We've been raiding together since launch and we had a couple people reroll shaman. With this change, I've been trying to see what the best combination of class spec for hybrid classes are.
Currently, our two shamans are melee dps spec'ed and add some big time damage to our rogue/feral druid/fury warrior group with the +agi totem and the +10% atk power proc.
On the flip side, our shadow priests have quickly become high dps'ers with the versatility to give a group mana/hp back.
So my question is this:
Is it better to have my two shamans healing and have 2 of my priests go shadow or should I just let my priests remain healers while I let my shamans dps to their heart's delight?
I'd go with 1 Enhancement Shaman, 1 Resto Shaman, 1 Shadow Priest, 1 Holy/Disc Priest. Part of what makes an enhancement shaman so good is their buffs to the entire melee group. But the second enhancement shaman won't add anything extra unless you have two melee groups (which you almost definitely will not).
Similarly, one holy priest is great for divine spirit and one shadow priest is great for misery and shadow weaving, but the second of either adds less utility. (That said, shadow priests are so obscenely useful that having 2 or even 3 in a raid does phenomenal things to your raid's longevity.)
On the other hand, good attitudes also help the raids phenomenally, and forcing someone to spec something they hate could be a long term detriment. Find out what specs they are willing to try and if they all have their hearts set on DPS, it might be time to start recruiting people who like healing, with the understanding that the older members might not get invited to 100% of raids.
To add to tedv's comment, in terms of group buffing to increase raid DPS, also consider asking 1 of your shaman to spec 41/0/20. It's a solid nuking build (at least for now =\) and adds a healthy amount of damage to a casting group. Having been both enh and elem, I know I'm a big hit with the DPSers in either spec.
101 spell dmg, 30 mp5, 3% spell hit, and 3% spell crit is certainly worth considering.
Originally Posted by DeeNogger
I look forward to seeing these "numbers". Notice that I put the word numbers in quotations. Thats sassy type for "you're full of shit".
Originally Posted by Florrie
Nothing spells out attraction quite like being given books about the slaughter of your people.
My shamans don't care what they spec. They've been asking me "what can I do to improve our overall raid performance" and "I'll spec whatever is needed".
We have a healthy number of holy priests already and I'm just wondering if a priest being shadow will give us more dps than a shaman not being healing spec.
My shamans don't care what they spec. They've been asking me "what can I do to improve our overall raid performance" and "I'll spec whatever is needed".
We have a healthy number of holy priests already and I'm just wondering if a priest being shadow will give us more dps than a shaman not being healing spec.
Healing specced Shamans add alot to your raid. Mana-tide is good and all, but mostly because of Chain-Heal. It's simply amazing for most fights (Void Reaver, Hydross to name a few). Also you can throw resto shams in your Tank group for added aggro gen (Windfury/SoE) or suvivability (GoA, Stoneskin), without sacrificing those groups dps.
I try to run with 3 Shamans in my raid always, 1 of each spec, or 2 Reso in place of elemental works well. There is simply no better buff for your melee dps than windfury (or GoA depending on specs, warriors and combat rogues easily benefit more from WF than your druid will from GoA).
Generally assuming your Shamans are active players; one of each spec, and depending on the size of your guild maybe a second of one or two (Resto usually, maybe Elm) is enough in your guild.
Shadowpriests are simply amazing, if you can cut it bring atleast one or two, in your raid always, but I would say no more than 3 max.
About your Priests, even if you have Shamans healing, dont count out your other classes completely; having a well balanced and diverse group of healers can add alot of utility to your raids.
To add to tedv's comment, in terms of group buffing to increase raid DPS, also consider asking 1 of your shaman to spec 41/0/20. It's a solid nuking build (at least for now =\) and adds a healthy amount of damage to a casting group. Having been both enh and elem, I know I'm a big hit with the DPSers in either spec.
101 spell dmg, 30 mp5, 3% spell hit, and 3% spell crit is certainly worth considering.
Moonkin also provide 5% spell crit to a group and 3% melee hit to the raid, but I haven't heard much about either of these specs being considered desirable in a raid. I've also heard waffling on enhancement shamans as well, but have no direct experience with any of these classes in a raid setting. I'd love it if all these classes became the new spriest, but can anyone comment on whether these specs are worthwhile in the raid setting?
We have a healthy number of holy priests already and I'm just wondering if a priest being shadow will give us more dps than a shaman not being healing spec.
