Season 3 and the rise of quad healer?

Shade · 11/28/07, 2:58 PM

A guild team was queuing for 5s yesterday and came across a quad healer+warrior team yesterday. They were running warrior/lock/rogue/priest/paladin and said they had huge problems getting anything down. After some mana burn pressure, the druid and the shaman would start chain casting wrath/lightning bolt.

Has anyone else seen healer-stacked teams in 5s, or in any other bracket? The spelldamage buff is big, but is it that big? I'd think that quad healer would be easy to deal with because their burst damage is very low and they only have 1 drain and one real cc (cyclone). If you asked me to counter a quad healer team, I'd say stack physical dps--rogue, hunter, warrior (3x healing debuff+1 drain). My friends were running almost exactly that, but with a lock instead of the hunter.

RootBreaker · 11/28/07, 3:29 PM

How bizzare. I've never run into a 4 healer team before, but I can't really imagine them having any offensive pressure. I assume they had one of each healing class? With that team setup I'd put the rogue on the priest to stop mana burn, the warrior on the druid to stop cyclone/roots, and the warlock keeping tongues on the paladin and shaman, and rotating fears between them. Your paladin, in addition to helping keep your priest up (which shouldn't be too hard against a single warrior with no one feeding him rage) should be totem stomping and watching for drinking with the help of the pet.

The priest and warlock should both be mana burning when opportunities arise.

Nitz · 11/28/07, 3:49 PM

How a quad healer team is supposed to kill somebody ?

Nurru · 11/28/07, 3:50 PM

During S2 I ran into a Warrior/Resto Sham/Resto Druid/Holy Priest/Holy Pal team. It was good for outlasting burst, but they really didn't have enough damage while we trained the priest and kept mana burns down.

Aphyrax · 11/28/07, 4:27 PM

Originally Posted by Nurru

During S2 I ran into a Warrior/Resto Sham/Resto Druid/Holy Priest/Holy Pal team. It was good for outlasting burst, but they really didn't have enough damage while we trained the priest and kept mana burns down.

You may have run into my team. We are a triple healer team, but one day we didn't have the people on for our weekly games so we invited a pally and ran quad healer for one night. It was a lot of fun. Any drain team was an automatic loss, gib teams were easy and balanced teams were so/so. We held our own around 2000 with that setup.

I don't think it will be viable in S3, even with the damage buffs to healers, due to the rise of mana burn teams. Mana burn teams are unbeatable as quad healer.

Triple healer/triple burn teams, however, will be very viable.

Aoife · 11/28/07, 4:48 PM

Originally Posted by Nitz

How a quad healer team is supposed to kill somebody ?

Lock drain mana+Mana burn from priest.

Played one of these teams once and it was the most annoying team ever. Match took awhile, but we could not get anyone down. Eventually our entire team was OOM and we dropped in short order.

Kasi · 11/28/07, 5:03 PM

While it seems if paired with warrior that you'd want the 4 healer types (always need pally and priest in that combo), druid gives you much needed CC and shaman helps the warrior I wonder if you went with a more caster based version of that team how would it work? For example Holy Pally, 2xPriests (holy/Disc or vice versa), Resto Druid and SL Lock. It might be a bit weak against something like double warrior (because of having 3 soft targets, although I don't think SL locks or Disc priests are very soft at all), but you'd think any caster based team or most 4 dps setups you would be able to drain into the ground.

Xavias · 11/28/07, 11:22 PM

Too risky.
What happens when your Warrior goes out of LoS and all 4 healers can't get to him?

Its a gamble, your exchanging the power to actually kill something with the power to not die, but overall, the chances of you losing the match is much higher running with 4 healers, and generally not worth the risk at all.

Shade · 11/28/07, 11:45 PM

Some additional info: the players in my guild team are all full pvp gear with some season 3 stuff, fully gemmed and enchanted for the most part. Skill wise, they're somewhere in the 1900-2000 range (got there in both s1 and s2). The opposing team had 1 of each healer.

They said they weren't able to kill anything, and basically they were taking constant dps from the windfury warrior. Once healer mana got low, the enemy shaman and druid would start spamming wrath and lightning bolt. That's where the extra dps came from. The paladin and priest may have used SWD and holy shock as finishers as well.

desertswarm · 11/29/07, 12:57 AM

So they played a team which actually utilized the hybrid nature of some of the classes! That is pretty cool.

panny · 11/29/07, 2:02 AM

Quad healer seems like it tries to do what a Drain team does, but slower, and with more defense. It reaches the end goal of running the opposition out of mana, but more slowly and more safely. It seems like a move against the higher damage that seems to be occuring with Mage/Disc Priest/Rogue buffs. But are you sure the team in question were four full healers and not some kind of hybrid healing/damange spec/gear (Elemental Shaman, Shockadin, etc)?

Venomia · 11/29/07, 3:35 AM

Funny this thread actually popped, becuase we just started new team yesterday to see how it goes. The setup is

Disc Priest
Disc Priest
Disc Priest
Resto Shaman
Warr / Hunter / Rogue (we were using rogue - there wasnt any geared hunter avaible and warriors were off)

It was quite funny experience overall though. We played just few matches and theres a lots of coordination which we need to tune, but generally we played on the initial heroism powered 3x mana burn storm on enemy dps. After that healers, which rogue was locking down some melee dps. When they were trying to burn down anyone, we had 4 healers avaible and in worst case 3x pain supression. No bubbles or ice blocks or heroism from enemy team, because everything gets dispelled promptly. With enemy team on 0 mana its not really a problem to take someone down even with 4 healers nuking.

Will see how this turns out in the future.

Herrera · 11/29/07, 4:25 AM

Is this 1 quad healer team we're talking about or is it really becoming a common lineup in S3? I'm yet to come against one of those on my battlegroup.

Venomia · 11/29/07, 4:39 AM

We didnt really meet any other yet (played just few games anyway) but I'd guess its more of an expected rise. Its just reaction on the healing > dmg mechanic, which noone bothered with at the end of season2, but at the start of s3 lots of people are thinking about it. Earlier in s2 and in s1 healers meant more stability for the team, some utility and almost 0 dps except some hybrid builds. Now they mean more stability with healing, still the same utility and quite noticable dps - so why not to use it.

In the team I mentioned before (we might get spanked later on and prolly will, because its just the first idea of the team) the biggest weapon is the ultra powerfull mana burn combined with shitloads of healing power, basically "your mana users wont have any mana to use before you can actually make a dent in us" (which means we will have a lots of problems with heavy melee teams after - hopefully trippled pain supression will help a bit).

Nitz · 11/29/07, 4:47 AM

Your setup is quite interesting Venomia, could you keep us updated as you progress ? I'm really interested in this kind of "gimmick team".