How critical is it to have the capability to get rid of all magic, curse, poison, and disease debuffs?

[Boxor]

My first team was a 4X Warrior and Shaman team. Had a heck of a time dealing with curses and magic debuffs in SFK. If I run a bear tank and Shaman, I can cover diseases, poison, and curses (out of combat). How critical is it at higher levels to have the ability to remove magic?

I like the abilities of the priest, but the shaman brings wipe control plus so many other things with totems. Just trying to figure out how critical it is to have a priest in the group on the Horde side.

[daviddoran]

It can really slow you down sometimes. I'm running 3 teams, 5 shamans, 4 locks and a priest, and 4 Mages and a priest. In Shadowfang Keep, the curses would slow me a lot on the shaman team, because without a way to remove them, I just waited them out before going after boss kills that were already a bit dicey. On my mages, they were not a problem. I still couldn't get rid of poisons, but between the priest dispell and the Mages decurse, I could get rid of the troublesome ones. I also run with a buddy sometimes, and being able to dispell roots on the tank is critical to him being able to hold aggro.

If I was going with 4x warriors, I'd go with a Shaman if only for Windfury Totem. And Chain heal will probably be pretty good. The cleansing totems make quick work of poisons, etc.

Unless you run a 4-5 class team, you just have to live with the tradeoffs of which buffs/debuffs each class brings. For leveling I like to keep things simple, and have 1-2 classes at a time. At 60 I will experiment with a multi class team, and having all the spells available will make it a bit better to choose the optimal makeup.

[Boxor]

The new team is currently a Bear tank, 3 hunters, and a priest. Just way too much stance dancing and cleaving for me. My old hands (58 years old) have too much pain and just had a hard time with all the keyboard requirements so I'm opting for the ranged team now. I might swap in my shaman a little later. Not sure though if I want to put the shaman in for a replacement as the priest or a hunter though. The hunters are good steady dps and easy. My buddy is running one in his five man team and says the shaman is doing better now with chain lightning.

[nodoze]

Debuffs are in part why I like Paladin for dungeon Tank (if not healer). A Paladin with 1 Mage can clear them all.

Paladins are the only class that can clear 3 different kinds of debuffs:

https://cwl-forums.s3.amazonaws.com/a95359cc-fa14-48f6-aaed-dc2fabb91c5c.png

[Ughmahedhurtz]

In my past experience (back during BC is as close as I can get to classic cap yet) there were only two times I really wanted full-time curse/magic effect removals: when I was pushing content that I probably had no business attempting at my gear level, and old raids where some of those effects were potentially a wipe (Chromaggus in BWL I think?). So, just depends on what you want to accomplish.