Currently leveling up a 20 man ZG/AQ farming team - What do you all think?

[nodoze]

Hey there,

That second party doesn't have 4 warriors because I didn't have enough space and I want extra utility. I want to have 2 Curses. I want to have an extra mana burner character (in this case, drain mana) for that optional AQ boss in the future. Having an extra warlock saves a lot of time if I want to make healthstones for my entire raid. Also, more importantly, in the future, I can use my druid as a tank and put it in the 3-warrior group for extra melee physical crit chance, and instead have the warlock in my main tank party for Blood Pact. Or, inversely, I could have the tank druid in my main tank party and instead have the hunter in that 3-warrior group (Trueshot Aura might be better for Fury Warriors than the increased crit chance, since they already crit a lot with Recklessness).

At first I wanted to go full Fury Warriors for maximum burst, but then I realized that my life would be a lot easier if I have some mages to CC raid trash mobs and kill them one at a time, and also to AoE-burst down adds summoned by certain bosses in ZG. Furthermore, while Sheep CC is optional in ZG, it's almost a necessity in AQ20.

Thanks for the detailed response. Great info.

There is already at least one pretty much all warriors+shaman raid group out there and variety is good so I am glad to see a different approach.

It sounds like Weepy is potentially at the other end of the spectrum with 9+ ranged (8mages+1warlock so far) and only 4 warriors (all of which could be tanks if need be) and 1 Priest & 1 Shaman at this point. If Weepy on his remaining 5 slots goes something like Druid & a mix of healers & ranged (mainly mages) on his remaining 5 slots he could be as reasonably close to a "rolling ignite multibox raid" as possible to cover the other extreme...

So with both extremes potentially covered it would be great to see how your more balanced "middle-of-the road" approach goes.

The only other thing I can think of is to review Tazeon's comments closely and make sure you have tanks and healers covered.

Tank-wise I suspect you can be good as any of your current 7 Fury Warriors could either off-tank or be converted to a full Prot spec if need be and you already have both a Druid and a Warlock available/planned to press into at least specialized Tank service so I suspect you are good there.

Heale-rwise I am a little more concerned (especially if you convert the Druid to being a Tank) as you only have 1 Priest and 3 Shaman and I have always heard that Shaman were mana inefficient... My understanding of "conventional wisdom" is that only Priests and Holy Paladins are true full raid healers and Druids/Shaman are more niche due to "classic hybrid-tax" mana issues (but take that with "multiple grains of salt" as I always main Paladins so only played Shaman from BC->WotLK on and thus can't personally speak to Shaman in Vanilla/Classic). For built in AI assistance & mult-boxing simplicity it is hard to argue with chain-heal so hopefully shaman can get your healing done in Classic if needed (and that could free your Priest to focus on doing shields/HoTs)... I 5boxed Paladin+4Shaman & 10boxed Paladin+9Shaman (& various other combos) so I know they can get it done in BC->WotLK just can't speak to Classic...

[dustofoblivion]

Thanks for the detailed response. Great info.

There is already at least one pretty much all warriors+shaman raid group out there and variety is good so I am glad to see a different approach.

It sounds like Weepy is potentially at the other end of the spectrum with 9+ ranged (8mages+1warlock so far) and only 4 warriors (all of which could be tanks if need be) and 1 Priest & 1 Shaman at this point. If Weepy on his remaining 5 slots goes something like Druid & a mix of healers & ranged (mainly mages) on his remaining 5 slots he could be as reasonably close to a "rolling ignite multibox raid" as possible to cover the other extreme...

So with both extremes potentially covered it would be great to see how your more balanced "middle-of-the road" approach goes.

The only other thing I can think of is to review Tazeon's comments closely and make sure you have tanks and healers covered.

Tank-wise I suspect you can be good as any of your current 7 Fury Warriors could either off-tank or be converted to a full Prot spec if need be and you already have both a Druid and a Warlock available/planned to press into at least specialized Tank service so I suspect you are good there.

