Converted my shaman team to a totally mixed team...

[TheBigBB]

I was leveling up 4x shaman and a druid and had them to level 64 when I just decided that, for the sake of my guild, I would include my PVE raiding priest in the team since I am very good at healing in raids, and not so good at DPS. It would suck to focus on a 5-box team without having my raider involved in the badge/rep farm.

So I decided that with a healer now, I should just throw a tank in, and I brought back my old pre-BC level 60 alt paladin. Then I tossed in my old 70 mage, and am just keeping the druid and one shaman from my original team. I decided to use the mage because since the team is now mixed up anyway, I might as well learn to use a complicated team and mix it all up.

It's not hard at all to set them up to play together. The pally gets her own set of keys, ZXCVBNM to tank with. The DPS use 1234567890, the healer uses the number pad. DPS just match up spells that work together, like 1 can be wrath, fireball/scorch (mod keys), and LB. 2 can be moonfire, fire blast, frost shock. And I set it up in case of immune mobs so that with mod keys I can cast different spells. So I can make the mage cast frost spells or fire spells depending on which mod key I hold in.

I am mostly interested in doing 5-man heroics with them. PVP makes me too angry. So there's no need to have all shaman to counter PVP stuff...

I actually like this a lot more! The buffs and synergies I get now and will get in the future are incredible. Here's all the stuff that I can do which won't cancel out in WOTLK:

Prot Pally benefits: Kings, auras (20% mount speed!!), AOE tanking, stuns.

Moonkin Druid benefits: Earth and Moon (going to act just like COE now), MOTW, moonkin aura, combat rezzing, fareie fire

Mage benefits: AI, Crit chance debuff, spell damage group buff, good AOE

Shaman: Everyone knows this! 1 set of totems will be mostly all you need in the xpac. Other than groundings which I might miss.

Priest: Raiding priest will never be OOM, 400MP5 while casting :-), fort, AOE mindless heals, POM generates tank aggro, etc.

[Thulos]

I have mad respect for all of the boxers that are pulling off multi class groups like this. I'm comfortable with 1x pali and 4x shamans but if I added a third I think my brain would melt. One of these days i'll break down and give it a try.

[Jaws5]

Your Dps will go down but you have increased flexabilty to handle new instances.

you will miss the old dps burn downs a lot. Only 3 dps vers 5 is a 40 percent hit

Goal is to have fun , and you like to raid so it lets you have more fun

[Mooni]

This is really cool, and thanks for posting it!

I did 1-60 as 4 shamans then ditched one to gift-level a paladin to 60.999. It was a challenge learning to park a tank somewhere and getting buttons to line up. What I used to do with the 5-shaman team (I know I said 4-shaman, but I had one who was 60 something already) was use WASD for everyone's movement, G was my formation key (the "diamond" and I'd jump before I moved so they'd all be moving and spreading at the same rate) then UHJK was my main-only movement keys (for those times you need to kite a boss or run away from an exploding mushroom or whatever).

I like your idea better, heals over there---->, tanking down there and ranged DPS up there. It makes me want to try this 5-class thing out. The most I've run was 3 at any given time: Pally/druid/priest for my "3x future healer" crew, and pally/3shaman/1disc priest through old world instances.

I think a lot of people would rather spend 4 days grinding to 60 the hard way than 15 minutes sitting still writing macros and fixing keybindings.

Unfortunately I'm one of those people. I was also a forum lurker until you posted your setup; so I might give it a shot and keep ya posted.

-Mooni

[TheBigBB]

Your Dps will go down but you have increased flexabilty to handle new instances.

you will miss the old dps burn downs a lot. Only 3 dps vers 5 is a 40 percent hit

Goal is to have fun , and you like to raid so it lets you have more fun

Oh yeah, I wouldn't do this if it weren't more fun.

Once they're all 70/80 and on the same general gear level, I think my DPS will only drop more like 30%, not 40%, because the extra buffs will make up some of the gap, though clearly a 5 DPS team that manages to do an instance would go faster than any other team. And 5 manning a heroic with all DPS must be a great accomplishment too! I did find that at level 60, my prot pally in terrible gear was still a better tank than any of the shaman were in appropriate level 63/64 gear. I was able to clear out BF and Ramps with this team no problem where my shaman couldn't do it yet. Of course, my healing is overpowered (1k non crit COH) but still.

[Ellay]

With the expansion they are promoting more synergy by having 1 of each class in most makeups. I think mixed setups will become pretty popular for PvE once this takes effect.

[Frosty]

I am mostly interested in doing 5-man heroics with them. PVP makes me too angry.

Same reasons I'm playing my mixed group. :P

Lots of fun.

[Los]

Also, with COH + PoM from the priests abilities you would have an easy time healing tbh. Aoe heal en tank heal, and voila, that should suffice for instances. Pally right now is also not to bad with controlling (as a main i mean) then just ring the dpser up on as little macro's'as you can, done. Its no too hard, its just getting the dps macro up that is a bit of a hastle, but for the rest.. easy fairings.

[Qlimax]

From the recent releases of information and BETA testing, we have deduced that a 4 shaman 1 paladin team will not be very productive, or not as effective as BC. We are more focused on raid synergy of multiple clases. Mages new ability winterschilld and scorch effects, Boomkin Bonus, 1 Shaman totem of wrath, 1 Resto shaman earth shield since heroism maximises the use of only 2 shamans. Paladin tanks have better more utile healing and survaviablity. Locks always provide unlimited ammount of damage, not regardless of mana. Then you have mana battery classes. As you can see in my signature, this is 1/2 of a 10 man 2 box raid group. We are hoping to clear the endgame 10 mans by using proven tactics of multiple classes.

[ChaoticMonk]

Another benefit might be gearing up in instance runs, no more fighting for the same gear x4. I'm still working on 4sham+1boomkin for now as I'm still new to multiboxing/macros I do however have a nice selection of 70s so I might swap a couple shamans out for something else in the future...who knows.

Keep us posted on how your team is doing and I'd love to see how you've mapped out your keys.