MoP Beta - Group Composition viability (ongoing process)

[Mokoi]

First off.. I want this to be a thread where people can discuss various combinations, or groups for MoP. We are all kind of watching things, reading notes etc. For me, I like doing the theorycrafting. I like to know what options I have, and which ones offer me the best chances for success.

OBVIOUSLY this is still speculative. If you do not like speculation, please just move on. If I end up being the only person to use this thread, that's fine, too. I need a place to put my thoughts. If anyone else finds them useful, bonus. If not, no worries.

Since I am a 10 boxer, I will discuss both 5 man teams and 10 man teams. Sorry to those who do not have 10 (yet .. /evilgrin )

I will try and rank them, give them scores or points, and then calculate (at least how I would calculate them) which teams offer the best viability and stability.

Feel free to add, discuss, but not to flame.

One post, One Team.

I will use the following measurables to determine an overall "viability score" for each team. This final score, much like an IQ test is not an actual score, but a theoretical score. It may not have any bearing on if the team is good, fun or popular. It is merely my way of making sense of a huge amount of information.

Survivability - X/10
Pretty self-explanitory. How hard is it to kill the team? How much damage can the team endure while still being competitive? What kind of defensive cooldowns or passive damage reduction does the team have?

Damage - X/10
Can the team dish the damage? Ranged and Melee will have similar criteria. Can you stay on target? Are you mobile?

Healing - X/10
Can all team members heal? What if your healer dies? Healing is scored not just by what the dedicated healer (if there is one) can do, but overall healing. 4 shaman can still easily heal themselves if a paladin healer dies, but 4 warriors will be up shit creek.

Ease of use - X/10
How do abilities work? Can abilities be easily macro'd or are many good abilities passive? How much micro-management is required for the team to be effective? The more "no-brainer" abilities the better. Can I spam one button and my class fulfil it's role effectively?

Synergy - X/10
Does stacking this team offer buffs that they would not otherwise have access to if it were a solo toon? ie: multiple paladins can give both blessings, but multiple druids can not buff anymore than one druid can. Take into consideration heals, abilities etc that may affect multiple allies. 5x Wild growth is amazing, but 5x prayer of mending overwrites itself a lot, minimizing it's effectiveness.

Crowd Control - X/5
Obvious. Is the team able to lock-out, stun, incapacitate or otherwise CC a target, or multiple targets. Is this CC easy or difficult to use? (ie: 5 polymorphs are more difficult than one aoe fear to accomplish)

Longevity - X/5
Does this team rely on a resource that is limited, or scarce? ie: mana users run out of mana, DKs never run out of runes. This is primarily concerned with long fights, either in a BG or arena, where a team may face the challenge of "running out of steam". ie: a shaman with 0 mana is useless.

Flexibility - X/5
Does this team have multiple roles, for things like dungeons. When you need to do a quest or a dungeon run,or while leveling, can you queue for LFG / LFR easily. Can you switch to a tank spec and tank that world boss, or BG boss? Can your DPS switch to a healing spec and heal this raid? This dungeon? For this BG?

Recoverability - X/5
Whathappens when we wipe? or when we have lost 3/5 characters? What kind of ressurection or battle res have we got at our disposal? can any member of our team res any other member? ie: 5 feral druids will recover much easier than 5 rogues. In some situations, like AV.. we might need to res our toons instead of letting them res at a GY and run all the way back. We might have to use a rebirth in combat easily to continue to fight. (yes, we have mass res, but that's equal across all boards, and so can not be taken into account)

[Mokoi]

I want to start with one of my favorite teams... and one which my good friend, Mosg2 really has pioneered not just for the release of Cata, but ever since.

4-9 Deathknights and a Healer

The healer is a choice which is separated from the choice of the melee character, and so I will not theorycraft the use of different healers classes as heavily as the DKs.

Survivability - 9/10
DKs have excellent, and continue to have excellent survivability. This has not changed in MoP, and in fact has gotten better.