Heale-rwise I am a little more concerned (especially if you convert the Druid to being a Tank) as you only have 1 Priest and 3 Shaman and I have always heard that Shaman were mana inefficient... My understanding of "conventional wisdom" is that only Priests and Holy Paladins are true full raid healers and Druids/Shaman are more niche due to "classic hybrid-tax" mana issues (but take that with "multiple grains of salt" as I always main Paladins so only played Shaman from BC->WotLK on and thus can't personally speak to Shaman in Vanilla/Classic). For built in AI assistance & mult-boxing simplicity it is hard to argue with chain-heal so hopefully shaman can get your healing done in Classic if needed (and that could free your Priest to focus on doing shields/HoTs)... I 5boxed Paladin+4Shaman & 10boxed Paladin+9Shaman (& various other combos) so I know they can get it done in BC->WotLK just can't speak to Classic...

Thanks for the reply.

I am making note of the comments about a potential lack of healers and the mana-inefficiency of resto shaman. I hadn't thought about this.

I had a couple of reasons for wanting 3 Shamans. First reason being obviously the totem utility, which is a must for Fury Warriors and which is also just powerful in Classic in general. The second reason is that most of the time my characters will be clumped together in 2 parties, the caster/ranged/healer one, and the melee one. This makes Chain Heal a very attractive option. The third reason is the option to use one of the Shamans either as a Resto/Enhancement hybrid or as a full Enhancement shaman with Annihilator for the armor reduction debuff.

I'm hoping that with my high burst setup and with a stock of mana potions and with Mana Tide totem, I will be fine for raid bosses.

If mana sustain ends up becoming a clear problem, I will either replace one of my Fury Warriors with a second healer priest, or respec my druid tank to resto and convert one of my Fury Warriors to a full tank or a fury/prot off-tank. Do you think there's a clear winner between these two options here?

[nodoze]

Thanks for the reply.

I am making note of the comments about a potential lack of healers and the mana-inefficiency of resto shaman. I hadn't thought about this.

I had a couple of reasons for wanting 3 Shamans. First reason being obviously the totem utility, which is a must for Fury Warriors and which is also just powerful in Classic in general. The second reason is that most of the time my characters will be clumped together in 2 parties, the caster/ranged/healer one, and the melee one. This makes Chain Heal a very attractive option. The third reason is the option to use one of the Shamans either as a Resto/Enhancement hybrid or as a full Enhancement shaman with Annihilator for the armor reduction debuff.

I'm hoping that with my high burst setup and with a stock of mana potions and with Mana Tide totem, I will be fine for raid bosses.

If mana sustain ends up becoming a clear problem, I will either replace one of my Fury Warriors with a second healer priest, or respec my druid tank to resto and convert one of my Fury Warriors to a full tank or a fury/prot off-tank. Do you think there's a clear winner between these two options here?

I am a big fan of Hybrids with Shaman being my 2nd favorite class for PVE so I really hope it works out and their flexibility plays well for you (I know they should in BC+ and hope so now). I have heard good things from some 5boxers of Shaman that they can indeed sustain if built right so maybe one or more of them may chime in (I don't know the details of how they built to push sustain and then again you can always leverage consumables).

I would definitely watch the ZooBoxing ZG videos that Congau found (AWESOME FIND THANKS AGAIN !!!).

It sounds like he leveled four 4 man teams (each with a tank and healer and 3 DPS) and for the 20 man raid, like you are saying above, he also kinda breaks his team into 2 main 10 man groups (one ranged group and one melee group (with some ranged in it)). In the end between totems and Chain Heals I think you may actually be able to come out ahead in many ways.

There are several things he could maybe do better (as is the case for all of us I suspect) but is very competent and works his raid pretty well (and we are seeing him in his early attempts at the various areas).

Some observations:

His rogue appears pretty useless and dies a ton. If he brought him for chests and/or lockboxes I would personally just use engineering charges (or just leave them) and replace the Rogue with something else.

He has 4 tanks (2 Warriors+2 Druids) with his Warrior as his main Tank and uses them like I was referencing above (instead of CC). His ZG Venoxis fight video shows them best with his main Warrior taking 2 adds and then the other Warrior taking one add and the 1st Druid tank taking one add and the 2nd druid taking the boss. According to his addon log that is his 2nd kill for that boss and he really starts well with all 4 tanks doing great jobs. Things go a little south when he loses a Druid tank on the boss but he recovers that well and picks up the boss quick on his main warrior and re-positions him. Then the Boss AoE kills the rogue fast and then the last 2 off-tanks (though if he had some action target groups to pause their assists they likely would have been fine (except maybe the rogue)). From that point forward he keeps deep healing the main tank (and only tank left) and focuses on burning the boss and gets the win (though the 4 focused healing barely kept the main tank alive)!

