[Classic] Good farming team?

[nodoze]

... Placing a couple of warlocks at key flight paths on different continents could be useful. ... Having a summon to Chillwind Camp would be nice. I farmed Scholomance a LOT on my warlocks trying to get the robe pattern and SM is my default location to boost alts for a pretty broad level range -- like 21-43 or something. The run with low level characters to get from Stormwind to SM is a pain.

Historically in early WoW my buddies and I mainly did Battle Grounds and they mainly played various builds of Paladins and Warriors in mostly Tanky DPS specs. Since they all only wanted to play Tanky DPS roles I usually ended up playing a full or Hybrid Healer which started off as mainly Paladins and Druids and then later included various Shamans when Alliance got Shamans. To get a better understanding of each class I did at least 1 character of every class to cap though some of those I just did barely enough battle grounds to get a solid feel for them and their strengths/weaknesses and better understanding of how they try to mess with me as the main party (often solo) healer. When not being the main or only healer (or just wanting to cause mayhem) I also enjoyed playing a terrorizing fearing/dotting Warlock for payback or playing an Elemental Shaman who mega-chain lighting'ed groups of enemies (but could still heal/chain-heal ) and being a stealth Hybrid druid enhancing a group of rogues .

Thanks in large part to your posts I am thinking my first main group to cap will be 3 Warriors & 2 Paladins mainly leveling through instances. When I can swap from 2 Healers I likely will make one Paladin Tank, seal, & maybe off-heal for the group with 3 DPS Warriors having only one Paladin as full Healer.

With the above in mind I am thinking that I will get all 5 toons Thrash Blades via the quest and then pretty much live in BRD to get everyone the Hand of Justice and as many IronFoe's for the group as I can.

Priority-wise the first Ironfoe drop will be to a Warrior but the second one may actually be to a Paladin... I say that because I hope to get my brother (& best buddy) to play and enjoy in both open world and battle grounds a Warrior with Ironfoe+ThrashBlade+HandofJustice+CrusaderEnchantX 2 with me as a duo Paladin making him the Energizer Bunny . Unfortunately though he is stubborn and may end up saying he instead only wants to play Protection Paladin regardless of how much I try to convince him that an Energizer Bunny Warrior is better... Though a Warrior+Paladin duo is likely the best overall one of the funniest things we ever did was be a duo of max geared and max Engineering Protection Paladins each with bags full of multiple Force Reactive Disks and every gadget and bomb and lead the charge into the Horde in Alterac Valley... With ideally dedicated healers (and off-healing/protecting each other as needed) it was utter mayhem and maybe the most fun I ever had in WoW and even frankly any game to date.

TLDR : All that being said, my most important Parked Warlocks will first be at the BRD entrance and then likely at key locations for queuing Battle-grounds & receiving Battle-ground rewards and/or for World PVP/objectives. Likely also will park Warlocks at a few other key dungeons but I am thinking BRD will be my main focus for quite awhile...

[Apatheist]

3 Warriors & 2 Paladins

This will be my main group also. I'll just use a paladin to boost 3 warlocks later on so I can swap between warriors/warlocks (assuming somebody figures out a /focus substitute.) I can't think of any reason I'd want to change healers so the 2 paladins will be the core of pretty much all of my alliance groups.

Kind of hard to beat warriors that can't be slowed or rooted for 16 seconds out of every 20 with imp. freedom.

[Syclone]

If you want to farm the place to do it is dungeons and raid trash. You get the best drop rates on everything, more stuff to DE and in some cases chances for some pretty nice BoE gear (ZG trash, Dire Maul.) One of the primary benefits of boxing is being able to farm content by yourself that is usually only accessible to groups. It doesn't make sense to farm locations that can be done solo as a boxer.

With that in mind, optimal "farming" teams will be the same as the dungeon teams. I would think any tank with sound AE threat (paladin or druid) any healer and a combination of mages and warlocks.

You can reach the same conclusion through a process of elimination.

1. Hunters could work but are too micro intensive to box effectively, are heavily limited by their dead zone and have limited AE. The upside is that hunter pets actually make good dungeon tanks. An owl with max rank screech generates reasonable AE threat.
2. Melee classes are heavily gear dependent and subject to the availability of IWT.
3. Shadow priests, druids and elemental shamans are all low DPS, lack AE damage and run out of mana very quickly.

If you're going for optimal efficacy, mages and warlocks are really the only choice IMO.

Something like:
druid, shaman, mage, mage, warlock.
paladin, priest, mage, mage, warlock.
etc.

Covers all the decurse options (curse, magic, disease, poison) and gives you most of the useful buffs.

