Comparison of squads for 5 man dungeons

[nodoze]

Perrigin,

For 1) the 4 Warrior+Shaman in a melee-cleave would likely be the most efficient at cap assuming a single shaman would be fine healing that group to cap, at cap, and from a single spec that allows you to do all the other content besides dungeons (if any) you want your Shaman to do at cap. From 40+ the Shaman has Rank 1-3 Chain Heals which should be very nice AoE-ish heals for the party (downranking for efficiency when appropriate). That is all assuming the Shaman can do all of that without going OOM. Unfortunately I didn't play Shaman in Vanilla and have never played on private servers so hopefully others can chime in. That group should only ever need Water for the Shaman so it shouldn't be too costly and the gold from 4 Warriors cleaving though dungeons with WindFury should more than cover that!

Since frequent repecing can get very costly one key will be finding a spec which can do the role(s) you want for the content you want at cap.

What content do you want to use your Shaman Main in besides dungeons, if any (WPVP,BattleGrounds,Raids,etc)?

For each type of content, what role(s) do you want your Shaman Main to be able to do effectively without respecing between content?

Once you answer those questions the key will be specing into a single spec that meets those goals yet still allows you to heal your melee-cleave team. Most likely that will put you in some kind of Elemental-Resto spec and hopefully someone with more experience can chime in with recommendations once we have more context.

Note that most of the above is centered on PVE boxing dungeon efficiency... If you do plan to do WPVP with your group may want to look at swapping in a 2nd Healer and/or even switch to a different group if doing WPVP (with your full group and not just your main) is a big priority.