What should I choose?

[Chilaxx]

Hey guys,

Well at the moment my team is about to hit 70.. But I've been having a lot of problems the last week I've played.. I'm whiping a lot more then I usually did (like once / run or something)
I'm using ISBoxer atm, and I must say I'm loving it.. but it also adds a little more to my playing style..

Atm i'm using a DK + Priest + Lock + Shaman + Druid team. And tbh, It's hard. All the different abilities, cooldowns,... so much things to think about. And also pirtty squishy team.. When my DK dies, my priest + lock die instantly after him.. my druid is always the last man standing..

So now I was thinking of starting a new team, but I'm not completely sure, so that's why I would like the opinion of you guys.
The team setup I'm thinking about is:
- 1 paladin + 4 Shamans (my paladin is already 60 and my shamans are 42)
- 5 Druids (I would have to create 4 new druids tho)

Why I would choose the shaman team:
- Totem change in 3.3 (magma totem? the aoe one )
- 4 fire / earth elements
- They can all heal
- They can all dps like crazy
- They can all reincarnate
- Great for PvP as well
.... i could go on for a while..

Why I would choose the druid team:
- 4 hots on the tank looks kinda imba
- Stealth Runs (extremely fun!! did this with guildies in TBC)
- Also very nice utility spells (innervate, battle rez, treants, starfall, ...) but not as much as a shaman i think..

I hope you guys have any suggestions because I'm really not sure on what I should do.. because I really want to get them to 80 before the new expansion!

Thanks in advance guys!

[SuddenSacrifice]

Hiya - I am running my first team at the moment (they are still low level though) which consists of 1 Paladin and 4 Tauren Shaman and its fun as hell. I have one of the shaman as the designated healer but all of them have an emergency button to heal themselves or the Tank.
Originally I was considering Druids (4 Moonkins - later 3 Moon, 1 Tree - , 1 Feral) as well but tbh I was put off by the partial dot-style moonkins use in order to dps efficiently. Sure, at the earlier levels its just wrath, wrath and wrath some more but later on you would have to watch two debuffs and the procs as well. You could fix some of this with a castsequence but as insect swarms' timer is lengthened by the use of another spell (sorry forgot which one) it would still feel a bit off for me.

So yeah, just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

[Gadzooks]

A shaman team would definitely be easier, mixed teams are a bigger challenge. I have one, because I started with existing toons, and added accounts. Why not both?

One thing, the most important thing, that I've learned about mixed teams: keep it simple. Add abilities when you need them, not because they're there. Work on getting consistent DPS and tanking, all of which is built on the foundation of solid healing. Prioritize your tank as far as gear, training, and heals. Work on your healer 2nd. DPS is easy to gear later - and I'd rather a fight take a little longer, due to low dps, than have to finish the mobs/boss off really fast, before the tank dies.

On thing would help, what specs are your toons? Some specs are better for leveling than others - your priest could go Disc for the extra armor/dps, and your Lock should be (imho) Demonology, as the Felguard is a hell of a tank - you should be dotting and letting the Felguard off-tank from the DK. The druid should be a Boomer, or should be switched over to Main Tank with Feral.

The key to mixed classes is macro rotations, /click rotations if possible. You can "time" macros with ","s in the macro, to get your rotations matching up on your tempo - training dummies are your best friend for this.

My team is a Prot Pally, Holy Priest, Boomkin, Arcane Mage, and Destro Lock. I have my rotations set up, and have them tweaked to pull 1.4 -1.9k in Heroics, with a one button spam on 1. My heals are on key 2, with alternate healing on Shift-2 from the Boomkin, and AOE/reduce threat on 3, etc.

It's not easy, and takes a lot of work, but it's all here on this site, you just have to pull it up and try it. Take a look for Fursphere's keymap thread, he's got some awesome ideas for planning and configuring your keyboard, and his macro consolidation thread is a great place to start to get your macros in order - for mixed teams, or 1 + 4 shaman teams.

[Eloxy]

Does it realy matter what other people think you should run? I mean, comeon do what YOU feel like! =)

want pvp? serious pvp 4shamans, roflomg pvp 5locks
want pve? 4 shammis and a pala, or any mixed team

Just run what u want m8, anything can work out nicely. Just depends on the player

[shaeman]

Are you wiping on content you've done before or on new content?
(If you are only wiping once per run that doesn't sound like a huge issue to me, unless it is on content you have cleared flawlessly for quite some time).


I wouldn't be so ready to write off your first team. Little tweaks to setup can make big differences.

As someone else mentioned seriously consider /click macros.
I recently converted my shamans to Fursphere's /click macro and saw a 200-300 dps increase over my trying a manual rotation. I found it was hard to concentrate on tanking and healing and maintain the dps.
(I even found myself spamming the lavaburst button by mistake).

Make sure your tank is in the best gear for his level. (I remember trying to tank UK when my DK was low 70's. it was a struggle and that was without multiboxing it. A guildie made a load of pieces of the cobalt set, and the next instance run I saw a huge difference). Having the tank in good gear helps to take a bit of pressure of the healer and allows you to calm down a bit and concentrate on what's happenign.

If you are considering alternatives I would highly recommend a Tank + 4 shaman.
The shaman have such utility with the totems. Passive healing, resistances, elementals. And of course they can all heal, which has helped save my tank on a number of occassions.