Out of curiosity why Druid/Shaman and not Warrior/Shaman? Windfury totem doesn't work for druids right?

[nodoze]

Out of curiosity why Druid/Shaman and not Warrior/Shaman? Windfury totem doesn't work for druids right?

I suspect it is because he said "any tank with sound AE threat (paladin or druid)".

My understanding is that while Warriors are superior Raid Boss Tanks, Druids and Paladins make better Area of Effect (AoE or AE) Threat tanks for Dungeon farming and Raid Trash farming.

[Apatheist]

You could swap the druid for a warrior if you prefer warriors. Druids have better AE threat generation -- at least until (if) Blizzard fixes battle shout.

However, I'd revise that statement now that we're reasonably certain IWT will be available. Melee teams all the way. Casters are just mediocre until AQ40/Naxx gear.

[Syclone]

You could swap the druid for a warrior if you prefer warriors. Druids have better AE threat generation -- at least until (if) Blizzard fixes battle shout.

However, I'd revise that statement now that we're reasonably certain IWT will be available. Melee teams all the way. Casters are just mediocre until AQ40/Naxx gear.

Ah I see. Whats the issue with battle shout currently? Not generating threat per team member affected? From what I read druid's swipe/maul rotation is simpler/easier to do to hold AE threat compared to warrior toggling which could help those of us trying to manage multiple characters at once.

I am a bit surprised by your comment about melee > casters thanks to IWT. I assume IWT allows them to path to and start attacking a target. Isn't it true however that warriors and melee in general are more gear dependent? I would have expected a Druid/Shaman/3 Mage group to be better than lets say 4 Warrior/Shaman. Especially if your 5 man group isn't expected to get raid gear (only having them to farm dungeons and maybe raid trash besides a main).

[Apatheist]

Ah I see. Whats the issue with battle shout currently? Not generating threat per team member affected? From what I read druid's swipe/maul rotation is simpler/easier to do to hold AE threat compared to warrior toggling which could help those of us trying to manage multiple characters at once.

I am a bit surprised by your comment about melee > casters thanks to IWT. I assume IWT allows them to path to and start attacking a target. Isn't it true however that warriors and melee in general are more gear dependent? I would have expected a Druid/Shaman/3 Mage group to be better than lets say 4 Warrior/Shaman. Especially if your 5 man group isn't expected to get raid gear (only having them to farm dungeons and maybe raid trash besides a main).

Last I heard battle shout isn't generating any threat on beta. I don't know if that's something Blizzard will fix.

Preraid BiS for melee classes is significantly stronger than for casters. There are multiple epics available for warriors (lionheart helm, ironfoe, felstriker, cloudkeeper legplates), tons of hit rating and hand of justice is BiS trinket for warrior/rogue until well into phase 5. Feral druids have a similar power spike but they don't scale as well as warriors and rogues later on. Also, the crusader enchant is light years beyond anything casters have available to them.

Warlocks and mages don't start to get really strong in PvE until after AQ. In PvP they're much more dependent on CC/cooldowns to stay alive and susceptible to interrupts/LoS. Warriors just run at things, do a ton of damage and are naturally tanky and difficult to stop with a freedom. You don't have to try to kite or worry about being circle strafed or any of the issues casters have. That's not to say caster teams can't do well. They just require more effort.

I wouldn't even try to play a melee team without IWT. I know some people have done it but it's super slow and clunky IMO.

[Syclone]

Last I heard battle shout isn't generating any threat on beta. I don't know if that's something Blizzard will fix.

Preraid BiS for melee classes is significantly stronger than for casters. There are multiple epics available for warriors (lionheart helm, ironfoe, felstriker, cloudkeeper legplates), tons of hit rating and hand of justice is BiS trinket for warrior/rogue until well into phase 5. Feral druids have a similar power spike but they don't scale as well as warriors and rogues later on. Also, the crusader enchant is light years beyond anything casters have available to them.

Warlocks and mages don't start to get really strong in PvE until after AQ. In PvP they're much more dependent on CC/cooldowns to stay alive and susceptible to interrupts/LoS. Warriors just run at things, do a ton of damage and are naturally tanky and difficult to stop with a freedom. You don't have to try to kite or worry about being circle strafed or any of the issues casters have. That's not to say caster teams can't do well. They just require more effort.

I wouldn't even try to play a melee team without IWT. I know some people have done it but it's super slow and clunky IMO.

Does this remain true for preraid dungeon farming? My goal is to run 5 mans/maybe raid trash for farming, not for PvP. Would a caster group with significant AoE be a better choice in your opinion then?

