4 or 5 shaman? (pve with pvp on the side)

[antishadow]

Good afternoon everyone.

My purpose of this thread is more of a pro/cons discussion, or even me just writing it out and maybe in that process I'll make up my own mind. Happens sometimes.

A little history. I have 5 accounts. 4 of the accounts already have 70's on them. A protection paladin, holy priest, BM hunter, and Boomkin druid. All of which are geared at least through Kara. Dealing with all the keys and different macros has been frustrating to me so I've started leveling 5 shaman.

The shaman are finally all at 30. I've been wondering though if 5 is the right set to go with or if I should level 4 with the assumption of doing PVE with my protection paladin.

My goals are PVE and PVP on the side but I don't want to gimp the pugs I end up getting stuck with (and arena - gimping myself).

For PVP - those of you who have 4 shaman do you wish that you had 5 or is 5 overdoing it since you'll need a dedicated healer for arena? Or those of you with 5 do you think that 4 would be more than adequate in BGs?

With a 5 shaman group would a tank be helpful or do earth elementals work just just as well?

To drag this thought out a little further. For heroics, with 5 shaman which has been proven as very doable would it be faster with a protection paladin and 4 shaman or would it be about the same or slower with less DPS output?

Darn. I didn't answer my own questions by putting this out there. Oh well. Anyone have any wisdom that they could share on their experiences?

[antishadow]

What a friendly posting. I did some quick searches but didn't find anything that I wanted. I did take your advice however and did some more searches with different strings find started to get some results after weeding through unrelated posts to find what I was after and have decided on dropping one of the shaman and using the pally for instances. No one in the posts that I did read seemed to miss not having a 5th.

Although I was asking for specific experiences and didn't find any specifics in the search I got what I felt was close enough.

However if you do have "specific" experiences with just this scenario please reply.

[antishadow]

I wasn't asking if it was possible or not. I already knew it was possible.

I was asking if people had done both which they preferred, or if they missed not having 5 shaman (or DPS) when they did pvp and instead had just the 4 (leaving the tank behind). I was fishing for personal experiences of which I got none. So either the search is just too cluttered and I can't find those personal experiences or I'm searching for the wrong thing. Anyways. I'll just make my own damned experiences! And I'll post them. In this thread! So THERE! 8o (i need to stop now)

[cepheus]

I have not tried mixing my paladin with my shamans yet, but I have done 1 pally +4 dps priests in instances, and I have done 5 shammys in instances. Personally I thought 5x shamans in instances was a lot more fun (as far as fun goes for instances) Personally I got REALLY bored of soloing instances after a while and started pvping instead. When you reach this point, you will probably regret not having the 5th shaman instead of a pally.

[Kaynin]

I find 4 shaman more effecient in pvp then 5 shaman.

The fact is, in warsong gulch and AB, too many on the same spot can be annoying. Depends a lot on the rest of your team as well. But being with 4 is easier then being with 5 here I reckon.

Also, arena is best suited for 4 shaman, not 5. It'll be more effective with a second person there. Preferably a healer. Ofcourse you can rotate, but hmm.

I have four shaman, I like having a fifth extra person around as well. 4 works best for me. x)

[cepheus]

I find 4 shaman more effecient in pvp then 5 shaman.

The fact is, in warsong gulch and AB, too many on the same spot can be annoying. Depends a lot on the rest of your team as well. But being with 4 is easier then being with 5 here I reckon.

Also, arena is best suited for 4 shaman, not 5. It'll be more effective with a second person there. Preferably a healer. Ofcourse you can rotate, but hmm.

I have four shaman, I like having a fifth extra person around as well. 4 works best for me. x)

I also use 4 shamans in arena
I rotate them, but it requires ALOT of ui configuration to make the rotation seemless so that you dont have to reconfigure your macros each time. Healing macros especially is hard to configure,since you have to make one profile for each rotation.

In wsg I could agree that 5 boxing is a bit much, but in AB and eots it is just about perfect if you just use the right tactics. My BG statistics in about all battlegrounds exept wsg is ranging from from 70-80% winrate.

[shaeman]

You have a 70 protection paladin already.

Why not level the 5 shaman anyway - this would give you the optiosn to go in and do heroics 5 manning it with the shamans. Then if you are finding a lack of tank particularly rough you could drop out one of the shaman and bring the pally.

I guess you'll have maximum flexibility and as it's about personal preference you will discover which you prefer.

[Kyudo]

You have a 70 protection paladin already.

Why not level the 5 shaman anyway - this would give you the optiosn to go in and do heroics 5 manning it with the shamans. Then if you are finding a lack of tank particularly rough you could drop out one of the shaman and bring the pally.

I guess you'll have maximum flexibility and as it's about personal preference you will discover which you prefer.

Agree with this. I currently run with 4 shammies and a pally, but I'm levelling a 5th shammy now to try it out. In Wrath I'll probably keep 1 of the shammies resto for instancing, pvp with the other 4, and instance with either the 5 shammies or 4 shammeis and a pally. Nice to have options/variety.

[Havelcek]

I'm currently going with 1pally x 4shaman because I find it more interesting to have 2 classes and in my extremely limited experience so far (read RFC instance) its just a little less stressful to keep the mobs in front of the group rather than having them aggro ping-pong around my shammy group. Again, your mileage may vary and I could well get to 70 and go roll myself a 5th shammy. I guess the moral of the story is that you can't go wrong either way, just changes the approach in instances a bit.

Remember that one of the big values of having a pally is that at 70 you can have a gathering character with epic flying mount and Crusader Aura. Very uber for gathering.

[Kicksome]

I have 5 shamans and a prot Pally. So I can do 5x shamans, 4x shamans 1 pally tank, or 3x shamans, healer, pally tank.

Right now I prefer doing my 5 shamans for almost everything except arena (where I sub in a pally healer friend for 1 shaman). The main reason is that I tank with my pally, in guild, quite a bit. Also, the fact that I hate drinking with my pally after every pull. In addition to that, doing instances with 5 shaman is a bit refreshing as it's a totally different strat that I've done 100 times before with every other group.

I cleared normal Mr.T with my 5 shamans yesterday and I just downed the first boss in Heroic Mr.T today with the 5 shaman group.