Group makeup question (specific)

First, I am not asking "What should I run"... but rather "If I run this... what should I know" (just to clarrify)

My main is (and always will be) my BE Pally. The nice part is... she is prot spec, so I don't have to level a tank for my 5-man group... but I have a few questions before I get SERIOUSLY started on putting together my group.

A few details first:
I want to put together a 5-man group with the (almost) SOLE purpose of farming Northrend Heroics. I may try to take a few of my team into raid-groups, but that will be on a VERY limited basis. I just want to be able to run heroics without having to wait for friends, or wallow in LFG for hours.

Also, I am NOT big on PvP. I play on a PvP server (US Spinebreaker)... but I don't even gank people that often. I like the fact that I CAN if I want to... and it adds some excitement when questing in contested areas... but other than that... meh.

Now, my questions (with thoughts/concerns):

1.) Would running an all melee group cause significant problems in heroics?
I want to run my Pally (tank) with 3 Unholy DKs (DPS) and a dedicated healer. I know that I won't really need a healer until I get to heroics, but I would rather start practicing with my group in Outland, where everything is easy-sause... and work my way up into Northrend that way.

The main reason that I want to use DKs, is because I have seen videos where the MBer uses hunters, and the added pet makes things go a lot faster/easier. 3 pets destroying everything they see would be great... 3x Army of Darkness would be pretty OP in most dungeon boss fights... and 3x Anitmagic zone (spread out of course) would make fighting casters seem like a stroll through the park.These are ALL theoretical "this would be easy" situations... and that is why I am asking. What do I need to worry about with this group setup? Are there dungeons, or specific bosses that REQUIRE a caster?... I could even have one of the DKs in tanking gear as a "just-in-case" off-tank. I have a friends with an alt-DK tank, and he is still putting out almost 2K dps while tanking in Heroic/Crafted/Naxx 10 defense gear.

2.) With a pure melee group like this (IF this would be a viable group composition), which class would make the best healer?
Let me just say that I HATE healing. I tried to spec holy, and it lasted all of 1 dungeon run. I know that part of it was the fact that it was "new and different"... but I didnt't like it... Regardless of that, I know that in heroics, I am going to need a healer, so I will either have to PUG one (ugh)... or deal with it.

I am prepared to "deal with it"... but I want to make sure that my healer is the right one for this group. I know that Priests have a few (3?) AoE heals, which would be great for healing a group of melee, and that Shaman have chain-heal (again... win), but I don't know about Druids and/or another Pally healer. I am not saying that they are no-good... I know NOTHING about Druid healing (at all... I know they are trees, but other than that... nada). I am (almost) discounting using a Pally healer, because their AoE can be a bit limited iirc.

Yes, a Pally has beacon, but if I am taking group-wide-AoE damage (Loken), I need to be able to get heals on EVERYONE while still tanking / moving the group... and stopping to focus on heals during all of this just seems crazy. Having an AoE heal would just seem a lot more efficient (and easier). Add to that a Pally's lack of HoTs, and it's almost a no-brainer to NOT pick a pally as my main-group-healer (unless I am missing something DRAMATIC).

On the flip-side, an ALL plate group would be kinda OP for damage/survivability. Zero squishies FTW!

TL;DR Version
If I ran 1 protadin, 3 unholy dks and a healer, would that be a decent group-makup?
What class would work best for heals?

aTdHvAaNnKcSe,
JU1CYFRU1T
Thejuicebox (US Spinebreaker)

I have not played a DK for any length of time, I don't personally like the feel of them, but I am one who ran hunters and I did not find any instance where I wished I had casters instead of physical DPS. That said, my guys were still ranged DPS, so we had an easier time of things when it came to mobs that required distance {mobs like Mechano-Lord Capacitus with his polarity shift, the elemental in Gundrak and his pools of ow}. On the other hand, you would tear up mobs like Novos the Summoner in DK and Slad'ran withg his snake adds in Gundrak.

As far as healers, I'm going to say that you will want a mobile AOE healer, and that will flat out kill a pally. You will have to scoot your entire group out of puddles of death, clouds of pain and so on enough that you don't want a healer you have to focus on too much. So, that leaves priest, druid and shaman.

Druids...they're ok, I didn't mind mine too much when I was playing healer as main. They can put out some serious AOE healing with Tranquility and Wild Growth, and they can spam HoTs all day long. They can quick-heal a little with Regrowth and heal a lot with a Healing Touch, AND they have 3 means of "Oh Sh#t" healing with Nature's Swiftness, Swiftmend and letting Lifebloom actually bloom instead of rolling it when things get scary. And since they are mostly HoT healers, they can tag along behind you with all your moving and you're still getting heals.

The problem I have is it's easy to overspam them when things get chaotic and it's easier to forget to spam them when unexpected things happen. If HoTs aren't rolling, it takes a while to get them up and stabilized again. I really much prefer a healer that I don't have to babysit so much.

