MoP Beta - Group Composition viability (ongoing process)

[Multibocks]

I'm going to disagree with your healing score on X Dks + Healer. DKs have conversion and deathstrike - that combination is extremely powerful. Conversion is pretty easy to maintain as well as I have found videos on youtube showing how hard it is to actually lose it (basically have to stop using attacks).

[Mokoi]

I'm going to disagree with your healing score on X Dks + Healer. DKs have conversion and deathstrike - that combination is extremely powerful. Conversion is pretty easy to maintain as well as I have found videos on youtube showing how hard it is to actually lose it (basically have to stop using attacks).

Thats great news! i was a bit skeptical about conversion, and it's still not healing on a target.. which is what we need.. but we still have DC and Lichborne if you take it, so I am going to upgrade it

Changed

[Fat Tire]

I love conversion and the cheat death dks get over lichborne and I will take desacrated ground over any of the lvl 90 talents for dks. However, I will reserve judgement until the live release as blizzard has not got to the tuning phase of the numbers yet. I know this thread is about 5/10 man teams and since i only play three my veiw is a bit skewed, but I think ret/ret/dk is amazing atm to box and will be the same in mop or maybe better. So maybe you could do a team of 4 rets/dk, DS got a large buff in the last beta patch of 120% weapon dmg up from 50% and when I look at the aoe/passive healing lvl 90 talents that rets are getting it gets me excited.

[JackBurton]

Really good information. I like the way its presented logically. I see how some area's only net 5 points because they are not as important. ie CC is rarely used. especially if you can just aoe or tank anything in your way.

[Ualaa]

Druids (x5)

Mine will be Feral/Resto, but they also include the option of Boomkin (Ranged Caster) or Guardian (Tank), meaning the team could go 1x Heals, 1x Tank, 3x DPS for PvE content.
I'll let you decide on the rating value, but try to keep to the same organizational template.





Feral

Survivability:
Druids get to pick and choose which fights they participate in and which they avoid; Stealth and the element of surprise are an incredible advantage.

Druids feature exceptional mobility:
- Their base move (including Feline Swiftness) is +30%, which is faster than almost everyone else; this offsets the Stealth movement penalty too.
- Travel Form increases this to +40%, and is usable in combat... or Aquatic Form bestows +50% swim speed and underwater breathing.
- In MoP, disentanglement is returned... meaning the act of shifting (or Power Shifting into your current form) will break all root/snare effects.
- Dash (15 sec every 3 min) gives +70% movement, and breaks root/snare effects; Stampeding Roar (round-robin) is almost as good (+60% move for 8 seconds and breaks root/snare) for yourself and friendly players within 10 yards.

Barkskin (12 sec, every 60 sec) reduces damage from every source by 20%, and can be activated even when stunned/feared/incapacitated/etc.
Nature's Grasp (1 charge, 45 sec duration per minute) will Root an enemy.

Might of Ursoc (20 sec, usable every 3 min) will activate Bear Form, and add +30% current/maximum health.

Symbiosis: Hunter (Play Dead) will be a strong ability for PvE, while Paladin (Divine Shield, aka "Bubble") will likely be a top PvP option.

Ursol's Vortex & Disorienting Roar (both at 75th) provide additional options; the Vortex will snare enemies and pull them back the first time they attempt to leave it, and Disorienting Roar is like a Rogue's Blind (lasts 3 sec, usable every 30 sec). I'd likely mix the two, across the team.


Damage:
Their damage is only single target (sure you can Swipe, but that hits for very little and uses a lot of energy).
However, they hit very hard... easily (each) dealing more single target damage than my Frost DK's, at equal gear.

Boxed, a simple rotation that is not dependent upon facing is: Mangle, Rake, Mangle, Mangle, Rip.
With Primal Fury awarding an extra Combo Point on a critical, four moves gets close to 95% chance of at least one move being a critical by the time the sequence reaches Rip.
I basically just did this rotation + IWT.
In MoP, Mangle/Shred will extend the duration of Rip by 2 seconds per application (to a maximum of +6 seconds).

