My 2nd mixed group - sham sucks

Another group. This is my second highest group, currently level 70.

Blood dk tank
Ele shaman
Destro lock
Bm hunter
Holy priest

Nice things about this group:
Decent tank for boxing. Takes some big hits sometimes but the holy priest can handle it.
Wipe recovery from shaman
Two classes capable of healing and rezzing
Best healer in the game

Bad things about this comp:
My shaman does poor dps. Maybe i need to switch him to enhancement?:confused:
Earth elemental is nice for oshit moments
Cant use leather drops

This group is fun too but the lvl 71 group is more 'easy mode' than this one.

I'd be happy enough to keep the shaman ellie as it is generally easier to manage all ranged or all melee dps when boxing IMO. Also your range dps will require a bit less healing further down the track when you are running 85 level stuff.

Your other alternative would be to switch the priest to shadow and have the shaman go heals. I love resto shaman for 5 man dungeon healing and blood tank with earth shield and riptide is almost going to stay alive on his own.

Post your macros for the ele sham and we'll see if we can help out with the dps setup, I can't really imagine why it would be falling behind though at this stage.

Cheers

This team is still 70. I will probably get back to it tonight. I may try the 2 healer setup with this group and have the shaman be resto and the priest be disc. I guess i would then spam smite on the priest and lightning bolt on the shaman. The problem then is that the priest did crap for damage as disc. Id be hoping two crappy dpsers added up to maybe 2/3 of a real one. It might be interesting to try though since those two healer groups do well in instances.

I have never tried an enh shaman though and i know holy priests rock so i may do that first.

On a side not, i forgot how long the levels take in wotlk. Seems like forever compared to bc levels. And im always running with rest bonus.

The shammy has a lot of totem buffs.
I see the group has a mix of melee (physical based) and casters (spell based), so this might be less of a bonus.

Putting one toon into a group... even when they're relatively undergeared...
If they bring something to the group that makes the others better.
That can be very worthwhile.

In my case, I went from four (elemental) shaman and a paladin (my PvE Heroic group for BC/WotLK).
And dropped one shammy, replacing her with a warlock.
The warlock did just under half of the DPS of the shaman she replaced.
But gave the group a 13% spell power boost.
Which resulted in a net DPS increase.

The shammy will bring melee/spell haste, spell power, etc.
Heroism/Bloodlust, is pretty big too.
Even the resistances (via glyph, on the Healing Stream totem), will greatly reduce the elemental type damages taken by the team.

In PVE I really like my shamans. I think most teams who cleared heroics did it with Shamans in the group. I used 4x shamans and 1x druid tank. They aren't the best DPS, but if you do the macros right, they really do good dps. The better gear you have, the less mana issues you have. They scale very well at the higher end, with crap gear the suck, but when they start getting geared, they get to a point where mana isn't an issue, and do solid dps. Plus they can heal without changing forms, which really is a life saver.

What kicksome says is true, shammies ,might have mana issues at 85 with lower gear.
Once you get them geared up, mana becomes almost no issue, thunderstorm+shield do enough mana regen.
At first I was running oom during trashpacks, had to take a manabreak after each pull.
Now (ilvl 347-350 on the shammies) I can rush through a dungeon taking even multiple trash when the pull screws up :)
DPS is around 8-14k depending on the pull.

Should've switched the BM hunter for a boomkin, since they give a lot of party buffs that increase the damage for your lock and elemental shaman, you also could've used leather then :)

You can also use Drums and Runescrolls.
Get the equivalent of Fort, Kings/Wild, not sure if there's one for Might or not.

But extra buffs can help, when starting PvE content.
As can food buffs and flasks.

This group is 71 now. I will probably start back in on one of the under-70 groups now though since im already sick of the wotlk starter zones. Bleh.

I have not completrd nexus or that viking instance yet on this team because im waiting until i have the quests. I kept doing instances on my 74 team. Theyre 74 and i just finished the second starter area which i guess means they should be 71 or 72 instead of 74.

Anyway, after respeccing the shaman to enhancement his dps went up fifty percent. I also think the different totems benefit the group more now since this way i have three direct damage classes and one caster dps. The priest just heals. I hate the shaman less now and i have a backup healer for oshit moments

The destro locks dps seems to be lagging behind after getting wotlk starter gear on all five toons. I may switch the lock to demonology to get the felhunter to add more direct damage. The lock is usually number one in my other group when pet damage is taken into account.

The dk is still fun to tank with. I miss having a shield and the damage taken in instances can be spikey. This isnt so much of an issue with this group though since i have a priest healing.

Finally, i am having problems with my hunter. I want the hunter to stop following the instant i start pressing 1 on the main window. I tried sending Down on key up to all hunters. Do i need to send Down several times instead of once? I tried having steady shot as the first ability in my hunter macro. The only thing that has worked is setting up a G11 key to turn on broadcasting, press Down once, and turn off broadcasting. This is irritating. I posted once before about this and followed Ualaa's instructions but the hunter still follows into melee range. I know other people on here use hunters in their groups.

How do you break follow without having to do it manually?

What kind of follow are you using?

The default game follow.
Normal follow from Jamba.
Or strobe follow from Jamba?

For /Follow (warcraft follow) or Jamba Follow (not strobe follow), all you need is any movement key.
From up/down arrow to W/S or strafe left/right, depending on how you have your keys set.

If you're using strafe, then you need the Jamba command to stop that.
Otherwise once you break follow, they'll start following in a very short while.

Im using normal follow from Jamba. I have no movement keys passed to the slaves. Id like to get the hunter to break follow just through the course of initiating combat normally, since i start it outside melee range 99% of the time.

I usually have my slaves break follow, via the arrow keys (target: window all without current).
And have the WASDQE keys for keyboard moving the main, if I'm not using the mouse.

And then personally rely on IWT, either tapped once (PvE) or spammed (PvP) to move melee in.

You could take the reverse approach, and use follow to bring everyone in.
But have a mapped key for ranged only that breaks follow before closing.
Create a mapped key, that sends a movement key to the hunter.
Something like down arrow or S, or whatever you have bound to move backwards.