Bring two dedicated healers and a hybrid healer? Gear up the hybrid for both healing and dps?

The suggestion above more or less defines it, but the overall situation could be affected greatly if they decide to go with dual specs or respeccing on the fly or any of those routes that makes two specs more accessible. It will greatly affect the viability of raid compositions and the strength of bringing those hybrid classes.

Given that raiding will gear characters up, and make them DPS better, heal better, tank better, I think it should be obvious that whatever the healing requirements are at the start will be vastly reduced as time goes on and your better gear and knowledge of the fights improves. There is nothing blizzard could do to change that, so if you initially need 3 healers you will get by fine with 2 later, and if you initially need 2 healers you will get by fine with 1 eventually, and so forth. Really this is true of every class, but bringing more DPS than you need will speed up a run, while bringing extra healers is less useful.

In my opinion only one fight in Naxx10 (4H) requires or even encourages using a 3rd healer even in subpar gear. You might want one for Sapphiron as well, but for the rest the only reason I've seen to bring 3 is if your tanks are in premade PvP gear and getting wrecked by every boss. Our group last week killed Patchwerk and then wiped to Grobbulus' berserk timer when we swapped a DPS for a healer.

Also unlike Kara, much of the instance requires two tanks in such a way that it will never be realistically possible to do it with just one. So for the first 10-man at least, I think you should count on bringing 2 tanks, 2 healers, and a hybrid healer/DPS.

Warriors/Paladins and DK's apparently have problems getting crit immune by Naxx also according to Ghostcrawler so if they fix that then tank damage should go down some.

Thank you, that's exactly the type of answer I think most of us were looking for. It is interesting, as Blizzard had said 3 healers would be the norm for a 10 man. It also exacerbates the scaling to 25 mans, at that ratio we'd be using 5 healers in Naxx-25, which seems very unlikely. The ratio of hybrids dpsing in 10 mans will probably end up higher than 25 mans to compensate for that imbalance. It is however good to see the 5 man 1-1-3 ratio finally extending up to 10 mans with the need for 2 real tanks.

Although subject to change (mostly due to the age of the post)-

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Death Knight Viability Question


Which makes 10 -> 25 man transitions interesting and more complicated.

I assume you're also hoping to hear actual experience from 25-man raid groups, but honestly there's no telling at the moment because all of the 25-man content is undertuned. We'll probably see more relevant figures for 25-man raid composition later on in the tuning phase.

As I posted somewhere else, if you add every possible blue quality DEF item for plate tanks, with blue-quality defense gems, chest shield and cloak enchants, CoT head patch, you end with 761 defense rating. You need 689 to be uncrittable, which means you have a choice in which items you can pick to go raid-ready (some of the best DEF items are mid-levels rather than high level, which usually means they lack a bit in the sta/armor department).

It's a problem because most of the people didn't have the time to farm all of the equipment that stacks enough defense rating.

Blizzard have said 10 and 25 man are supposed to be separate progression paths though, so maybe transitioning between 10 and 25 man raiding and comparative healer ratios aren't heavy on their minds.

This seems to be the case. Blizzard's idea with WotLK is for a guild to either be doing 25-man content, in which case they would need to recruit classes and specs accordingly, or 10-man content, with a potentially different class/spec balance. It won't be like early BC when guilds were trying to figure out how to fit their different Kara runs together and make it mesh well as a group of 25. The ratios won't have to match up, because the audience is different.

Leeka's Shield+enchant gives you 58 defense, and Eternally Folded Blade gives you 22. But I forgot about the ranged slot (there's a quest in Stormpeaks for a 19 def throwing axe). It's even a little harder: without the CoT revered reputation, you drop 3pt below cap.

So, while a DK is theoretically a viable MT in entry-level raids, that's far more difficult to achieve. There's no 2hander with defense to compensate. As blue said that there shouldn't be an absolute reason to avoid a tank class, I assume there's at least one or two 2handed with 40-60 defense still in the pipeline, presumably in one heroic version...

They specifically said they won't itemize two-handed tank weapons just for DKs and expect them to tank with a DPS weapon. With the current itemization they have to dual wield two one-handed tanking weapons to be uncrittable though, so I expect some changes coming through either talents or (more likely) changes to existing tank items.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Regarding Death Knight Tanking Weapons

Oh DKs can't use ranged weapons either. We could well get a +def or -crit sigil though, so far only 2 have been itemised.

Another (neglected) source of DEF, besides the newly implemented faction quartermasters is Smithing. You can add a gem to a belt (16 def), and if you're a smith, another one for another 16 def. Still, DK tanking suffers greatly from this. Even the Nax 10 set has 3 less defense rating than a War's.

I think there should be a Rune of Defense for DKs to put on their weapon. Every other tanking class gets a possible 50 or so def rating from shield plus enchant, and a tanking sword as an option while DKs have... nothing.

Obviously HP and damage are up as you move from 10 -> 25 to account for having more DPS and healers.

The bosses themselves seem to only have minor changes.

For Faerlina 10-man, you dispell the enrage by killing one of her adds next to her (requires no Mind-control and thus does not REQUIRE you to bring a priest). For Faerlina 25-man, the old mechanic returns, where you have to MC an add and sacrifice it to remove the enrage, thus you are required to bring at least 1 priest in your 25-man raid.

Razuvious there are mind-control crystals in the 10-man, allowing any raid composition to complete the encounter. However, in the 25-man these crystals are gone, and you are again dependent on Priests for mind-control.

Anub'rekhan is rumored to move faster in 25-man, requiring an Unholy DK or Hunter Aura for the tank to get away from Locust Swarm, but I didn't tank him, so I can't comment if this is true, I wasn't really paying attention. In the 10-man, he is slow enough that you can kite him no problem with only run speed to boots (may not even need that, but I had it).

This most recent patch they claimed to have made some changes to the 25-man raids, however I've yet to get into a 25-man Naxx raid this build, so I cannot comment if they have made further changes to make the 25 man encounters "different" or more complex than their 10-man counterparts. These "changes" may just be further balance on HP and damage.

Also, in Obsidian Sanctuary and what I have observed of Malygos (have not raided this encounter myself) the encounters are very similar between 10 and 25 man (I may be missing some minor differences I've not experienced / noticed), aside from damage out and HP.

Is there a hierarchy of difficulty in the different Naxx wings? Or, to put it differently, what wings/bosses should guild start with who've no history of Naxx in Vanilla?

If he does move faster, a warrior or druid tank could also get away without a run speed aura with intervene or the new feral swiftness (works indoors!)

The spider wing is generally considered to be the easiest.

Can you skip any of the wings before KT, or do you still have to clear the entire instance first?

My understanding is that you still have to clear the 4 wings before you can have access to Saph and KT.

There has been some discussion in this thread about DK tanking in Naxxramas - specifically about mitigation vs. avoidance and also with getting crit immune. I was wondering how well, in general, DKs have managed to hold aggro and stand up as a main tank against bosses. Considering the fact that the DK niche is as an anti-caster tank, are DKs viable as an MT in Naxxramas?