Rake & Rip are dots, which means they ignore a targets armor.
Mangle is physical damage, which is reduced by armor; it places a debuff on the target, which increases Bleed damage effects.

Savage Roar will be returning, it will add +30% physical damage for 18 seconds (on 1 combo point), or +6 seconds for each additional combo point.

Their "alpha strike" can be devastating -- Ravage, which hits for 850% damage, and has a +50% crit chance against targets at/above 80% health.
Ferals have a fairly high crit rate to begin with, due to all their Agility, so this is almost a guaranteed critical hit from each; in battlegrounds, it is not unusual to kill whatever you open on.
Ravage is dependent on being in the rear arc, which makes it a little harder to use.
Incarnation will give the ability to use Stealth moves, 30 sec (every 3 min).

Druids have two burst abilities:
Tiger's Fury (6 sec, every 30 sec), increases physical damage by 15% and instantly restores 60 energy (cannot be used during Berserk, so initiate this first).
Berserk (15 sec, every 3 min), abilities only cost 50% energy.

Symbiosis on a Warrior grants Shattering Blow, which will remove an immunity effect such as Divine Shield or Ice Block.


Healing:
Nature's Swiftness (1 min cooldown) combined with Healing Touch (150% normal effect), looks to be an extremely nice tool to round-robin; this is usable with Rebirth (battle rez) as well.
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast [@mouseover,dead] Rebirth; [@mouseover] Healing Touch

Predatory Swiftness takes the druid out of Cat Form, but 97% of the time any given druid (likely all five) have an instant cast and mana free: Healing Touch, Rebirth, or Cyclone.
With or without Predatory Swiftness, Rejuvenation is also an option.

Nature's Vigil (level 90) looks to be great. For 30 seconds (every 3 minutes), damage is increased by 30% and a nearby ally is healed for 50% of the damage dealt; I'll likely round-robin this effect, as sometimes 1-2 clicks will be plenty and at other points all five at once will counter opposing burst.

The team could easily be run with one Druid as Resto specialization, which would provide a mobile healer and a similar style to the Pally/DK's.
A Resto-Shaman is also an option, as Symbiosis would bestow the Prowl ability to their Ghost Wolf.
I personally like 5x DPS, and think the level of healing is quite strong already, especially when combined with their mobility and escape options.


Ease of Use:
For the most part, the team is one button mash; I use a main DPS sequence, which includes IWT.
It won't be hard to build a mapped key for Mangle > Savage Roar, as the opener which then leads into the normal DPS sequence.
I'll likely include the Barkskin and Nature's Grasp in the DPS spam.

For specials, we don't have that much to manage:
- NS (Healing Touch or Rebirth), using Grid the same as the Pally on the DK team.
- Ravage opener.
- Cat Form (for Power Shifting).
- Might of Ursoc, could be a Grid ability.
- Ursol's Vortex, in the place of Death & Decay (likely on the same keybind, for ease).


Synergy:
Multiple druids don't add that much beyond a single druid.
Pretty much, all we get with extra druids is extra uses of round-robin abilities... like instant-cast Battle-Rez...
We have the ability to mix and match the new talents:


Crowd Control:
They don't have any hard crowd control, such as Hex/Polymorph or Hungering Cold/Freezing Trap.

They do have several root effects, including passively rooting someone just for being hit... and the new Mass Entanglement (5 Targets, every 2 minutes).
Typhoon, from stealth and usable in Kitty Form, will be fun to knock opponents off of Lumber Mill (AB), a cliff (EotS) or the bridge (AV)...

Disorienting Roar will act like a Rogue's Blind (3 sec, every 30 sec).
And Ursol's Vortex (also level 75), provides snare and prevents a target from leaving an area, for a short duration... but will be usable both offensively (cannot evade our claws) or defensively (cannot chase that flag carrier).


Longevity:
Ferals are based off of Energy, which constantly regenerates at a fixed rate; their rotation could be spammed for eternity.
Offensive specials are on fairly short cooldowns (Tiger's Fury, every 30 seconds).