So with IWT and a melee group. You essentially have them IWT + Click to Move to path to the target and attack. Then you keep spamming that to ensure they remain on the target combined with pressing keys to trigger skills? Is that the jist of it? I would imagine if you did something like 3 War/2Pal that you would control the 3 wars manually with identical input and the 2 pals with forwarding key presses? (or vice versa)

Edit: Doh sorry you did mention Mages/Warlocks not getting really strong in PvE until after AQ. So I guess you do mean that a melee group would farm dungeons better preraid as well. What would such a group look like on horde? 4 Warriors 1 Shaman maybe? Control shaman and forward presses to warrior or control all 4 warriors identically and forward heals/totems to shaman?

[Apatheist]

AoE?

Warriors have stronger AE on standard mob packs (4-6) with cleave/whilrlwind. Mages and warlocks have stronger AE on larger packs because their AE skills have no cap. However, you only really utilize large scale AE farming in dungeons that are significantly lower level than you. If you pull more than two packs in any on-level dungeon you'll die. There are clips from the beta of groups doing large AE pulls in SM but that would be pretty sketchy as a boxer. You don't have the control to micro iceblock, CC, heals, kiting and tanking the way 5 individual players do. The lower level dungeons are also much easier. At 55+ when you're farming end-game dungeons all of the mobs have silences, stuns, armor debuffs, AE damage/knockbacks, etc. that will kill you if you pull too many.

IWT moves your melee characters to their target. I usually create target action groups with a hotkey to toggle different characters IWT on or off. There are times you don't want to mindlessly spam IWT or you'll end up in some lava or getting cleaved since IWT has weird behavior and sometimes circles around the target.

3Warrior, 2Shaman or 4/1. Either would work fine. I always prefer having two healers just because I PvP a lot and a single healer can be interrupted/CC'd much more easily. If you're only interested in doing dungeons and not PvP, 4/1 will be plenty of healing. Especially once you get some decent +healing gear. Downranked chain heal is pretty efficient.

For raid trash farming casters are definitely superior. Raid trash in vanilla is too strong to tank with 5 characters, you have to kite it.

[Syclone]

Warriors have stronger AE on standard mob packs (4-6) with cleave/whilrlwind. Mages and warlocks have stronger AE on larger packs because their AE skills have no cap. However, you only really utilize large scale AE farming in dungeons that are significantly lower level than you. If you pull more than two packs in any on-level dungeon you'll die. There are clips from the beta of groups doing large AE pulls in SM but that would be pretty sketchy as a boxer. You don't have the control to micro iceblock, CC, heals, kiting and tanking the way 5 individual players do. The lower level dungeons are also much easier. At 55+ when you're farming end-game dungeons all of the mobs have silences, stuns, armor debuffs, AE damage/knockbacks, etc. that will kill you if you pull too many.

IWT moves your melee characters to their target. I usually create target action groups with a hotkey to toggle different characters IWT on or off. There are times you don't want to mindlessly spam IWT or you'll end up in some lava or getting cleaved since IWT has weird behavior and sometimes circles around the target.

3Warrior, 2Shaman or 4/1. Either would work fine. I always prefer having two healers just because I PvP a lot and a single healer can be interrupted/CC'd much more easily. If you're only interested in doing dungeons and not PvP, 4/1 will be plenty of healing. Especially once you get some decent +healing gear. Downranked chain heal is pretty efficient.

For raid trash farming casters are definitely superior. Raid trash in vanilla is too strong to tank with 5 characters, you have to kite it.

First, thanks so much for your input. It has been invaluable. I took some time to plan out what I think would work for me as well as trying out a setup that I could on a private server. Of course IWT isnt in the 1.12 client so testing a melee group with it isnt viable.

You mentioned you plan to do 3 War / 3 Pal. What does that look like for you? 1 Pal tank, 1 Pal healer and 3 arms/fury wars for dungeon leveling? What would you drive from, the tank?

If I did 4 War / 1 Sham would I need one of those wars to go prot? I am thinking so. Then I suppose I would drive from the prot tank for dungeon leveling as well?

I tested a Prot War/Resto Shaman/2 Mage/ Warlock in RFC on a private server. My biggest issue was keeping aggro as the prot warrior. I know practice will really help. I need to not have my dps macros assist the tank since the tank is tab targeting each mob to grab aggro. This did make me wonder though if perhaps Druid with swipe/maul would be easier. Druid/3War/Shaman?

Although 4 war/shaman might still be ideal, but I am just concerned about no cc and holding aggro. Perhaps holding aggro isn't as big of a deal if the dps are warriors and can take a hit.

Any advice with this would help greatly. I essentially would like to end up with an optimal 5 man farming group that includes my main (shaman), and possibly at some point have a 4 shaman/1 priest pvp group.