There's more then 1 way to do it and I'm sure not all guilds set up groups the same but how does your guild do it? I'm mainly wondering about EJ but feel free to chime in for any other horde out there. :)

I know they'll vary for each fight but in this thread I'm talking more about what you generally do.

I didn't search these forums much, so sorry if there is a real good thread about this that I missed. Anyway this is a very good debate topic, as I'm sure some of you will agree. :)

See you could set groups up to optimize melee/hunter DPS, when possible (not worrying about where healers are placed for the most part.) Or you could be more controlled and try to set healers in each group and have their main responsibility their tanks or their group.

Then of course tanks might need shaman/locks in some fights. There's also healers/casters who benefit from tide, spring and tranq air.

As horde, I'm a big fan of not doing groups by healing but by optimizing shaman and to a lesser extent locks. Which is a bit less controled but I feel with ct raid assist and EM healers should have no problem keeping everyone alive. My reasoning is that as horde we should try to take advantage of our shaman's best qualities since we don't have BoK and what not =p. It does make healing assignments and healing in general a bit more difficult I guess but nothing too over-whelming.

I like to maximize DPS but that is me personally and of course there are exceptions. This is coming from an ex-priest btw, I now play a warrior (C'thun killing guild.)

I'm bored and haven't seen a good topic about this in a while and as horde there is alot more science, if you will, to this aspect of raiding then alliance has. So, how do YOU do groups. Do you mainly favor melee/hunter DPS? Give tanks shaman/locks for agro help/mitigation? Give healers shaman for tide and what not? Give mages/locks shaman for regen/agro reduction? Or set groups according to healing?

Bring 8 shamans.

My personal philosophy is a hybrid of spreading healers and optimizing the use of shamans to enhance DPS. This is a typical group setup I'll aim for on ordinary fights:


(Note that we were melee-heavy that day and low on hunters, but the general point holds regardless.)

Gurg, do you ever double up shaman in an MT group for Grace and WF?

What Gurg posted is pretty much how we do it. We optimize DPS over anything else for the most part when it comes to moving around our shamans. About the only time we tend to deviate from the above setup is on fights such as Twin Emps where i will stack each sides priests with a Mana Tide Shaman for maximize regen.

Gurg are your raids always that DPS heavy?

There are 14 healers in that group, it's not too DPS heavy, we usually have 14-16 healers in a given raid, never more than 16 except for special cases (some Viscidus fights).

Here's the class spread of our most recent AQ marathon clear:

5 druids
5 hunters
5 mages
5 priests
5 shamans
6 rogues
3 warlocks
6 warriors

The screen Gurg posted is most likely from MC which has been on "speed farm run" status for a while now. (I'm guessing this because my wife is on the raid - we both fight for the "good" PC - and I'm not.) But yeah, there's no need to stack raids heavily with healers when 15 or so can easily get the job done.

-edit-
No, that's definitely a BWL raid. Point still stands though since BWL isn't anything special either.

ROFL im blind. I could have swore i counted 12. Do druids exist? :P

Back when I lead ZG runs I would sometimes put enough Shaman in my group to give me WF, Grace, Windwall, and Tranquil Air just to spite the casters.

Because we no longer need lots of soulstones of course.

Seriously, there's no prejudice. It's a simple matter of having more of the other classes.

We used to be a healer heavy guild. However, I am really starting to appreciate heavy dps. We even ended up doing huhuran with 10 healers, and it went well. Though we got up to 13 for emps. It still seems really hard to do emps with less than 13 healers. But for us, 13 is ideal for emps.

I have been setting up groups to have warrior, rogue/warrior, rogue, hunter, druid/paladin. Or mage, mage, mage, warlock, priest. Or tank, tank, paladin, druid, priest.

So two tank groups and 6 dps groups. Usually two of which are caster heavy and the rest hunter/melee heavy. I put extra healers in with the mage groups or the groups with two warriors. I could set up the tank groups quite a bit different but I have actually been trying to eliminate alot of crosshealing that goes on. It usually results in distracted healers and a lot of overheal.

At first I was worried about putting the mages all in one group as they tend to be rather fragile and I was worried that they would drop while their priest was healing another mage in the group. I am beginning to think it is best though. It isn't that often that more than one or two mages need serious healing. ANd if you put a priest in their group they are more ready to react right away to when a mage does need healing.

I am surprised you have a druid over a priest in one of the ranged groups though. It sees to me that druids and paladins make really bad mage healers. So far, having two healers in mage groups means that priest can get off the fast shield and the other healer can follow up with a heal. And in the mean time the extra healer in the caster groups can focus on cross healing.

Of course there is no hard rule. Most fights in AQ have vastly different group setups. Huhuran, fankriss, sartura, emps, ouro, and cthun are all heavily customized. But in MC and BWL I will usually only have to move a few people around during the entire clear.