Good melee group combinations

I should have used this thread title for my other thread (Pally, 3xwarrior, shaman). Basically I would like to entertain a variety of melee groups. We already know that 5xpaladins and DK+4xrets work well. My 5xpally group is nearing 80 and I had a blast playing them. They just smash stuff up! But for my next group it must be mixed with at least 3 different classes, but be very effective. What I am looking for is a group combination and the pros and cons of it. This is targeted mainly for PVE levelling. But if you want to add PVP or instancing thats ok too.

Groups I am entertaining are -

Ret + Ret + Arm + Fury + Enhancement
Ret + Arms + Arms + Fury + Enhancement
Basically a combo of paladin, warrior and shaman
Pros - Good AoE, good buffs
Cons - Probably hard to macro into a one button spam.

Feral + Fury + Rogue (which one?) + Enhancement + Unholy

Although I am aware of that "any combo works" for levelling, thats not what I am looking for here. At least this is an exercise in finding good group synergy with 3 different classes setup for melee. ATM I don't think there is a group of 3 classes thats better than the 5xpally and DK+4xrets. What would be a very close approximation with 3 different classes?

I found this at mmo champion http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/#

It allows you to make group comps and see what abilities each spec provides to the group.

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Originally Posted by Drommon

I found this at mmo champion http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/#

It allows you to make group comps and see what abilities each spec provides to the group.

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i love you?;)
haha j/k. nice find tho.
there is similar threads to this one tho if you search some. ive been contemplating long time if i want to add a shaman to group for buffs.. or add a druid for heals.. or maybe dk/warrior for buffs.. but meh dunno yet. (any other tank/4ret teams find a need for healer in PVE?) only things im stuck on currently are the obvious superb gear fights.. (ICC heroics/ Toc heroic/Halls of light)

If you're targeting PvE as a primary concern, I think you should consider the following 3-class arrangement:

Feral Druid (Bear) Tank + Enhancement + 3xRetribution

You'll get a great selection of buffs plus great passive healing plus Bloodlust/buffage. Bear brings stuff that's not-redundant compared to Prot Pally or DK, like iLotP and MotW. An enhance shaman replaces most all of the buffage you could get from the DK and adds other wonderful buffs. If you wanted to tank with a prot pally, I'd also recommend Prot Pally + 2x Ret + Enhance + Kitty for the buffs, although I think it's easier to manage DPS with 2 classes instead of 3.

Depending on the degree of PvP you want to mix in, there are many other options. May also want to wait until we know more about Cataclysm mechanics before you lock your setup into stone. 4xHealing Hands might be OP and then I'd default back to a DK+4xRet setup.

I have been trying like mad to get my arms and fury warriors to get decent dps. In similar gear to my prot war they fall far behind in dps, and the buffs they bring do not seem to offset the difference. My team of 1 priest 4 warriors actually does the highest dps as 4 prot wars. This is in the early 70's. While sending them off on a charge is fun, I'm thinking my next melee team will have no warriors.

Druid tank 3 dk frost blood spec and a ret makes for a fun team

I barely play, maybe only a few hours a week, but I subbed in a enhance shaman about 4 weeks ago and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. His overall dps is better than the rets I think and contributes a lot to the group.

So the comp is Blood DK tank, 3 ret, 1 enh shaman. I'm slowly levelnig up a warrior to replace another ret, if I feel like it.

This is strictly pve though, I haven't even tried or put thought into how it'd work in PVP.

my team is feral tank fury warrior enhancement 2 ret pallies.

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Originally Posted by Boylston

If you're targeting PvE as a primary concern, I think you should consider the following 3-class arrangement:

Feral Druid (Bear) Tank + Enhancement + 3xRetribution

You'll get a great selection of buffs plus great passive healing plus Bloodlust/buffage. Bear brings stuff that's not-redundant compared to Prot Pally or DK, like iLotP and MotW. An enhance shaman replaces most all of the buffage you could get from the DK and adds other wonderful buffs. If you wanted to tank with a prot pally, I'd also recommend Prot Pally + 2x Ret + Enhance + Kitty for the buffs, although I think it's easier to manage DPS with 2 classes instead of 3.

Depending on the degree of PvP you want to mix in, there are many other options. May also want to wait until we know more about Cataclysm mechanics before you lock your setup into stone. 4xHealing Hands might be OP and then I'd default back to a DK+4xRet setup.

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I'd have to agree with Boylston. With current mechanics pre cataclysm, this PVE composition with the feral tank seems like it covers all of your bases well without too much micromanagement:

http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/?c=...00000000000000

Add Runescroll of Fortitude (Very cheap to make with inscription) for the missing stam buff. Now you have all the major melee buffs, wipe recovery, and fear recovery.

