you remember to chain your grounding totems.

[Bravo]

I dunno, I stayed inside the circle the whole time, I didn't bother healing the earth elementals and decided to take the hit when he did his sonic boom (only took about 50% of my health away) chain healed after.I switched windows to who ever got Touch of Murmur and ran them to the other side of the circle and forgot about them becuase they're silenced for a while afterwards, and murmur was already at 5%

[kayb]

I'm curious actually; on heroic, he gains an ability that fires bolts at all players outside of his circle every 5 seconds. Can these be absorbed by grounding totem? Pandemonius has a very similar-looking ability that is vulnerable to grounding totem (totally trivializes the fight). If this is the case for Murmur, you could treat this just like normal mode, as long as you remember to chain your grounding totems.Grounding totems dont absorb those bolts. Counts as an aoe attack I guess.

And @Bravo: Yeah, you can do pretty much anything with shamans when you got good gear. But you can do heroics with a classic setup in shitty gear. Thats basically the only differance. My shammies have over 9k unbuffed health now, and over 10k armor, so they're becoming little tanks as I progress into better gear =)

[Mokoi]

Howdy,

As a side question, has anyone ever healed a 25man raid with 5 shamans? Wondered how the organisation works with that, or if it's too random heals to control 5 at once.

Thanks Lilal

I have tried this.

I respecced 2 of my Shamans to Resto with about 1400 healing each. I wasn't sure quite how to do it at first, but I think I figured out a good way.

I had 3 main targets on both of my shamans. 3 different macros to target a different target and heal them. 6 keys bound for chain heal and 1-6 became heals on 6 different people. Tanks, Melee and Certain ranges DPS who clumped.

Worked well in conjunction with my existing macros to target one person and LHW / Chain heal at once (mainly used on main tank after transitions etc)

tricky part is setting up your UI so you can quickly heal who needs healed and making sure your guys are standing close to their healing assignments.

for the most part, I only used the 2 keys that were assigned to heal the tanks I was assigned to tank. and only used the other 4 to heal sporadically. the bonus, is chain heal heals a lot of people when theres more than one flying around.

Not the recommended style of healing, but adds a certain flare to the game that makes it very interesting =)

-Dan

[Bravo]

But you can do heroics with a classic setup in shitty gear

Remote, myself, and I'm sure some other 5 shaman teams on here were running a few heroics in greens ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=20733#post20733')

[Lilal]

So I've got my 5 levelling slowly (only 8 atm aww :P) and seeing I didn't want to make needless threads, does anyone know what addon the bars in LancerX's movies are? Seems nice to have the casting/buffs etc, rather than the standard set.



Thanks Lily

[kayb]

But you can do heroics with a classic setup in shitty gear

Remote, myself, and I'm sure some other 5 shaman teams on here were running a few heroics in greens ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=20733#post20733')Yup, did that myself. Though only Slave Pens, and a boss here and there. Took first boss in Sethekk halls easy enough day after I dinged 70, but it kinda stopped there. Wiped alot on the Ravenguards after this, so I just stopped running it. I did clear it just to do it, but I never did it again cause I wiped alot after the first boss. It would probably be very easy for me now, with better gear.

[Motoren]

Im running 1 pally 1 priest and 3x mages and it seems to go ok for me.. im doing a few heroic bosses now and trying to get some gear for the pally. I have many times been thinking of switching to 1pally and 4xshamans mostly due to stupid fearing mobs. Its alittle harder to control 3 different characters too, but i guess you get used to it :)

Giz

1pally 1priest 3mages

[kayb]

Gotta hand it to ya Bravo. Been testing your idea for the pve stuff I do, and it's riddiculously powerful. I just swap out the normal lb spam macro that I use in pvp every time I go to do heroics. I thought stuff was easy before...but oh man =)

/cast [target=targettarget, help] lesser healing wave; lightning bolt

The downside is that theres alittle more drinking than before, but that's not to bad I guess.

[Oldin]

Gotta hand it to ya Bravo. Been testing your idea for the pve stuff I do, and it's riddiculously powerful. I just swap out the normal lb spam macro that I use in pvp every time I go to do heroics. I thought stuff was easy before...but oh man =)

/cast [target=targettarget, help] lesser healing wave; lightning bolt

The downside is that theres alittle more drinking than before, but that's not to bad I guess.

HPM and HPS wise Healing wave should be much more efficient. So why would you use lesser healing wave on something you are going to spam constantly without remorse about overhealing?

Paladins are a special case as their flash of light is much more efficient than holy light, but both priest and shaman slow heal is so much more mana and time efficient than their fast one, so why do you choose to spam the fast one that will drain your mana fast? Remember that you should be able to downrank considerably if you're spamming healing waves, with max ranks only to smooth out spikes.

[kayb]

Im not specced into healing wave, so often its too slow to save someone. idea is to juggle aggro around on multiple toons, using them as one health pool.

[Bravo]

Thanks Kayb... I use the Lower City rep prayer book to help out with the mana pool on my healer.. it's cooldown is only 1 min so it's an incredible help for spamming LHW

@Olidon: Healing Wave is more efficient, but it's not fast enough when your juggling the agro table, my main will be casting HW on toon2 and they're not being attacked anymore, Toon3 is, and they're about to die because I couldn't get the heal out to them fast enough.

I have Quagmirran's Eye ('http://thottbot.com/i27683') on my adds and even though it's a nice +spell damage it causes problems to my threat table, in my Pandemonius video ('http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFitESqUDA') the 5th toon procs the eye first and gets hit first, if I didn't burn the boss (which I normally don't) that toon keeps agro and will most likley die first. I'm hoping to swap it out for Battlemaster's Audacity ('http://thottbot.com/i34049') or maybe even the new Alchemist trinket ('http://www.wowhead.com/?item=35749') in 2.4