Warrior/Priest/3 Mages PvE team?

DK is the only tanking toon which can do the 13% spell power buff.
But any spec Warlock can use Curse of the Elements, for the same 13%.
And a Balance Druid gets the same via Earth and Moon, by casting Wrath or Starfire at the mob; Boomkins need to manage their eclipse procs for decent DPS, the others don't need to manage anything.

Having one of the three options on a caster team is huge.

Also having Bloodlust/Heroism, and totems are a rather large boost too.
Totem of Wrath is the same buff as Dark Pact, which Demo/Felguard warlocks get; I believe around 2800 spell power, the warlock buff is better.
Wrath of Air, is casting haste which is decent.
If your shammy is the healer, there's another Fire totem not quite as nice as the ToW but gets you spell power too.
Moonkin Aura or Elemental Oath (Elemental Shaman) is increased crit chances too.

A lot of decent buffs for a caster team.
Assuming you go with 3x Mages as the core.
That's two other classes to give them whatever boosts they can get.
Or possibly exchange one of the mages for a boomkin/elemental, as another option.

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

DK is the only tanking toon which can do the 13% spell power buff.
But any spec Warlock can use Curse of the Elements, for the same 13%.

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Except that the DK can keep it up on an unlimited number of targets.

It all depends on what you want.

A Paladin tank is far and away a better boxing option then a DK, as far as tanking goes.
Single and multi-target pulls.
Passive threat on everyone, just for blocking.
Much better survivability.
Much easier to play at close to maximum efficiency, while boxed.
The DK would be tied with a warrior (for 3rd and 4th place, on my tanking list behind Pally 1st and Druid 2nd); but they do get you the nice damage buff from the tank...

But you have to balance that against....
A druid only applies Earth & Moon, to targets hit by Wrath or Starfire (not AoE).
A warlock only applies Curse of the Elements to single targets which are hit by the spell.
So both caster options can have it on multiple targets (for the duration anyway), but need to cast on one at a time.

I have a druid on a 5x caster team... druids click macro includes 1x Wrath as an opener, then IS/MF for bosses or straight to SF/SF/SF or Wr/Wr/Wr/Wr stings, which alternate between one and then other.
The warlock does either Curse of the Elements on bosses as the first click, or just spams Seed of Corruption.
It works well for both teams.
The 13% only applies really against bosses, as trash dies so fast it doesn't matter.
Of course trash might be tougher in other content, but for my teams and what I do, it only matters on bosses.

For this comp Id actually with the mages have one in each spec.

Frost for replenishment
Fire for Scorch (5% crit)
Arcane for Arcane Empowerment (3% damage)

Could be really cool to have one in each spec, youd just have to work on macros a bit more, but the synergy would be really fun.

I ran with a team of Pally, 2Mage, Lock, Priest.

I have a warrior I'm leveling (currently 66) to see how they fit into the mix. I also leveled a second team (Pally, 3xLock, Shaman).

Here's one thing to note: Priests are squishy. Learning to box new content can be a challenge. With the team you have planned, you're going to be making a lot of runs back to the instance on your priest, simply because there won't be anyone else around you to rez. No SS, no Reincarnation.

If you are going with Warrior, and you want to do 3 DPS, I would recommend having a warlock in the mix.

However, I would actually recommend 3 warlocks. They really work well together. My original plan had been to raise the 3 warlocks so I could do 4xLock 1xPriest in PvP (hence why I leveled a new team, just to mix and match) and I had planned to try 2xLock 1xMage... but I found that my mage was really just slowing me down. With less gear, and much less boxing effort, the locks crank out better DPS in the average boxed fight simply because DoT's tick while you move.

In a different thread I spelled out how well my Locks were doing with 3xSoC - a spell mages just don't get. This spell is great because it is a ranged AoE that you don't need to target - making it very boxer friendly. It was cranking out 3k DPS back when I first hit 70, and it has only gotten better. Add to that 3xSS - which means you can have some recovery for when you are learning how to move your priest out of the fire.

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Originally Posted by ragawaga

I don't have much experience with different groups, but based on what different classes can bring to the table...I'd suggest dropping one of the mages for:
- a warlock who'd bring healthstones (free pot), soulstones (wipe recovery), curse of elements (boost mage DPS), demon (either extra DPS or an OT in some situations)
- or a shaman strength/agility totem or armour totem for the tank, wrath totem to boost caster DPS, mana spring for the casters, haste for the casters.....fire elemental and earth elemental.......ANKH for wipe recovery....and the potential to assist in heals if things get hairy.

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I definitely agree. A lock or shammy will add nice utility.

On a side note, Frost is very easy to play (for good and for bad). In my experiences (and your may vary of course), you use one offensive spell - frostbolt. That's pretty much it. Maybe when you get frostfire bolt you will throw that in, maybe.

If you decide to go arcane, you may want to level the mages as either frost or fire until 64 when you get Arcane Blast. I went with fire and it worked nicely. Frost I'd imagine will work just as well.

I see a lot of people saying that mages are hard to play or low DPS or this or that. I don't know how. I run 3x mage or 2x mage moonkin in PvE and my mages are extremely easy to play and do over 10K DPS in Triumph badge gear in heroics.

Mages are great - I'm not knocking mages. However, in order to do any real DPS mages need to plant and shoot. A huge chunk of the warlock's DPS comes from things you only have to worry about every 18 seconds or so - and Pets are kinda fire-and-forget.

When I play my mage solo, even with horrible gear I can get pretty respectable DPS. However, my locks were doing more DPS at 70 then my mages are at 80.

Fun note - downed my first Heroic Boss on my new team last night!

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Originally Posted by Ghallo

Mages are great - I'm not knocking mages. However, in order to do any real DPS mages need to plant and shoot. A huge chunk of the warlock's DPS comes from things you only have to worry about every 18 seconds or so - and Pets are kinda fire-and-forget.

When I play my mage solo, even with horrible gear I can get pretty respectable DPS. However, my locks were doing more DPS at 70 then my mages are at 80.

Fun note - downed my first Heroic Boss on my new team last night!

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I guess I just haven't seen any need for movement in WotLK encounters with the exception of the new ICC heroics but even then they weren't much issue. In fact I can't think of too much in this game that requires movement. It sounds to me like your mage DPS problem might be from just wanting to be mobile for the sake of being mobile or just lack of something.

Anyways as for the topic team I would still recommend a tank other than warrior but theres no reason why you wouldn't be able to clear anything just fine with it.

Mages are king of heroic instances at the moment - mostly because of arcane blast. When geared properly, you can pull 10-13k dps without the druid/lock/dk spell damage debuff, by simply spamming arcane blast. You'll go out of mana quickly, but that isnt really an issue since few boss fights last more than 20 seconds.

Of course, heroics arent really difficult at all, so you don't need any specific class to do them - any tank + healer + 3 dps will do, but the arcane tree really favors mages for heroic 5-mans atm. Add to that the fact that you can decently macro raid dps (AB x 3 + AM) with good mana efficiency and very nice CC which can be good while gearing up.

My aspect on this, having tried a lot of combos, is that paladin + priest + 3 x mage will work very well, but you might still want to consider swapping in a shaman for utility (tremor, ToW, cleanse, nature resist).