Good 5 man comps purely for pve / dungeon leveling

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Originally Posted by Torgo

...Unless you want to main a warrior at 60, I would pick another tank since warriors don't really do anything in a farming group. For example, a pally tank would be much more valuable since you have a second rez and they can do aoe damage so will actually contribute to farming. I ran with a warrior since raiding as fury dps is awesome.

On the horde side, a lock doesn't really give you anything. On alliance side, as someone pointed out, SM would suck without summons. Horde has Brill to use as a base.

Overall, horde is much easier to level a 5 man than alliance due to SM and Gor'shak farming.

I am not sure why chinese bot farmers go with a druid for their tank. Anybody know?

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I agree that Paladin Tanks give the best overall utility to teams focused on Dungeon Grindings (though they can have issues in fights that have threat wipes).

Personally, whether Horde or Alliance, I can't imagine not having a Warlock for any dungeon focused team that includes a main character that frequently goes off to do other content (raids, battlegrounds, etc). If the server isn't too hostile for it I guess you could stage level 20+ Warlocks near needed location(s) to mitigate the pain... I agree that especially for Alliance, even if the team does not include a main character, a Warlock really helps as SM and such are a PiTA.

Also curious why Druid Tanks seem to be preferred. My best guess is that maybe they are the easiest Tanks to gear to get decent performance from (kinda like how Mages get the most mileage out of starter gear) though I don't know that for sure.

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Originally Posted by Gh0ztEye

Hunters are fantastic dungeon grinders! The key to getting the most out of them is AOE pets like owls, carrion birds, and gorillas for screech and thunderstomp. 5x hunters can burst then just feign death to reset pulls. 4x hunt + shaman can just grind it out only having to wait for sham mana.

I tried various combos of pets and in the end what usually happened was the sham would get aggro from healing. I switched to 4 carrion birds and did a couple SM runs the issue seemed to be resolved. I also went out and got 4 gorillas and had pretty much the same outcome. I'm going to try a bird with the gorillas next and see how that goes.

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What is the highest levels you have run both 5H and 4H+Healer?

Curious which team (5H or 4H+Healer) do you think is better for farming dungeons? My gut has always been that a Healer brings more to the table than a 5th Hunter but I never ran either team in Vanilla nor Classic so curious to hear from someone who has...

Note that I ask in part because your signature says your hunters are 38 and curious if it is out of date.

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Originally Posted by nodoze

Curious which team (5H or 4H+Healer) do you think is better for farming dungeons? My gut has always been that a Healer brings more to the table than a 5th Hunter but I never ran either team in Vanilla nor Classic so curious to hear from someone who has...

Note that I ask in part because your signature says your hunters are 38 and curious if it is out of date.

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My sig is current, I'm at 38 on a sham + 4X hunters. The hunters are orc, 2 trolls, and a tauren all with engineering for cables. In longer fights previously I would either go oom and sham eventually died or grabs aggro and gets killed. I've only done SM a couple times since upgrading my pets to birds n gorillas and they are 34-35 so a bit underleveled still but it was a huge difference aggro wise.

I should also note that I have another PrLLLL team I just finished leveling to 35 for prof/summon toons and the hunter combo feels smoother. I run an imp and 3 VW to ping pong aggro currently. The healing on the lock team is much better but I just don't need to heal as much on the hunters.

I believe 5x hunters is viable due to this guy https://www.youtube.com/user/BlackDrgnu/featured and a 5x Troll hunter w/ gorillas on my realm I've talked with. I think this guy in the videos could do better yet if he made a spellpower set on his main(pseudo healer/more magic damage) and did a bit of mend pet via click bars or something of the sort in his group which is something I will probably try. I would also probably go orc for that little extra bit of pet damage/aggro.

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Personally, whether Horde or Alliance, I can't imagine not having a Warlock for any dungeon focused team that includes a main character that frequently goes off to do other content (raids, battlegrounds, etc).

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Well, when leveling you always log out at an inn so summons is not needed. It isn't even workable unless you have summon alts since you need 2 other party members anyway. You always set the hearth stone to the town nearest the dungeon. For Horde, Brill is a short run. Then you go ZF and gadget is a short ride. After that you just grind to 60 in BRD and either base in Kargath or Undercity (portals and thorium point).

At 60, it would be nice to have a summon team for Strat as that takes forever to fly to. But usually my whole team just travels together for world buffs anyway.

I am considering a new lock team, just for something different and for some reason there is a dearth of locks on my server i.e. easy raid gearing.

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Originally Posted by Gh0ztEye

sham + 4X hunters.

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How often does the Shaman pull aggro?

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Originally Posted by Diwa

How often does the Shaman pull aggro?

