Invincible PVE Group (A New Twist on a Classic)

[valle2000]

#show earth shield
/target Tank
/castsequence [@targettarget, exists] flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt
/castsequence [@Tank] reset=combat earth shield, null
/cast [@Tank] riptide

This macro looks interesting.
However I'm no expert so I'm wondering can the same be used with a priest to assist with holy fire,smite and at the same time making sure tank is shielded and renewed?

But what happens exactly when the macro is activated? If tank has a target, won't the result be only the dps-spell is cast and the others lines will be rejected due to "can't do that yet"?

[gunsun]

This sounds fun & appealing, and I may experiment with the two healer setup once my team is 85. Currently my team is:

Pally tank
2x warlock
ele shaman
resto druid

I have other shamans, and thought momentarily about swapping out the druid for 2x shammy in this team, but then I realized I can just as easily have a resto druid & resto shaman for the 2x healer setup. dps is dps, so I like the idea of two different classes worth of healing spells.

I am curious if a resto shaman does more dps than a resto druid...I suspect it would.

The benefit of the 2x resto shaman group is the huge passive heals from earthshield, riptide, and the enhanced healing stream totems. With all three of these stacking the tank almost never needs a direct heal and the group very very seldom needs an aoe heal. (EDIT: earth shield doesn't stack)

The reason I avoided other healing classes is to avoid casting healing spells whenever possible. Also, the CD on earthshield and riptide allows the shaman to dps. So the synergy of the two resto shaman is amazing.

This macro looks interesting.
However I'm no expert so I'm wondering can the same be used with a priest to assist with holy fire,smite and at the same time making sure tank is shielded and renewed?

But what happens exactly when the macro is activated? If tank has a target, won't the result be only the dps-spell is cast and the others lines will be rejected due to "can't do that yet"?

When I was 10 boxing I tried setting up similar macros for my two priests. I ran 3 healers, a pally healer dedicated to the tank and 2 holy priests dedicated to group heals with aoe. The priests seldom did much and I tried to macro some dps for them.

Other than a few dots, the problem with priests is that they have long cast times. So you can't really spam one dps button because your priests end up casting holy fire or smite more often than the heals.

The reason the resto shaman macro works as well as it does is that riptide has a 6 sec CD and it also stacks. Two of them, plus earth shield are all the heals you need on the tank. (I also earth shield the mage.) Shocks also have 5-6 sec cooldowns, so the two castsequences chain together well. You cast riptide when it is up and you spam lightning bolts most of the time.

Take that spell synergy and multiple by two characters. You now have a team that mostly heals itself and has a low-but-acceptable 3rd dps.

[gunsun]

I'd like to note that I haven't started playing this team in cata yet. I'm letting rest exp build up to instance grind a couple levels and I'm scouting out the new content by single boxing my fury warrior who should be 85 later today.

I've found that deepholm has a bunch of dailies, but you have to do every quest in the zone to unlock them. Things like this are helping me identify leveling strategies for the team. I think I'll instance grind about half of 80-85 and then run a group of 2 and then a group of 3 through certain areas for quest gear and to minimize the horrid collection quests.

There are tons of collection quests and phasing, which I absolutely hate, but the money and gear from quests, plus unlocking dailies, is too huge to ignore. I've also found that questing is more interesting than instance grinding.

The real test of the team is cata-heroics. Having pugged the some new instances, I'm not that concerned about boxing them. It will be a lot slower than a pug, but I haven't seen anything that looks impossible yet.

[gunsun]

So I decided to try Blackrock Caverns.

Wiped twice on the first boss trying to be clever and heal through his chains ability instead of dpsing them down. That was pretty dumb. Other than that I face rolled the place in all Wrath gear, average gs of 5.2k on all toons. Lost a toon on a couple boss fights but no other wipes.

Second boss (caster lady i think) I could aoe tank the two adds and heal through damage, shaman were still able to dps as they healed. So it was a one-button fight.

Third boss (flame armor guy) I could passive heal through aoe and didn't need any heals at all. Trained him into flame, dps, repeat, repeat, dead. Also a one-button fight.

Dog boss I lost the druid to a poorly managed fear, but other than that, just a tank and spank.

Fifth boss I pulled too early by walking in close, lost the mage, but recovered and dropped him.

With drops that were upgrades and some experience I don't think I'll lose anyone on the second attempt.

[valle2000]

The reason the resto shaman macro works as well as it does is that riptide has a 6 sec CD and it also stacks. Two of them, plus earth shield are all the heals you need on the tank. (I also earth shield the mage.) Shocks also have 5-6 sec cooldowns, so the two castsequences chain together well. You cast riptide when it is up and you spam lightning bolts most of the time..

So if I understand correct, for it to work you need spells with cool downs?

And using emtpy cast slots like
/castsequence smite,,smite
to make time for a heal spell doesn't work any more right?