4xShaman plus ...

[Hyper]

I am a slow boxer... my original team is only level 36. I have been doing it off and on for a while and started with 1 pally and 4 shaman. But I have noticed quite a few people do 4x shaman and 1 death knight. What are the advantages of dropping the Paladin for a Death Knight or should I just keep the pally?

[Hachoo]

Its really up to you but you can't even create a DK until you're level 55 anyway - at that point if you want a DK just make one and he can join right up with your team at the same level

[Siaea]

Well, I can't speak of the advantages/disadvantages of pally vs. death knight, but I'm really liking my DK as a tank, especially now that she's pretty well geared. The ability to 'bubble' your entire team from magic is one good thing, and DKs seem to hold aggro pretty well with the AoE death and decay.

[Hyper]

I guess I should have been more precise in my original statement. I am slow on the multi-boxing because my priority is raiding on my lvl 80 mage. So, I do have access to the DK and have even tried it out a little bit. (but that just put my pally further back in XP than my shaman). To be even more precise, I 4 box the shaman and my wife plays the pally/DK So, yes there is a bit of 'whatever she has fun playing' involved, but atm she is flexible on either one. We were looking at the loss of Blessings and Divine Intervention in exchange for ..... what exactly? They are both powerful AoE tanks. The Anit-magic shield is nice, but does it compare? Eventually, one day... We would like to be able to do heroics or fill in on raids that don't quite have the full 25 online every night of the week. (but that is way in the distance it seems) Our guild is has plenty of tanks (thanks to the DKs) and mostly short on the heals, but sometimes its even DPS light. Thanks guys for your input.

[Hachoo]

DKs give the shamans a flat 13% buff to all spell damage (if you spec into unholy, which you should). This alone makes them more beneficial than a paladin IMO as once you start gearing up you no longer need salvation, wisdom, etc.

[Alemi]

I guess I should have been more precise in my original statement. I am slow on the multi-boxing because my priority is raiding on my lvl 80 mage. So, I do have access to the DK and have even tried it out a little bit. (but that just put my pally further back in XP than my shaman). To be even more precise, I 4 box the shaman and my wife plays the pally/DK So, yes there is a bit of 'whatever she has fun playing' involved, but atm she is flexible on either one. We were looking at the loss of Blessings and Divine Intervention in exchange for ..... what exactly? They are both powerful AoE tanks. The Anit-magic shield is nice, but does it compare? Eventually, one day... We would like to be able to do heroics or fill in on raids that don't quite have the full 25 online every night of the week. (but that is way in the distance it seems) Our guild is has plenty of tanks (thanks to the DKs) and mostly short on the heals, but sometimes its even DPS light. Thanks guys for your input.

Well, good benefits of each is that an unholy DK can easily, with just a swap of gear, not spec, do fantastic DPS - whereas a paladin will need a respec to be able to heal (and a DK can't at all). If you're looking for a healing respecing class, then I'd suggest the paladin.

On the same note, the dps that an unholy DK brings is not just his own but as Hachoo said, Ebon Plaguebringer (which can be applied at range as well). This is the highest spell damage debuff in game and, more importantly, frees up your warlocks to CoA instead of CoE.

All in all, both are effective tanks - I find that the dk is much more mobile since he has a targetable ground aggro, vs. the paladin concecrate - and strangulate and death grip get casters to you (until 3.1 when avenger's shield from paladins silence). The buff loss isn't a huge deal, I don't miss them in 5 mans - and DK tanks just take far less damage than any others because of the sheer amount of cooldowns. I'd suggest leaving it up to your wife and say "Which would you rather do in a raid, spam flash of light on people by clicking on health bars or mash buttons and dps?" :P And, when you say short on healers, are you saying you have less than 4 online?

[Hyper]

The wife will always play her tree druid when raiding. I am the only one adventurous enough to want to play multiple in a raid. So I would probably be dual spec'ing if/when I get them to 80. But that is far down the line really. And our raiding guild usually runs Naxx with 7 or so healers. We have full cleared Naxx25 and Sarth+1 but just recently stepped foot into the Eye. We are a RL > WoW guild who raid 3 day a week, so sometimes our best geared/well played characters aren't online as often as we would sometimes like.

So..
Ebon Plaugebringer > Blessings
DnD > Concecrate
and my Mana Totems are just going to my benefit instead of all of us


have I got that about right?

[Hachoo]

Don't forget that in general a DK tank does more damage than a Paladin tank as well (much higher attack power, just as much AoE, 2H weapon for better single target DPS, etc).

[Multibocks]

I really really like my DK tank, but I have one gripe. I hate that I have to drop mana totems with my shaman team, no blessing of wisdom is a real annoying thing to deal with. I'm sure people here have ways of dealing, but I brought up my team with a paladin originally and I NEVER had to do anything to manage mana. That made the choice of how many healing totems real easy (all 4 healing.) However I enjoy tanking with my DK so much more that I put up with having to drink once in a while and remembering to use their thunderstorms as soon as they are up. It makes doing a timed Culling of Stratholme a real pain in the ass if your shaman dont get hit very often by the ghouls. I've seen it done by Hachoo, but after doing it a couple times I dont even bother anymore. It aint worth the extra Emblem.
So to recap: Paladin = easy boxing tank - low dps/boring, DK = more fun and more dps. Also DKs have more damage reduction abilities depending on your spec. They often save my DKs life =)

[daviddoran]

I am leveling multiple teams (rather than doing one at a time, much to the chagrin of my guildmages...) and I have to say that you gotta play what you like, regardless of its status as "best" or not. Who cares if such and such class stacks better, or diversifying buffs is better if you don't want to, or can't wrap your head around the micro management?

I enjoy playing my pally/priest/mage team, because each class is very defined in what it does. My paladin holds aggro like nobodys business, spams his threat/dmg abilities, and tanks like a champ. My priest heals, and just heals, nothing else. (though I am experimenting with multiple bars, so I can have an instance bar and a regular bar) My mages stand back and dish out continuous DPS. Simple, effective, albeit squishy.

My DK/Shaman team on the other hand is completely different. Now my tank actually does DPS, is more proactive about aggro management, protecting the group with things, has a couple more "oh shit" buttons, and a ghoul off tank (at least for now, well see how he fares in heroics, methinks he dies) and my 4 shaman dish out insane DPS, and can take a couple more hits than the mages. But no dedicated healer (resto sham may come later) means i have to think more about my healing. On my main team my healer has a spam macro with some blank spaces, so if i need more heals i just spam faster. I have a seperate set of keys for AoE heals, etc, but its pretty easy to manage, and forget. For my ele shamans, i am still working on the macros and keybinds, but for now, I just have a 4x chain heal on whoever has aggro, and its working for now. I think i will use the numpad and make various combos of lesser healing wave self, greater healing wave self, chain heal self, and the same for the tank specifically, and another for whoever has aggro. 9 buttons makes for some pretty easy healing. But the fact that its coming from my DPS is foreign to me, as I got very used to the dedicated healer setup.

My next team of 5 druids will be a whole nother set of challenges, mainly due to having to get out of moonkin form to heal, so ill have to figure that one out later.

Its too bad the combo healing/mana totems didnt make it to 3.1 (unless I'm wrong) cause that would have made 4x shaman teams more obvious choices.


BTW, my favorite part about leveling pally priest and mages, is that I can port to IF, and have all my trainers 5 feet away.... a bit tougher with my other teams.