I'm currently using a shaman and I'm really liking her for my group. Earthshield, chainheal, totems, much easier for me to control while I'm trying to tank, keep an eye on a single melee DPS and 2 casters. She heals when I want her to heal, she can heal more than one toon at a time and Earthshield keeps things stable. Plus, she can drop melee-type totems for your group. I'd take Windfury+Strength of Earth for a melee group over anything else any day. Yeah, it would be nice to stack pallies...BoM+ret aura on top of Kings/sanc and Devo is yummy, don't get me wrong, but ease of healing counts just as much as buffs, IMO.

I haven't personally used a priest, my husband is running one, though. He seems to love his AOE healing, and a priest just has an obscene number of toys to play with. But I'll have to let someone else point out the pros and cons of a priest in a multiboxed group since I've not even played one solo.

Just two notes I felt worth throwing in here. The DKs got hit with the nerf stick in 3.2 so you might want to see if they are still a good DPS type class. I can see them wearing alot of armor and having pets being good benifits still especially when they are not Supposed to be tanking.

Secondly I would put in a vote for the shaman healer. It would be a nice addition especially with the insta-drop of totems now. Might even want to weigh out the balance of two sets of totems vs a third DK DPS.

Just to close this up I am again all in theory over this, I have not gotten that far but from reading what you wrote and it being pretty much my end goal as well (No real interest in raiding but I might try out any 5mans, if they exist) it is what I have been putting thought into for the last month or so.

I currently have 4 DK team, the main DK being the tank and other 3 dps. Then i just have my healer buddy heal heroics for me. Anyway, from my experience of an all melee group, heroics are a lot harder(usually due to melee range aoe's that some bosses do). Another thing to note with DKs. due to them having some pretty crazy rotations that you wouldn't think would be much of problem with macro's actually are. For instance my DK are pretty well gear and only able to pull at max 2100 dps, compaired to my shamans who can all pull over 3000 dps. Macro'ing dk rotations basically just oversimplifies it and they lose a bunch of dps.

Thanks for the tips, and suggestions.

The best part is, I am currently leveling a Shaman to 60 so that I could get a DK on that account. Looks like I will just get the DK, level him to 60, and then pay to transfer him over.

@ Zal,
What would your ideal group makeup be? Would you prefer Locks (with pets), or should I just try to get togther a TRUE mixed group?

Group-Makeup so far:

• Tankadin (main... currently raid-def capped)
• Resto-Shammy (currently 45, and heading into Strath)
• Lock-replacable (probably Affliction... EXACT same level as the Shammy... [I have a sickness, and if one toon dies, I let the other die so that they have the same xp... I don't know why])
• Open slot
• Open slot

Would your suggestion be to fill in one slot with a DK, and the other with another lock... or maybe a Mage for ports? I don't want to gimp myself with a broken team, and if you are running a DK team already, and finding things "more difficult"... why bother.

If you don't mind me asking... what are your DKs specced? I am 99.99% sure that I will go Unholy with any DKs on my team.

NOTE: omg, this has turned into a "what do I do thread" instead of an "I know what I am doing"..... ugh. ROFL.

First, I would use the PTR whenever its available to make some of these decisions if you can.

Is there an affinity with multiple affliction warlocks? I am not sensing one in mine, I definately revisited them in Wrath to 80 and they just were horrid. And the change to stacking improved life drain was the nail in the coffin for me. Maybe 4.0.

You don't really need ports do you? With the low hearths cooldown and Dal providing all the portals.

Oops...

If I ran multiple locks, they would probably go Demo for the pets... I don't know why, but running a 5-man with 8+ players under my control just seems like it would be fun. I may be wrong, and it may make things harder... and that is the purpose of this thread. I want to figure these things out NOW before I get too far into a team that I am going to hate later.

As for ports... when I run with my (rl) friends... we have a mage in the group. It's just nice to be able to get to any major city without dealing with the go-betweens. It saves time to go straight from final heroic boss to UC (AH), to Dal. Not needed... but it's convenient, and having a pure DPS class would be ideal (I guess) for my group make-up.

To clarrify:
I am not "married" to any of these toons, with the exception of my Pally. I am dual-speced for Prot/Ret (prot is main)... I have a level 45 shaman, and a 45 lock using RAF. Once I get them to 60, I am going to start two new classes. These two will either be transfered to new accounts, or reserved for a second team (haven't decided).

Basically, I don't want to gimp myself for 5-man heroics from the start. I am glad I asked, because I found out (from Zal) that managing the DK rotation is NOT ideal for DPS via a one/two-button-macro. Now I am back to square one... what should my team-makeup be? If I am not running a pure melee group, is a Shaman still my best choice for healing?..... grrrr..... ROFL

Here is a noob question:
If I was going to run 4x ____ for the rest of my team (with pally tanking)... what would you fill in the blank with? I know that shaman are VERY popular in the MB community... and so are hunters (from what I have seen of videos.

