4x Melee Discussions

With Kromtor's success in 5's I'd like to take a minute and talk about the viability of other 4x melee setups that could potentially work. With that in mind, here's what I've got:

Paladins: With Kromtor breaking 2200 in 5's *by himself*, the viability of 4x Paladins is not debatable. I guess the question is if another 4x melee is as competitive or even more competitive than the Paladins are.
Pros: Lots of burst, great survivability
Cons: No snare, No MS effect

DKs: Personally I'm less inclined towards the DKs than the Paladins. Shrug.
Pros: Great sustained damage, better than average survivability, 4x Deathgrip + 8x Chains of Ice available
Cons: Burst potential is lower than other classes, no MS effect

Warriors: I've been kicking the idea of these guys around quite a bit. You're gaining MS at the cost of survivability compared to the other melee classes.
Pros: Good burst, MS effect, snare, Bladestorm, Charge+Intercept
Cons: Probably lowest survivability, no healing available

Rogues: I could see these guys going both ways. One one hand, you're basically guaranteed to be able to insta-gib whatever player you open on. Are the survival cooldowns you have good enough to mitigate the fact that once they're gone you're just a leather-wearing melee class?
Pros: Great burst, MS effect, best snare, great defensive/offensive cooldowns
Cons: Bad survivability once cooldowns gone, no healing available

I'm not really considering 4x Ferals or 4x Enhance shaman. Other specs for them I think are more competitive. So what does everyone think? I'm seriously debating boosting up 4x Warriors... Just the thought of getting Charge/Intercept humped up and down the field while you're perma snared and MS'd sounds hard to deal with. Rogues seem really interesting to me too due to the MS+Snare+Burst potential.

I would love to get this discussion going and get some feedback!

I think a mix and match would work well.

1 DK / 1-2 Rets/ 1 War / 1 Feral Druid

With this combo you get all the DK buffs, Might buff / 10% AP / Group heal / 20% group haste. A Snare and a Deathgrip
Warrior provides MS / and Commanding Shout
2 Rets provide 2 blessings/judgments - pick whatever is crucial to you
Feral Druid gives you the crit bonus and heal + Mark.

With some nifty clickmacro's I'm sure there is a relatively decent macro to spam out for each character without too much focus, and if any 1 class gets a nerf it isn't as big of a deal - if this combo actually works it has the good long term viability instead of a flavor of the month style.

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Paladins: With Kromtor breaking 2200 in 5's *by himself*, the viability of 4x Paladins is not debatable. I guess the question is if another 4x melee is as competitive or even more competitive than the Paladins are.
Pros: Lots of burst, great survivability
Cons: No snare, No MS effect

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I did some pvp in av while leveling and I found out that 4x paladin alone are not good. People run away from me, tho my stun rotation din`t work for some reason.

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DKs: Personally I'm less inclined towards the DKs than the Paladins. Shrug.
Pros: Great sustained damage, better than average survivability, 4x Deathgrip + 8x Chains of Ice available
Cons: Burst potential is lower than other classes, no MS effect

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Last time I played DK chains of ice had a cooldown:)

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I'm not really considering 4x Ferals or 4x Enhance shaman. Other specs for them I think are more competitive. So what does everyone think? I'm seriously debating boosting up 4x Warriors... Just the thought of getting Charge/Intercept humped up and down the field while you're perma snared and MS'd sounds hard to deal with. Rogues seem really interesting to me too due to the MS+Snare+Burst potential.

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IMO these 2 setups will be way way better then warriors and rogues. I think many will agree with me that enhancement shamans would be a great setup.

I think any of those combinations you can gib one person, after that you need survivability to continue on and thats what I think rets bring (lots of passive healing). In that respect I wonder if enhance shamans could be awesome. Imagine gibbing one person and doing instant chain heal x 4! (or do heals not count for the instant cast?)

@Ellay:
I agree that a mixed set up, on paper, brings all of the necessary parts but I think that in actuality your efficiency is going to go through the floor. I don't think there's any way that you can effectively manage cooldowns on 3 or 4 classes while maintaining decent dps.

@David:
Yeah, it's been awhile since I've been on my DK :)
I wasn't trying to say that 4x Enhancement wouldn't be competitive, just that if you're already going to be doing Shaman you may as well be Elemental. I think it'd be easier to be competitive at higher levels with Elemental than Enhancement is all :)

Enhancement shaman can rip people a new one, I've been on the receiving end before lol. Plus you can all start out with ilvl 226 weaps! (Those mugs from the dire brew event.)

I think DK's may warrant another shot at looking into. Their heyday was when auto interact didn't exist so the true potential was never shown.
They have a group heal ( or you can space it out) that totals 100% every 30 seconds.

Overall though Paladins look like the strongest, as playing them first hand I feel a huge difference in power. Than when I was leveling the DK's.

I'm assuming that you've got an independant healer for your trips into arena :) I'm just leery about the lack of MS with the DKs. It seems like the Paladins just have more small tricks than the other classes do.

4x Enhance does look awesome but... I'm trying to break new ground :)

I'm surprised no one has really seemed to discuss 4x enhancement shaman. Yes they are definitely softer than ret paladins against melee, but not against magic, with grounding totems. You also carry over all the benefit that elemental shaman get with totems, plus a way to get out of root, and the ability to root people from 30 yards with Frost Shock. They are also not completely locked out of damage during a BoP. 8 pets with random stuns, 30% run speed increase and 30% reduced damage could be pretty brutal.

I think it would take a lot more gear vs ret paladins, but I still see it as having potential. I know the geared enhancement shamans I see on my server just tear people in half - nearly any class/spec.

Depending on the length of this season I may be able to get the 1800 weapons for enhancement and see how that goes. The other pieces of gear are easy to fill in

With click castsequences, you can macro in all of your dps moves and cooldowns.

However, you're not able to cast a cooldown on demand, at least not for a lot of classes at once.
Too many things happening.

So, we basically combine all of the buffs, focus fire on a single target etc.
And a strong PvE dps sequence.
But don't have the ability to click this ability in response to that move etc.
If you can dictate play, you can probably anticipate what will happen and have your macro's set for their responses.
If play is incredibly variable, the macro's become weaker.