Swapping 2x ret for...?

Right now I'm running a 5 paladin team - 1 protection and 4x ret. Because I'm not particularly well geared (4400GS tank, 3300GS on the rets), things are a bit of a challenge, and I'm thinking of swapping out 2 of the rets to bring in a dedicated healer and a different DPS class for buffing.

My thoughts right now are, for healing, a resto druid - they have AOE heals and HOTs are fantabulous, and the wild buff is pretty spiffy. A fairly distant second would be a priest - though they might just be second because I don't know much about them and how they might work. I know they also have an HOT and can do AOE healing as well. And their fortitude buff is not a bad thing.

For the other DPS, I think it's a no-brainer to go with a shaman - either enhancement or elemental, leaning a little towards enhancement since my damaging team is all melee then, and I don't think adding just 1 ranged dps would be worth it for the difficulty in managing them in combat. Also, enhancement is all instant cast stuff - I'd like to avoid the casting times that come with an elemental shaman since it'll make things easier, too. The totems would really help, too.

I currently have a shaman in the 70's, and I can get a druid or priest up to 60 in about 2 hours (thanks, RAF!).

What do others think? Druid or priest? Would adding a single ranged dpser be worth it over the ease of managing all melee?

What are you using them for?

PvE entirely.

Druid for heals, they aren't as squishy as priests and so might match better in a melee team. Not sure for antoher class to drop in, I think maybe stick with a melee class, that would make it easier to control them, only healer would need to have range on the mob.

A Druid would make a good choice, I'd have to agree with crowdx there.

That said, I just hope you're doing this cause you want to, not cause of the difficulties a new all-paladin team faces. Once you get over that first little hump (and it can be dispiriting at times doing that), 5xPaladins can work wonders.

Still, a Druid would be nice because it would make a ranged healer - I'd consider leaving it at that, since any DPS ranged will add to your complexity even further.

The alternative though (just in case), would be to simply gear and spec the fifth paladin in holy. If it weren't so close to Cata, I'd definitely be doing that for my team.

I have 1 Prot Paladin, 2 Ret Paladins, 1 Disc Priest and 1 Fire Mage.

I have the 2 rets follow strobe (using Jamba) the prot and the other two stand at range.

I like the mage for portals and crowd control (you might need this again in cata).

The priest only heals; I have transparent ISBoxer click bars set up over a healbot display on my prot which maps to mouse presses over healbot on my priest. Setup here (click bar part down where Lax posts): http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=30511

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Originally Posted by OzPhoenix

A Druid would make a good choice, I'd have to agree with crowdx there.

That said, I just hope you're doing this cause you want to, not cause of the difficulties a new all-paladin team faces. Once you get over that first little hump (and it can be dispiriting at times doing that), 5xPaladins can work wonders.

Still, a Druid would be nice because it would make a ranged healer - I'd consider leaving it at that, since any DPS ranged will add to your complexity even further.

The alternative though (just in case), would be to simply gear and spec the fifth paladin in holy. If it weren't so close to Cata, I'd definitely be doing that for my team.

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I'm doing it so I have the most options available, really; the paladins are fantastic now. I haven't beaten any fights I previously couldn't, but now instead of dying when things are at 25% I'm dying when they're at 1-2%, which to me means I'm now just in the mode where I need to practice a little more or get slightly better gear (and there is better gear still readily available for the team, so I expect to be posting some "Downed!" threads soon :D)

However, since Cata is in Beta and I figure it'll be coming out Real Soon Now (a few months?) it seems like gearing up with stuff that'll be instantly replaced is kinda low priority, so I just moved forward on my plan to have more characters to swap out as needed so they're ready for Cata.

So I'm splitting my time in game between "progress" with my paladins and now leveling up those alternate slots. I got a druid and a priest to 60 quickly - I'm going to try them both and see what I can do. It's really pretty interesting figuring out how to handle people who aren't wearing plate and fighting up-close and personal, too - a nice change of pace :)

Jafula, as you say, I'm setting up the healbot repeater region - so far it's a little tricky to remember to use it, and I'm not sure I have it configured 100% correctly. What I want to do is have my mousewheel clicks and scrolls up and down cause a mouseover target to be healed (using 1 of 3 heals, depending on a click, up or down) but I haven't sorted that out yet. I have 3 different slots bound to click, scroll-up and scroll-down, and I have macros for mouseover target healing in those slots, but the repeater region doesn't seem to be 100% sending the clicks/scrolls - which could just be my mouse is dying :)

Sounds like a good plan then Kate. It's always a real bonus to have more than 1 team or set of toons to play with.

Kate, my melee team is feral druid tank with 3 rets and an enhancement shammie. Previously I have run a 4 shammie, 1 DK team and also have a mixed caster team with pally tank.

I can definitely recommend the druid tank/enh shammy addition to the pallys. For PvP my 4900ish PvP geared shammy still gets smashed fairly quickly and I really miss not having Death Grip in the group for PvP, so my ultimate goal here is to switch the DK to the melee group with 4 rets still.

For PvE however the group is awesome. I have +130 resist to anything I need. The druid tank has been super easy to gear up well, given that PvP gear is often best in slot for tanking also and seems infinitely more hardy with 4900GS than my 5800GS DK tank. As enhance the shammy will generally outdps my rets on single targets and can keep up with a bit of extra mana use on aoe. For flexibility I can also switch him to resto and have what I think is the best compromise between good group healing and tank healing in a single class. I use a repeater region setup for healing which means I just spam my dps/tank keys and click for chain heals/riptides as required.

The passive healing with this setup is also brilliant. Imp MotW, Healing stream totem, judgement of light, divine storm etc. Finally on top of this I get melee buffs of 5% crit, 20% haste, 10%atk pwr, blessing of kings and might.

When it all comes down to it though, pick the combo that you have the most fun with. If you are not having fun with your pallies anymore then by all means look at different options and see what appeals to you the most.