New to the EJ forums, so if i'm beating a dead horse you can delete this or link me to a helpful post

So, for a little while now i've been thinking about any of my guilds 1-5% boss wipes and just think "if we changed our raid setup a little bit, that wouldn't have happened".

First off, do any encounter at the moment need more than 7 healers? We usually have anywhere from 8-9 and it seems so overdone.

We usually have 3 prot warriors and a feral druid, also weems really overdone. You could probably get away with one prot warrior/one feral druid. This brought to mind the idea of an MS warrior for blood frenzy, worth it?

This would be my idea with a 2 warrior(1 prot, 1 ms), 2 druid(1 resto, 1 feral), 2 pallies (both holy), 5 priests (2 holy, 3 shadow), 4 shaman(2 resto, 1 enhance, 1 elemental), 3 warlocks(all UA, maybe 1 0/21/40), 2 rogues (combat sword/dagger), 4 mages (all 10/48/3), 1 beast mastery hunter.

Group one:
Main tank
Tree druid
Resto shaman
Imp lock
Holy pally

Group two:
Shadow priest
Holy priest (spellsurge)
Holy priest(spellsurge)
Holy pally (spellsurge)
Warlock, any spec

Group three:
Combat rogue
Combat rogue
MS warrior
Enhance shaman
Feral druid

Group four:
Shadow priest
Resto shaman (spellsurge)
Warlock, any spec
Fire mage
Fire mage

Group five:
Shadow priest
#1 Fire mage
#2 Fire mage
Beast mastery hunter
Elemental shaman


Ideas on how to improve this setup?

You're gonna need in upwards of 4 tanks, as Hydross and Void Reaver demand it. 2 can (and should!) be Feral Druids.

Try sticking a Ret paladin into that melee group, between the revamped Improved Sanctity Aura, and Sanctified Crusader, you'll see fabulous results. Not to mention that you're looking at only taking 2 paladins so far, and most classes can easily benefit from a 3rd blessing. If you've glanced at the thread on these forums here, you'll know that they bring relatively competitive DPS as well, we're not just buffbots anymore.

Knock out 2 of those priests. Bringing 5 priests is a recruitment pipe-dream, and additionally will strain the loot system, as they roll against Warriors and Druids. You don't want that many people rolling on a 1/3 drop.

4 Warriors (3 prot, 1 fury)
2 Rogues (combat)
3 Paladins (3 holy, 1 with imp might)
4 Priests (3 shadow, 1 holy)
3 Shamans (3 resto)
1 Druids (feral)
3 Warlocks (affliction)
3 Mages (fire)
2 Hunters (bm, marks)

G1
Warlock
Prot Warrior 1
Prot Warrior 2
Prot Warrior 3
Paladin

G2
Resto shaman
Rogue
Rogue
Fury warrior w/ solarian trinket
Druid

G3
Shadow Priest
Mage
Mage
Resto Shaman
Warlock

G4
Shadow Priest
Mage
Hunter
Resto shaman
Hunter

G5
Shadow Priest
Paladin
Paladin
Warlock
Holy Priest

As much as I would personally love an enhancement shaman I havent seen a good one with decent gear in action, and until I do, a resto shaman seems more valuable in my eyes.

to floria

i've killed both hydross and void reaver, and it's for certain you don't need 4 tanks for either of them, though we did have 4 it can be done with less, min/maxing :]

with the AOE strat on 2.1 hydross rogue can basically tank an add each, and you can do vr with 2 tanks..probably better with three though

i havn't read much math on ret pallies, but i guess they would be nice for keeping seals up..but groups only fit 5 people and i'm not sure who you would take out for a ret pally

to zerix

why bring 3 prot warriors and a feral? what encounter is honestly that demanding on threat that you need to have all 3 warriors be protection

not having a resto druid and only one holy priest is going to seriously gimp your hots..3 resto shamans is nice for chain heal though

I'm biased but you really want 3 paladins for 25 man raids for 3 blessings and 3 auras, a 3rd blessing is a pretty huge buff to the raid...

Rogues: Might, Salv, Kings
Hunters: Kings, Wisdom, Might
Priests: Salv, Wisdom, Kings
Mages: Salv, Wisdom, Kings
Locks: Salv, Wisdom, Kings
Tanks: Kings, Light, Might
etc etc

Regarding ret paladins, well it doesn't need to be a full ret pally... imp might is only 5 points into "ret" but alot of people are experimenting with ret pallies post 2.1 buffs to see if it's worthwhile. The jury is still out imo.

