[WoW] 70-80 Multiboxing 1 paladin 4 shamans or 1 druid 4 shamans?

Hello everyone,

I have a 70 feral druid (with dualspec) for boomkin. I can run him as feral in instances and boomkin for quests. Only one problem. I tried Utgarde today and i died on almost every pull. Its just too hard looking to see if i have enough threat, got enough hp or do i need a heal and dont loose agro over other mobs.

I have seen a lot of video's of 1 paladin 4 shamans groups, and i have a paladin available. He is level 71 and have greens for retribution. I can respec him protection and gear him up. Just a couple questions:

Should i go for the paladin or stay with the druid? Is it just gear on should i respec one of my shamans back to elemental instead of restoration so i have more dps and less healing instead?

Should i make one shaman restoration instead of elemental? So i end up with 1 protection paladin, 3 elemental shamans and 1 restoration shaman?

My druid has 63-69 blue/green gear.

My shaman have the nagrand/netherstorm blue's and greens. And 3-4 items from Northrend.

I hope you guys have answers because i've lost my mind.

Kind regards,

Negativ1337

A paladin is easier (less hotkeys to be effective) to box then a druid tank.
However, the druid is just as a capable as the paladin, as far as tanking goes.
Between the two, bottom line is who is more fun for you to box with or play in general?

With WotLK, you no longer need any defense on the druids tanking gear.
The Survival of the Fittest talent renders you crit immune to mobs of your level +3.
Crushing blows was changed to mobs of your level +4.
Defense still boosts your parry/block (druid doesn't have these) and dodge by a small margin.
Changing your itemization towards HP, AC and Dodge will improve your survivability.
A decent amount of Agi, Str, etc will still be required for threat generation.

As long as an instance is hard, I'd keep a dedicated healer spec'd to heal.
Once its approaching being trivial, switch towards more dps for faster runs.
If its hard with 3x dps, 1x heal and 1x tank, it'll be harder to survive with 4x dps and 1x tank.

I think that your answer my revolve around what your end goals are.

If you are wanting to PvP, having all druids is an advantage from the standpoint of ranged DPS.

If you are mostly doing PvE, I think the Paladin is a better option only because you won't be "wasting" plate drops in Heroics.

I think both can work, but it will just take practice. You can always just go ahead and run with the Paladin for a bit and see how well you like it.

For what it's worth, I respec'd one of my shaman to resto at level 60 and have never looked back. I changed my bindings so during most fights, he's either casting heals or not casting at all, otherwise he runs out of mana too fast (without talents to reduce the cost of CL/LB). So my damage went down a little bit, but the increase in survivability makes it SO worth it. Plus, with a resto shaman you get Earth Shield for your tank, better restorative totems, mana tide totem, riptide, etc. I'd recommend making the change.

For the record, I'm running a DK tank, 1 Boomkin Druid, 2 Elemental Shaman, and 1 Resto Shaman.

I have a similar dilemma, having a Naxx geared feral druid on my main account that I'm likely to use for the tank for my 4 shammies rather than push up a DK or dust off the 61 pally on the main account.

It's worth noting that dual spec is made for situations like this, the "should I dedicate a healer or not?" I plan to make all of my shammies dual spec with elemental and resto as the pieces.

Down the road my 4 boomkins will likely also moonlight as trees.

There are several threads on this already. However, I would say that you should play whatever you think will be most fun for you at 80.

Both pallies and bears are effective Tank+4xShaman classes. I've run both. I personally enjoy the flexibility in being able to go Boomkin+4xShammy as well.

Bears can also be "1 button tanks". You can glyph for maul and generate a lot of aggro using a very simple Maul+Swipe macro.