1x Pal/4x Dk Vs 1xDru/4xSham - theorycrafting breakdown - let's talk some stuff

[Ellay]

Having a bit of a dilemma here while leveling up my Shaman and would like some input.

I picked up a Druid for tanking dungeons and healing for PvP to go along with 4x enhancement Shaman. At 84 I queue'd up for a random bg and got AV last night. I did ok... something felt off. I think it was that it's a different playstyle because you have to run into the thick of it and in AV, it's just a giant cluster. It also didn't help that apparently people twink out characters even in the 80-84 bracket.. I mean holy shit just level to 90.
/rant

So for dungeon running the Druid/Shaman work very well, the offheals on the enhance seem to be enough to handle any dungeon with ease. I imagine a holy paladin with 1 dk tank and 3 dps dk is much the same. So they both win for dungeons, I'd probably put the pal/dk combo on a higher tier simply because it's the holy trinity setup. Pure healer / Pure tank / 3 dps.

For PvP the Shamans have a lot of their sleeves. Basically you can round robin it so the group has fear immunity for 30 seconds or more, and movement immunity for 30 seconds or more. Along with the ability to 1 shot every 3 min. This goes extremely well in arenas but as 5's from what I have read is not very active, it is a limited scene.

The DK's get many self fear breaks, a great group anti magic zone you can round robin. A much higher tier AoE ability, the Shamans is almost non existent. Can pull players towards you instead, or pull them out of the group.

I am really simplifying everything here and will probably break this down even further but just wanted others to chime in. I think these two combo's are the main players in the current form of the game.

It boils down to me - Enhancement better for Arenas. DK's better for everything else, and everything else is.. a lot.

[Owltoid]

I've been dominating in BGs with four enhancement shamans, even against the twinks. The enhancement have so much survivability that they have performed better than any other team I've ever played (I have not played DKs).

For PvE, unfortunately for some fights you need a magic dispel which means one shaman going resto for those specific boss fights. Otherwise, they haven't had any issues for me so far (early in MoP content to date). My pally team was better for PvE because pallies have even more passive healing, but either team can do just fine for PvE.

I dont know if DKs or shamans will be better for arena, but enhancement is the only spec we have seen so far that can global a toon. Personally, I think enhancement will be better for BGs, though DKs will be strong.

[Ellay]

Thanks Owltoid, that's given me new hope. I think it is just the gear gap at the moment.

[Owltoid]

I should mention I'm running a Druid tank with the team. The Druid has only recently started doing BGs with the shaman, but that's just because of the 85-89 bracket I'm doing AV for leveling. I've made the decision to just run 4 in BGs (other than leveling) as I feel 5 is too many toons at once. Obviously for 40 man BGs it doesn't matter, but 4 toons is the absolute max for 10 mans, and I would argue that for 15 mans 5 toons in one spot is too much.

Not that it matters, but 4 enhancement shamans is the first time I could actually win in WSG. I could carry the flag and stay alive with massive healing support from my toons, or I could assault their flag carrier with some ease once popping cooldowns. Really the only class I have trouble with is resto Druids, but I think it's because I'm not effectively using purge. Once I get ascendance I will likely save it for those pesky druids.

More rambling: originally I thought I'd run my Druid as resto with the shamans. However, so far I haven't needed healing support in BGs. Arena will be different, and I may try to heal my own toons, but I'm guessing I'd be more successful with a solo healer.

[Ellay]

I agree as well 5 characters in some bg's feels a little cramped when you can see it hurts the overall team. Easiest example is AB. The others you can get away with it more or less.

I'll stick it out though with this comp and get them to 90 at the least and re-evaluate from there. I do have a set of 4 dk's and 1 paladin mixed across a couple servers that would cost an arm and a leg to put on my current server, but it is there.

[Owltoid]

Damn iPhone.

4 toons BGs. Go enhancement
5 toons BGs, either.
4 toons arena. Go enhancement
5 toons arena, probably DKs and pally, but hasn't been proven yet.

