11-21-2006, 01:50 AM
While I think you can do 5 mans and even potentially some of the 10 mans (depending on encounter design) and that this would be a lot of fun, I don't think it will be possible.
Battle shout, stacks with that the shaman provide. Correct you don't need it, but they aren't mutually exclusive. Shaman, paladins, and druids get nice benefit from it. 300+ AP is not to be sneezed at. Sunder is another huge benefit to physical DPS and it is more valuable for that than for threat. Most raid bosses have 3000-4000 armor. A sunder stack is 2250 armor reduced. That is a significant increase in physical DPS. Druid threat is all based on damage, while you won't need as much threat since you won't have nearly the DPS threat with only healer classes doing DPS, your druids won't do as much aggro as they can with a warrior around.
You also lose demo shout and thunderclap. So the druids who already take more damage are taking even more damage. Demo shout is a significant damage mitigator. Thunderclap is overlooked as well for this roll by many, but you could replace that with a shaman or paladin with a thunderfury I suppose, but sitll no demo shout.
I'm not sure you could do something like the suppression room without a rogue. Never having those traps down? That debuff even with all those healers would be hellish.
Movement speed reduced by 80%.
Time between attacks increased by 400%.
Casting speed reduced by 80%.
All the time while trying to get through there? I see no reason why there might not be something similar in the expansion.
And while distract isn't strictly necesary, it does make some pulls nicer to do.
Sure tranq shot was a gimmick, but if you don't have it, something like Chromaggus is really going to suck you dry. Yes, all 40 people can heal, but you don't have a heck of a lot of DPS that doesn't suck down the mana supplies as well. Keep in mind that no sunder stack and no battle shout could easily make a cat druid only do about 80% of the damage they do with those buffs so what you see as good cat druid DPS now, will drop (given the same abilities you have now, even adding shaman), no sunder stack alone is 20% more physical damage mitigation for mob in most cases. He would be frenzied + enraged for the entire last 20% of his life. I've seen that combo being up for just 5 seconds get a warrior with over 10K buffed HP and massive mitigation killed even with 6 healers raining heals on him. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible, but I think it might be harder than you are anticipating. Heck Flamegor becomes difficult without tranq because it now means you are getting the whole raid hit with zone wide fire damage all the time because you aren't tranqing him out of it. Yep again everyone can self heal or get healed but again the more you heal the less DPS, the longer the fight, the more chances for mistakes.
Hunters are a significant portion of the DPS on someone like broodlord too where there is an aggro ceiling because of his fun little single target knockback that takes 30% of that targets aggro away. You get to a point where you can't generate more than the aggro you lost. Hunters are the only class that can zero that out. As mentioned since druids without sunder stacks are facing mobs that mitigate 20% (ore more) physical damage they aren't generating as much aggro as you might be used to with a current bear tank. The DPS being lower compared to a 9 class raid (that the encounter will be designed for if they have aggro cieling fights like that in TBC) means a longer fight and more danger of a mob that isn't controlled. Not to mention that without rogues this fight is impossible because of that debuff you would be fighting under.
Most fights where you want an imp buff on the tank are still relatively stationary. The imp is parked and it's rare that the wariror is out of that range when it matters. But yeah you can live without it. No summons, so downtime if you have to replace someone mid raid just increased some. Again all this can be overcome with better planning and people being more on the ball with prep work and such. Soulstones aren't just used for wipe recovery. They are put on some key people to save combat rezzes too, but yeah I do think with the extra combat rezzes that you have that can be dealt with too.
I'm not sure something like the Fankriss tunnel with the respawn speed it has would not be pleasent without more poweful AoE. Maybe it could be done with rotating hurricanes, holy nova's, focus fire, and consecrate. But mobile AoE seems quite valuable in there.
Yeah, razorgore kiting won't be an issue. Anyone with the skill can do it. I've seen vidoes where mages were the only kiters. I've kited as a druid, a warrior, and a hunter. And I've ended up kiting as a paladin from heal aggro. No biggy.
Another general note that I don't have enough experience with is that I would still be concerned about some of the DPS burn encounters. You get a bit of a taste of that with Chrommy with the 20% engrage he does, but it's not as critical as some of the Naxx encounters burns you have to do. I think you over estimate the amount of DPS that can be done. I've harped on the huge value of sunder for DPS already. You have extra healing, but you need extra healing. Even the best geared druid tank will take more healing than the equivalent geared druid, they do not have as much mitigation. Paladins won't be able to match warrior mitigation either, they don't get the same talents and I still don't expect them to get the itemization for mitigation as good as warriors either.
I just think you might have overlooked too much. I think you vastly overestimate the DPS of the raid too. And with more encounters being designed to prevent people just outlasting everything and eventually DPS'ing the mob down, which is what this guild pretty much has to do, I'm not sure how far they could get.
