Warrior/Priest/3 Mages PvE team?

I have a level 60 alliance warrior long abandoned on one of my account that I'm thinking about building a team around. He'd boost them from level 1, then be their tank.

I'm thinking about going the Warrior/Priest/3 Mages approach and it seems that every class combo has been done to death around here, but I can't seem to find any information on this kind of team.

Has anyone done this kind of team and what were their experiences with it?

Can a protection warrior hold tank and be kept alive by a holy priest long enough for three frost mages to heave DPS?

There were a couple of folks that ran that comp for BC Heroics and apparently did very well. And that was back before Arcane DPS went to plaid.

Warrior works well, if you drive with the warrior.
There are a lot of reaction abilities, which are strong if you use them and make for a weak choice if you ignore them.

The priest has strong single and aoe heals.
I'd go with a Disc priest.
The healing is a bit weaker, but the mitigation of damage offsets this quite a bit.
Disc is probably the best healer for keeping a single target up.
And then you'll have Pain Suppression/PW: Shield vs upcoming damage.
Holy Nova takes forever to drain your mana, which will good for keeping the priest/mages up, or heals on the move.
Mass Dispel is virtually instant, and gets you some fear protection, especially in conjunction with Fear Ward.

Mages are very strong DPS, possibly the highest.
I would go 3x Arcane, as they output a lot more damage then other specs, at least as a boxer.
Frost is a large step back in damage, and Fire is proc dependent.
You might go with 1x Frost for the snare effects, but I wouldn't really consider this with a warrior... possibly with a Druid tank, because you can dual-spec to Boomkin and have a full caster team for things which don't require a tank.
With a full blown tank on the team, you don't really need the control/snare of frost, so I'd go with the higher dps.

Not sure that the team will pvp that well, in arena.
But it should rock battlegrounds - you'll have heals and rez capability, a warrior in the front to take the initial brunt of attacks, 3x sheep and a lot of firepower ranged. Plus the offensive mass dispel.

So:

Protection Warrior - tank
Discipline Priest - tank healer
3x Arcane Mages - Ranged DPS

Hrm...

My tendency to go with the Holy Priest is because of their AoE heal ability since I'm still having a hard time with mob control with my teams. As I'm grabbing aggro with my tank, I tend to overlook the guy single trash mob that's been pounding on my caster for the last thirty seconds. AoE heals gives me the ability to splash healing all over when I screw up like that.

One of my favorite macros is "Heal The Guy Above You". Someone's being attacked that's not supposed to be? Quick! Everyone heal someone until I figure out what's going on! :D

Of course I could just get better at crowd control...

I'm currently playing with Warrior(prot)/Druid(resto)/Mage(arcane)/Priest(shadow)/Warlock(destro) in Wotlk heroics.

The priest and warlock could easily be replaced with 2x mages.

It works really good, but you gota watch the channeled spells - they'll cause your toons to "rotate" when the boss moves and screw up your party strafing.

I run paladin, resto druid, 2 X arcane mage and 1X shaman. It's a very good setup, and arcane mages are the easiest to macro of all the classes for boxers, just set up a click macro that does 4 arcane blasts and then arcane missilles. Grats, you're basically optimized.

Agreed with what fur said about the rotating from missiles and such though - it can get annoying when you're strafing a lot (and you will strafe a lot) in some of the lich king encounters.

If I can, let me advocate dropping a single mage for some other class - my bias says shaman. But warlocks are great too. Simply because you'll love the new buffs/synergy/totems/whatever that another class brings to your group. Totems are amazing, and I always end up dropping one of my mages when I invite a friend to join my group for heroics or raids or whatever.

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.

I agree with Ragawaga 100%. Running multiples of the same DPS may make things easier from a macro standpoint, but in my experience, adding a separate toon that brings utility like the lock or shaman will really make your whole team shine.

There is always the drop usage issue. Having 4 classes allows most drops to be used. the Warrior/clothie leave over half the loot on the DE table. Just me, I pick and use everything I can.

I have run priest | 3x mage | tank for the majority of this expansion. I have both a druid tank and paladin tank and have tried tanking as prot & ret pally and as bear & moonkin druid. It is a very strong PvE team any way you slice it.

I've healed with a priest since I solo raided when ZG came out in the 60 days. Always been my main toon and I think there is about 100 advantages priests have over other healing classes. That being said I currently have a 42 shaman I am leveling with the intention of having another healer option. Mainly for one reason, the most overpowered ability in the game - heroism. I ran a friends shaman through a heroic and on fights he used heroism I had no problem doing 10-12k DPS on my mages.