There are clear benefits to having Judgements (Light, Wisdom, Crusader) up fulltime on a boss:

JoL = 115 hp healed per proc melee (~50% proc rate)
JoW = 71 mana gained roughly every 2nd spell/hit
Jotc = 3% crit for the raid

Judgements don't look much on paper and you often don't actively notice the affect of them but they have the the power to trivialize bosses (JoL on loatheb back in naxx, JoW on Nerfarion back in bwl). You will see hunter and shadow priest performance sky rocket with 100% JoW uptime.

Keeping judgements up as a holy paladin when you're supposed to be a primary healer is a pain, it consumes precious casting time and mana. It also means you have to hover near melee range to refresh them meaning you might take more short range aoe damage, get feared, aoe stunned etc. It also increases your threat (no range modifier).

There is quite a few encounters where 2-3 holy paladins can ensure maximum uptime of JoL/JoW but there are also several where it's not very practical and you actually gimp your healing performance by trying to keep judgements on the boss.

I'm agreed with Ragnor; having three Paladins can be very nice. Unfortunately, that's not always as viable for Horde, so two has to do a lot of the time.

You probably also don't want any more than two Prot warriors. If you've got more warriors than that, it's worth having them as Fury most of the time, whilst keep a decent set of tanking gear and throwing them some gold each week for respecs. If you're looking to build the ideal raid setup from a smaller group, however, Feral druids will probably serve you better.

As far as healing goes, 7's plenty for most fights. There's the odd occasion where you may want to sub in an 8th, but they seem less frequent now. As far as the balance of classes for those healers go, you should have at least two paladins, one resto druid, and mix the rest of the heal spots up with resto shamans and holy priests. We typically run with three holy priests, two paladins, a resto druid and two shamans, which has yet to fail us as far as healing goes. Another paladin in place of a holy priest would be nice, but I don't feel our raid hurts overmuch because of it.

best way to improve your raid is make sure that your mages use all 61 talent points.

I'd say that having group 1 as:

Prot Warrior
Prot Warrior/Feral Druid
Paladin
Warlock
Tree Druid

May be better than having a third tank in there. These two tanks would of course be the primary two tanks.

Also, healing wise, I would go with a group with a resto shaman and a shadow priest. VE/VT from the shadow priest, more damage/heal and regen from the shaman. BL can be useful in those major healing stages (like late gruul).

I'd have to argue in favour of a fair bit of flexibility myself. In the case of a tank group for example you're going to design it quite differently for a threat based fight (WF being damn valuable if using a warrior tank for example) than for an endurance fight. Similarly things like general shaman placement, shadow priests etc are going to vary depending on whether your dps or healing are being most strained by the encounter design and also to a fair degree simply by how well endowed your guild is with quality players/gear amongst the different classes.

Sort of examples outlined by others above generally look pretty reasonable to my eyes (and plenty of those posting probably have substantially more TBC raid experience than I do) but would very much caution about aiming for a one size fits all raid layout - it makes a good starting point but requirements and available resources will vary.

Speaking as a mage, I find Spellsurge proc vexing. When the buff is applied, it can drag a mage out of Invisibility -- the solution, of course, is to watch for the procs and pop Invis after it fades away, but it's just another thing to watch for.

For what it is worth (and it really is far more important to have good people) we run:

Group one:
Main tank (prot War)
Tree druid (low attendence but we love him, tree because he lost a bet)
Resto shaman
Imp lock (Deep Affliction w/SE)
Holy pally

Group two:
Shadow priest (out generally still #1 dps and utility that amazes)
#1 Fire mage (10/48/3, me)
#2 Fire mage (10/48/3, whoever is listening to me lately)
Beast mastery hunter (working on it!, presently a MM Hunter or another mage if they show)
Elemental shaman

Group three:
Rogue (daggers, combat)
Rogue (probably mutalate or hemo or something else to annoy me)
MS warrior (when he shows, more likely a feral p2)
Prot Paladin (grandfathered in and perfect attendence...)
Feral (or another warlock often)

Group four:
Disc/Holy
Resto shaman
Warlock, any spec
Warlock, any spec
Hunter (probably PvP spec for all we can tell)

Group five:

Shadow priest
Disc/Holy priest
Disc/Holy priest
Holy pally
Random Guildy

[/quote]

We have far too much variance in our raid makeup as it stands but that's what we generally put out. It is very obvious to those of us that track things that there are standouts and also those that kinda ride a bit but the major synergies are the spriests and the warlocks in my opinion. For what it's worth, the high (near-perfect) attendance is the officers: fire mage (me), hunter (soon BM if I can have my way, and GL), prot war, feral, Shaman and lock. We are trying to pick up another healing druid and another offtank/dps warrior at present but overall I'm pretty happy with our setup.

