[ADVICE] Starting 5 Man Team, Combination Question

[Kyle K.]

Hello Everyone,

Just joined the forums, read a lot of the wonderful stickies, about grouping methods, whats good and bad about certain classes and now I finally have come to post about some help on settling in and picking a group to stick with. Right now I have a couple different ideas going forward onto how I would like to make my team, but am stuck at picking a single one, as some all have their own personal drawbacks.

The Five Druid Setup
In this setup I would have my first druid feral spec to tank, which should be a good enough tank for nearly everything as long as I can keep him geared properly. The next three druids would be balance, for my key DPS, although I am not sure at higher levels they would be good enough to keep up the DPS to quickly take down mobs, and not have me worrying a lot about the tank and its HP. The fifth druid would of course be the restro and be the main healer of the group, however I am unsure they can main heal in heroics, I have read posts on many forums saying that they could if geared right for it, so I am sure that given the gear he would be able to do just fine for the most part. This group I have more concerns about them not being able to perform at the top when it comes to higher end instances and heroics.

Four Druids; One Priest
This is basically the same setup as the one before, however this time I have a Holy Priest come in as the main healer for the team. With this, the DPS is still a concern, however healing would be a much stronger point in the team. And I would not have to worry as much about not being able to heal at high end content.

Two Druids; Three Mages
I would keep the Tank and Healer druids, but drop the other three DPS druids for Three mages to deal out the damage. This would allow great burst DPS, if arcane/fire. POM/Combustion/Pyro anyone? This would also allow me to AoE when needed which is great, and having a long lasting CC is a very nice addition to the group when a pull just goes plain terrible.

These right now are my ideas for my groups with the Five Druids and Two Druids; Three Mages being my favorite possibly combinations at the moment. I would just like some advice on the groups of what would and wouldn't work with these groups, as one mans dream team could be another's recipe for absolute disaster. Also if you have any ideas of your own please feel free to post them, I am always open to other ideas on team, I am just trying to do a something a little different, while keeping it rather simple to start.

Thanks EVERYONE!

[Drizzit]

What are you going to be using the team for PVP or PVE or a mix of both.

I would say if you plan on doing PVE heroics i would go with a pally as a tank. If you look at the forums a lot of people that had warrior tanks did not work out that well and rolled a pally and loved it. A druid tank is much like a warrior tank, so going pally might be better for you. But until we know how you are going to use the team we will not know how to help too much.

[Kyle K.]

Ah right sorry, I will for the most part just be sticking with PvE, although probably throwing some Battlegrounds in as well, not likely to do arena. So my main goal is to progress as much as I can in PvE.

[Drizzit]

If you are new to boxing then it might be good to stick with one class (like you where thinking with the druids). Heroics can also be done with 5 elemental sham, 1 pally and 4 sham. It comes down to what you want to do. Main thing is to have a tank (most like a pally) and a healer. The other 3 can be anything. Just watch out for casting and such. Probably want to stay away from melee too, but you can put that in if you want (Someone is doing 4 warriors so it can be done).

I'm new to boxing and i am not following my own advise. Powering a 3 locks (well 2 then 3rd is 70 already), a priest and a pally to be my team. Reason i am doing this is because i can power lvl with my 70... my sham team one of the toons is on the same account of the 70. When the pally is 70 she is going to power the shams.

[badashh]

I'd go 4 boomkin to level. you can alway switch forms to heal and your heals will be good enough fo the lower level. Also find a mage friend to make you LOTS of water.

[Darcla]

The 5 druid idea sounds solid. As you mentioned, DPS will be an issue, but if you are going to quest level then it doesn't matter. If you are going to instance level, then you just need to wait a level or 2 above the recommended.

As for a druid tank, definetly possible to tank anything in the game. It all comes down to gear. If a shaman can tank Kara, then a druid can tank heroics.

When leveling up to 70, spec 4 of the druids balance. You will not need a dedicated healer that early on. This should be able to provide more than enough healing using a round robin rotation with the 4 druids and increase the DPS until you get boomkin



On a side note, does the boomkin aura stack?

[Moxy]

Feral druids are simple to manage tanking and have a self heal. Boomkins do amazing dps. Resto druids are amazing healers. I'm not following the weaknesses here. The only downside is fear will pwn you in pvp.

No, boomkin aura does not stack.

[Rms]

I'm not sure why you would think a resto druid would have trouble healing heroics.

I have been running Warrior / Druid / 3X Shaman in heroics for a while. Druid is resto. No healing problems.

I also have no problems with AE threat generation. I am able to out-threat the druids heals with thunderclap/demo shout without issue. Obviously a paladin has better AE threat generation, but my warrior has been plenty sufficient.

[Vyndree]

Resto druids are great healers, but lack the big punchy heals of Priests and Resto Shaman.

QFT.

HOWEVER, speccing a boomkin as a hybrid boomkin/resto dreamstate build might help mitigate this during leveling, where you can be a healing touch spammer. Resto druids really come into their own as they get the gear. You can either spec a secondary boomkin offhealer (check the "Conditional backup healing" in the macro section of the wiki) or spec your main healer as a dreamstate/healing touch build until you're comfortable that your hots can deal with the damage your tank is taking.

but if you go alliance, 5x stealth will be awesome in many places.

Even if you go horde (mmm... stamina bonus) you should be able to stealthrun things in catform very easily. :) However, shadowmeld DOES work in boomkin form ;)

[Kyle K.]

Thanks everyone for the replies, and I have been persuaded to go with my 5 druid team. It sounds like it has the potential to be a very strong group for dealing with a lot of things. I think that if all have the correct spec, then they will be able to deal with anything, and I do like the idea of having my main healer and then a secondary off healer for those oh shit moments. Once again thanks everyone for the great posts, the reason I was thinking druids might not be able to handle the healing of heroics is that many people in my guild and friends have been telling me that they just might not be able to keep up with the huge blows that some mobs can deliver, however with an off healer that really should not matter nearly as much.

Thanks everyone, once again!