Good melee group combinations

[Shodokan]

I run:

UA/Prot Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Blood DK + Resto Druid for PvE
Arms Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Unholy/Frost DK for PVP + Resto Druid / Holy Paladin for BGs (Disc Priest partner for Arenas)

I did not design my team around optimal PvE performance, but it work's quite well. These classes/specs have zero proc management and fairly simple priority sequences, so I find it easy to get fairly close to optimal performance with each class using spam macros.

Pretty impressive IMO. Your arena rating and such. I'm still tempted to do this but it seems that dk/rets get so many buffs that it will be worth it to stick with them.

[Whitz]

I run:

UA/Prot Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Blood DK + Resto Druid for PvE
Arms Warrior + Ret Paladin + Enh Shaman + Unholy/Frost DK for PVP + Resto Druid / Holy Paladin for BGs (Disc Priest partner for Arenas)

I did not design my team around optimal PvE performance, but it work's quite well. These classes/specs have zero proc management and fairly simple priority sequences, so I find it easy to get fairly close to optimal performance with each class using spam macros.

I approve your arena team name ^^

[Tdog]

In my runs with the pally team, the single biggest problem with melee groups is being in range for AoE boss effects. That being the case, passive/semi-active healing become a big part of living long enough to kill whatever you're killing. As things stand today, ret pallies are the kings of self-healing with judgement of light and lay on hands. For those really rough fights, seal of light is stupid amounts of passive healing with each hit. I think probably the only thing that would heal better would be 4 rets and a bear druid for Improved LotP heals.

I'm actually working on a Druid team to try this very combo out. Back when SOL stacked x5 it was just insane passive healing. I'm thinking adding a bear to my 4rets could be almost as good as that use to be.

[drevil]

zugdud

i have some PVP questions :-)

- so how does this work .. burst on, focus until enemy does his immu, then mass-dispell and finish him?

- does the enemy team go for your enhancer only, does he die often?

- how well does it work for bgs?

thanks ;-)

.

[Zugdud]

- so how does this work .. burst on, focus until enemy does his immu, then mass-dispell and finish him?
.

In order to beat decent (or better) teams in the Arena I found that I needed to leverage pretty much every ability in the teams toolbox. No 2 arena matches necessarly play out the same way, but as an example I tend to follow this pattern for most maps/teams: Hungering Cold->Fear Bomb->Wind Shears on Healer A-> Chain Silences on Healer B-> purge+Ms+DPS on kill target. To help orchestrate this, I set 2 different focus targets (1 for my shaman for wind shear and hex, and the other for my paladin + DK for repentance,strangulate,leap+gnaw). I have a hard enough time landing wind shear interrupt, and on top of everything else I found controlling a healer here beyond my ability. That's not to say it's not possible, just that I couldn't handle it (so Cadderla picks up my slack).

- does the enemy team go for your enhancer only, does he die often?
.

My warrior is almost always the first kill target by other teams, he spends a bulk of his time in sword and board mode My shaman does get his fair share of attention but it pales in comparison to the agro generated by my Warrior. The shaman spends most of his time purging and dropping totems so I gear him for raw survivability (resilience) over boosting offensive attributes as he spends most of his "effort" on non damage dealing abilities so the sacrifice is lower then for other members of the team. Additionally, I include "equip shield" in his defensive cooldown macros which also boosts his physical survivability without impacting his ability to spam purge and totems . I use a dedicated hotkey for each team mate to "go defensive" and a single key to make all team mates "go offensive". I found that with the way most arena matches played out, someone will get focused and once he has "D'd up" the team will select a new kill target. So, I just found it more efficent to use a single "go offensive key" which I find easy enough to weave in between multiple toons going defensive. (Warrior going defensive+sword and board to battle+2 hander, DK going frost to unholy, shaman going 1+shield to dual wield, etc)

- how well does it work for bgs?
.

Well that depends on you define work , I haven't run very many 40v40 BGs as I don't find them as entertaining instead preferring EOTS/AB/WSG/SOTA as my random daily. It's rare that i'll actually be overwhelmed and wipe, and killing people is never an issue, but controlling 33-50% of the team in one location of the map can create difficulty with completing objectives though I suppose all 5 boxers share this problem (I can cleave through packs of players fairly quickly though, so it's efficient ). I do it find it very easy to box my own healer in BGs however, as the insane level of micromanagement required for success in Arena is definitly not required to steamroll unorganized Zergs of BGers. I rarly need to do much else outside of spamming damage with my melee, so I can devoate most of my attention to playing my healer more efficiently.

FWIW my input hardware is as follows:
G13 + Naga Razr + Logitech flight pedals. I find the G13 absolutly essential to play my team as it allows me to controll movement with the thumb stick leaving my 4 fingers free to hit between 1-4 keys at any given time. This makes it very comfortable to simultaneously heal while dealing damage, as playing a resto druid requires constant preemptive hotting of your team in PvP

[drevil]

zugdud, thanks for the quick answer :-)