However, with all of this said...I'd personally wait until Cataclysm before making any decisions :)

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Originally Posted by Redbeard

my team is feral tank fury warrior enhancement 2 ret pallies.

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Hey Redbeard! How is your team doing for you in heroics? I like the comp!

Another 3 class comp I thought of is furyx4 + feral druid. This could be prot warrior + 3xfury + resto druid for instances. This team seems like it could cut through PVE with great ease like the 5xpally group.

Drommon, my gear is still half shitey so its pretty rough to be honest. At this point i'd like to respecc the shaman to resto, but if I do I lose out on 10% AP from unleashed rage.

So what I have now is kind of a hybrid enhance / resto spec where I go far enough into enhancement to get unleashed rage and far enough into resto to get earth shield + improved earth shield... still working out the bugs.

Armory Sturmhoof on Kil'Jaeden if you want to check it out lol. We'll see if it works out.

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Another 3 class comp I thought of is furyx4 + feral druid. This could be prot warrior + 3xfury + resto druid for instances. This team seems like it could cut through PVE with great ease like the 5xpally group.

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Fury warriors are hard to run for maximum DPS. There, I said it.

There is almost no reason to put in a warrior for a PvE team. The allure of the warrior is the mortal strike debuff and invulnerability removal for arena/BG.

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Originally Posted by Boylston

Fury warriors are hard to run for maximum DPS. There, I said it.

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But they're fun and they look awesome =)

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Originally Posted by Redbeard

Drommon, my gear is still half shitey so its pretty rough to be honest. At this point i'd like to respecc the shaman to resto, but if I do I lose out on 10% AP from unleashed rage.

So what I have now is kind of a hybrid enhance / resto spec where I go far enough into enhancement to get unleashed rage and far enough into resto to get earth shield + improved earth shield... still working out the bugs.

Armory Sturmhoof on Kil'Jaeden if you want to check it out lol. We'll see if it works out.

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I checked out your shaman, I think it is good to go hybrid to keep the melee flavor you have. On an unrelated note, I recently made all the pallys in my 5xpally team Shockadins. With replenishment I don't run out of mana and they usually 1 shot mobs or 2-3 shot elites. Currently they are level 75. I am finding out the hybrid build can work well when thought out. It seems to be the case for specialized teams.

I like warriors myself and I think I am going to put some time into figuring out how I can make them work well in a melee boxing group thats capable in doing heroics.

I have been thinking about this for a while, too. What melee combo will give the most melee buffs.

DK Blood/Frost Hybrid. Abominable Might for AP. Improved Icy Talon for attack speed.
Pally- Blessing of Might, Kings, Santuary
Shaman - Strength Totem and Windfury(?), Not sure if WF and Ab Might will stack
Druid - Leader of the Pack, more crit chances.
War/Rogue - decrease armor

I run:

UA/Prot Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Blood DK + Resto Druid for PvE
Arms Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Unholy/Frost DK for PVP + Resto Druid / Holy Paladin for BGs (Disc Priest partner for Arenas)

I did not design my team around optimal PvE performance, but it work's quite well. These classes/specs have zero proc management and fairly simple priority sequences, so I find it easy to get fairly close to optimal performance with each class using spam macros.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone is running a pally and 4 enhancement shaman with any degree of success? Mostly want to know whether the 4 shammies could heal effectively in heroics (I suspect probably not unless geared but you never know).

EDIT: Had a brief search through and couldn't spot too much in the way of details...would seem most are using their shammies as elemental (or 3 ele 1 resto) when in heroics.

If you wanted to babysit maelstrom weapon procs you could probably do a fair amount of healing as enhancement... if i recall they get +30% AP -> SP conversion so they do get a bit of +healing.

Edit: Obviously you'd be hurting your dps to do so.

In my runs with the pally team, the single biggest problem with melee groups is being in range for AoE boss effects. That being the case, passive/semi-active healing become a big part of living long enough to kill whatever you're killing. As things stand today, ret pallies are the kings of self-healing with judgement of light and lay on hands. For those really rough fights, seal of light is stupid amounts of passive healing with each hit. I think probably the only thing that would heal better would be 4 rets and a bear druid for Improved LotP heals.

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Originally Posted by Zugdud

I run:

UA/Prot Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Blood DK + Resto Druid for PvE
Arms Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Unholy/Frost DK for PVP + Resto Druid / Holy Paladin for BGs (Disc Priest partner for Arenas)

I did not design my team around optimal PvE performance, but it work's quite well. These classes/specs have zero proc management and fairly simple priority sequences, so I find it easy to get fairly close to optimal performance with each class using spam macros.

