11-20-2006, 11:11 PM
Quote:I can't tell if you are serious or not. I'd be shocked if a 25-man could be tolerably done with 4 out of 9 classes.
yes I'm serious
And yes it has significant game design implications if it works. However that's Blizzard's headache, not mine :P
Quote:warriors - battle shout, commanding shout, sunder, mortal strike, spell reflect
rogues - stuns, dps, and a few debuffs similar to warriors
hunters - pulls, nature aura, aspect of the pack
warlocks - banish, imp buff, health stones, soul stones
mages - aoe, poly, int, nova, spellsteal, fire damage
Warriors Battle shout doesn't compare with the amount of extra oomph a shaman gives a physical dps group, commanding shout probably isn't critical if we have lots of healers. Sunder is used for threat and the other tank classes have perfectly effective threat generation. Mortal strike is marginal, I've yet to see a raid boss healing himself where MS was the best solution. Spell reflect doesn't seem a raid-critical ability. Do you foresee encounters that can only be beaten by having a warrior reflect a spell back on the raid boss? Seems unlikely
Rogues Stuns don't work on anything that's a problem in raids. Dps from rogues will be missed but what I'm seeing when raiding is that the worst dpser is doing about a third of what the best dpser is doing. Lazy people, unfocussed people, raiders who tap frost bolt while watching a movie are what hurts dps more on my server. Ymmv. Raid-effective rogue debuffs are very few, In terms of debuffs feral druids and enhancement shammies surely offer more. I'll swallow my words if Crippling Poison and Mind-Numbing Poison work on raid bosses in TBC
Hunters You don't need Hunters to pull. Tanks can pull, or paladins can pull then bubble. You don't need hunters' nature aura, shamans have a totem that does the same thing. You don't really need aspect of the pack anywhere, doesn't kill you to run up the stairs 30% slower
Warlocks Banish will be missed. Imp buff is compensated for by Kings, Fortitude and lots of healers. In any event Imp buff is pretty unreliable as tanks often run out of range. Health stones are a loss but compensated for by our healing power. We have more wipe recovery with 50% of our guild being able to recover a wipe (paladins and shamans out of 4 classes) rather than the standard guilds 33% so soul stones won't be missed
Mages I explained AOE, editing it in after my original post. We lose Poly but thinking again about raiding the main place i've seen poly is Domo and that fight could certainly be done with offtank/healer pairs on 7 off the minions while everyone else not in the main tank group mobs the 8th. By no means easy, poly is certainly a loss. No Mage int buff but overall tons of healing capacity so that's not crucial. No frost nova but so what? i'll bet a pally aoe-er without frost nova has more survivability than a mage aoe-er with. No significant fire damage which a number of things are resistant to or immune but instead we have physical elemental and holy. Holy damage is the least resisted, we are fine for damage types
Quote:The kiting strat would be out on Razorgore, so that leaves you the DPS strat... skeptical. Have fun even GETTING to Broodlord (no mages, locks).
My understanding of this encounter was that the absolute textbook core kiting strategy uses shamans as principle kiters. My view of Razorgore is that kiting is a question of skill not class. Our best kiters were a Hunter and a Warrior spamming Demo. We can use Druids to duplicate the Warrior spamming Demo. I've kited this as a Feral Druid with moderate success but that was more about my making mistakes than the tools I had available