Input Wanted -- Creating a Heroic Team

[accretion]

Hi All,
Long-time lurker but first-time poster. I've been multiboxing for 7 years or so (EQ then WoW) and finally took the "5-man plunge" last month. I'm now constructing a group for heroic dungeon runs, with the goal to complete nearly all of them eventually. My setup is somewhat flexible, and I want to know what you think my best and most playable group would be, given my situation.

My Setup
3 separate computers with varying hardware
- "Average" Computer A -- 1 toon (driver)
- "Beefy" Computer B -- 2-4 toons with Keyclone
- "Anemic" Computer C -- 1 toon

Here are my proposals thus far:

--- 1 ---
A - Druid Tank
B - 3x Hunter
C - Holy/Disc Priest

Pro: Aggro management, Buffs, Group Heals, Off-tanks
Con: CC, Wipe Recovery


--- 2 ---
A - Paladin
B - 3x Mage
C - 1x Warlock

Pro: AoE, CC, Wipe recovery (lock+pally), Portable, High DPS
Con: Squishy, Aggro management, Limited heals


--- 3 ---
A - Druid
B - 3x Shaman
C - Mage

Pro: Flexibility, Wipe-proof, Portable, Buffs/Totems
Con: Aggro management, Group healing


--- 4 ---
A - Pally
B - 3x Hunter
C - Shaman

Pro: Buffs, Aggro management, Off-tanks
Con: CC, Group healing


So, I'd love to hear what y'all think. Do you have a favorite in this group? Or do you have your own ideas?

Fire away!

Accretion

[Tdog]

As far as group 2 goes you're not going to make it very far with your tank being you're healer. Only reason paladins are able to tank for extended peroids of time is because of spiritual attunement which does not proc off of their own heals not to mention the fact that their heals are going to be light anyways without the +Healing gear and you'd be losing aggro building time while casting a heal on yourself.

Also Shamans have healing totem + chain heal which I see a few times you listed groups with shamans as having no group heal. It may not be as good as priest group heals but it's worked effective enough for me.

Lastly if you've been lurking around the forums for awhile I'm sure you'll most likely expect most people to tell you that 5x shamans or 1x pally 4x shamans is "the best" set-up. Given that you didn't list those or any variation of them I'm assuming you'd like to go against the norm, which is commendable, in which case I'd say that most groups with the basic Tank,3x DPS, Healer set-up can probably handle heroics given enough time, effort, and determination.

[accretion]

This is exactly the type of feedback I need, thanks.

Tdog -- Yes, I'm hoping to avoid the Pally/4xShaman team if possible. I'd like to control 3 unique classes, so I may experiment with Tank/3DPS/Healer in different combinations

Fur -- Re: Group 1, I hadn't really considered fear control, but 1 fear ward isn't much protection. I'd likely have to keep pets out of any boss fight with fear and be selective with other fearing mobs. Good point.

[Tdog]

Welp, even though I only list 2 teams in my sig I have 10 lvl 70's from my pre MBing days that I have messed around with in level 70 instances and a few easier heroics with less than ideal group make-ups. Even with less than ideal group make-ups and a majority of those 70's having very bad gear I've still killed a few heroic bosses. The biggest hang-ups I'm having isn't the group make up but rather they gear they are currently in. Given enough time I'm sure I could make them work fairly sucessfully. Sure I wouldn't be able to kill and clear every heroic with lightning speed while having ez-mode turned on but it is doable.

However if you want to be able to kill the most amount of heroic bosses there are a few abilites that would be highly recommended to have in your group and Fear control imo is one of them.

[pinotnoir]

I currently run your group3 setup.

I have a druid tank, resto shaman healer, 2 elemental shaman dps, and a mage. Nice buffs and portable. I have one cc which is very nice to have. Right now the only thing holding me back is gear. The resto shaman has about 1150 healing now and the dps all have 600 damage or less. Once I get their gear improved I will have an easier time. My druid is wearing T5 so he outgears everyone. What has wiped me more than anything is when a Mind Control mob takes over my tank and all the mobs rush my team while my druid owns the squisy guys.

I also have a pally tank that can swap in. His gear is not as good. If he had equal gear to my druid I would make him tank more often. The problem with the druid is when you have a large pack of mobs and need to keep aggro. Swipe works ok but you really have to watch out with your cc. The last patch said swipe, chain lightning would not break cc but that is a bunch of bullshit. If that was fixed I would have a much easier time with my group.

Sometimes I wish I had a 5 shaman group to burn through stuff. Tanking + Healing is pretty hard. It would be much easier if I could just nuke with everything instead of watching health bars and dpsing mobs. It takes more effort to have a tank healer group than it does with a nuke them down. Also, pvp with 5 of the same dps is much better than my group in pvp.