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Pretty impressive IMO. Your arena rating and such. I'm still tempted to do this but it seems that dk/rets get so many buffs that it will be worth it to stick with them.

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Originally Posted by Zugdud

I run:

UA/Prot Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Blood DK + Resto Druid for PvE
Arms Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Unholy/Frost DK for PVP + Resto Druid / Holy Paladin for BGs (Disc Priest partner for Arenas)

I did not design my team around optimal PvE performance, but it work's quite well. These classes/specs have zero proc management and fairly simple priority sequences, so I find it easy to get fairly close to optimal performance with each class using spam macros.

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I approve your arena team name ^^

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Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz

In my runs with the pally team, the single biggest problem with melee groups is being in range for AoE boss effects. That being the case, passive/semi-active healing become a big part of living long enough to kill whatever you're killing. As things stand today, ret pallies are the kings of self-healing with judgement of light and lay on hands. For those really rough fights, seal of light is stupid amounts of passive healing with each hit. I think probably the only thing that would heal better would be 4 rets and a bear druid for Improved LotP heals.

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I'm actually working on a Druid team to try this very combo out. Back when SOL stacked x5 it was just insane passive healing. I'm thinking adding a bear to my 4rets could be almost as good as that use to be.

zugdud

i have some PVP questions :-)

- so how does this work .. burst on, focus until enemy does his immu, then mass-dispell and finish him?

- does the enemy team go for your enhancer only, does he die often?

- how well does it work for bgs?

thanks ;-)

.

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Originally Posted by drevil

- so how does this work .. burst on, focus until enemy does his immu, then mass-dispell and finish him?
.

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In order to beat decent (or better) teams in the Arena I found that I needed to leverage pretty much every ability in the teams toolbox. No 2 arena matches necessarly play out the same way, but as an example I tend to follow this pattern for most maps/teams: Hungering Cold->Fear Bomb->Wind Shears on Healer A-> Chain Silences on Healer B-> purge+Ms+DPS on kill target. To help orchestrate this, I set 2 different focus targets (1 for my shaman for wind shear and hex, and the other for my paladin + DK for repentance,strangulate,leap+gnaw). I have a hard enough time landing wind shear interrupt, and on top of everything else I found controlling a healer here beyond my ability. That's not to say it's not possible, just that I couldn't handle it (so Cadderla picks up my slack).

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Originally Posted by drevil

- does the enemy team go for your enhancer only, does he die often?
.

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My warrior is almost always the first kill target by other teams, he spends a bulk of his time in sword and board mode ;) My shaman does get his fair share of attention but it pales in comparison to the agro generated by my Warrior. The shaman spends most of his time purging and dropping totems so I gear him for raw survivability (resilience) over boosting offensive attributes as he spends most of his "effort" on non damage dealing abilities so the sacrifice is lower then for other members of the team. Additionally, I include "equip shield" in his defensive cooldown macros which also boosts his physical survivability without impacting his ability to spam purge and totems ;). I use a dedicated hotkey for each team mate to "go defensive" and a single key to make all team mates "go offensive". I found that with the way most arena matches played out, someone will get focused and once he has "D'd up" the team will select a new kill target. So, I just found it more efficent to use a single "go offensive key" which I find easy enough to weave in between multiple toons going defensive. (Warrior going defensive+sword and board to battle+2 hander, DK going frost to unholy, shaman going 1+shield to dual wield, etc)

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Originally Posted by drevil

- how well does it work for bgs?
.

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Well that depends on you define work ;), I haven't run very many 40v40 BGs as I don't find them as entertaining instead preferring EOTS/AB/WSG/SOTA as my random daily. It's rare that i'll actually be overwhelmed and wipe, and killing people is never an issue, but controlling 33-50% of the team in one location of the map can create difficulty with completing objectives though I suppose all 5 boxers share this problem (I can cleave through packs of players fairly quickly though, so it's efficient ;)). I do it find it very easy to box my own healer in BGs however, as the insane level of micromanagement required for success in Arena is definitly not required to steamroll unorganized Zergs of BGers. I rarly need to do much else outside of spamming damage with my melee, so I can devoate most of my attention to playing my healer more efficiently.

FWIW my input hardware is as follows:
G13 + Naga Razr + Logitech flight pedals. I find the G13 absolutly essential to play my team as it allows me to controll movement with the thumb stick leaving my 4 fingers free to hit between 1-4 keys at any given time. This makes it very comfortable to simultaneously heal while dealing damage, as playing a resto druid requires constant preemptive hotting of your team in PvP :)

zugdud, thanks for the quick answer :-)