If you're asking if a shadow priest would bring a lot more DPS than an Enhancement shaman, the answer is yes with comparable gear. The answer is yes, but that's not really the point of a shadow priest-- it's providing +200 m/5 to four other party members. That mana directly turns into extra healing or damage, and you can even shift the focus based on raid balance. Low on healing? Move the shadow priest out of the damage group and into the healing group.
Originally Posted by niska
Moonkin also provide 5% spell crit to a group and 3% melee hit to the raid, but I haven't heard much about either of these specs being considered desirable in a raid. I've also heard waffling on enhancement shamans as well, but have no direct experience with any of these classes in a raid setting. I'd love it if all these classes became the new spriest, but can anyone comment on whether these specs are worthwhile in the raid setting?
Enhancement: One enhancement shaman is truly amazing. They do incredible things to your melee DPS.
Elemental: I've raided with an elemental shaman shaman and he put out some good numbers, although it's unclear if that will still be the case next patch. The 3% hit/crit totem was hardly a make-or-break deal though, and you get all the other totem benefits from a resto shaman, plus mana tide (if you don't have a shadow priest in the group).
Moonkin: No direct experience with this, but there was a thread on this subject earlier. The basic summary was that Moonkin didn't contribute enough damage and 5% crit was not big enough buff to warrant losing a "real" DPS class.
Moonkin also provide 5% spell crit to a group and 3% melee hit to the raid, but I haven't heard much about either of these specs being considered desirable in a raid. I've also heard waffling on enhancement shamans as well, but have no direct experience with any of these classes in a raid setting. I'd love it if all these classes became the new spriest, but can anyone comment on whether these specs are worthwhile in the raid setting?
It all depends on your raid setup. If your guild min/max's effectively then thats a definate yes, if (like alot of Alliance guilds, sadly) you think every tank needs their own special little group and the like, then people wont see much effectiveness in them.
That said, both specs of Shaman can put out very respectable dps in their own right. Moonkins I do not have much experiance with, however have heard very good things for buffing groups, not so much in personal dps. We have no druids in our guild with any desire to spec Moonkin; however we have a couple of each type of Shaman.
Elemental is great and can put out very good dps with less gear, but is getting nerfed next patch so longevity may be an issue.
Enhancement has amazing burst potential, but is harder to gear for, however we had one of our Elemental Shamans just respec Enhancement to try it out, using almost all blues and a couple minor Karazhan epics and he nearly kept up very respectable dps last night. Aggro can be an issue at times, but a melee dps who knows how to play shouldn't have a problem with it.
Enhancement will also buff your melee group much more than Elemental will your caster group.
I try to keep 1 of each in our raids always for max buffs. It will increase your dps expodentially with correct group setups.
(Windfury/SoE) or suvivability (GoA, Stoneskin), without sacrificing those groups dps.
Did you just use stoneskin and survivability in the same sentence?
@OP, i would advise you to switch one shaman to resto, keeping the best geared as enhancement and if you have the ehalers have both priests go shadow.
shadow priest are the best hybrid by far, there healing and mana regen is insane for any ranged dps group, and assuming you have 2 ranged groups then both will benefit from the SPriest, or a healer group.
It depends heavily on your group make up. We have very very few strong melee DPS, so an enhancement shaman is not very useful, but shadow priests are godly, since our mages/warlocks dominate.
Did you just use stoneskin and survivability in the same sentence?
@OP, i would advise you to switch one shaman to resto, keeping the best geared as enhancement and if you have the ehalers have both priests go shadow.
shadow priest are the best hybrid by far, there healing and mana regen is insane for any ranged dps group, and assuming you have 2 ranged groups then both will benefit from the SPriest, or a healer group.
Doable? Yes, adds minor survivability.
Unncessary buff? Yes, would be more beneficial to use SoE; or swap out that Shaman for a Resto Druids +healing if thats all he is there for.
Our raid group is actually finding that often times hybrids are as valuable in the 'off-spec' as they are in the 'raid-spec'. We have an elemental shaman who frequently works healing assignments while buffing a caster group. I would wager that at least half of our priests are now shadow to provide mana to healing druids and holy paladins. We only have two shaman raiding right now and thus don't have an enhancement shaman, but the theory I'm seeing shows substantial group buffs for melee.
