Currently I'm sure many guilds are accustomed to and use optimized dps groups, ie melee groups with a hunter with TSA, warrior with talented battleshout, or a druid with lotp; and caster groups with atiesh auras/new shaman caster totems/moonkin aura.

So I got to thinking, with shrinking raid size in BC, how detrimental to encounters would it be to allow group aura effects work on the entire raid?

Right off it seems a little over the top, but when you consider the shrinking raid size, and therefore less people of each class, dmg optimized groups like this seem even more important, with the one downside of instead of leaving 5-6 people out of that perfect group, you're now only leaving out 1-2.

Example:

We'll assume that your average 25 man raid in BC will have approximately 7 dps casters. This allows a spread of 5-6 warlocks/mages and two slots for a shadowpriest/moonkin/elemental shaman. Also in the raid we'll assume at most 3 paladins, though that may be pushing it, not really sure on the healing dynamics of what'd be optimal to bring along. I only mention paladins due to them being the only healing class that really benefits from +crit, and while ~7 paladins getting +10crit (moonkin/totem/mage atiesh) from raid auras currently is a little overdoing it, in the context of BC, 2-3 paladins getting 9crit (nerfed mage atiesh) doesn't seem as overwhelming.

Ideally you'd currently stack the Atiesh-m and moonkin along with 3 other mage/destrolocks, and the Atiesh-w with your affliction warlocks/SP. But that's also assuming 8-10 total mages/warlocks. Reduce that number to 5-6, and now you're only leaving out maybe 2 from receiving the group buffs.

I'm not particularly good at pushing my point, but that's my prime example. So the question is, would this be too overpowered or out of balance given game mechanics, or is it a small change that would be nice but not have too big of an over-arching effect?

To me it seems this solves alot of problems in deciding who gets X group buff, be it windfury totem for melee, totem of wrath for casters, etc. The only real forseeable problem I notice would be paladin/shaman/hunter resist auras, though that can easily be rebalanced by slightly lowering the resist values on the crafted resist gear for X encounter.

While it may sound nice to not have to deal with group making, i think that's quite the opposite blizzard would want to achieve. Wheres the fun, or at least the thinking, in making group if everyone gets all buffs anyway ? it doesnt make sense anymore to have 8 or 5 groups, just throw everyone in as they get invited by an /rainvite 70 !

If you start with druid auras, then you have to do TSA, then battle shout, then obviously paladin auras and shaman totems and shadow priest VE and VT... wheres the cut-off line ? and how do you balance an encounter with rogues having TSA, FI, BoM, BoK, BoS, Sanc. Crusader, ILotP, BS, WF, GOA, SOE, Unleashed Rage... and how do you balance it so raids without all that can still do it ?

edit : too slow :x

Well the deal is with the changing raid size, and them seeming to want to promote off-specs you can already have 2-3 rogues with all those listed buffs, since 2-3 are all you're going to have in a raid. Obviously melee benefits far far more from buffs than casters do, but when you look at the full list of buffs available it really doesn't seem that over the top.

But you run into problems with things like LotP. That 5% crit to everyone including warriors, rogues, shamans, pallies, hunters and feral druids. Now a buff that gives a total of 25% crit max now works out to be closer to +100% with the ability to heal anyone that crits for a subtanial amount. Now they have to design with that in mind, thus forcing a feral druid to be part of the raid.

While it may or may not be all that overpowered, it would take a lot of strategy out of group making and that's part of the fun. All you'd be left with is deciding who gets prayer of healing for their group (unless you want to make that raid wide as well, haha).

They want group composition to matter, hence now being unable to change groups in combat, and much stronger party buffs for offspecs.

Um? This is completely untrue. Being unable to move people around in groups is a UI bug with using certain raid UI's - I was perfectly able to move one of our paladins into the group I was in when I died. This was on beta, in Karazhan, of course... so it may be different on live, but it's certainly not intended if so going by what's possible in beta(which is a newer build).

Most of this is going to be simply old-news to Horde raid leaders. You'll find out quickly that min/maxing groups isn't all that bad. Still - 25 mans leave a lot to be desired when it comes to diversity, especially with 9 classes.

It's been our experience that if you are using CTRA or Perl, you won't be able to change groups unless you are dead and thus out of combat. There are probably other UI mods that lock all your frames inside combat to prevent silly errors.

Several of those effects are borderling broken at 5 person effectiveness and you want to increase them to 25?

Erm.

Let's go with, this was a bad idea that you didn't think through, but we'll let it go and forgive you. (At least I hope you didn't think vampiric touch for the entire raid was a sane idea?)

While I agree that having aura effects work on the entire raid would be dumb, something thats always bothered me is how things like Battle Shout and Tranquility only effect your party. Seems like they should effect everyone in range... or to prevent it from being stupid exploitable: A number of people in range limited to 5.

Naturally this has some problems, such as what 5 people get buffed or healed if more than 5 are in range? I guess some sort of priorty system would have to be in place.

I don't know if its feasible, but standing next to a warrior going '"RARRR BATTLE SHOUT" and me being like "I'm just not hearing you man" is silly.