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

[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.

[EaTCarbS]

I prefer to use a Pally as a healer because you can do pretty well just standing there with the pally dealing out those epic heals. You've got superb defensive cooldowns and most of your spells have a cast time, so you can sit there and cast while your melee dps tear stuff apart. I often top the healing charts in bgs, but thats probably cause ive got aoe healing going on 9 dks constantly. I did pally/x4 enh in early cata with reasonable success. Have you considered driving your shamans with a pally ellay?

[heyaz]

I prefer to use a Pally as a healer because you can do pretty well just standing there with the pally dealing out those epic heals. You've got superb defensive cooldowns and most of your spells have a cast time, so you can sit there and cast while your melee dps tear stuff apart.

I like the large punch heals a paladin has, but how does hard casting and long cast times benefit a multiboxing team? You have resto shaman somewhere in the middle, also with some hard hitting heals with a cast time, some instants, and a lot of cooldowns. Then resto druids with mostly instants, aoe healing, a lot of mobility, and incarnation (tree).

I guess instead of just wondering, I can try out the latter two right away as they're geared and ready to go. First thoughts are shaman will need peels (not a problem with DKs as the DPS though), and resto druids may lack big enough heals to prevent death on a target that's being focused. But I guess I'll find out.

[Ualaa]

For PvE, pretty much either composition is going to be fine in 5-man content.
I don't know how well the Enhance works, as I've not played that composition... and I haven't done much PvE (aside from Leveling and Playing the AH) in the last 2-3 years...

If there is not an enrage mechanic, 4x Blood with 1x Heals can do anything and it is rather trivial.
At least as far as pull size, number of mobs on you, etc.
If you need to control a vehicle or whatever, that's going to make class choice and class abilities irrelevant.
Last expansion, I'd think more people ran 4x Blood then 1x Blood and 3x Frost/Unholy, along with their healer... at least that was the impression, from those who are active on the forums.

I'd imagine 4x Shaman and a Tank is going to be fine as well.
You could spec one of the Shaman as Resto, and suddenly you have a Holy Trinity too.



For PvP...

I don't know that much about Enhance...
I do know that 5-box anything else, generally (almost every time) loses very quickly to boxed DK teams... but your metrics against another boxer is less important than how you do against non-boxed opposition that you encounter ~200x more often.

The Pally/4x DKs...

You have Obliterate, which hits really hard if the target has diseases on them (which you can apply with Outbreak).
You can spread your diseases with Blood Boil (and the Tier 1 Talent).

You have Howling Blast, which is 30 yard range.
It applies Frost Fever to everyone within 10 yards of the primary target.
With Chillblains, anyone with Frost Fever is snared.
Howling Blast doesn't hit a 90, nearly as hard as it hit 85s (in relation to their health)... but it still is AoE/Melee Cleave, which is huge to have and an immense issue if your composition doesn't have it.
I had my Howling Blast set to round-robin Chains of Ice (on one DK) and Howling Blast on the others... that way, even if one was dead, the kill target was basically constantly rooted.

Death Grip basically makes your team permanently immune to every Snare/Root effect in the game... as whether you move or not, the target comes to you.
With four Death Grips, and the glyph that refreshes the ability when you kill something that offers experience or honor, you basically have unlimited uses.

Icy Touch, with the glyph is purge; so both compositions have this.

The DKs have a lot of defensive cooldowns.
- Anti-Magic Shell makes you immune to anything that gives a debuff icon, for the 5 seconds it is up.
- Pillar of Frost makes you immune to knockback effects.
- Lichborne makes you immune (and breaks you out of) Fear/Charm/Sleep effects.
- Icebound Fortitude makes you immune to Stuns (and can break you out of them).
- Combined with a Trinket, that is two breaks of many effects which quickly brings into play Diminishing Returns.

At 90th, Desecrated Ground is an 8 second/2min CD immunity to Loss of Control effects too.
But you can also take the AoE stun, which with multiple DKs is applied much faster.

If you glyph your Pillar of Frost, it roots you but makes you immune to all 'Loss of Control Effects', for the duration.
You can macro it.... /cast PoF and /Cancelaura PoF... which is an extra trinket on a 1 min timer.
If you do, you are giving up the bonus STR from PoF.

[Ellay]

That is a very nice compilation of what I figured DK's brought to the table. It seems the nice things about them have improved so much since 80.

For Obliterate does it have to be that specific DK's diseases up to gain the bonus or when you apply it or on 4x DK they won't be able to dispel them fast enough?

[heyaz]

For Obliterate does it have to be that specific DK's diseases up to gain the bonus or when you apply it or on 4x DK they won't be able to dispel them fast enough?

It's per DK so you apply them all with outbreak, or make it simply and pop unholy blight which will AoE apply both diseases every second. You get an additional 12.5% damage per disease. The big thing is killing machine procs which guarantees a crit, but there's not much you can do about that since it's a random proc. A few DKS will usually have it up.

[Shodokan]

Outside of your very few offensive (burst) abilities to increase damage... your damage is consistent and normally not enough to force healers to oom in the time it takes them to kill you after you've AMS'd. In 5's you basically need to AMS offensively a majority of the time or to avoid ring of frost (which is instant now so that isn't really all that possible). As multiple dks in arena if they have a single frost mage and any other burst class you can be killed before your paladin can trinket/bubble to heal you.

With shaman you get an instantgib and possibly a second instant gib if you aren't CC'd fast enough or they do it at the wrong time in which case you win.

Dk's in general right now aren't all that strong and require specific compositions to do well. They are not a class that can be stacked to become more effective right now. Dk's for the group get nothing other than silence + grip + AOE freeze which you can easily get out of.

Shaman get grounding totem for anti-cc (need ams/lichborne for this), get anti-fear (lichborne) that can be done round-robin which makes fears useless, AOE damage increase, AOE freedom, Heals, Two forms of CC (stun, hex).

DK burst being on 1 sec GCD per ability can be a big deal since oblit hits so hard... but if they get bop'd and have a bunch of things on them even glyphed it will be hard to get it off (unlike shaman with double purge).

Shaman have more survivability as a GROUP, on an individual basis because of pet sac you have more on the dk (but you will die in 5 seconds anyway).

If you plan on doing bgs either works, dks are stronger IMO because of the cleave damage but the increase in damage to that skill over time will not be proportional to the amount of health you will see in later seasons where as enhance shaman's 1 shot really isn't going to change.

Shaman are also one of the only offhealers that make a difference now because of the glyph for maelstrom weapon.


Like i've said before and will continue to say... if you want to do really well in arena play a multi-class comp with control, burst and play with other people... if you want to play yourself with no one to help then do bgs on dks+hpal IMO.