5 shamans in WoTLK heroics?

[TheBigBB]

So why do two shamans stack then? This makes no sense.

With two shaman you could stack totems up to great benefit. Like if you need a resistance or poison cleansing totem for a particular fight, you won't be sacrificing your spell haste or spell damage totem for it anymore. Plus you'd have a heroism up every 5 minutes, so you'd be able to burn it every time it's up.

With more than that, only the replenishment totems stack in a meaningful way. Everything else is just something another class can do better.

With three or more, your main benefit would be getting some extra mana or health regen, a function which can be served by other classes while adding more buffs. For example, you can have a frost mage with a water elemental to regenerate more mana and add a spell crit chance that only a mage can add through winter's chill (or scorch). And a mage's AOE is more than enough to counter a magma totem. Add a mage and a moonkin and you now have 12% spell damage taken on top of that, not to mention the buffs like mark and int and fort that you could gain with more classes in the mix.

Shaman teams work, but they don't stack like they used to. No classes do. For anything major you claim that stacks with more and more shaman, I can name you a class that does that function better while adding more of something else. This isn't a knock against anyone who's using them, as there's no such thing as a multiboxer who's getting full benefit of everything. I'm just trying to help the OP and I don't think telling him that a big shaman team is as good or better than any other team is going to answer his question properly.

Two shamans dropping two different totems is not totem stacking. Adding a poison resistance or fire resistance totem is just taking advantage of an ability the class has, and which certainly other classes have as well. The OP asked if it was true if more than 2 shamans were "bad" because more than 2 totems won't stack. I don't believe this makes any sense.

Can you get more synergisms with multiple classes in the mix? Certainly. Multiple shamans still offer a simple configuration setup and a lot of functional flexibility. If you're all about min-maxing, you probably want a multiple class group. You're still not going to get every buff in the game, nor do you need to, in a 5 man group.

My point is not that shamans are the greatest. Simply that a tank + 4 shammies is still a very viable (and comparatively easy to manage) group setup. While buff totems do not stack, most functional ones (mana, healing, fire damage, ground) do.

First of all, I think there must be a misunderstanding because I actually 100% agree that tank + 4 shaman is a viable team and 5 shaman in PVP is still decent. They just don't stack up like they used to, but I would not say that it's a bad team.

Anyway, to clarify, when I talk about totem stacking I am talking about unique effects you can get using each type of totem. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Frost Resist Totem and Totem of Wrath are both fire totems which grant a passive and significant benefit to the group. I am calling that stacking because you have the same fire totem slot giving out a passive effect which cannot be easily replaced. (Only a paladin can replace the fire resist, but you gain a lot from concentration aura.) Anyway, magma totem is just adding some damage which is not a passive group benefit and can easily be surpassed by some other class simply casting another spell. Once you get past two shaman, it's hard for me to see how the extra totems are giving anything that you can't get some other better way, though don't get me wrong, you do get SOME bang for your buck.

Apologies if you think I don't respect shaman teams. If you look at my guild you'll see that I got 5 shamans on the roster myself... 8)