Invincible PVE Team (Cata update)

Invincible PVE Team (Cata update)

Original thread: http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=33276

Basic idea:
Pally tank
Resto shaman (main heal, backup dps)
Resto shaman (main heal, backup dps)
Mage
Boomkin

Instances that were cake (almost no wipes at all): BRC, TT, VP, and the first 3 bosses of Stonecore. Did all of these around the appropriate levels and the boss fights were mostly 1 button encounters.

84 was a painful level. The mana scaling and gear scaling didn’t seem to mix well so I was having a lot of issues in the 84-85 instances. At 85, in crap gear (still unable to use dungeon finder tool for normals) I cleared LC, GB, and HO. I also downed the last boss of Stonecore, but that was painful.

So I can run all the normals and I'm gearing for heroics. I AOE tank just like Wrath. I have a lot of CC options but I don’t like micro managing it. Interrupts seem far more important than CC, and even nukes on the tank are okay with 2 healers.

The shaman dps most of the time, stopping to refresh riptide, earth shield and occasionally group heal. Very seldom do I direct heal the tank. Each shaman pulls 8-12% of overall dps, sometimes more. The main issue is pulling groups closer to the casters because healers have limited range.

So far I’ve only killed the first boss in VP on heroic. I’m still working on gear and farming reputation. I’ll update as I work on heroics, but real life is cutting into my play time.

After enormous trial and error . . .

Updated Shaman spec, 10/0/31: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhr0hZZcGbMsdfRho

This build uses all the damage talents and opts for LB as a mana regen strategy plus 2x mana tide totems and innervate. I skip blessing of the eternals for telluric currents. You could drop Call of Flame to have both telluric currents and blessing of the eternals, but the extra fire damage really helps.

The small percentages offered by the enhancement tree can be compensated by glyphing. Having both is obviously good, but I want backup dps and Elemental Precision is crucial for the hit rating. Once you’re that far in elemental, you might as well finish it with Call of Flame. The extra aoe is very helpful for a couple Stone Core and Lost City bosses.

Updated shaman glyphs:
Earthshield
Earth Living Weapon
Lightning Bolt

I earth shield the tank and the mage. This, plus totems, lets the group absorb truckloads of damage without mana issues. The biggest issue is managing direct heals because chain heal does nothing with 600k total group health.

I macro direct heals on the dps and then the healers. So in 2 globals, with 2 healers, I can top off the group. On fights with limited aoe I ignore the damage and let the 2 healing stream totems take care of things. Depending on the characters they heal for 1900-2100 per tick. I might move to a different healing strategy for heroics, but so far this works well.

I also bind the dps macros of the mage and boomkin to the heals of the resto shaman so the dps never lets up even when group healing. This small efficiency really helps on boss fights.

The biggest issue the group has is lack of burst damage. It is designed for the slow-brute-force win. If you need to race dps (Like the adds on the last boss of stone core, or the last boss in Grim Batol) then things get ugly. This is why the resto shaman have the hybrid build and glyphs, every little bit helps.

Updated macros:

The real innovation that makes the group dead simple to play is the shaman dps spam + earth shield + riptide macro. That is doing 90% of the work and healing for the group. It makes most pulls aoe pulls and 1 button encounters.

#show riptide
/target Tank
/click MultiBarRightButton1
/click MultiBarRightButton2
/cast [@Tank] riptide
/use 13
/use 14

MultiBarRightButton1
/castsequence [@hazze] reset=combat/6 earth shield, null

MultiBarRightButton2
#show lightning bolt
/castsequence [@targettarget, exists] reset=6 flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt

Heal tank (Both restos do this for big damage spikes on the tank, might use it 1-2 times on trash depending on the size of the pull)

/target Tank
/castsequence reset=15 Unleash Elements, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave
/cast Nature's Swiftness

The mage and the boomkin are cookie cutter specs and macros. I took most of that from Mercurio’s threads in the Macro forum.

Thanks for the update. I've been playing around with this since I read your other thread, and I really like it. I try to heal with one resto + repeater regions when I can but I fall back on your method when I need to concentrate on movement or just need more healing.

I'm still 84 and I definitely noticed the difference you're talking about at this level. I'm looking forward to trying out your updated macros. I've been using a hybrid of what you posted in the other thread and the 2 step macros from Mecurio's thread.

That's sweet.