I would note that he does indeed have 4 main healers (2 Paladins & 2 Priests) and it looks like sometimes even with them going all out with heals and his main tank barely survives... I believe his 3rd Priest is a Shadow Priest buffing the Warlocks so he could increase his healing output without changing his composition if he needed to... I think he using Grid2 for healing and not sure how he breaks up the healing or if all 4 are just healing the same targets with downranks if/as needed or what... It may be that the healing just needs to be better optimized to make things easier (not sure) but bottom line he gets it done. It may well be that Chain Heals would be a huge help but if I saw correctly 3 of his 4 healers were pretty much OOM (which is saying alot considering Paladins are the most efficient healers) so that is something to watch for.

If I recall correctly he has at least 3 ZG boss videos and he does a lot of commentary on at least the ZG trash one (things started getting better and better as his gear improved and he mentioned that the bloodvine was really helping his team's DPS). Since I like Warlocks I was glad to hear him saying he liked his Warlocks' DPS. I am kinda in a hurry and plan to go back and watch the fights closer later but Warlock-wise I noticed in the Venoxis fight that the Warlocks were close to top tier until the final phases but ended up in the bottom tier and that looks to be because they went OOM (and not sure if they ever life tapped nor whether they started wanding when OOM etc)...

Bottom line is that all is pretty impressive and fun to watch. Perfect timing for you to review to make any adjustments now.

[dustofoblivion]

I am a big fan of Hybrids with Shaman being my 2nd favorite class for PVE so I really hope it works out and their flexibility plays well for you (I know they should in BC+ and hope so now). I have heard good things from some 5boxers of Shaman that they can indeed sustain if built right so maybe one or more of them may chime in (I don't know the details of how they built to push sustain and then again you can always leverage consumables).

I would definitely watch the ZooBoxing ZG videos that Congau found (AWESOME FIND THANKS AGAIN !!!).

It sounds like he leveled four 4 man teams (each with a tank and healer and 3 DPS) and for the 20 man raid, like you are saying above, he also kinda breaks his team into 2 main 10 man groups (one ranged group and one melee group (with some ranged in it)). In the end between totems and Chain Heals I think you may actually be able to come out ahead in many ways.

There are several things he could maybe do better (as is the case for all of us I suspect) but is very competent and works his raid pretty well (and we are seeing him in his early attempts at the various areas).

Some observations:

His rogue appears pretty useless and dies a ton. If he brought him for chests and/or lockboxes I would personally just use engineering charges (or just leave them) and replace the Rogue with something else.

He has 4 tanks (2 Warriors+2 Druids) with his Warrior as his main Tank and uses them like I was referencing above (instead of CC). His ZG Venoxis fight video shows them best with his main Warrior taking 2 adds and then the other Warrior taking one add and the 1st Druid tank taking one add and the 2nd druid taking the boss. According to his addon log that is his 2nd kill for that boss and he really starts well with all 4 tanks doing great jobs. Things go a little south when he loses a Druid tank on the boss but he recovers that well and picks up the boss quick on his main warrior and re-positions him. Then the Boss AoE kills the rogue fast and then the last 2 off-tanks (though if he had some action target groups to pause their assists they likely would have been fine (except maybe the rogue)). From that point forward he keeps deep healing the main tank (and only tank left) and focuses on burning the boss and gets the win (though the 4 focused healing barely kept the main tank alive)!

I would note that he does indeed have 4 main healers (2 Paladins & 2 Priests) and it looks like sometimes even with them going all out with heals and his main tank barely survives... I believe his 3rd Priest is a Shadow Priest buffing the Warlocks so he could increase his healing output without changing his composition if he needed to... I think he using Grid2 for healing and not sure how he breaks up the healing or if all 4 are just healing the same targets with downranks if/as needed or what... It may be that the healing just needs to be better optimized to make things easier (not sure) but bottom line he gets it done. It may well be that Chain Heals would be a huge help but if I saw correctly 3 of his 4 healers were pretty much OOM (which is saying alot considering Paladins are the most efficient healers) so that is something to watch for.

