Mixed Class 5-man groups? What's best for buffs and stacking?

[Ualaa]

Neither class is terribly mana efficient.

The mage has evocation, and will want some of the arcane talents for mana efficiency.
I've go with a frost mage, over a fire. More control at the cost of a little less burst.
But you get a lot of talents which reduce the cost of spells.

The warlock has lifetap going for her.
I believe this class is the least efficient from a mana perspective.
Lifetap is extremely powerful, and you'll have passive healing from the party/totems.
Still Lifetap when you cannot otherwise cast, or you'll kill your dps.

I'd say go with whichever class you enjoy more.
In the end, it will work out.
Your party will have some form of replenishment.
You have passive mana regen either from Mana Spring or Blessing of Wisdom.
You can stack some mp5 gear if you want.
Both classes bring things to the table, and no matter what you pick now, Blizzard changes the game.
They've specifically made class balance threads recently, so we can expect changes are coming.

[Mercurio]

I'd take a lock over a mage any day. I have regularly taken both into Naxx in the same group. Lock have better DPS (my experience with equally geared toons), soulstones, summoning, eternal mana, curse of elements... way too much to pass up.

[Klesh]

For Maximizing Buffs/Debuffs I would choose....

Prot Paladin
Resto Shaman
Elemental Shaman
Balance Druid
Shadow Priest

The Elemental Shaman could be swapped for an Affliction Warlock or Mage I suppose - but I like totems better.

As always http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/ is your friend.

That's the group setup I've been running for quite some time.
The shadow priest didn't cut it in the long run though. At the end her damage done (not just the DPS, the overall damage done) was 25 to 40% below the druid/shaman ones. Priests seem to need to cast dots for reasonable DPS, but that's just not worth it on trash, cause mobs die way too fast. Either this, or am too stupid to run shadowpriests.

Long story short, I've leveled another team from 60 to 80 just to replace that priest with another shaman. Am happy with my setup now, running prot paladin, balance druid and 2 elemental shamans, with my wife filling the resto shaman role.

[moog]

As someone who has never strayed from the 4x + tank makeups it would appear overwhelmingly complex to coordinate 5 unique class cast sequences / etc. Am I over-reacting
and things synergize effectively? Any advice from someone who has played both varieties to 80?

Go for it... it's so satisfying once you get it working well

My mixed team is Pally Tank, Priest Healer, Mage / Hunter / Warlock DPS and it definitely takes some time/effort to control them properly but I enjoy playing them far more than the 5xShammies now.

Pally Tank - great AOE tanking with great party buffs, emergency healing and ressing.
Priest Healer - HoTs, group heals, fade, shield, fear ward, shackle
Mage - drinks, portals, sheep and great DPS with an arcane build
Hunter - awesome DPS with a Marksmanship build and a pet thrown in, too
Warlock - summons,

The way I play is to choose my next target, stop the 4 following, run in/pull with the Pally, consecrate, and then I manually click on my various paladin tanking type actions - I don't have a paladin macro, I much prefer doing it manually, and doing most of it with the mouse leaves the hotkeys to trigger off the rest of the party with DPS / heals... this works really well for me.

The Priest heals with a variety of ALT-keys. They heal the paladin or the paladin's target if it's friendly and alive.
Alt 1 - renew
Alt 2 - flash heal
Alt 3 - greater heal
Alt 4 - prayer of healing, targetted on the paladin as you now have to target this spell
Alt 5 - circle of healing
Alt 6 - guardian spirit
Alt 7 - divine hymn

Unless we're in Heroics, I rarely need more than a few renews and occasional prayer to top the group up.

The mage casts slow on the target when I trigger my initial consecrate with the paladin and after that has a main DPS macro...

/castsequence reset=combat/target Scorch, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage

I use PowerAura to monitor for the Missile Barrage buff, when I manually trigger an arcane missiles.
I also trigger a PoM/Pyro macro whenever it's available and I remember

The Hunter misdirects onto the paladin when I trigger my initial consecrate with the paladin and after that has a main DPS macro...

/castsequence reset=15/target serpent sting, chimera shot, arcane shot, aimed shot, steady shot, steady shot

and I manually trigger Rapid Fire, Kill Shot etc.

My Warlock has one big DPS macro...