If/when you fill in the blank, please say WHY you would run with 4x ____.

I'm sure I'm going to take a lot of flack for this from all the people married to shaman on this board...but......

MAKE A DRUID HEALER

You just want to run heroics right? I'm telling you that druids are absolutely great 'set it and forget it smash one button' healers. I do basically every heroic in northrend not paying attention and simpy pressing one button. Having to pay attention to healing is just one more thing that you don't want to have to deal with. Making a macro that keeps hots up on your tank and tieing that to your dps/tank macro button keybinds is wonderful. One of these days I'm going to make a split screen video of me doing heroics while actually rolling my face around on my keyboard.

My suggestion?

Your pally tank, 3 shaman (totems really are insanely good, and the new totem bar is simply nuts), and a druid

Like someone posted above, give a group a try on the PTR if you can. That's really a great suggestion.

Ive been talking this over in the IRC channel with some people.. There are two different views, one is to cover all of your bases. Make a diverse enough team that can give you pretty much everything just be prepared to deal with the complexity that this can add in. Second option is to have a team made up of mostly shamans with one or two other supporting characters. If you take a DK as the tank and go Unholy you can get the Ebon plague which has the 13% increase to magic damage for your ele shamans. If you take a pally tank you might want to then consider swapping out one of the shamans for a warlock for its CoE along with its dot based DPS and such. A secondary tank option was that of a well geared Druid. Apparently an under geared druid can be a bit too hard to heal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JU1CYFRU1T

Thanks for the tips, and suggestions.

The best part is, I am currently leveling a Shaman to 60 so that I could get a DK on that account. Looks like I will just get the DK, level him to 60, and then pay to transfer him over.

@ Zal,
What would your ideal group makeup be? Would you prefer Locks (with pets), or should I just try to get togther a TRUE mixed group?


Group-Makeup so far:

• Tankadin (main... currently raid-def capped)
• Resto-Shammy (currently 45, and heading into Strath)
• Lock-replacable (probably Affliction... EXACT same level as the Shammy... [I have a sickness, and if one toon dies, I let the other die so that they have the same xp... I don't know why])
• Open slot
• Open slot

Would your suggestion be to fill in one slot with a DK, and the other with another lock... or maybe a Mage for ports? I don't want to gimp myself with a broken team, and if you are running a DK team already, and finding things "more difficult"... why bother.

If you don't mind me asking... what are your DKs specced? I am 99.99% sure that I will go Unholy with any DKs on my team.

NOTE: omg, this has turned into a "what do I do thread" instead of an "I know what I am doing"..... ugh. ROFL.

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when running heroics i'm normally on my shaman team then just pug my tank buddy. I find it works well, but for a mix group i'd suggest: Tankadin, boomkin (haste + spell crit aura), resto shaman (totem buffs), shadow priest (fortitude), and either mage or warlock.

My DKs spec are Frost on the main guy for tanking and the rest are Unholy.

Out of curiosity, what is your druids macro for heals?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jimbobobb

I'm sure I'm going to take a lot of flack for this from all the people married to shaman on this board...but......

MAKE A DRUID HEALER

You just want to run heroics right? I'm telling you that druids are absolutely great 'set it and forget it smash one button' healers. I do basically every heroic in northrend not paying attention and simpy pressing one button. Having to pay attention to healing is just one more thing that you don't want to have to deal with. Making a macro that keeps hots up on your tank and tieing that to your dps/tank macro button keybinds is wonderful. One of these days I'm going to make a split screen video of me doing heroics while actually rolling my face around on my keyboard.

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I don't want to bump my own thread... and I tried searching through the macro forum for a good one/two button healing-marco, and I didn't find anything.

What are you using for your druid healing? Ideally, it would be something that I can put on my main spam-button, but having to hit two buttons would not be a deal-breaker.

I personally have been using a priest the whole time with one of my 3 shaman going resto if my friend wants to join me and I drop the healer, since the shaman is already resto spec its easy to just have her heal.

So more on my priest, I enjoy the added buffs she brings to the table, having Fort and Spirit is always great, normally to avoid the AOE I just spam Holy Nova, and I have her set up to just wand and throw some other spells from time to time so with wanding and me judging wisdom she never really runs out of mana.

I have a group with 2 druids, 2 shamans and a hunter (I always like a pet for auto off tank). I tried to work with one shaman for heals and found it hard. Switched roles (now 2 ele shamans, druid tank and druid heals) and all became much easier. Not sure why, but I think its the hots. I still have the shamans defined in my heal group so I can add extra heals if required. If my tank gets in trouble I entangle, put the pet on the mob, tank drops some hots on himself, and away we go.