[Kruschpakx4]

raidwide freedom/fearbreak/stormlash/bloodlust/healing tide is much more worth in bgs than everything dks have

[djensen2010]

raidwide freedom/fearbreak/stormlash/bloodlust/healing tide is much more worth in bgs than everything dks have

But what compensates for howling blast? O.o lol

Here i go, I run 8dks and 2 heals or 7 and 3, but i run with our 15 boxer who runs 9 shamans (all enhance) and 6 heals. There hasnt been 1 bg that he has scored more killing blows than me in. I average 25-30 kb's on each of my characters per game, talking AV and Ioc of course. Death grip is still probably the best thing about the death knight as well as howling blast. So long as you got some heals you can do well in bgs because your killing stuff so fast with obliterate criting for around 100-120k even on fully gear opponents. Gorefiends grasp+remorsless winter (5 sec stun on all target within melee range) or desecrated ground (second pvp trinket). choose your poison. I love the Death knights. i have 7 shamans at 87 and i love off heals and support but the lack of Aoe is plain annoying. Arena i see the enhance slightly ahead only because of the near 100% guarantee of an insta-gib with ascendance.

Ill take 4 dks and a healer in a random bg and post my results. I 10 boxed the Temple map (idk remember the name but its the one with the 4 orbs) and was winning right till the end when they smartened up and just kited me but 10 v 10 i win simply because of the absurd damage and no escape because of death grip and chilblains. i cant see it being too terribly different with a 5 man team.

[Owltoid]

Might as well be talking about two different games with 10 or 15 boxing versus 4 or 5. Also, killing blows isn't the point of BGs. I'm sure most of us already have Bloodthirsty. Being kited around as a 10 boxer is exactly the reason to not have that many toons controlled by one person in BGs. Even if you're unkillable it doesn't help when you need to control multiple nodes.

I guess I just don't see the point in PvP with 10 or more. I'm always amazed at those who solo raid, but in PvP if you can't kill everything around due to sheer brute force and over healing with 10 or more toons then you have issues. A 4 or 5 man team is often outnumbered and that's where the multiboxing skill makes or breaks the fight. I don't understand how you can't see it being terribly different between 5 boxing and 10 boxing.

[heyaz]

It boils down to me - Enhancement better for Arenas. DK's better for everything else, and everything else is.. a lot.

Yes... everything is quite a lot now. You have more BGs than ever, WG and TB at 90, daily quest hubs in MoP with constant action, constant world pvp in some areas (deepholm, blasted lands, probably others).

I am thoroughly enjoying my DKs at 90. Their uptime is near constant and although I don't have an instant kill, obliterate hits pretty hard and is not on a long cooldown. Pulling your enemies to you is always going to be better than chasing them even with a speed buff and immunity. I have 2 Asphyxiate (stun version of strangulate on a 1 minute CD) across the team to deal with troublemakers, and an nice aoe cc on a 1 minute (Gorefriend's Graspx1 + Remorseless Winterx4).

I don't know about burst on enhancement outside of Ascendance on a 3 minute cooldown. Compared to DKs it looks pretty mediocre. Self heals are nice but when you have to chase everyone down, and you're squishy, uptime is going to suffer.

For a 5 man team with healer most people seem to run paladin, whether they are best I don't know, but I get the impression not everyone evaluated the alternatives. I asked around and what I hear a lot is "they're all in plate" or "they can all be the same race". Oh, hammer/fist of justice is another one I hear a lot. If I want to stun and gib someone I can use asphyxiate :/

I don't have one at 90 so I'm going to try resto shaman or druid. I'm not quite setup to go over 5 box but I like the idea of 5x DK + 2-4x resto shaman. Windwalk totem, passive healing totems, and chain heal / ascendance / etc. would be extremely useful. I'll probably only use this in larger settings though - WG/TB, 40 man BGs, and world pvp.