If I recall correctly he has at least 3 ZG boss videos and he does a lot of commentary on at least the ZG trash one (things started getting better and better as his gear improved and he mentioned that the bloodvine was really helping his team's DPS). Since I like Warlocks I was glad to hear him saying he liked his Warlocks' DPS. I am kinda in a hurry and plan to go back and watch the fights closer later but Warlock-wise I noticed in the Venoxis fight that the Warlocks were close to top tier until the final phases but ended up in the bottom tier and that looks to be because they went OOM (and not sure if they ever life tapped nor whether they started wanding when OOM etc)...

Bottom line is that all is pretty impressive and fun to watch. Perfect timing for you to review to make any adjustments now.

So I did watch his High Priestess Jeklik video. Great find indeed.

I noticed three challenges:

1. The fear towards the end. I feel this one could have been easily avoided by having a shaman use tremor totem in each of his melee parties, and by putting a fear ward on the main tank.

2. The adds that show up mid fight. I think he handled that pretty well. I would have the 4 mages there to AOE them down with a feral druid (+ maybe 2 warriors) to take the aggro on them.

3. The fire. I'm not sure but it looks like some of his toons started taking heavy damage towards the end because they were standing in the fire. That one is not that easy to deal with, but you could use Follow Me to move some of the toons towards you, and then make stop following you once the relevant characters are out of the fire. I think that's what I'd do. I could also have a Broadcasting On keybind with "All w/o current" as its Target to move characters out of harm's way. Or if the boss is almost dead like in the case of the video, just pop a fire resistance totem and ignore it.

After watching his video, I'm pretty confident in my team composition. I could use some of my warriors as Fury/Prot tanks to take the adds, I have plenty of AOE with 4 mages and 2 warlocks, and I have ways of dealing with the fear. I do think that I need an extra healer, I'll probably spec my 3 shamans as resto instead of having one as Enhancement. I would also make 2 Fury/Prot off tanks. This would bring me to 3 tank warriors, 1 druid tank, 3 resto shaman, and 1 Disc priest. I think 1 healer and 1 tank per party seems like a solid choice.

[nodoze]

So I did watch his High Priestess Jeklik video. Great find indeed.

I noticed three challenges:

1. The fear towards the end. I feel this one could have been easily avoided by having a shaman use tremor totem in each of his melee parties, and by putting a fear ward on the main tank.

2. The adds that show up mid fight. I think he handled that pretty well. I would have the 4 mages there to AOE them down with a feral druid (+ maybe 2 warriors) to take the aggro on them.

3. The fire. I'm not sure but it looks like some of his toons started taking heavy damage towards the end because they were standing in the fire. That one is not that easy to deal with, but you could use Follow Me to move some of the toons towards you, and then make stop following you once the relevant characters are out of the fire. I think that's what I'd do. I could also have a Broadcasting On keybind with "All w/o current" as its Target to move characters out of harm's way. Or if the boss is almost dead like in the case of the video, just pop a fire resistance totem and ignore it.

After watching his video, I'm pretty confident in my team composition. I could use some of my warriors as Fury/Prot tanks to take the adds, I have plenty of AOE with 4 mages and 2 warlocks, and I have ways of dealing with the fear. I do think that I need an extra healer, I'll probably spec my 3 shamans as resto instead of having one as Enhancement. I would also make 2 Fury/Prot off tanks. This would bring me to 3 tank warriors, 1 druid tank, 3 resto shaman, and 1 Disc priest. I think 1 healer and 1 tank per party seems like a solid choice.

Yeah I think you have a good chance to be OK with that 3rd Shaman going resto as long as they can sustain (or you use consumables if/as needed). If you were still really hurting for some additional healing you could pick up another healer via respecing your Druid resto without having to level another toon because any of your fury/prot warriors could swap on a shield and go off tank... Those fights seemed pretty short so likely sustain isn't a big deal.

Since most folk move the foreground window with the mouse and/or WASD I generally I recommend you put make the arrow keys as movement keys for "All w/o current" and that should do quite a bit for you if you don't have much channeling at that time. If you want to get fancy you could add some modifiers to have the arrow keys to also not include off-tanks or what not...