In PvP, my Feral team often acted as a 'Guerilla Force' while gearing up; destroy something via Ravage, attack until focused, run away, eat, return and blow mana healing and innervate ally healers, and then begin the cycle again.
There wasn't much the other side could do about it.


Flexibility:
Besides Druids, only a Paladin team can fulfill all three roles of Tank + Healer + Damage.
Druids offer both Melee and Ranged damage, so I would give them 5+ in this category.

Also, Heart of the Wild grants 45 seconds (every 6 minutes) of dramatically increasing the Druid's ability to act as if it were one of the other three specialization choices.


Recoverability:
Druids have a battle-rez, and it is not dependent on having a high level of Runic Power.
They can stealth into an area, and then instantly battle rez (and glyphed this is a 100% heal).

Nothing comes close to a Druid's ability to leave an area quickly... faster base movement, Dash, Disentanglement...
Flight Form is an instant cast, allowing quicker escape from any area where flight is possible, than any other class.

[Mokoi]

Druids

Since Ualaa started this, I thought I would just add what I think (I have 10 druids) about the scores on this team, and details can be referenced from his very excellent and detailed post! Thanks, Ualaa!.

Survivability - 9/10 - Tank form, heals, great cooldowns... druids can last a long time. Not to mention if you run resto..
Damage - 9/10 - Some of the best single-target DMG for melee.
Healing - 8/10 - Simple rejuv stacks can keep a bear alive through a LOT of trouble.
Ease of use -7/10 - Facing requirements and some issues with combo points being wasted if not used correctly means they are not quite as "point and shoot" as DKs.
Synergy - 2/10 - Apart from the fast that the HoTs stack, druids gain no superior gains from increased numbers.
Crowd Control - 3/5 - roots and cyclone are good, and if you get the stuns, they are pretty handy too.
Longevity - 3/5 - Energy for melee druids, and innervate for resto/boomkin. Great!
Flexibility - 5/5 - easily the most versatile class to box.
Recoverability - 5/5 - As ualaa said, this is an easy group to recover a wipe from. Brez and normal resses at your fingertips.

Final Score - 53 / 70

[zenga]

5x shamans are gonna be close to 100% I bet

[Sam DeathWalker]

1 Prot Pal
1 Disc Priest
3 Fire (pvp) or Arcane (pve) Mage


1 Prot Pal
2 Disc Priest
7 Fire (pvp) or Arcane (pve) Mage


I think these are the strongest but no time to go into detial rl is beating me up.


Survivability - 7/10 - Priest has solid healing, prot pal very hard to kill
Damage - 10/10 - Mage rox
Healing - 6/10 - priests
Ease of use -9/10 - just 3 classes to write macros for, range killing, tank leader
Synergy - 3/10 - 3 classes although minimal stacking
Crowd Control - 5/5 - sheep, fear
Longevity - 4/5 - Some mage spells use little or no mana
Flexibility - 5/5 - priest can os to damage, some healing from pal
Recoverability - 2/5 - pal and priest

Tank 2 (any group that has a proper tank should get a bonus)
One Shot 4 (any group that can one shot a pvp oppenent at 40 yards should get a bonus)
Anti Fear 2 (a group that can stop fear should get a bonus)
Cast while moving 2 (a group that can cast while moving should get a bonus)


51 total plus 10 bonus

[Mokoi]

5x shamans are gonna be close to 100% I bet

I'm not very hopeful about that =(



Thanks for your opinion, Sam, but I have to disagree on some of your points. I hope you have the time to address the details, which is the most important part of this thread.

Some tips for those who want to post:

1. no bonus points for tanks, that's what the "flexibility" category is for.
2. One shot - we have no idea what classes will one shot at lvl 90.
3. This is a thread for MoP teams, and the theorycrafting associated with the new talents and specs. Not for lvl 85, which by now everyone is well aware of.

[ebony]

got some stuff to add to mages Guild res is still in game and working as it does today on live ... no changes so far to this (its have a group will thats been removed) saying that that makes mages even more useful as they have portal/telport that are free to use as well

mages have a lot Survivability then they do on live in all specs.


Ill try and make a one for warlocks that looking a very cool class to play in mop (well it is )