Quote Originally Posted by Apatheist View Post
If you just want a level 60 druid, swapping a mage out won't prevent you from clearing dungeons. Any tank, healer and 3*DPS combo will be able to clear dungeons. Some comps will take longer and may not be as viable in PvP. If you're doing it in order to gain DPS though, you'll lose more DPS replacing a mage with an oomkin than 5% crit will give you. A warlock would increase party DPS and provide more utility.

As far as efficiency goes -- I'm fairly sure you'll get 5 characters to 60 faster by grinding dungeons together rather than leveling in two separate groups. If you level in dungeons from the start you'll be in pretty much full blues by the time you hit 60 and geared enough to start farming preraid BiS. Here's a preraid BiS list so you can get an idea which pieces to aim for while leveling. As I've said before, the stat difference between rare and epic gear is immense in classic -- much more so than in other expansions. There are some level 40-50 rares and epics that are better than raid tier gear. Warden Staff and Smoking Heart of the Mountain are good examples. Warden Staff is a level 43 item but is better than Naxx tier weapons for a feral tank.
Yes, I'm fairly familiar with vanilla Druid gear, as I mained as resto through MC and had both of those epics (I leveled Ench just for Smoking Heart) . Another thought with the Balance druid (aside from crit aura) was Innervate, since a Prot Pally stacking defensive gear will have a very low mana pool and will spend a bit of time drinking. I didn't play Alli until just before TBC, so my knowledge of Pallys during vanilla is limited.