Damage - 7/10
DKs continue to have great damage. It is mostly Melee, and there seems to be a problem with downtime again, where runes and RP is diminished, with nothing to do but Auto-attack. That could prove to be a problem if it occurs when your target is at 10% and you have no way to stop them from healing to full before you have a rune again.

Healing - 7/10
Healing for this team relies heavily on the healer, which can be excellent, but is often killed easily, or runs out of mana. Once a healer is gone, this team must rely on self-heals, which are fairly good, but at a high cost of damage.

Ease of use - 9/10
Ever since Mosg2 revealed to us how brilliant he is, and his use of a first come first serve system, running a DK has never been easier. They continue to be an easy to manage with procs, cooldowns and other abilities. This does not seem to be affected yet in MoP. Almost all cooldowns can be macro'd, most abilities are easy to FCFS, and there are no procs which you really have to manage. g.g.

Synergy - 3/10
DK's do not offer buffs that they can share, or benefit from above and beyond a single DK. The choice of healer class will determine the buffs, and the DKs have no way to assist each other independently. However, DKs have Death Grip, and 5x Death grip is 5x better than one DG. This ability sunergy is very good, and accounts for all of the DK's points. ALSO: The new (but untested) lvl 90 talent point "Gorefiend's Grasp" and "Remorseless winter" seem beneficial when stacked, too. but conservatively we can not yet count on talents that have never been used.

Crowd Control - 3/5
DKs continue to have excellent CC, and if talented, have even more CC. A Darth Vader throat crush will mean that even those pesky tanks in BGs can not dodge or parry abilities (I assume) making even a hardened enemy easier to take out. Silences and Interrupts are easily macro'd or added to rotations. No long-term CC like Poly makes the class a bit weaker.

Longevity - 3/5
DKs use a resource which is continually regenerating, and therefore the DK will continue to deal damage even in super-long fights. Obviously healer longevity is seperate to this, and I have taken 2 points away to be conservative, knowing fully-well that a DK team without a healer is a dead DK team.

Flexibility - 4/5
DKs can fill two roles, and with a healer on the team they can easily queue for dungeons for gear, or raid in LFR easily and quickly (gear dependent). One point taken away because Melee teams are often harder to control and work in a dungeon / raid.

Recoverability - 4/5
DKs have a battle-res, which makes recovering in an area where it is too difficult or time-consuming to run back from a GY easier. Also a healer will always be able to ressurect fallen DKs, if he stays alive.

Final Score - 49 / 70

Remembering that the DK team loses a lot of points because there are no buffs to stack, and because it relies so heavily on a healer... DKs are still one of the most interesting, flexible and dominant teams available today.

[Mokoi]

5 or 10 Mages

A healer would be a good addition to maybe a BG group, but for most purposes, mages work best alone. This is due to many of their mechanics, like invisibility, mirror images, etc.

Survivability - 3/10
Mages have very little in the way of damage mitigation as a multiboxer. A solo frost mage is almost unkillable for many classes, but unless you're a God and more competent than the average bear, you will be a sitting duck as a multiboxer. This is bad news for our survivability.

Damage - 9/10
Nothing beats the damage of arcane mages while casting on a target. I took away a point because of course many times it's difficult to move and cast as arcane, but I am not discounting the idea that frost or fire could be way OP in MoP.. Either way, I would say that DPS as a mage is great, but contingent on having a clear field to shoot at. If they aren't aware of you, they are dead.

Healing - 3/10
Healing for this team relies solely on the glyph of evocate (confirmed still in game?) and on food eaten out of combat. Bad news on the healing front.

Ease of use -8/10
For the most part, I play arcane. Nothing easier than spamming one ability, on one bar that does 90% of your DPS. Arcane is pretty easy and you just target something red until it's dead. nothing complicated here. However!!... To play mages even better, requires a huge level of control and coordination. I played the shamans for years so I am in a turret mode in all of my ranged teams, so I am not giving myself the benefit of the doubt of being able to control them any better.