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please note this is only my personal experience;
when I was leveling I used fleshrippers With screech and it was effortless until SM range Where they just got insta gibbed, I happened to pick up 3 broken tooth cats running too and from uldaman and dear lord I spent more time corpse running my healer than anything else... any group of mobs with more than 5 (so normal aoe packs) were horrible... the scorpions pits in ulda, the aoe packs before boss in arena evenT in BRD and such forth were pure hell on earth... mobs in your dead zone. You could end up wiping to 2 normal mobs if you had a panic reaction...

Someone suggested ungoro gorillas with stomp... so I duly noted and went tamed 4 with stomp and set about again and ya. Even worse... sure they had an Aoe but it’s on a 1min cooldown and doesn’t even generate much agro.

I thought, right this is it, I’m gonna bench this team.. and I said I’ll just grind some timbermaw rep for my shaman before folding him into a different team and I noted that while doing that the owls from that area seemed to take longer to die than most regular mobs around them when I agro’d them... so que taming 4 of them, never looked back. My old method was bind every pets attack to different keys so I could Send 1 pet to tank every mob in packs of 4 easy, I don’t even need to do that anymore. 4 owls go in, on one target, they have a damage reduction so they require a lot less healing, and they have screech... the only time my healer pulls agro now is when a passing patrol happens to agro mid chain heal cast, and it’s not even an issue I just send all pets to the patrol, regardless of what they are doing. Haven’t panic wiped once since and if I have a situation where there’s a lot of damage coming in I just auto attack the hunters, chain heal with the shaman until oom, then park the shaman and use meant pet on my hunters until their oom by which time my shaman is nearly always about 75% mana again. Rinse and repeat.

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Originally Posted by Diwa

How often does the Shaman pull aggro?

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Very rarely. When it does it's usually because of something I did such as using chain lightning and didn't change the pets targets or a random pat/runner pulling another group. My Sham is full resto atm with the Healing Grace talents.


I just did two full SM Armory runs and did't have any deaths. I even had a couple reeaally long fights because of runners chain pulling(3-4 packs).

I also redid a few macros and keybinds. I had petattack baked into the damage rotation and while it worked it wasn't ideal for switching pet targets . I've pretty much moved everything around and am using a petattack macro with one toon adding in a hunters mark and I feel like I have much more control now.

Thanks The Crowd and Gh0ztEye for the tips. I'm still debating between 5 Hunters vs 4 Hunters + Shaman. What made you guys decided to go with Healer, isn't mend pet enough?

I went with shaman for the wipe protection and the res .. I had a fifth hunter I dropped him like a hot snot in around WC time, because I nearly spent half my time running a singular hunter back to the instance, even when I got feign death it doesn’t always work, resists are far more common than you’d realize. The pet healing also becomes problematic at certain chokes... princess in Mara for example, you end up full time on mend pet On all five hunters and little to no time dps. You probably gain more dps by dropping one hunter than always having at least two on mend pet duty. Glad I brought the healer though because at 40 I respec’d one hunter from BM to MM for TSA and his pet is super squishy. Plus tremor totem, grace of air, and strength of earth more than make up for the missing hunter... and don’t forget stoneskin if you’re stuck on a hard hitting boss.

Hey - I currently have 4x hunters + 1x priest (horde), currently lvl 47/48. The main reason to bring a healer is for the rez and gives you much more leeway when you make a mistake. Highly viable in instances, and incredible survivability once you add a healer.

I can't speak to shamans, but priests have a few advantages:
Power word: Shield - has saved my behind so many times, especially when someone gets critted
Prayer of healing/holy nova - essentially heals 8 toons (hunters+pets)
Power word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection - some of the best buffs in the game, and you can buff your pets for even more survivability
Dispels/Abolish Disease: incredibly underrated. I play on a pvp server with tons of mages, so being able to dispel their shields just makes taking them down so much easier. I'm talking mainly against lvl 60 mages, who are really your only danger at this point due to aoe damage.

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Originally Posted by Diwa

Thanks The Crowd and Gh0ztEye for the tips. I'm still debating between 5 Hunters vs 4 Hunters + Shaman. What made you guys decided to go with Healer, isn't mend pet enough?

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I had planned S+HHHH before launch and really just wanted a sham for a res to save time running after a single death/wipe.

I've made more macros for pet management and FD/ice trap so I can drop them in combat for oh crap moments which has helped speed things up a little more. Still need to get my engineering up for the better cables but I really haven't needed them as much as I thought I would. I have to say I really like the combo now compared to when I first started it but man, 5 hunters looks pretty sweet! Grass is greener kind of thing I suppose.

Found a vid of Quiding running 5 hunters. He's pretty much set it up how I would minus buttons for Intimidation and pots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBW-kQ2lFfE