/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=combat/target Curse of the Elements, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Life Tap(Rank 1), Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt

the logic behind that is I slap on CoE to benefit the whole group and then cast the cheapest Life Tap which still gives me the whole +SP boost from http://www.wowwiki.com/Glyph_of_Life_Tap and I then cast 7 shadow bolts before the lifetap buff drops.
CoE stays up for 5m, so I have a number of LifeTap/ShadowBolt 'loops' to avoid wasting DPS time with a recast of CoE.
You will need to be using Macaroon or a.n.other addon which supports huge macros to use the above
Again, with the Warlock, I use PowerAura to monitor for the Decimation buff which means I have 10s to cast a very quick Soulfire with no shard cost, which I trigger with another key.

The whole team also does very nice AoE.
For that, I use the 9 key and everyone casts their AoE... pally / consecrate, mage / arcane explosion, priest / holy nova, hunter / explosive trap, warlock / hellfire.
Whilst spamming the 9 key, I manually move my mouse over to the hunter in order to cast Volley and target it.
Works really well, with the priest's holy nova healing up the warlock's self-inflicted hellfire damage

My mixed team is made up of my 4 original solo chars, moved to other accounts, and a Warlock I dragged up.
It was always a pally tank and priest healer but the mage used to be fire, hunter was beastmaster and the warlock was demonology.
Back then, the Warlock was top DPS and I was very close to dropping the hunter.
With a bunch of research, respeccing and macro tweaking, the hunter is now top DPS

I've only covered the basics above... for instance, I have a set of macros for CC (sheep/shackle/freezingtrap/banish) which use /focus to allow me to re-CC very easily.

Hope that helps

[DLoweinc]

i love my mixed team, people can say that intellect is a useless buff and that mages have poor mana regen but if you plan to raid, you will want the intellect buff. teleports are very nice and water is also very nice. some people are happy to buy tea to replenish mana and that is fine, but mages bring a lot to the table and as arcane my mage can top 4k dps often. yes he has mana issues but i have a key bound to use mana gem and one to use evocation. basically i bound the "use mana gem" key to also cast thunderstorm for the shaman and to the mana regen on my shadow priest as well.

i'm currently leveling up a lock to replace my prot/holy pali for times when the raid doesn't need 75% of a healer or an offtank, but for heroics you'll obviously need your own tank.

play what sounds fun to you, for me i wanted to maximize not only the buffs i cast on my group, but also the debuffs i could put on bosses.

[Mac]

I'm thinking Arcane mage is looking better for some after the buffs in 3.2.2 , better mana and dps now. What do you think?

I have Druid I tank I solo with, but considering making him boom for the group and rolling up a pali tank to take advantage of all the plate that drops, I also already have priest heals and arcane mage at 80.

The only question is the remaining dps spot. I have a shaman at 70 that would seem to be the no brainier to get to 80 and go ele for totems (loved tremor) and take the mail drops. But I love the sound of port anywhere with my mage, and summon anywhere utility of a lock because I recall it happening quite often where I wanted to go back to town for some reason and come back and the lock would make that trivial. The downside is I'd have three cloth class'.

[Greythan]

Arcane mage rotation is simple easy now. Stack 4 arcane blasts and then arcane missles. YOu have something like a 92% chance of missle barrage proc'ing after four casts of AB.

DPS on my mage is really solid. My shaman does more total damage (slightly lower DPS) but also is better geared.

[daviddoran]

My current comp is Prot pally, Holy Priest, Destro Lock, Frostfire Mage, Elemental Shaman. My shaman is practically a fresh 80, with mostly PvP gear from my AV power leveling, but still manages to keep up with my geared out lock and mage. Adding the shaman, with totem of wrath, and windfury boosted my lock and mages dps considerably. My mage is dual spec Arcane/Frostfire. Arcane is a mana hog, even with all the regen i have, i have to use evocation and mana gem every cooldown. As Frostfire, I have to manage hotstreak procs, but it's not that bad (comes in handy in direbrew, when it happend to proc right when the mole machine knocked the mage up in the air) As it is now, each of my toons fights for max damage and dps in shorter trash fights, but boss fights, the lock is usually on top, followed bye the mage, with the shaman not too far apart, considering his gear (PvP purples and quest greens)

Heroism is something that makes a lot of "quick dps race" heroic achievements possible. I just wasn't able to down trollgore fast enough before, and first run with the shaman and I got it. Plus, totem of wrath is like a 25% increase to my pallys spellpower, which I'm pretty sure boosts his dps a lot.

I havent tried swapping my mage back to arcane since 3.2.2, ill have to give it a go, but I think the scorch crit debuff is also helping my overall group's dps, and fire is much more mana efficient, at least it was when i first dual specced her.