Synergy - 1/10
Mages don't offer much except for CCs that they can overlap. There are fery few abilities that overlap or benefit the mage more than if they were playing solo.

Crowd Control - 5/5
Poly, silence, roots, stun. Enough said. nothing competes with the (albeit difficult to control and master at times) CC of a mage.

Longevity - 2/5
Evocate, mana gems make for some more tools to stay in a fight, but when the tools and mana are gone, you are gone. g.g.

Flexibility - 2/5
in LFR mages are great, since we do easy, reliable and high DPS. in a Dungeon, you can not queue as a group, but like Beeq you may be able to burst the bosses down easily. unknown right now. In a BG sometimes it's nice to switch a DPS toon to heals for a boss, but I have found that 10 mages take a boss down so fast you rarely need to use anything but DPS to kill it, as long as there is a half decent healer and a plate-rambo around.

Recoverability - 0/5
If you die... that's it. no brez, no res (outside of guild res, which I think (is it?) might get nerfed or removed from the game.)

BONUS POINTS - 5/5

I am giving this team bonus points for being really hilarious. Nothing pisses horde off more than 10 mages appearing out of nowhere popping coodowns and stomping their face while Van is at 10% hahahahahahaha. good times.

Final Score - 33+5 / 70

Well, a really crappy score, but honestly I simply LOVE THIS TEAM!

The fun-factor of invising into a group of 40 horde and then KILLING ALL OF THEM is worth the fact that it's the worst team imaginable on paper (except rogues)

[Mokoi]

Reserved....

[Selz]

I want to start 10boxing also, but I have to get a new PC for that, im aiming for 10x mages in MoP as farm team, else im going with the regular 4-5man team either a mixed group or 4x Ele & 4x Ret
on top of that I hope to find someone to do PvE content with.

[MiRai]

I think what is slightly confusing to me is that some of the categories are worth 5 points and some are worth 10. Even at 44/75, DKs still get a failing grade of ~58% as per the Academic grading in the United States.

I like this, though. It'll be easy to point people to these posts for all the "What do you think is going to be the best comp to play in MoP?" threads that there will be before (and after) the expansion goes live.

[Mokoi]

Reserved.....

[Mokoi]

I want to start 10boxing also, but I have to get a new PC for that, im aiming for 10x mages in MoP as farm team, else im going with the regular 4-5man team either a mixed group or 4x Ele & 4x Ret
on top of that I hope to find someone to do PvE content with.

That's great Selz, but keep this thread to facts about the classes, and opinions on the points I have made, thanks. We don't really need another "I'm going to make ............ team " thread. we have those, now we need to know why

I think what is slightly confusing to me is that some of the categories are worth 5 points and some are worth 10. Even at 44/75, DKs still get a failing grade of ~58% as per the Academic grading in the United States.

I like this, though. It'll be easy to point people to these posts for all the "What do you think is going to be the best comp to play in MoP?" threads that there will be before (and after) the expansion goes live.

Mirai, sorry for the confusion. I am giving the different characteristics of the team different weights. I think that the survivability of the team is worth more than it's recoverability, or it's flexibility. Those are good, too but they are not as important. So even a team thats REALLY flexible, that's only worth half as much as a team who's really survivable (to me and for my purposes)

Also, this isn't an academic grade, since it is impossible to get 100%. I am guessing that we should expect a range of 30-50 from our favorite teams, and 10-30 for some of our crazier, silly or gimmicky teams (like rogues haha)

[Ualaa]

Would you do a separate post for the same class but with different specs?
Shockadin vs Ret Paladins; Ferals vs Resto Druids...

[Mokoi]

Would you do a separate post for the same class but with different specs?
Shockadin vs Ret Paladins; Ferals vs Resto Druids...

no, i consider a team as an investment in time. The investment to get to 90 will probably be sufficient to warrant careful choices of the multiople classes we likely will have at 85 when it comes out. This means that teams with multiple options (like druids) should score high because of their utility, and potential. I will do my best to get some more up. right now i am focused on my RAF lvling, and my videos on RAF boosting.