Quote: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
Battle shout, stacks with that the shaman provide. Correct you don't need it, but they aren't mutually exclusive. Shaman, paladins, and druids get nice benefit from it. 300+ AP is not to be sneezed at. Sunder is another huge benefit to physical DPS and it is more valuable for that than for threat. Most raid bosses have 3000-4000 armor. A sunder stack is 2250 armor reduced. That is a significant increase in physical DPS. Druid threat is all based on damage, while you won't need as much threat since you won't have nearly the DPS threat with only healer classes doing DPS, your druids won't do as much aggro as they can with a warrior around.
You also lose demo shout and thunderclap. So the druids who already take more damage are taking even more damage. Demo shout is a significant damage mitigator. Thunderclap is overlooked as well for this roll by many, but you could replace that with a shaman or paladin with a thunderfury I suppose, but sitll no demo shout.
Quote: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
I'm not sure you could do something like the suppression room without a rogue. Never having those traps down? That debuff even with all those healers would be hellish.
Movement speed reduced by 80%.
Time between attacks increased by 400%.
Casting speed reduced by 80%.
All the time while trying to get through there? I see no reason why there might not be something similar in the expansion.
And while distract isn't strictly necesary, it does make some pulls nicer to do.
Quote: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
Sure tranq shot was a gimmick, but if you don't have it, something like Chromaggus is really going to suck you dry. Yes, all 40 people can heal, but you don't have a heck of a lot of DPS that doesn't suck down the mana supplies as well. Keep in mind that no sunder stack and no battle shout could easily make a cat druid only do about 80% of the damage they do with those buffs so what you see as good cat druid DPS now, will drop (given the same abilities you have now, even adding shaman), no sunder stack alone is 20% more physical damage mitigation for mob in most cases. He would be frenzied + enraged for the entire last 20% of his life. I've seen that combo being up for just 5 seconds get a warrior with over 10K buffed HP and massive mitigation killed even with 6 healers raining heals on him. I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible, but I think it might be harder than you are anticipating. Heck Flamegor becomes difficult without tranq because it now means you are getting the whole raid hit with zone wide fire damage all the time because you aren't tranqing him out of it. Yep again everyone can self heal or get healed but again the more you heal the less DPS, the longer the fight, the more chances for mistakes.
Hunters are a significant portion of the DPS on someone like broodlord too where there is an aggro ceiling because of his fun little single target knockback that takes 30% of that targets aggro away. You get to a point where you can't generate more than the aggro you lost. Hunters are the only class that can zero that out. As mentioned since druids without sunder stacks are facing mobs that mitigate 20% (ore more) physical damage they aren't generating as much aggro as you might be used to with a current bear tank. The DPS being lower compared to a 9 class raid (that the encounter will be designed for if they have aggro cieling fights like that in TBC) means a longer fight and more danger of a mob that isn't controlled. Not to mention that without rogues this fight is impossible because of that debuff you would be fighting under.
Quote: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
Most fights where you want an imp buff on the tank are still relatively stationary. The imp is parked and it's rare that the wariror is out of that range when it matters. But yeah you can live without it. No summons, so downtime if you have to replace someone mid raid just increased some. Again all this can be overcome with better planning and people being more on the ball with prep work and such. Soulstones aren't just used for wipe recovery. They are put on some key people to save combat rezzes too, but yeah I do think with the extra combat rezzes that you have that can be dealt with too.
Quote: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
I'm not sure something like the Fankriss tunnel with the respawn speed it has would not be pleasent without more poweful AoE. Maybe it could be done with rotating hurricanes, holy nova's, focus fire, and consecrate. But mobile AoE seems quite valuable in there.
Quote: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
Yeah, razorgore kiting won't be an issue. Anyone with the skill can do it. I've seen vidoes where mages were the only kiters. I've kited as a druid, a warrior, and a hunter. And I've ended up kiting as a paladin from heal aggro. No biggy.
Another general note that I don't have enough experience with is that I would still be concerned about some of the DPS burn encounters. You get a bit of a taste of that with Chrommy with the 20% engrage he does, but it's not as critical as some of the Naxx encounters burns you have to do. I think you over estimate the amount of DPS that can be done. I've harped on the huge value of sunder for DPS already. You have extra healing, but you need extra healing. Even the best geared druid tank will take more healing than the equivalent geared druid, they do not have as much mitigation. Paladins won't be able to match warrior mitigation either, they don't get the same talents and I still don't expect them to get the itemization for mitigation as good as warriors either.
I just think you might have overlooked too much. I think you vastly overestimate the DPS of the raid too. And with more encounters being designed to prevent people just outlasting everything and eventually DPS'ing the mob down, which is what this guild pretty much has to do, I'm not sure how far they could get.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.