I

[Naysayer]

Hey guys,
''''''''
Thanks in advance guys!

It's all about the macros. If you learn more and streamline your macro's, than a mixed team is just as easy as pally shaman.

[Fuzzyboy]

Hey guys,

Well at the moment my team is about to hit 70.. But I've been having a lot of problems the last week I've played.. I'm whiping a lot more then I usually did (like once / run or something)
I'm using ISBoxer atm, and I must say I'm loving it.. but it also adds a little more to my playing style..

Atm i'm using a DK + Priest + Lock + Shaman + Druid team. And tbh, It's hard. All the different abilities, cooldowns,... so much things to think about. And also pirtty squishy team.. When my DK dies, my priest + lock die instantly after him.. my druid is always the last man standing..

First of all, it depends very much on what you want to do. In terms of buff/debuff synergy I find that the optimal combination is pally + druid + mage + priest + shaman. However, synergy isn't really an ultimate point. I've tried a lot of combos and on paper, the 13% spell damage taken increase from druid (warlocks and DK's can apply this too, btw) is great, but tbh you can overgear heroics so much that you wont notice it missing. I like the druid version because it applies automatically on casts and because it lets me have a pally for tank which seems to be a bit easier to box than DK.

Priest is amazing for AE heals - all the healers will do, but the resto shaman does lack a good AE heal IMO. Mage is mostly for convenience. Originally I took him for buffs and replenish, but replenish really doesn't matter unless you raid more serious content. He is very nice to have for ports and food though. The shaman is almost mandatory - nature resistance, tremor and ToW.

That was my original reasons for chosing my team composition - I would probably select another team today. Why? Because it's simply more fun (at least for me) to have more chars of the same class. Glory of the hero has been done with pally + 4 shaman which just goes to show that synergy isn't all that important.

Pally + 4 shaman has another advantage too - you can BG with the same team if you have dual specs. The paladin can turn into a decent healer/support char and the best part of it is that once you're decently geared, you can simply run heroics and gear up, but in terms of PvE and PvP gear. I would also consider DK + 4 shaman, for several reasons. The spell dmg taken debuff is one - another is the ability to pull casters closer to you. Targetted AE taunt is good also, though you can't keep it up permanently like consecrate (you don't really need to, except for a few select situations such as brann event, but you can do this anyway.

TLDR conclusion: I'd go with either pally + 4 shaman if you plan to PvP or DK + 4 shaman if you don't.

[Chilaxx]

Thanks everyone for your fast replies!

I think I'm going to level my shaman team, because it seems to be a group where you can achieve a lot with (glory of the hero ^^) and also pvp with. And when I'm a bit more advanced in multiboxing and ISBoxer I might start again with my mixed team. ^^

I want to take the time and reply on each of you guys as well because you all gave me some useful information ^^

@ SuddenSacrifice
The debuffing and procs of druids was one thing that held me back to level them because I wasn't able to handle the procs that good in my mixed team, so I can imagine the pain it would be when i have 3 or 4 boomkins

@ Gadzooks
To start off, my DK is specced Frost, Priest = Discipline(healer), Shaman = Elemental, Druid = Boomkin, Lock = Destuction.
My lock is destruction because of fur's click macro for it. And with some tweaking I managed to boost his dps a lot last week (somewhere around 800-900 @ lvl 69)
For all my other chars i'm also using /click macro's but tbh, I suck at keeping a fixed pace of clicking So my dps varies a lot.. except my shaman is always on top. Which I like about him But that's not the main reason I would go for a shaman team

@ Eloxy
Well at this moment I really would like to level my shaman + paladin team :-) But I wanted other player's advice on which has worked for them and which didn't

@ shaeman
Recently I've been whiping on content where I didn't whipe before.. so that's really frustrating as you can imagine I'm probly not going to write off my mixed team completely, but I do think I'm going to focus some more on leveling my shaman team first.

@ Naysayer
I think you're right and that has been a problem for me lately.. and this is something I dislike about boxing now. And boxing should be fun so think it's smart to step back from my mixed team for a while :-)

@ Fuzzyboy
That's why I chose my mixed team, because of the synergy and the classes I wanted to have at lvl 80. And thanks for pointing it out to me that this might not be the most important aspect of a team, this helped a lot in my decision :-)
My DK and paladin are on the same account so it's easy to eventually switch those. But at the moment I think I'm going to like a paladin tank a bit more because of the continue concecration and party buffs and utilities. And also that a paladin has more gear options eventually. If I'm going to pvp I could let him heal or go retribution. So this is also something nice to consider :-)


All of you thanks again!

Ciao!

[Raigirin]

I used to play 1*paladin, 3*hunter, 1*priest...
then I switched to 1*paladin & 4*shamans... oh my!

The ease of the classic pally, shammy group is staggering to say the least.
*All team members can rez
*Paladin tank is just excellent in my opinion
*Healing is a no brainer
*DPS is good (and easy)
*Totems!
*Shaman + Horde = nice racials
*No squishy clothies


I haven't played 5 druids yet but that will be my next team when Catalysm hits
(5 Worgen Druids FTW)

[Los]

Tbh oomkins are fun, but they cant heal in oomkin form, so you are stuck with switching constantly OR making 1 tree with the zapchickens.