I would recommend you do a 5 shaman group then make a tank or mage with other toons later.

[yarr]

my group setup (havent done heroics yet, hoping to gear up first) is pally tank, 3 shaman dps, holy priest heal.

Pros: Massive single target dps, respectable aoe (3 fire totems + consecrate), group heals, lots of buffs (blessings, fort, shadow protection, and 3x totems) and great aoe threat (i.e. healer wont' pull aggro ever)
Cons: no CC. unless the pull has undeads.

[Effex]

Currently running 1 pali 4 shammy, doing a LOT of heroics, there great but I do miss CC a lot so Ive been thinking about a new team. havnt quite decided what yet but imo the ultimate heroic group will need:

1) Pali tank - AOE agro is not only great for no CC groups its great for multiboxers giving us extra time to cordinate which target to CC
2) atleast 2 healer - theres loads of times when one char will get CCed so 2 healers, 1 primary 1 off healer is a must
3) ranged dmg - boxing melle yuck no thx
4) as much CC as poss
5) wipe prevention - i love anhk's i hate releasing


so Im thinking

Prot Pali - tank + buffs
Resto shammy - healer + buffs, manatide is amazing when u look at the benifit to the whole group.
Boomkin - off healer + buffs + offtank + CC
Mage - DPS CC buffs
Mage DPS CC

[kayb]

Anything works, really. If you want the micro challenge go for a trinity setup, up to 5 different classes even, if you want the simple approach go with 5xshammy or 1tank/4xdps. In the end 5x [well-geared] shammies are probably unbeatable for sheer killing speed. I have no problems grinding 20 badges in about 3 hours with my current team.

[Bunny]

If I were to do a pure Pve group again with 1 tank 1 healer and 3 dps I whould go with:
Pala tank: great on aoe, needs not much attention
Shaman healer: resto shams are highly underrated in 5man situations in my opinion. They have decent/good single target heals, they can pee heal if the group takes some damage (imho the priests group heal usually does too much, chain heal is usually okay). They have excellent utilities via totems. If yopu have a mob which fears or uses poison just drop the appropriate totem and forget about it - no active action necessary is always good. Heroism rocks ;)
3 fire mages: great damage, intbuff etc. A case can be made for adding an elesham, lock or shadowpriest but I whould prefere the extra Aoe power.
Although this is just a suggestion I highly recomend pala tank and sham healer.
Bunny

[OzPhoenix]

Anything works, really. If you want the micro challenge go for a trinity setup, up to 5 different classes even, if you want the simple approach go with 5xshammy or 1tank/4xdps. In the end 5x [well-geared] shammies are probably unbeatable for sheer killing speed. I have no problems grinding 20 badges in about 3 hours with my current team.

This post makes me feel very happy. I was a little worried when everyone was talking about 1 Pally/4 Shamans for my 5 Shaman team.

[accretion]

I'm currently leaning toward either: Pally/Resto Shaman/3xHunter or 5x Shaman. Despite leveling 10 or so characters to 60+, I have to confess that I'm a bit of a Shaman n00b. I understand they're quite a force and 20 badges in 3 hours is impressive. I also don't want to fight over the same gear on normal 70 runs, but I don't see much alternative outside of PVP. Would BS player-crafted armor be a decent stop-gap?

I may end up trying both. I also currently have a 5x hunter team that will probably be able to farm normal 70 instances at a decent speed.

[Sanctume]

I run Pally + 3 Shaman + Mage and love it.
Mage works just great for the food/taxi service.

Imagine doing Nagrand reading googles, porting to shatt, fly to netherstorm, fly to throne, and porting back again--so convenient.

Or after you clear an instance, you just port back to shatt.

Or even better, you Hellfire, and port to Ogrimmar to train your newly levelled shamans.

[Zolo]

Currently running 1 pali 4 shammy, doing a LOT of heroics, there great but I do miss CC a lot so Ive been thinking about a new team. havnt quite decided what yet but imo the ultimate heroic group will need:

1) Pali tank - AOE agro is not only great for no CC groups its great for multiboxers giving us extra time to cordinate which target to CC
2) atleast 2 healer - theres loads of times when one char will get CCed so 2 healers, 1 primary 1 off healer is a must
3) ranged dmg - boxing melle yuck no thx
4) as much CC as poss
5) wipe prevention - i love anhk's i hate releasing
That's an interesting point about the 2nd healer. I'm going to need to give that some thought. My current low level team is 1xPally, 1xPriest, 3xLock. You've exposed a major flaw in that group for me. Thanks, you might have just saved me the effort of boosting a 2nd healer up. :thumbup:

[yarr]

I run Pally + 3 Shaman + Mage and love it.
Mage works just great for the food/taxi service.

