Your ideal 25-man raid group

[PapaSmurf]

With BC coming soon and all 9 classes being available to either side I thought it would be fun for people to post their ideal raid group. Here's my first go

Group 1 - Magic DPS
1 Druid - Moonkin (balance/resto)
3 Mages
1 Priest - Shadow

With vampiric embrace and a moonkin that can snipe heal this group should be able to keep itself in good health

Group 2 - Melee DPS
1 Druid - iLOTP
3 Rogues (Rogues can be swapped with DPS warriors)
1 Shaman

Again improved leader of the pack and shaman heals should keep this group in good health

Group 3 - Healing
1 Druid - Tree of Life
2 Priests
2 Paladins

This group will be responsible for keeping Healing/Tank/Utility DPS health up

Group 4 - Tank/Pull
3 Warriors
1 Hunter
1 Shaman

Group 5 - Utility DPS
2 Warlock
2 Hunters
1 Shaman

There are obviously some ares that can be re-shuffled. I tried to have 2-3 of each class type. What do you think? Post your ideal groups and let's have some fun with this.

Big D

[Concillian]

My ideal 25-man group:

A few Lurkers who can tank
A few Lurkers who can heal
A few Lurkers who can dispel junk
And the remainder Lurkers who can DPS

[Treesh]

My ideal 25-man group:

A few Lurkers who can tank
A few Lurkers who can heal
A few Lurkers who can dispel junk
And the remainder Lurkers who can DPS

LOL! <3 Conc :wub:

With BC coming soon and all 9 classes being available to either side I thought it would be fun for people to post their ideal raid group. Here's my first go

Group 1 - Magic DPS
1 Druid - Moonkin (balance/resto)
3 Mages
1 Priest - Shadow

Does the Moonkin aura and the totem of wrath from an Elemental shaman stack?

[Magicbag]

I'm not up on all the latest warrior updates, but shouldn't their shouts still provide a big DPS increase for rogues?

[Tuftears]

My usual criteria for a 20-man run is just 2-3 from each class, and a minimum of 2 tanks and 6 full-time healers.

If you want to get optimal about it:

* 2 full protection tanks
* 1 shadow priest with Vampiric Touch
* 1 moonkin druid with improved Faerie Fire
* 1 tree druid
* 1 feral druid with improved LotP
* 1 ret paladin with improved BOMight
* 2 paladins with BOKings and improved BOWisdom
* 1 BM/improved HM hunter with Ferocious Inspiration
* 1 trueshot aura hunter
* 1 survival hunter with Expose Weakness
* 1 shaman with Windfury Totem and Earth Shield

Fill in the remaining 12 with DPS, hybrids, and a couple healers, and you're good to go.

Group organization:

Tank group:
* Tank 1 (challenging shout)
* Tank 2 (battle shout)
* Paladin (Devotion)
* Warlock
* Extra class (i.e. hunter for Aspect of the Wild, shaman for Windfury, Ret paladin for Sanctity aura increasing healing)

Melee group:
* DPS warrior (battle shout)
* Rogue
* Rogue
* Feral druid (iLOTP aura heals group)
* BM hunter or Trueshot hunter

Magic DPS group:
* Caster
* Caster
* Caster
* Shadow priest
* Moonkin druid

Other groups: any organization is fine.

[PapaSmurf]

Melee group:
* DPS warrior (battle shout)
* Rogue
* Rogue
* Feral druid (iLOTP aura heals group)
* BM hunter or Trueshot hunter

Would a shaman with windfurry benefit this group more than a hunter?

I think we are both coming from different factions. I am much more familiar with the capabilites of shamans and know relatively little about a paladins contributions. For example I left a paladin out of my tanking group where it makes sense to have one there not just for devotion aura, but some offtanking duties as well. Perhaps a bear tank in the tank group also makes sense since iLOTP will help tanks with healing and threat generation.

[Kevin]

Magic DPS group:
* Caster
* Caster
* Caster
* Shadow priest
* Moonkin druid

Shadow priest is wasted in that group in my opinion and keep in mind the new shaman totem that ups spell damage.

I'm rather fond of shadow priests in the MT group in 20 mans (though maybe that is because we do them 8-15 man most of the time) because of how much healing the tanks can get from VE. The priest will be expending that mana for DPS anyway regardless of the group and it if saves a heal or 10 from the tank healers so much the better. Of course where to put the shadow priest seems very situational. They are great in DPS groups where there is steady AoE/Environmental damage too.


