I'm bored waiting for lazy paladins to finish buffing between emp attempts, so I thought I'd pick up the tangent from the DPS warrior and feral druid threads, and compose my "ideal" 40-man setup for beating every single raid encounter in the game, if you could bring the same 40 people from green level 60s to full AQ farming without respecs. It would be interesting to see the horde perspective on it. I'll assume 1.10 priest talents.

Feel free to disagree, the discussion is half the fun.

6 warriors
2 Defiance/Flurry warriors
2 MS warriors
2 Prot warriors

This allows for varied tanking, depending on wether it's a output heavy boss mob (ragnaros, magmadar, golemagg) or aggro sensitive mob (Vael, BWL drakes). The MS warriors provide offtanking, dps and obviously MS for the healer bosses.

6 priests
1 Shadow PvE damage spec
3 Disc/Holy Maximum Throughput/Endurance spec (GHeal)
2 Disc/Holy Inspiration spec (FHeal)
At least 3 of them dwarves, obviously.

The shadow priest allows for one of the priests to go dps for race encounters and quick clears, as well as boost the damage of the warlocks. Keep in mind this crew will be doing everything from MC to AQ without respecs, so multirole specs like shadow and feral actually have some merit.

5 paladins
Healing specced, with variations allowing for all the blessings

5 druids
1 31F/20R feral druid
3 11+F/31+R resto druids
1 tonofR resto druid
This gives you the option of having LotP for dps race encounters or a druid tank, and leaves you with powerful healing all around. The amount of healers in this raid can vary between 14 and 16 depending on need.

5 rogues
PvE damage specced, obviously

5 mages
Probably arcane/frost all around, perhaps one for fire.

4 warlocks
Demon/Dest specced of some variation, leaving you with at least 2 soul link warlocks, and preferrably most have MD.

4 hunters
MM plz thx.

This damage crew will have AE options, and high damage output for those threat sensitive encounters through rogues and hunters.

Prior to 1.10, I'd probably go as low as 3 or 4 priests in favor of paladins.

5/5/5/5/5/5/6/4 (6 warriors, 4 warlocks, 5 of all else)

Warriors:
1 prot warrior
3 31/5/15 variants
2 31/20 DPS builds

Rogues:
PvE combat

Mages:
Frost/Arcane or Arcane/Frost, mostly PvE DPS builds, with 1-2 with snare talents

Warlocks:
No huge spec preference. MD/Ruin or SM/Ruin with 1-2 Soul Link thrown in I suppose.

Hunters:
Marks/Survival or Survival/Marks, not much variety here

Druids:
As above.

Priests:
All Holy/Disc or Disc/Holy variants, hard to go wrong in 1.10 (no PvE shadow -- it isn't viable for Horde due to mana)

Shamans:
No requirements except that they have NS and Imp LHW. A mix of 0/21/30, 30/0/21, and 0/30/21 builds.

How about 5 Warriors of varying specs, 10 Priests and Druids of varying specs and 25 Hunters?

Heh.

Edit- Swap out 5 Hunters for 5 Paladins/Shaman. :ph34r:

PvE shadow may become viable at some point. In 1.10 shadow priests can get meditation while they previously couldn't. Plus with oracle set you have a set that actually has a good amount of spirit and mana/5 in addition to lots of damage. Maybe if mana spring totem wasn't so ass they'd be viable, so maybe after shaman review.

I wish fire mages brought more to the table in pve. They can do great damage, and there are times where you want good fire damage, but ice block is too fucking good for raiding to give up.

Random thought: Mages should get a talent that lets their critical strikes cause no threat. That would put an interesting spin on things.

;_; I hate variety that my class is structured around yet does not have.

:angry:

The difference between 31/5/15 and 31/20 warriors is too small, certainly in utility, to bother making a distinction. Bring two fury warriors instead. More DPS and you'll still get all the Mortal Strike a boy could need.

Also that means there are two more people to ninja all the Rogue shit and that's always a plus.

Oh, poor Crauch. Loved by his raid leader and yet scorned by his heart.

Also I really wonder about shadow priests in 1.10. Being able to reach that 30% mark and make use of mana oils has got to bring them closer to being raid viable hordeside.

we got 70% firemages in aq40 and it's working out greeeeat. lose a little (yes little) in endurance, gain a bit in burst. gain another aoe snare.

the debuff nerf in 1.10 is not good news though.

How about one with 5/5 shadow weaving for boosting lock DPS ?

We have on rare occasions enjoyed a briefly shadow-specced priest along to weave for us. As Rambar says, it does tend to lead to quicker deaths on some mobs. Wyrmguards especially.

Raiding with a shadow priest is like an always-open buffet of sweet sweet cocaine. So good, so easy to OD and die.