Imagine doing Nagrand reading googles, porting to shatt, fly to netherstorm, fly to throne, and porting back again--so convenient.

Or after you clear an instance, you just port back to shatt.

Or even better, you Hellfire, and port to Ogrimmar to train your newly levelled shamans.

How do you mix your Mage in with the Shaman? Since Shaman are mostly lightning bolt / chain lightning, do you just spam fireball / frost bolt? I've often thought about adding a mage for food, taxi, and buffs, but didn't know what to do with him/her. Never really played a mage before.

I ran pally + priest + 2x shaman + mage for quite some time. I always just had the mage fireball or frostbolt (depending which spec, i tried both). As fire, the mage could keep up with my shamans on dps but always OOMed first, this is in level 30-50 instances. As frost, the mage had quite the staying power due to all the mana efficiency talents in frost, however it would always come out about 30% less damage than LB/CL spamming shamans (unless I did a lot of aoe pulls).

It was very nice having portals and water. In fact i'd say it was worth taking teh mage in place of another shaman just for the water. However when the going got tough, shamans always outperformed mage, when it came to pulling aggro, shamans could survive it , mage would get 2shotted.

Sheep was IMO more trouble than it was worth, with a pally tank (i suppose you could make an argument for bringing a mage for sheeps in heroics due to the huge incoming damage)

[Kaynin]

Most easy to manage and effective set up?

- Prot paladin
- 3x Mages
- Priest or shaman healer

Pro's: One of the more easy set ups to level. A lot of CC. Potential to have some fun in PvP for a change. (With the 3x mages and healer, could have quite some fun in battlegrounds. Especially if you make the mages undead and the healer a shaman. Tremor and WotF as a backup when you dont have tremor up or it's crowded and can't wait for tremor.)

Cons: Can't think of any yet. This set up would rock in just about any heroic with the right tactics.

[accretion]

So after doing some research prompted by these posts, I plan to do Pally + 3x Shammy and leave one slot open for a "swing" character, probably a Hunter, Mage or Lock, depending on the instance. This gives me solid tanking, reasonable AoE (with a Mage), good heals, wipe recovery and still 3x totems.

Thanks for all the feedback and feel free to keep adding.

[BobGnarly]

Even though you said you've made a tentative decision, I'll break down how I view it:

Tank:

Pally, hands down. They are the best multi-mob tank, and can generate a ton of threat with absolutely no input on your part after the pull (pull, drop consec, do nothing). Not saying you'll want to tank like this, but it's really nice to have a tank that doesn't require input every GCD to be effective since you've got a lot of other stuff to be doing all the time.

Healer:

All can be good choices for various reasons. I would choose priest because personally, as I feel they are the most adroit healers overall (just my personal preference). Honestly though, any of the 3 healers could work great here.

DPS:

The idea of splitting up here is compelling, but I'll stick to your 3 class wish.

No on rogue, warrior, paladin (melee).

Priest would be interesting, and would have obvious bonus of a fun PvP (bgs) teams with 4priests+paly.
Shaman would be very nice with the totems. Could help paladin (WF) and healers, in addition to themselves with the different totem selections.
Druid. 3 boomkins yay!
Hunter's could be fun, but not top-tier here imo. Lack of synergy with each other and, while it's much better, still have a ranged position requirement.
Warlock is a very close second. Lot's of group utility, and multiple of them is very nice. However...
My pick is mage. Great DPS, probably best-in-class for AOE. Water ain't for nothing, and having ports really is a nice feature. The biggest factor, however, is CC. There's a reason you see people wanting mages for heroics and zones like Magister's Terrace, and this is it. I think it's even more clear when you consider that 5 boxing places a certain amount of burden on your ability to micro. 3 fire-and-forget CCs here is priceless.

Anyway, that's my take.

[Havelcek]

My only comment here is that with a Paladin tank, you don't need CC. And consecration, a Paladin's greatest AoE tanking ability breaks CC...... somewhat counter-productive and may required extra time to setup and effectively use. That would argue for Pally/3xShaman and 1 mage for port, water, int buff

[Moredots]

If you picked group 4 I have some suggestions that would be great for that group. Hunters pets would be great if you had two owls / bats one with rank 5 Screech and one with Screech 4 (they stack that way for over 300 ap reduction) then maybe a wolf for the extra dmg for the paladin and both owls / bats. To be honest with the two bats and the dmg mitigation on your paladin you could go with any dps pet.