Pets scale very nicely with windfury and/or unleashed fury.

Edit: turning on brain I meant leader of the pack + unleashed fury

Group one with the tree druid is kinda weak considering you are going to toss your second tank in that group slot.

I'm not sure if this is a typo, but pets to the best of my knowledge don't scale in any way, shape, or form with windfury.

Or has something massively changed while I've been out?

Celboom,

If you're running a prot paladin, why not put him in the MT group instead of the holy paladin? If he is tanking at all, he might as well get imp and windfury. Its definitely not really doing the Holy paladin any good.

From a guild 3/6 SSC and Void down in TK - who also hasn't tried any new content in 2 weeks due to numbers from mid semester exams at School/Uni/College.

We generally don't min/max raids too much and have a fairly stable core group.

3 Prot Spec'd tanks with ~100% attendance, and 1 Feral Tanking/DPS Druid as well with ~100% attendance. They all have Hydross resis gear.

1 Holy Priest - we have recruited a second one, but dont always have 2.

Min 2 Shadow Priests - we have 4ish but only 1 really attends every raid.

3 Solid Mages with 2 in the works who are proving good. All 10/48/3 with Spellfire/Spellstrike.

3 Solid Rogues with 1 spare who is pretty decent. Mix of combat swords/daggers, no gimp PvP specs.

Our Locks are quite dismal - most have scetchy attendance or lower gear/skill/concentration level. Wish we could get some better ones but its proving difficult. As a result, our Mages almost always top the DM's with rogues mixed in on some fights.

2 Good Hunters - though we normally only take 1.

2 good Resto Shaman with 2 spares that are not quite up to the same standard.

2 good Paladins with 3 spares not quite as good.

2 good Resto Druids.

Out of that our group makeup is almost always the same.

1- MT Group
Tank
Tank
Tank
Lock
Holy Paladin

2 - Melee DPS Group
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Feral Druid
Resto Shaman

3 - Caster DPS Group
Mage
Mage
Mage
Resto Shaman
Shadow Priest

4 - Healer Group
Resto Druid
Resto Druid
Holy Priest
Holy Paladin
Shadow PRiest

5 - Leftover group
Extra Lock/Hunter/Healers or other DPS ends up here.

Depending on the fight, we may add a Shaman to the Tank group or Healer group.

With totems/bloodlust groups 2 and 3 pretty much fill up the top 5-7 DPS slots with ease - things can change slightly based on who we have in the raid. A DPS Warrior may get put in with the rogues or a Tree Druid in the MT group. But it essentially made up like this.

Healing/DPS intensive fights some may be subbed out for others, but we generally make do with what we have.

Yes he OT's on Hydross, though I never really looked at his resis gear - but he is an outstanding player so I assume he has everything required. He was wearing a lot of the Naxx crafted resis gear.

Here is a link to his armoury profile

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dath'Remar&n=Moonphire

We do things slightly differently to most setups listed here.
Notably, we always have a resto shaman in the MT group for GoA and (less so) SoE. Heroism helps a bunch for threat generation too.

G1
Warrior (Prot)
Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (Holy)
Warlock (Imp imp)
Druid (Tree)

G2
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Shaman (Enhance)
Druid (Feral)

G3
Priest (Shadow)
Hunter (BM)
Hunter (Marks/Survival)
Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (Holy)

G4
Mage (Fire)
Mage (Fire)
Priest (Shadow)
Warlock (Destro)
Paladin (Holy)

G5
Priest (Holy)
Druid (HT hybrid)
Warlock (Destro)
Priest (Shadow)
Generic Caster

We usually only bring 1 prot warrior unless more than 2 are specifically needed, in which case the 2nd one moves into the MT group at the expense of the druid who moves to group 5. Otherwise the feral druid (me) fills the 2nd tanking roll as I can actually do some dps when not tanking. It's pretty widely accepted that druids make absolutely the best OT's these days also as we can just throw on some Glad gear for resilience (crit immunity) and stamina while maintaining dps stats.