I think the real measure of a hybrid right now is not just "what do you bring to the group?" but "can you buff the group while pulling your own weight?". I would wager this is why you aren't seeing moonkin druids and ret pallies discussed; moonkin suffer from significant mana issues that overshadow their group buffs; pallies provide some group buffs (notably refreshing judgements) but the damage they bring to the table doesn't justify not bringing an enhancement shaman to buff a melee group.
Hybrids do reward diversity but also suffer from diminishing returns. You don't need 2 enhancement shaman to provide buffs to one melee group; given their proclivity for pulling aggro, a rogue might be better than the second shaman. You don't need two shadow priests to stack weaving or misery (although a second VT and VE make a large difference in many cases). The gist of my argument is that you should be open-minded about the possibilities but also judicious such that you don't wind up with people with weird specs who aren't really pulling their weight.
We run with one elemental shaman in the three mage + shadowpriest group and it would seem to me to be well worthwhile. 3% hit for deep fire mages really is a great thing and of course 3% crit and more +damage is excellent always. His personal damage is not exactly terrible either and he is definitely a greater raid contribution that a moonkin or another mage would be in the slot. He was an enhancement shaman though in the past and even has his hammer smithed and all, so we may lose him to the dark side eventually again. For now though I do like the easy to form group for our pew pew casters. The relative merits of replacing them all with warlocks is another matter entirely =)
I would certainly be quite happy with one of each flavor of shaman as a raid staple but it depends on your raid makeup. We are a little caster-heavy for right now but come 2.1 that may change somewhat and we are not entirely composed of 100% attendance people anyhow. The only thing that would really make me sad would be to not have our high attendance resto shaman all the time, as he simply does great work. An Enhancement shaman is also excellent but of the three major varieties I would consider it to be the most replaceable.
We have 3 shaman, two elemental and one restoration.
Enhancement shaman are too often threat capped and we don't need another one running around getting cleaved or something. One of our current elementals was a pretty hardcore enhancement shaman (took decap + smithing) but realized how powerful elemental shaman were and switched. His DPS can be off the charts in some fights.
We also roll with the 1 shadowpriest + 1 elemental shaman + 3 dps caster groups, except we have two of them (ideally, when everyone shows up). It's pretty filthy how good the synergies are.
Our raid group is actually finding that often times hybrids are as valuable in the 'off-spec' as they are in the 'raid-spec'. We have an elemental shaman who frequently works healing assignments while buffing a caster group. I would wager that at least half of our priests are now shadow to provide mana to healing druids and holy paladins. We only have two shaman raiding right now and thus don't have an enhancement shaman, but the theory I'm seeing shows substantial group buffs for melee.
I have to agree with the first comment. One thing to consider is that resto shamans can fill the role of melee buffer while still healing and be swapped out for mana tide and back in. Sure, they won't give a huge of a buff as an enhancement shaman, but ask any rogue or warrior if they'd take unbuffed windfury and I'm sure they'd say yes. It's a fairly good way to squeeze extra raid utility out of your shamans.
I'd really love to see what I could do with a elemental shaman in my group in a raid, but unfortunately we don't have one. We have three regular shamans, usually all resto, although one has a considerable amount of enhancement gear and has done that a few times. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like Alliance guilds are using their shamans predominately as healers, while the Horde guilds are experimenting with them in lots of other roles.
We normally raid with 1 enhancement shaman(me), 1 elemental shaman, and 1-3 restoration shaman.
Enhancement and elemental are both viable specs, but you normally do not want more than 1 of each in your raids. I would just try to have enough people with these specs in your guild to average 1 of each online every night.
You definitely want atleast 1 shadow priest, and very often atleast 2. You will want a shadow priest in both the mage group and the hunter group. Elemental shaman basically require one. We average 2 holy priests and 1-2 shadow priests in our riads.
And lastly druids. Moonkin is horrible, but both restoration and feral are viable. We normally raid with our 1 tree druid and 2 feral druids.
Blizzard has done a really good job with a lot of the hybrid class specs in the expansion. Hopefully they will toss moonkin druids and retribution paladins a little love so those specs will become a little more useful.
I think the real measure of a hybrid right now is not just "what do you bring to the group?" but "can you buff the group while pulling your own weight?". I would wager this is why you aren't seeing moonkin druids and ret pallies discussed; moonkin suffer from significant mana issues that overshadow their group buffs; pallies provide some group buffs (notably refreshing judgements) but the damage they bring to the table doesn't justify not bringing an enhancement shaman to buff a melee group.
