some questions about leveling/picking a team.

[Catamer]

my two cents worth on your team selection.

pally + 4 shaman is a very good classic team. they do heroics just fine. I have a team of them myself and love them.
everyone can heal, everyone can dps, everyone can rez and shaman can self rez giving you 4 chances to have a team wipe and not run back.
you could swap one of those out for a druid or a warlock to boost the team dps.
the druid can still rez and heal like the rest and the warlock could soul shard one of the team ( warlock soul shard rez it limited to every 30 min )

A less classical team is 5 pally, the leader being protection and the rest Ret.
I'm not sure how good they are at level 80 heroics yet since I'm only 73 but I just did nexus and had a much easier time of it than when I had tried it with 1 pally and 4-shaman.
with 4 ret pallys you can repentance 4 of the mobs and wake them up one at a time and kill them.
the play style is completely different and it takes a while to get used to.

[Nisch]

I have no gear and I was able to passively heal myself through the trash heroic mobs at 80 with my 5 pallies.

I imagine if I had some gear, it would be a bit easier, but with just quest gear, I currently cannot do heroics with 4 ret, 1 prot. My defense isn't capped, so the bosses would tear me apart.

That's why I'm now leveling my shamans in case the pallies don't work. For regular instances, they're great, but heroics are currently quite a challenge.

[Sivier]

Well I get into some hardcore sessions sometimes lol. I use my 80 pally (prot spec) to run my 4 slaves thru dungeons. Than gift level whatever other classes I want, rinse/repeat 1-60 took me like 3 days, but now I gift toons to 30 than start from there so like 2 days per 60 team. I havent gotten any of my multi box toons above 60 yet because I'm really enjoying running teams thru pre bc isntances. So i'm gonna end up with alot of level 60's of every classe/race lol.

Not trying to hijack the thread or tell you something you don't already know but it would be faster to boost them to 30 then grant them up to 59 right?

I dont understant settings like this ( just learning on RAF ) :whistling: You have your 5 accounts linked like A > B > C > D > E ? If yes i guess you boost your 4 slaves to 60 , use the free levels from B, C, D ,E to make new toons in A, B C, D and then transfer the new lvl 30 from A to E , Right? If thats the way i understand why make new toons to 30 and then boost to 60 and not like Wendalf say because Account E will make free lvls but never get it ( E is not a Vet) The only way you can grant them from 30 to 60 could be transfering the lvl 30 from E to A, grant lvls to 60 and then transfer again to E. (too much transfers for my taste lol) Dunno, im losing my mind with all this RAF maths :wacko:

[alcattle]

Just getting in to this thread, I missed something here. You should be able to boost 5 toons to 60. D can boost E, maybe you mean you can only grant to one other toon to use up the 30 levels. It is very easy to level groups. Once you are set up, a 5 man team can get to 60 in 5 days played easily. So you can raise 18 teams during RAF.

[Ualaa]

Within the RAF period, you can certainly get a whole lot of toons/teams to 60th if you like.
Any team that you think you'd like to try at 80th, is definitely worth getting to 60th when its so easy to do so.

Still 60 to 80, without RAF, is not a quick or easy endeavor.
At this point, I'd focus on a team or two.

With an existing 80 to boost, I wouldn't even link that account to the others.
If you go: A >> B >> C >> D and boost with an unlinked E.
You can cascade the granted levels freely, and use the 80 (on E) to boost any of the others freely.

You've stated you do not wish to pursue heroics.
A winning formula for PvE is 4x Shaman DPS and 1x Paladin Tank.
Still, something similar to this will get you success in normal non-heroic instances too.

Shaman teams have had the most success in arena.
For world/battleground pvp, Druids are a very fun option, but they won't be as good in arena.
People have gone with all Paladin and all Death Knight groups, with success.
I've heard of all Demo-Felguard lock teams. One person posted of an all Rogue team.
Depending how serious or casual you are with the arena goals, lean more towards the Shaman or explore other options.

I really enjoyed the 4x Balance/Resto hybrid druids during RAF.
Discipline priests were annoying at lower levels, but became more fun with levels.
Hunter teams have destroyed PvE content to 60th.
My Shaman team is the only one I've taken beyond the RAF so far.
Druids are really fun, they'll be the next.

Whatever you choose, if its fun that is what counts.
For PvE content and Battlegrounds, you can make almost anything work.
For Arena, you really need a good combination.

[Tancredo2112]

Whatever you choose, if its fun that is what counts.

Yup. I know that's not exactly technical, but it's also very true.

I'm planning to RAF and make the first 10 days count with "classic" toons, just to get those 10 days going. No spacegoat shammies, obviously, in the original lvl 60 game.

Thinking to drag along a mage, lock, rogue [lock picker], and [something] to 60 as one of the first teams. Trying to get portals, food, and summoning capabilities for later. Plan to use an unlinked 80 DK as lead, and focus teams to 60 during the RAF period.

Not sure what classic toon makes the most sense for a fourth there; I'm not really worried about any of them contributing yet in instance runs, since the DK can pretty easily handle it all in the old world instances. Just looking for utility value.

Then, once the first 10 days are gone I will lean towards shammy team, then others.

Just my thoughts ATM, worth less than a pfennig I'm sure :P