When I was 84 I grinded out instances with a frost mage for replenishment and the resto shaman just spammed lightning bolt to help with mana. It keeps the exp flowing, but has issues on some boss fights, just not enough burst.

At 85, with better gear from rep items and starting to farm some heroic drops, I switched to arcane mage and added in lava burst after flameshock on the resto shaman. It really ups their dps but hurts mana. I'm dropping mana tide totems all the time now.

Interesting idea, using 2 healers as hybrid dps/heals. You could also do the same with Disc priests, as they heal the tank while spamming smite. I've seen some disc priests in pugs beat out many other DPS too. You might consider replacing one of the shamans with a priest, you get more buff diversity, and power word shield stacks with earth shield.

I've gone with:

1x Blood DK
1x Arcane Mage
1x Desto Warlock
1x Resto Druid
1x Resto Shaman

The composition doesn't have the simplicity of double Shaman.
But I like having Wild Growth and Rejuvenation stacking across the team.
Plus Mark of the Wild across the team, and Thorns on the tank.

Still tweaking one button spam for the healers.
Shammy can Lightning Bolt indefinitely; Druid can Wrath forever.
Glyphed, innervate is 50% mana on the Druid and 100% on the Shaman.

Possibly run one healer as a main healer, via Repeater Regions.
And the other as a passive heal boost / support DPS.
But I like both healers with a healing and DPS rotation that is mindless.

I've been reading your posts to help me setup my pala + four shaman.

I'm using your macro combination above and it works nicely!

I never noticed the cleanse talent, to have a method to dispel magic is going to be useful I think, I'll have a quick respec.

So thanks for your posts, they've helped me out!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dancook

I've been reading your posts to help me setup my pala + four shaman.

I'm using your macro combination above and it works nicely!

I never noticed the cleanse talent, to have a method to dispel magic is going to be useful I think, I'll have a quick respec.

So thanks for your posts, they've helped me out!

---

I use cleanse on the last boss in Vortex Pinnacle Heroic. it's a magic root before a big aoe. You can dodge it by jumping, but I don't always dodge it.

Glad they helped :-)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ualaa

I've gone with:

1x Blood DK
1x Arcane Mage
1x Desto Warlock
1x Resto Druid
1x Resto Shaman

The composition doesn't have the simplicity of double Shaman.
But I like having Wild Growth and Rejuvenation stacking across the team.
Plus Mark of the Wild across the team, and Thorns on the tank.

Still tweaking one button spam for the healers.
Shammy can Lightning Bolt indefinitely; Druid can Wrath forever.
Glyphed, innervate is 50% mana on the Druid and 100% on the Shaman.

Possibly run one healer as a main healer, via Repeater Regions.
And the other as a passive heal boost / support DPS.
But I like both healers with a healing and DPS rotation that is mindless.

---

Are you spamming rejuve on all your team? How is your mana working out with the druid?
For your main heals on the druid I have found nourish to be lacking now since the expansion? How are you handling the big heals without running out of mana?

Still tweaking the set up.

At the moment I have four DPS keys.
1 = Druid DPS, Shaman DPS
2 = Druid DPS, Shaman Heals
3 = Druid Heals, Shaman DPS
4 = Druid Heals, Shaman Heals

Have not finalized what kind of DPS/Healing I want on the two toons.
The initial idea was Heals = manually controlled healing via Repeater Region.
While DPS = automatically (as automatic as I can macro), casts some healing spells and adds DPS.
Then have them on DPS mostly, but have the option to use either as a 100% healer too.

Also playing around with the idea of toggles, and a single button spam.
So I would always spam '1', but via toggle have the Druid in either DPS or Heal mode and do the same for the Shaman with another toggle.

This makes me wonder if I should tweak my team.

Currently
Pali
Disc priest
2x elem shaman
arcane mage

and change one of the elem shaman to resto.

A bit of a loss in dps, but seems my survivability would go way up.

I'm about to start looking at heroics and to be honest the lvl 85 normals haven't been what I would call easy for me.
Could always swap specs on fights that require (or are made much easier) by a fast burn down.


I like the idea of keys or modes that would be high dps low healing, middle of the road and full on heal baby heal.

I think most people who have done more than a couple cat heroics have had 4 shaman at this point. Nothing beats 4x heals on your tank in a pinch.

I'm curious if anyone has any updates on this group composition with regard to heroics?
i.e. Has this setup worked well in heroics?