Sadly dropping 1 mage for a moonkin increases total group DPS even though anyone can tell you moonkin DPS sucks right now. That 13% spellpower buff is invaluable for the other two mages plus the druid gives you an extra buff, but is too hard to control. Sooo... I'm picking up a DK when my shaman hits 58 and I'm going to level it with the intent of having a 3rd tank option. The big thing I'm looking at with a DK tank is they can apply the 13% spell damage buff AoE. They are the only class that can do this. That means some serious AoE firepower. Plus combine 3 mages with a tank that can do 13% spellpower buff and I don't need the moonkin which is another few thousand DPS i'll gain.

My ultimate group will hopefully be 80 soon. DK tank | 3 arcane Mages | Resto Shaman. I'll be switching the shaman to elemental as soon as him and the DK are geared. With the 13% aoe spellpower buff and heroism / totems I look forward to one of the highest DPS heroic groups ever. I have no doubt I'll be pushing 40-45k DPS with this team on heroic bosses.

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.

Quote:

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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.

Quote:

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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!

Quote:

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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).

AB x 4, no?

The mage macro I've seen the most is:

/stopmacro [channeling]
/use 13
/use 14
/use Gem (whatever the top mana gem is)
/use Presence of Mind
/use Focus Magic
/use Icy Veins
/castsequence reset=combat Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles



You could try this as a click macro.
Something like:

/stopmacro [channeling]
/use 13
/use 14
/use Gem (whatever the top mana gem is)
/use Presence of Mind
/use Focus Magic
/use Icy Veins
/castsequence reset=combat ,,,,,,,Arcane Missiles
/use Arcane Blast

Then tweak the commas for 4x Arcane Blast, prior to the Arcane Missiles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ualaa

The mage macro I've seen the most is:

/stopmacro [channeling]
/use 13
/use 14
/use Gem (whatever the top mana gem is)
/use Presence of Mind
/use Focus Magic
/use Icy Veins
/castsequence reset=combat Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles

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I have cooldowns on a seperate macro, but I rarely use PoM since Arcane Power will trigger a CD on PoM. Anyway, the castsequence works well, but for heroic bosses theres actually no need for it, since spamming arcane blast will yield much better DPS for the short duration fights that heroic bosses are. Again, it's not really needed since the only remotely difficult heroic fights when you have good gear, are about crowd control and not dps races (AB x 4 + AM will put you around 7-8k dps in good gear - even more if you have spell damage debuff, AB spam will put you on 8-13k depending on RNG). However until you reach that point, AB spam will probably enable you to brute-force some encounters that usually requires some gear (quick demise, watch him die etc.).

Oh btw, about the warrior versus other tanks. Paladin is probably the best choice for boxing, since they macro easily. You have to think/position a bit more with druid/dk/war, but nothing gamebreaking. One thing to mention though, is that your three dps are all ranged spell casters, which means the warrior only brings commanding shout to the team in terms of buffs / synergy.

A druid would bring GotW, but you can item-buff that (drums of the wild or whatever), however an unholy DK will give you spell damage taken debuff and some utility: death grip, which is great for caster pulling, water walking, which is nice for questing etc.

In terms of min/max, DK is probably the best choice - in terms of ease of play, I'd go paladin. I dont see any real good reason to go warrior though, except that you'd be a "classic" trinity group.

The reason why I'd go warrior is because I have one already at 60.

I figured it would be faster to pull up a new team than to start a whole new one from scratch, and I already am running a Pally/4Shaman team, and I thought I'd mix it up.

Update: Warrior/Priest/3 Mages sucks.

I have very little wipe protection and if things go south on my team, if I'm not really careful the priest dies and then I'm bummed.


This experience really makes me appreciate how easy a pally/4 shaman team really is.

I think a Paladin tank would be more suitable for triple mages because of the better AoE tanking.

As for the mages' spec, I'm definitely not an authority on this, but I just couldn't get triple Arcane dps to be as high as simply going frost and triple spamming blizzard. And for single target, the Arcane was only marginally better, and the frost had additional protection which made healing easier.

Maybe I was just doing something wrong, but before I started multiboxing I was single boxing an Arcane mage all throughout burning crusade and the beginning of WoTLK raiding and had pretty excellent DPS. Maybe they're just hard to multibox because they depend a lot on mana management and rotations that aren't always the same.

Hey Akoko, if im reading your post right you have 3 frost mages at 80. Can you tell me what kind of gear you have going on and what dps you put out? Im just wondering what i have to look forward to. I think my mage is going to be frost too but I keep going back and forth between it and arcane.

Thanks.

I haven't played my mages for many months. One of them already hit 80 and raided a bit in naxx, the other two are fresh 80's with only blues. I was really just starting to do heroics, so I shouldn't be giving any advice on multiboxing mages, lol. I just remember that the water elementals were making the frost mages out-DPS arcane. Maybe this is just a matter of scaling and arcane becomes more powerful at higher gear levels.