The other advantage to going the hunter group is you will level fast as hell... Hunters are just OP when it comes to leveling. I got my 5 man hunter group to 20 in one night... it was nuts.

[Zoroaster]

I use a War/Sham/Mage/Mage/Mage setup. I've cleared a few of the heroics so far, SP/UB/Bot are my usual 3, haven't even tried a lot of them. I'm just trying to maximize by badges per hour right now, since I don't often have more then a couple hours per day for heroics.

Tanks - I already had a 70 warrior which I've played since WoW release, since I was very familiar with the class I didn't feel like rerolling and gearing a pally. However if you are starting out I'd definitely have to agree that prot pally is the best.

Healer - Same thing as with warrior, I raid on my shaman and have very good T6+ gear, so no way was I going to reroll/regear another healer. I'd say go with a shaman since the heroism is nice, and they really aren't bad for healing the majority of heroics. Earth shield is also really nice for helping you get a ton of initial aggro. Either priest or shaman will work fine though.

DPS - Mages overall are probably the best due to the crazy amount of CC you get. Have decent burst DPS for bosses via heroism, icy veins, and elementals/combustion. If you go the prot pally route for your tank warlocks and/or elemental shaman should work pretty well, since it is a bit harder to CC, also the pally can hold AoE aggro better, chain lightning away!

[Balduran]

Hi mates, just needed to reply on this, since i have many times asked myself the same question:)

I have Pally, Priest, 2 x firemage, firelock setup. I AOE through heroic ramp, botanica, UB, SL and for MT i havent managed to AOE there yet (normal is fine)

You get massive AOE, u get CC all if needed (MT), and u get nice buffs, but the burst dmg is the best. I have 3x shammies comming up ( at 42 ftm) for PvP. When i do quests, dailys or grind, i ride around and just AoE everything down.

Hope you have a great time with your team. nomatter what your setup is :)

[Mercurio]

I have Pally, Priest, 2 x firemage, firelock setup. I AOE through heroic ramp, botanica, UB, SL and for MT i havent managed to AOE there yet (normal is fine)




I'm quite familiar with firemages, but a firelock? Some kind of Destruction spec, I assume? Would be nice to see a toon name to check out the exact spend of talent points. And for lock AoE do you SoC or Hellfire or Rain of Fire?

I'm considering a similiar setup, so any info would be appreciated :)

[Balduran]

Character name is Cayla on Daggerspine EU, But the spec is 0/21/40 DS/S&F , basicly sacc your imp, and do immolate, incineratte, conflag. With Curse of Elem, and 5x im scorch, u get immense Burst dmg. And when i AOE i do HF, 550 dmg/sec so its nice. I counter this with CoH or Holy nova.

[Greythan]

Firelock is a destrction focused build. Very high fire (obviously) based burst DPS. Locks often spec that way when raiding/grouping with firemages to built off each other's ability to increase fire crit percentages, etc.

[Mercurio]

Thanks for the info, guys. It is a very interesting spec. I've been to the bottom of the affliction and demonology trees before, but not destruction. I didn't realize you could do destruction so efficiently while just picking up fire talents.

Now that I have a 2nd lock at 70 I can put together an AOE heroic team consisting of:

1 prot pally

1 fire mage

1 holy priest

2 locks

I originally leveled a 2nd one to 70 so I could put out SoCx2, but I'm interested to try the firelock thing out too. Fun fun!

Only thing is, yesterday I spent a whole bunch of resources getting a Frozen Shadoweave Set for the new lock (the other is in epics, so no change needed). Guess I'll need to start my four spellcloth tailors blowing their cooldowns.

Thanks again :D

Oh, and sorry for the threadjack. I'm done now (I think).

[accretion]

Based largely on y'all's advice, I'm now working up my Shaman trio to join my 63 Pally and either my 70 Hunter or my 40 (and soon-to-be levelled) Mage. They hit 20 last night and I should be able to hit Outland in a month or so. I'm definitely warming to the idea of a Hunter for low-hassle DPS, pet buffs and some other utility. I may ultimately end up with a Mage, but I'll start with a hunter and see where that goes. I hope that Pally/2xDPS Shamans/1xResto Shaman/Hunter will be able to tackle most Heroics eventually. We shall see.

[Akoko]

Prot pally, 3x mage, resto shaman is probably the easiest group to control. Possibly switch mages with any ranged/caster DPS class, however mages are most useful.

[accretion]

Yeah, I thought hard about that combo as well. The main drawbacks I saw were the "squishiness" of the team as well as few totems, which seem to be very powerful for instances. Although that group would be sick for AoE.