We're lucky enough to have an abundance of shadow priests which helps keep caster dps consistent and makes BM hunters somewhat viable. However we still find that the melee group pretty much tops the dps meters every time. Been toying with the idea of having a 2nd melee group with a ret pala and arms warrior but still not convinced that either of those specs can dish out enough dps to be raid viable, even with the added utility.

It would be nice to have an elemental shaman too but, being alliance, shamans are still in short supply and more valuable as resto or enhance. A moonkin might help caster dps a bit too but from my (limited) moonkin experience it's still the most "lol" spec of any class when it comes to endgame pve.

I'd say you definitely want 1 Survival Hunter for EW(easily 200+ ap to melee dps, tanks, pets, other hunters) and if your BM hunters can pull off numbers like Osse and Djinn, several of those as well. FI is very nice, and with the buffs to hunter dps, we should no longer be lagging behind on the damage meters.

You mean Unleashed Rage, and obviously it's beneficial to a hunter pet, but it's a hell of a lot better on a rogue, dps warrior, or even a feral druid.

I'm pretty surprised by the group setups posted in this thread so far. Raids with 1 warrior and 2 tanks total? What content are you raiding with that? No Battle Shout for a group with 3 rogues? Resto shaman in groups full of healers instead of dps groups? That's just a complete waste.

I know every guild has different classes available to them, but I'm seeing a lot of basic mistakes. There's a definite trend towards healing longevity and tank survivability in exchange for a lot of potential dps, which I totally disagree with. In my raids healers can use a damn mana potion, because shadow priests and shaman are for making the mob die faster.

Maybe I just don't understand and someone can explain to me the reasoning behind these decisions.

Shaman
Paladin
Warrior
Warrior
Warlock

Shaman
FuryW
Rogue
Rogue
Feral

Spriest
Mage
Pal
Lock
ElemShaman

Spriest
Hunter
Hunter
Feral
Hunter

Pal
Priest
Priest
Priest
Lock

Is one of our desired matrixes. Unless noted otherwise classes that can heal are healing. Yes, 3 priests in group 5 with the paladin, shaman is subbed for the lock and drops mana tide as appropriate.

That said - finding hardcore raiders on our server is godawful terrible, so I totally understand why some groups are running setups that aren't "optimal" because that's what shows up. Personally I'd happily kill to run with less hunters and an extra lock, but I have 3 100% attendance hunters, and my locks are all over the place. Ce la vie.

The critical thing is to maximize the classes you have, especially the most talented. If your raid has 3 kick ass rogues? They get everything. If you have 3 kick ass mages? They get everything. It's pretty easy to figure out who your best players are dps wise and build accordingly. (which is the only thing you should be building groups for, everything goes into the DPS bucket in TBC).

If your best dps are rogues:

They always get a shaman
They always get a dps warrior
They might get a hunter/feral, but only if that won't compromise the first 2.

If your best dps are mages:

They always get a spriest
They always get a elem shaman
They might get a moonkin (if your moonkin is awesome, awfuls need not apply) or a beast hunter (same deal).

If your best dps are warlocks:

They always get an elem shaman
They always get a BM hunter (no awfuls)
They might get a spriest (but you will always have one in raid).

If your best dps are hunters (I pity you):

They always get a spriest
They always get a feral
They might get a resto/enh shaman (Only if it doesn't compromise other groups)

If your best dps is a non-pure dps class, tell your pure dps classes to crank it up, because they are completely fired if they get beat in damage and utility.

So that's how you feel huh Seb? Shutup and Pot...

Actually though, I agree with what he said. If you look at what "consumables" healers really have to use on wet runs, it's basically nothing compared to a DPS class or tank class. We chug a mana pot every so often...and maybe, on occasion have a flask and some food. As a healer our role isn't typically chain casting like a Mage for example. The few times we've had an overabundance of Shadow Priests and I've had one in my party, I've ended fights with 80% mana...mana that wasn't put to any productive use.

The faster a mob dies, the less I have to worry about my mana. I would much rather see a caster not have to wand b/c he's OOM than to see a SP giving all the healers enough mana to go at the fight for an hour. If your healers aren't self-sustaining they need to check their gear choice, heal choice and your raid/tanks need to see where they're not actually being useful in mitigating, avoiding unnecessary damage.