Input Wanted -- Creating a Heroic Team

[accretion]

Hi All,
Long-time lurker but first-time poster. I've been multiboxing for 7 years or so (EQ then WoW) and finally took the "5-man plunge" last month. I'm now constructing a group for heroic dungeon runs, with the goal to complete nearly all of them eventually. My setup is somewhat flexible, and I want to know what you think my best and most playable group would be, given my situation.

My Setup
3 separate computers with varying hardware
- "Average" Computer A -- 1 toon (driver)
- "Beefy" Computer B -- 2-4 toons with Keyclone
- "Anemic" Computer C -- 1 toon

Here are my proposals thus far:

--- 1 ---
A - Druid Tank
B - 3x Hunter
C - Holy/Disc Priest

Pro: Aggro management, Buffs, Group Heals, Off-tanks
Con: CC, Wipe Recovery


--- 2 ---
A - Paladin
B - 3x Mage
C - 1x Warlock

Pro: AoE, CC, Wipe recovery (lock+pally), Portable, High DPS
Con: Squishy, Aggro management, Limited heals


--- 3 ---
A - Druid
B - 3x Shaman
C - Mage

Pro: Flexibility, Wipe-proof, Portable, Buffs/Totems
Con: Aggro management, Group healing


--- 4 ---
A - Pally
B - 3x Hunter
C - Shaman

Pro: Buffs, Aggro management, Off-tanks
Con: CC, Group healing


So, I'd love to hear what y'all think. Do you have a favorite in this group? Or do you have your own ideas?

Fire away!

Accretion

[Tdog]

As far as group 2 goes you're not going to make it very far with your tank being you're healer. Only reason paladins are able to tank for extended peroids of time is because of spiritual attunement which does not proc off of their own heals not to mention the fact that their heals are going to be light anyways without the +Healing gear and you'd be losing aggro building time while casting a heal on yourself.

Also Shamans have healing totem + chain heal which I see a few times you listed groups with shamans as having no group heal. It may not be as good as priest group heals but it's worked effective enough for me.

Lastly if you've been lurking around the forums for awhile I'm sure you'll most likely expect most people to tell you that 5x shamans or 1x pally 4x shamans is "the best" set-up. Given that you didn't list those or any variation of them I'm assuming you'd like to go against the norm, which is commendable, in which case I'd say that most groups with the basic Tank,3x DPS, Healer set-up can probably handle heroics given enough time, effort, and determination.

[accretion]

This is exactly the type of feedback I need, thanks.

Tdog -- Yes, I'm hoping to avoid the Pally/4xShaman team if possible. I'd like to control 3 unique classes, so I may experiment with Tank/3DPS/Healer in different combinations

Fur -- Re: Group 1, I hadn't really considered fear control, but 1 fear ward isn't much protection. I'd likely have to keep pets out of any boss fight with fear and be selective with other fearing mobs. Good point.

[Tdog]

Welp, even though I only list 2 teams in my sig I have 10 lvl 70's from my pre MBing days that I have messed around with in level 70 instances and a few easier heroics with less than ideal group make-ups. Even with less than ideal group make-ups and a majority of those 70's having very bad gear I've still killed a few heroic bosses. The biggest hang-ups I'm having isn't the group make up but rather they gear they are currently in. Given enough time I'm sure I could make them work fairly sucessfully. Sure I wouldn't be able to kill and clear every heroic with lightning speed while having ez-mode turned on but it is doable.

However if you want to be able to kill the most amount of heroic bosses there are a few abilites that would be highly recommended to have in your group and Fear control imo is one of them.

[pinotnoir]

I currently run your group3 setup.

I have a druid tank, resto shaman healer, 2 elemental shaman dps, and a mage. Nice buffs and portable. I have one cc which is very nice to have. Right now the only thing holding me back is gear. The resto shaman has about 1150 healing now and the dps all have 600 damage or less. Once I get their gear improved I will have an easier time. My druid is wearing T5 so he outgears everyone. What has wiped me more than anything is when a Mind Control mob takes over my tank and all the mobs rush my team while my druid owns the squisy guys.

I also have a pally tank that can swap in. His gear is not as good. If he had equal gear to my druid I would make him tank more often. The problem with the druid is when you have a large pack of mobs and need to keep aggro. Swipe works ok but you really have to watch out with your cc. The last patch said swipe, chain lightning would not break cc but that is a bunch of bullshit. If that was fixed I would have a much easier time with my group.

Sometimes I wish I had a 5 shaman group to burn through stuff. Tanking + Healing is pretty hard. It would be much easier if I could just nuke with everything instead of watching health bars and dpsing mobs. It takes more effort to have a tank healer group than it does with a nuke them down. Also, pvp with 5 of the same dps is much better than my group in pvp.

I would recommend you do a 5 shaman group then make a tank or mage with other toons later.

[yarr]

my group setup (havent done heroics yet, hoping to gear up first) is pally tank, 3 shaman dps, holy priest heal.

Pros: Massive single target dps, respectable aoe (3 fire totems + consecrate), group heals, lots of buffs (blessings, fort, shadow protection, and 3x totems) and great aoe threat (i.e. healer wont' pull aggro ever)
Cons: no CC. unless the pull has undeads.

[Effex]

Currently running 1 pali 4 shammy, doing a LOT of heroics, there great but I do miss CC a lot so Ive been thinking about a new team. havnt quite decided what yet but imo the ultimate heroic group will need:

1) Pali tank - AOE agro is not only great for no CC groups its great for multiboxers giving us extra time to cordinate which target to CC
2) atleast 2 healer - theres loads of times when one char will get CCed so 2 healers, 1 primary 1 off healer is a must
3) ranged dmg - boxing melle yuck no thx
4) as much CC as poss
5) wipe prevention - i love anhk's i hate releasing


so Im thinking

Prot Pali - tank + buffs
Resto shammy - healer + buffs, manatide is amazing when u look at the benifit to the whole group.
Boomkin - off healer + buffs + offtank + CC
Mage - DPS CC buffs
Mage DPS CC

[kayb]

Anything works, really. If you want the micro challenge go for a trinity setup, up to 5 different classes even, if you want the simple approach go with 5xshammy or 1tank/4xdps. In the end 5x [well-geared] shammies are probably unbeatable for sheer killing speed. I have no problems grinding 20 badges in about 3 hours with my current team.

[Bunny]

If I were to do a pure Pve group again with 1 tank 1 healer and 3 dps I whould go with:
Pala tank: great on aoe, needs not much attention
Shaman healer: resto shams are highly underrated in 5man situations in my opinion. They have decent/good single target heals, they can pee heal if the group takes some damage (imho the priests group heal usually does too much, chain heal is usually okay). They have excellent utilities via totems. If yopu have a mob which fears or uses poison just drop the appropriate totem and forget about it - no active action necessary is always good. Heroism rocks
3 fire mages: great damage, intbuff etc. A case can be made for adding an elesham, lock or shadowpriest but I whould prefere the extra Aoe power.
Although this is just a suggestion I highly recomend pala tank and sham healer.
Bunny

[OzPhoenix]

Anything works, really. If you want the micro challenge go for a trinity setup, up to 5 different classes even, if you want the simple approach go with 5xshammy or 1tank/4xdps. In the end 5x [well-geared] shammies are probably unbeatable for sheer killing speed. I have no problems grinding 20 badges in about 3 hours with my current team.

This post makes me feel very happy. I was a little worried when everyone was talking about 1 Pally/4 Shamans for my 5 Shaman team.