We have a variety of class mixes for the runs I attend but they are hardly strange or anything. Prot Warrior and Feral Druid share tanky duties and we typically have one hunter, one mage, one warlock. If possible we'll bring a priest and a spriest, always at least one shaman and sometimes a second (enhance) and a real druid. I don't know, other than ensuring that we have a couple of tanks that like tanking and a few healers that can heal, we sort of cobble it together out of available people that can take on a raidID.

We did start up fairly late but progress has been reasonable. One thing I've definitely noticed is that most strats I've personally read (post-factum wherever possible) have been completely improper for our little mini-raids. It's not that the bosses are all easy, it's just that what works for us is not what will have worked for someone else necessarily. As well, once something dies there is a tendancy to wonder how it ever gave you any trouble to begin with. Moroes and the Curator are probably the easiest examples here in going from wipe-status to less trouble than half the trash pulls. I guess that's not really much different than many places but it does seem to be more pronounced here.

I'm definitely enjoying the zone, although for an initial ten-person it does seem to be tuned just a little tightly. I sure wouldn't want to go at the present Illhoof without a little raid stacking (hello again warlock and spriests... I see you are enjoying your stay!) and I will admit that some of the run-backs are starting to wear thin and the respawn rate is a bit annoying when learning certain fights. We also haven't gotten our Paladins quite ready for prime-time yet and perhaps because of this our healers are already complaining a bit that some encounters are potion-chuggers just like in the bad old days but frankly, I'm a Mage and don't actually care.

Overall I do quite like the zone but I would agree that the raid composition is a little too inflexible. It's not just that some classes have specific abilities that shine in certain fights either at this point, it is that some classes are definitely filling certain raid-roles better than others. I won't clarify that statement because that way leads to madness and class-envy mudslinging and such. I honestly don't care anymore but it's effects on balancing are becoming somewhat obvious I'd say. The raidwide dps or hps or sustained tanking or whatever metric you like to use is wildly varied based on class selections at this point. That's fine in the end but I think it's a little odd that the very first ten-person, filled largely with very minor upgrades, is quite so demanding (or at least encouraging) of specific classes and specs.

-Tanks-
Prot Warrior
Feral Druid

-Healers-
Priest
Pala
Shaman

-DPS-
Warlock
Mage
Rogue
Hunter
Shadow Priest

Has been the group makeup I've been in. Been very good so far.

So far our group composition has been:

Feral Druid (MT on most encounters)
Prot Warrior or Arms warrior
2x Holy Priest
1x Holy Paladin
2x Warlock (one demo, one affliction or destro)
1x Hunter
1x Rogue
1x Mage (before we got one keyed, this spot was basically open)

Works out pretty well, we're still working on the Curator though.

My group (one of 2 guild groups) is running the 9+1 setup. It has worked really well so far.

We have an extra warrior to offtank when necessary. The druid/pally/priest are pure healing spec. I'm an elemental/resto hybrid spec. So far I heal on about 1/2 the fights and dps the others, or some combination of both. We're currently on Nightbane.

I also blow 100g to spec resto once a week for Gruul's lair, though we haven't seriously gone after Gruul it's necessary for farming the Ogre Council I think. I easily make up the 100g by being able to farm/quest tons faster for the rest of the week.

A paladin makes quite a few karaz encounters a lot easier, yeah. We hardly go with less then two priests, this week my group had 2 holy priests and one shadow priest. also has something to do with all druids being feral and shamis being fairly inactive, so when we want three healing specced healers, we have to turn towards priests.

Generally the 1-of-each approach is okay, but if you go for pure power, I don't see a huge reason to take a hunter and a rogue. Mages and warlocks outdps them anyway badly and if you add a shadow priest to the mix, the amount of damage a warlock deals compared to a rogue/hunter is laughable. The only good reason for a hunter is misdirection, which helps a lot in a few situations.

