AE Team: To mage or not to mage?

[Angrypuffin]

I'm thinking of starting an AoE team. Either 5 moonkin using hurricane, or 2 moonkin using hurricane and 3 mages using blizzard.

Ways in which the pure moonkin team might be better:
1. Everyone could use "mobility" forms like aquatic form or flight form- is that still instant-cast?
2. You could stack way more HoTs on the tank for collecting AoE pulls if you have 5 druids. This might be the difference between 10-mob pulls and 25-mob pulls; I don't know.

Ways in which the mixed team (with mages) might be better:
1. Water.
2. Portals.
3. Little Bo Peep. (That is, 3 sheep, when you're NOT using AoE.)
4. (Most importantly) Insane damage from blizzards critting, especially with lots of chances to apply Winter's Grasp/Fingers of Frost. Depending on the build, you might also have +30% from Arcane Potency if you're frost/arcane.

However, I'd like your feedback before I go level a team up to level 40 (RAF is out, and I don't want to buy new accounts). Have I made good assumptions? Which things are worth weighting heavily?

[Seraphaw]

The thing you must take into account is mages survivability. As in they don't survive if they get clobbered on. As in no more aoe. You could try it, I haven't personally done it...

The added damage of 5 arcane explosions might be so immense that mobs die before you do, but trying to blizzard them down? You'd have to be one crazy player.

[brasssmunky]

mages are glasscannons.
do insane dmg, but die quickly
now this is not so when you are controlling your own mage with finess and skill...
but multiboxing with finesse and skill doesnt work :P
you can't do creative blinking and using of different spells and procs and whatnot..
so i'd say boomkin spam kgo!

[glo]

Doing well in pvp or pve either one with an all mage team would be impressive. Mages need to be mobile to survive, standing still for any amount of time means you die.

[brasssmunky]

Doing well in pvp or pve either one with an all mage team would be impressive. Mages need to be mobile to survive, standing still for any amount of time means you die.

precisely.
my main is mage :P
i know how it is...
if you do anything just walkin around, keyturning and frostbolting... its not gonna work.
aside from normal mob grinding and DPSing...
if anyone tries to touch you, you're done.
if anything goes wrong, you're done...
and for AoE, mages strength is kiting... which isnt that easy with multiboxing.
plus boomkinz get ARMORSSS

[Malekyth]

All three of my teams' DPS are heavy AOE and I would have trouble playing any other way at this point ... warlocks (3), mages(3), druids (all five).

I'm most happy with the warlocks, especially with a pally tank, for burning down mobs with Seed of Corruption. All three groups hit massively hard with their AOE and so the differences between their actual damage delivered against normal mobs isn't too relevant -- mobs just die, period. The deciding factor for me is that SoC is ranged, and can help round mobs up. If the puller (usually my pally tank) gets knocked off her mount while rounding up, that'd be the end up of it if SoC didn't allow you to target outside of your little corral and add a straggler or two to the carnage. SoC is the only ranged AOE I can think of that doesn't require you to target the ground -- you just add it to a macro, everyone casts on a mob and stuff starts exploding -- so it's especially good for multiboxing. Finally, the locks have nigh-infinite mana, especially with imps and Dark Pact, and can keep grinding forever without having to stop.

The con, of course, is that you don't get SoC for a LONG time. I used Hellfire while leveling. Meh. I'd level warlocks again if I had to do it over though, it's worth a bit of RAF Rain of Fire and Hellfire to get to the SoC goodness.

My druids are my second favorite AOE team. I love the gigantic radius of Starfall. I mostly rely on Hurricane and Typhoon, obviously ... I don't mind mousing over to the other four WoWs to cast Hurricane on the ground, because I know a Typhoon is going to finish the burning-down and I'm 99% sure there won't be any stragglers beating on me. It's efficient and a pretty fun experience. The drawback with the droods is that I can't round up as big a group as I'd like, because when I'm mounted, I'm wearing crappy leather armor and subject to massive pummeling between being unhorsed and killing the last mob. They also have relatively crappy mana consumption, and Innervate doesn't help as much as I'd like.

My mages hit very hard, and their CC makes them just freaking insanely awesome in most instances. They're my third-favorite AOE team, and honestly I'm having trouble explaining why. They don't have any wild negatives that aren't shared by teams I like more (druids also gobble mana, and warlocks also wear cloth), I guess they're just slightly mediocre in ways that are important to me. That Arcane Explosion is a point-blank spell and the tank has to do more precise rounding-up is probably a factor. Maybe it's that they remind me of the locks, but don't have the huge virtual mana pools to draw from. I'm'a go with that.

So if I had to recommend any team at all, I'd say warlocks are you friends. Based on what you wanna do already, probably go with druids. They're incredibly versatile and just plain fun to play.

[Angrypuffin]

Yeah, I can see that SoC would be awesome. I suppose you have all your warlocks cast SoC followed by something quick- searing pain, maybe- and then start right back up on another SoC, and you'd get better base DPS. I'm still not sure you'd get better DPS in the end, because- again- multiblizzard seems like a good way to stack up crit percentages.

This video demonstrates the blizzard/arcane potency thing.
http://files.filefront.com/PoMBlizza.../fileinfo.html

But my main thought, actually, is survivability. It seems like freezing people with Blizzard would make it more survivable than Arcane Explosion; because, if the pull were done right- and I know it wouldn't be easy- the enemies just wouldn't get to you.

[Catamer]

I would think that if you were going to go squishy that a warlock team would be easier to multibox because the SoC is a targeted AoE as opposed to a mage/druid click-to-cast AoE.
Maybe you could go demon spec and sacrifice your pet for insane health regen + life tap.

if you don't have a problem with the click-to-cast AoE then druids would have to be the most survivable.

[Herc130]

I don't play WoW, but I do play mages on EQ. And mages there are pretty decent AoE casters. My tank that I just built up is an SK and SK's in EQ can AoE agro. So, I pull trains with the SK, maintain agro on him, stun with my chanter as often as possible to keep damage to the SK as low as possible and AoE nukes with the mages. Mages in EQ are "glass cannons" as well, but if you can keep agro off them, maybe they can do their DPS unbothered. Some raids I have done in the past with my guild, we had an over abundance of enchanters and clerics and we'd just pull massive trains while all chanters and clerics did AoE stuns and mages and wizards did AoE nukes. Was pretty effective, but you need to be able to keep the mobs stunned through most of the fight otherwise casters go splat. I don't know the game mechanics of WoW, but maybe you guys can do something similar if you have a class that can maintain agro on all the mobs and survive while the AoE nukers nuke....or stuns.

[daviddoran]

If you aren't gonna have a tank, dont get mages for aoe. I run a prot pally Holy priest and 3 mages, so my mages rarely get womped on (when they do they die fast) I would just go 5x boomkin if I were you. I guess the 2 druid 3 mage could work if you made one a bear tank and one resto (or ele/resto, or full ele if you prefer) and with dual spec u can have 5x dps, and a holy trinity for instances.