Are All Ranged DPS Created Equal?

[jrkilroy]

Hi there. I'm hoping to open up my new accounts and start my new team today. I am spending my lunch pondering my class choices and I'm thinking I'm going to start with tank/healer/ranged DPS.

Shammies seems to be excellent ranged because they can apply buffs at the same time.

Besides this, do any of the others bring anything really interesting? Any 3 matching DPS that should be avoided?

Thank you for your advice.

[Shodokan]

3 mages should bring the most DPS to the table, but no they aren't created equal as some have buffs and some don't etc.

[Ualaa]

They're not all created equal...

Druid (Balance)
- These require you to manage your Eclipse proc (switching between Wrath/Starfire) for optimal dps, which can be a pain while boxing or with multiple druids.
- They get you Innervate, Battle Rez, Normal Rez, Mark of the Wild (strong buff), Increased crit chance, 13% increased spell damage, very strong AoE options... This druid can heal too, but has to drop out of their DPS (Moonkin Form).

Hunter (Any Spec)
- Hunters have decent single and aoe dps, can buff your Nature Resist, increase the parties out-of-combat run speed, have a pet...

Mage (Any Spec)
- Arcane is probably the highest DPS toon for heroics. Frost gets you a lot of snare/freezes, which can rock for an all caster team. Fire is good burst too, but procs to manage.
- Mages have sheep, an intellect buff, can amplify/dampen magic, bring portals and conjured food as utility benefits too.

Priest (Shadow)
- Haven't played with shadow priests much, but they get you Replenishment which is mana regen, can passively heal the party as they dps.
- They bring Fortitude (hit points), Spirit buff, PW: Shield, Fear Ward, Mass Dispel etc to the table, and in a pinch can heal if necessary, but that drops them out of shadow form.

Shaman (Elemental)
- A strong choice, because of the totem buffs. This caster has mail armor and a shield, making them tougher against melee.
- They put out a lot of burst, deal decent damage, can buff Nature, Fire, Frost resists, summon a tanking pet or AoE damage pet, while they don't have Fortitude/Kings/Mark/AI type buffs, they add more then any other class to buff melee or caster dps.

Warlock (Any Spec)
- Affliction is dots, which is mobile damage... against trash they won't appear to have high damage, but on bosses they're up there with anything. Demonology is between the other two, in style and with decent gear up there in damage. Destruction plays like a mage.
- Any spec gets 13% spell power, via Curse. They bring Soul Stones, Health Stones, a buff from several of their pets, Party Summoning, Underwater Breathing...

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Probably the biggest reason people tend to choose shammies is totems.

• Anti-fear totem
• automatic disease/poison cleansing totem
• healing totems (group renew, basically)
• +spell damage totem
• AoE and tanking elementals
• spell absorb (grounding totem)
• AoE snare

The anti-fear (staggered tremor totems), healing stream and auto-cleanse totems are probably the most useful for preventing the kind of uncontrolled craziness that makes things harder to 5-box.

Mages are the easiest raw DPS output when gearing up. Shammies are probably the highest utility from totems + heals + wipe prevention. Hunters are the easiest to manage in terms of tank aggro with Misdirect/feign death.

[jrkilroy]

So which one is the "IWIN" button?

How viable is mixed party for 5-box newbie? Would I be asking for trouble with having to sync all those rotations?

Thank you again.

P.S. This is a very friendly forum! Thank you for all your help!

[crowdx]

My first team was pally tank, 2 warlocks, hunter and resto druid and I liked that setup. Now I just started running a shammy team through heroics and I have to say they are MUCH easier to use than my main group. The big plus I am seeing is their AoE damage with chain lightning and also their buffs are a big help in some instances (Anub with the poision) .
Overall with a group of shammies the macros are very easy and no procs to worry about.

[Chowdog]

I have my mage team approaching 70 now. Started a hunter team but after playing the mages I dont think I will pick up the hunters again. I am playing all frost atm and its a freaking breeze. I will try out arcane when I hit 80.. Easy to manage rotation on arcane and a ton of dmg..

[Ualaa]

I'd say the easiest team to start with would be:
- (Prot) Paladin tank.
- 3x or 4x Elemental Shaman (dps)
- If you go 3x Shaman, go 1x Boomkin or 1x Warlock for the 13% spell power buff (warlock is better, in that there is no Eclipse to manage).

3x Shaman can handle healing for all 5-man content.



However, if you want your first team to be able to both PvE and PvP well.

Swap out the Paladin for a Druid.
Feral is almost as good of a tank as a Pally, a little harder to macro but still very strong.
And then dual-spec the Druid to Boomkin, and run with all casters in battlegrounds.

[SideWays]

So which one is the "IWIN" button?

How viable is mixed party for 5-box newbie? Would I be asking for trouble with having to sync all those rotations?

Thank you again.

P.S. This is a very friendly forum! Thank you for all your help!

There is no real "IWIN" button (class^^). Mixed teams arent much harder to manage than one-class teams. Click macros make DPS management very easy. If you are using ISboxer healing is no problem either. I started with a shaman team but if you know more than one class mixed teams are no problem

[Ghallo]

There is no real "IWIN" button (class^^). Mixed teams arent much harder to manage than one-class teams. Click macros make DPS management very easy. If you are using ISboxer healing is no problem either. I started with a shaman team but if you know more than one class mixed teams are no problem

I've played a mixed team from the beginning. While the combinations are endless, I love having 3 warlocks and a resto shammy. Some fights I want a priest healer and other fights I am really glad for the shammy healer - it really is very situational. However, I always love having my Warlock DPS. Seriously, they are very boxer friendly - with 0|41|30 their Felguards each do 500-600 DPS and they have 3 really damaging dots (2 of which are instant cast). Soul Stones make it easy to recover from a wipe, and summons make it easy to go back and repair.

SoC is my single favorite ranged AoE as a boxer. When I play solo, targeted AoE's are fine - but they are very unfun to box. I can simply spam SoC at whatever target I am banging on and between 3 Felguards and my pally the 1k damage mark is always hit before the next SoC comes in. This flattens trash fast, which makes instances fun

Every group combination can work (now). Blizzard has made just about every class combination "viable" as long as you are using the class correctly.