Hybrids do reward diversity but also suffer from diminishing returns. You don't need 2 enhancement shaman to provide buffs to one melee group; given their proclivity for pulling aggro, a rogue might be better than the second shaman. You don't need two shadow priests to stack weaving or misery (although a second VT and VE make a large difference in many cases). The gist of my argument is that you should be open-minded about the possibilities but also judicious such that you don't wind up with people with weird specs who aren't really pulling their weight.
One of the big things about shadow priests and enhancement shamans is they have strong buffs that actually require them to be attacking to maintain. Ret is really missing something like this. Vindication for example just doesn't effect enough bosses (are their any that it does effect?).
I think hybrids should suffer large diminishing returns with each spec as a way to encourage use of the different specs. The paladin holy tree doesn't have anything that encourages diminishing returns.
Shadow priests don't really suffer enough diminishing returns as so many classes can make use of the mana funneled.
I don't know enough about druids to comment, but each tree seems to have pretty good diminishing returns, though balance looks like it could use a buff. An improved moonkin form that restores mana like imp LoTP would probably help. This would make them competitive with shadow priests, as the moonkin could go with the nukers, and shadow priest with the healer groups.
Last edited by Zraknul : 05/03/07 at 3:38 PM.
Reason: Expanding.
Debuff slots. Too many DOT classes eventually end up pushing off each other's spells.
True, but it really depends on your make up. In the same way you could argue 2 enhancement shamans would work if your raid has so much melee dps as to 2 groups (if the encounters didn't encourage limiting your melee and spreading out). There also tends to be a fair number of raids willing to run 2 shadow priests.
My shamans don't care what they spec. They've been asking me "what can I do to improve our overall raid performance" and "I'll spec whatever is needed".
We have a healthy number of holy priests already and I'm just wondering if a priest being shadow will give us more dps than a shaman not being healing spec.
If I were to rank Hybrids in terms of total raid utility my list would probably look like this;
Now most guilds have Drastic skill gaps between their healers so simply put you take you best healers either way, but that aside I would say that currently healing classes rank out in terms of total utility like this;
Holly Pally
Resto Shaman
Resto Druid
Holly/Disc Priest
I would say a perfect Mix of healers would be 3-4 Pallys, 2-3 resto shaman, 1-2 Priests, and 1-2 Druids.
In terms of Hybrids I would say 1-2 Feral Tanks, 2-3 Shadow Priest, 1 enhancement shaman, and possibly an elemental shaman.
Enhancement shaman are too often threat capped and we don't need another one running around getting cleaved or something. One of our current elementals was a pretty hardcore enhancement shaman (took decap + smithing) but realized how powerful elemental shaman were and switched. His DPS can be off the charts in some fights.
Elemental shaman with 4p T4 and decent spell crit are possibly the class with the most longevity right now. However, after 2.1 that will change thanks to the elemental focus nerf. I'm glad you think so highly of elemental shaman, but aren't your warlocks and shadows priest beating your him in dps?
If you have a strong melee dps group (fury warrior, feral druid, 2x rogue) the amount of dps a good enhancement shaman will add far outweigh the negative aspects of having them in melee range. Sounds like you're running with mostly casters, though.
I'd have to agree with 1 SP, 1 disc/holy -or- holy/disc, 1 resto, 1 enhance. Enhance provides the most active dps buffing of any class that I know of, even threat capped (and boy howdy are they threat-capped).
I'd also strongly recommend the SP being in the resto shaman's group. WoA and Tide let even undergeared SPs go all out very heavily- including TA for short periods to decrease active threat at the begining of the fights ect. I would strongly question the wisdom of TA for anything other than extremely short periods, and WoA will really help SPs. In addition, a resto shaman's biggest weakness will hands down be mana recovery options, so I personally think it's worth losing a dpser in that slot to shore up a very strong healer.
Plus I've always liked strengthing raids through diverse specs, and leery of stacking one type to do a specific role (beyond what I should, honesty- stacking Holy Pallies still makes a ton of sense post 2.1, but I like at least 1 of each healer type instead).
Moonkin is generally pretty much a +- deal for the raid, his auras and utility will make up what he lacks in dps quite well. They just don't really go past making up - at least not to the degree that shadow priests etc. do.
05/03/07, 9:24 AM
Too many DOT classes eventually end up pushing off each other's spells.
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