Deciding On A Team (Mostly Unsure how to Spec What)

[Kyle K.]

Hello Everyone,

Its been a long while since I have posted here but I am back to boxing and with the help of RAF now am sitting on 6 level 60 toons. I have an idea on what the group makeup should be but I just for the life of me cannot decide on who I want as my healer. Here is my team, and what I am planning on doing with them.

Druid (Feral/Tank)
Shaman (Resto OR Elemental)
Priest (Holy OR Shadow)
Warlock x2 (One Affliction, One Destro)

Now the problem lies within the healing. Shaman and elemental brings a lot of good things for the group. Totem of Wrath helps him, and locks when not casting dots. But a shadow priest will help with that, as well as with the dots. So I am really torn on which way I should go with the speccing, and was hoping I could get some help from everyone here.

PLANS WITH GROUP: Mainly PVE, Instances, Heroics, Raiding, some PVP.

Thanks Everyone!

[Apophysis]

My opinion on what might be the best synergy:

Druid - Feral
Shaman - Elemental
Priest - Holy
Locks - Affliction or Destruction for both.

Simply put - I think the Holy Priest is a bit more flexible for group healing. That forces the remaining casters to be DPS.

You need to explore the synergy between the Shaman and Lock casting styles if you go this route. The more you homogenize the casting sequences, the less complex your encounters will be when you start dungeons/raids. I try to min/max my teams as much as possible, including what spells each character uses. Locks have cast times and cooldowns that are not like the other caster classes and I've tinkered with integrating them into my teams in various ways. I've personally found that destruction works best for my playstyle. For example, Mages and Balance Druids match up nicely with cast times & cooldowns: wrath + scorch, fireball + starfire. Once my Balance druids are higher level, I pair them up with a Locks opening dot sequence (faerie fire, insect swarm, moonfire w/ Curse of Elements, Corruption, etc.) and then use a fireball + starfire + shadowbolt setup. Sometimes I change to wrath + scorch + shadowbolt.

I also watch the synergy of mana costs very closely. I don't like to stop the whole team for one character to eat or drink (just a personal pet peeve) and I pay close attention to talents that affect cast times and/or cooldowns. Sometimes you want them, sometimes you don't depending on the overall team cast synergy.

[elo]

My pre-boxing main was a priest and I 5 box with a resto Shaman. My vote is Resto shaman and Shadow priest. Reason being the Earth Shield is godly, especially stacked with the Feral druid's self heal. Also for clearing trash the reactive heal/vamp should keep your tank up just fine and in my experience a resto shaman can do more dps than a holy priest (YMMV). For nomal instances my resto always DPS'd on trash to clear it faster. In other thoughts the high armor of the shaman is nice when they invariably take a hit but then again the priest has an aggro dump which will be nice since you're not running a pally for salvation. ToW, at least pre-WotLK will really help you crank out the DPS on the warlocks before you get good gear, so that's an argument for going elemental and holy. Chain healing is more efficient than the priest group healing... The VT return on mana + the mana spring should help quite a bit with staying power/down time as well. So, really afterall I don't think there's a clearcut answer here, you'll be fine either way and in the end Wrath will change everything.

On the lock thing, I think mixing spec's will add a level of complexity which won't return enough results to make it worth it. Keeping them same spec means they cast the same spell rotations and really simplifies things. Unless you set it up very well you're likely to have a higher DPS out of same spec then 2 different specs. Also note that with the focused coordination that we have you'll tend to kill things before your DOTs really have time to do reach full effectiveness so Destro is my preferred spec with a lock in the group.

[Griznah]

My opinion on what might be the best synergy:

Druid - Feral
Shaman - Elemental
Priest - Holy
Locks - Destruction for both.

Simply put - I think the Holy Priest is a bit more flexible for group healing.

This.

[Captainbrew]

For your warlocks, I suggest going affliction in both, until you get 1k spelldamage AND 20-25% crit, at that point spec into destro and lolSB spam things to death

Before that mark, especially seen in early Kara clears, affliction is crazy DPS on bosses and large high HP targets.

On trash just corruption, or UA, and Spam SB.