We run two groups that are like this:
prot warrior
feral druid
1 holy priests (2 if no shaman)
1 holy paladin
1 resto shaman
1 rogue
1 hunter
3 mages/warlocks or 1 mage & 1 lock & shadowmage

Every encounter up to nightbane is very doable with that setup. On nightbane we either take a 4th healer or the druid respecs. Haven't killed him yet, if we get some practice there, I am sure three resto healers and 1-2 non-healing specced healers will do the trick as well.

Absolutely demolished the instance up to Nightbane in ~4 hours the past week with:

3 Rogues
1 Paladin
1 Priest
1 Druid
1 Warlock
1 Mage
1 Warrior
1 Shaman

Had to switch one rogue out at Prince for a Hunter, mostly because the hunter wanted the bow.

Then we got to Nightbane and called it. :P

We've got the Prince and his obnoxious Enrage bug down with 2 slightly different compositions:
1 Paladin (MT)
1 Druid (feral)
4 Priests (2 shadow)
2 Rogues
1 Hunter
1 Warlock

and

2 Paladin (1 holy)
2 Druids (feral)
3 Priests (1 shadow)
2 Rogues
1 Warlock



We rotate members around with 2 groups and spend a fair amount relearning encounters, and I assure you that every boss in the instance short of Nightbane (you'll likely need to bring a shaman/warrior for fears) is doable with the OP raid composition. A lot of people discount Paladin tanks offhand, but I think that mentality comes from 95% of the playerbase never actually having played with a good Prot Pally.

We've given everyone a month to get to 70 and get keyed so we haven't really run balanced raids the last few weeks (this will be our first week for everyone at 70). With this it has allowed us to experiment some and most of the encounters up to and including the Curator (we got there and with 1 tank in the raid and nobody with an Arcane Resist set to sponge the bolts it was time to call it after a couple of attempts) are doable with any group of 1-3 tanks, 2-4 healers and the rest DPS regardless of the classes.

Ideally we're planning to run groups with 2 tanks (1 druid, 1 warrior), 1 mage/warlock/hunter/rogue, 2 priests (1 could be shadow, we also have a couple that seem to be finding some good "holy mage" DPS specs that let them heal a quite a bit better in the 4th healer required situation), 1 resto shaman, 1 paladin. After we get to higher gear levels (1500+ heal, 150-200 MP/5, caster DPS with 1000+ damage, etc) we may try moving to 2 healer raids to speed things up allowing more time for the content beyond Karazhan.

By stacking some classes you'll make certain fights easier but you risk turning upgrades into Void Crystals and you also may make other fights harder than they need to be.

Rogues/DPS Warriors are by no means useless now but they are much more difficult to play. For ranged classes the level of difficulty increased from a 2-3 out of 10 in game complexity to maybe a 5 where as the melee folks went from a 3-5 in difficulty to a 7 or so, a lot of people that are perfectly capable of playing a ranged DPS class to its full potential will end up face planted/well below their DPS potential on a melee character. The difficulty comes in the required reaction time to circumstances and the number of different reactions they need to make in order to maximize their DPS and survive. To provide some generic examples to rate the scale I would rate playing Tetris(tm) at level 1 a 1 in difficulty as you have a "gaming eternity" to decide where to drop the next piece and completing Minesweeper on Expert in 45 seconds or under a 10 (now the decisions are a lot more complex, you have to make them much faster, and one wrong decision and you're dead rather than just having a pocket of air you'll fix later).

This is an interesting point concerning rogue/dps warrior damage. I am starting to wonder if my below average ping times will come into effect with my class. I believe I'm a decent enough player, our guild's alpha rogue and the class lead and leading melee damage dealer, however, my average ping time is in the area of 250-350ms. I'm wondering how much it will affect my survivability in these fights down the road.

I do have an alt shadowpriest who would probably be more latency friendly, but the way blizzard has cockblocked alts with ridiculous attunement and rep grinding I don't know if it's feasible at this point to try to make a jump.

How come is a rogue not latency friendly? All of rogue abilities are limited by energy regen, something I always admired as a warrior with high latency. If you bloodthirst every 7 secs instead of 6, that's quite a dps loss; even more sensitive for a caster. Rogue doesnt have that problem, it doesnt matter if you ss 2 secs later.

My bad