Edit: Unless the plan is for the new mana VE thingy. But I don't know how bad most of the other casters will need that.

[PapaSmurf]

Shadow priest is wasted in that group in my opinion and keep in mind the new shaman totem that ups spell damage.

Indeed, Treesh made a similar mention and it makes sense to have shaman in that group. If the totem of wrath (+3% crit) does indeed stack with the moonkin aura we could see a pretty impressive boost to magic DPS also factoring in shamans new wrath of air totem which increases magical damage.

In addition a shadow priest using Vampiric Touch would also be a welcome benifit to increasing the mana pool of the group. However, that mana increase may be better served with the healers instead of the mana-based DPSers. Since we do have 2 60 shadow priests with Adirra and Xarhud we may be able to have both. So my modified magic DPS group would look like.

2 Mages
1 Moonkin
1 Shaman
1 Shadow Priest for VT

My Healer group would be
1 Holy Priest/1 HT druid or 2 Holy Priests
1 ToL druid
1 Paladin (Any Auras here good for healers I apologize for my lack of knowledge)
1 Shadow Priest for VT

GG also mentioned having a shadow priest in the tank group but I think that having an iLOTP bear tank in the tank group would be perhaps more effective due to the +5% crit addition.

My tank group would be
2 Prot Warriors (Both don't have to be prot as long as MT is)
1 Feral druid for iLOTP
1 Paladin for Devotion Aura
1 Warlock for Blood Pact

My melee DPS group would be
3 rogues/DPS warriors
1 Feral druid for iLOTP
1 shaman for windfury/GoA/strength totems

The Utility DPS group would be made up of
2 Hunters
1 Warlock
2 fillins

[edit] lol looking back at the post I realize that I have 4-5 druids in there. Hey what can I say I'm biased:)

[Kevin]

Alright. Given at least 2 of every class and 7 "floaters" I'm thinking the mix might end up something like this:

Warriors: 3
Paladins: 2
Druids: 3
Hunters: 3
Shaman: 2
Rogues: 3
Mages: 3
Priests: 3
Warlocks: 3

That gives you 10 people that can heal but likely generally won't need to heal. 5-7 dedicated healers should be plenty.

Tank Group
MT (warrior or feral druid)
OT (warrior or feral druid)
Paladin
Warlock
Shaman

With windfury procs no longer generating rage for warriors and crits now generating more rage, grace of air is likely the totem to go with. The druid and shaman both get a bigger benefit from GoA (unless the whole weapon proc working for druids now includes windfury). The shaman gets the benefit of course because their self buff is better than the totem and WF totem does nothing for them. The extra dodge that it gives (4-5% at least) is nice as well. But that is just a guess. If your tanks can't stay within 30 yards of each other for totems/aura then you'll have to split them up someway to help with that.

Melee DPS Group
Rogue
Rogue
Rogue
Warrior
Shaman

Yep, pretty much keep it just like a horde DPS group. IF you have an LotP druid, and they aren't playing the OT job, replace a rogue with them.

Magic DPS group
Mage
Mage
Mage
Lock
Shaman/Moonkin (If you have either)

Ranged/Mixed DPS group
BM Hunter
TSA Hunter
Warrior
Rogue/retnoob pally/feral druid/DPS shaman/Warrior
Shadow Priest

Why the shadow priest here? They can do VE and VT (mana and health). Assuming you can have a hunter pet out (like you can in pretty much all of ZG, AQ20, and MC) the VE will keep the pet up, the VT will keep the hunters in mana (this may not matter as much with judgement and blessing of wisdom, but coming for a horde side keeping that hunter from having to FD drink and with the new damage models could be huge). The BM hunter can be anywhere really when the pet is usable. The pet proc is simply all damage by 3% so as best as I can tell this helps mages or rogues or anyone. If the BM hunter uses a pet that does a party buff like a wolf then that is still helping 4 people in that group as well. Leaching TSA from the marks hunter helps the BM hunter too.

Healer Group
Priest
Priest
Tree Druid
Lock
Paladin/shaman/druid whatever other healer.

Really the big issues seem to be.

1. What do you do with the hunters?
2. What do you do with the shaman?
3. What do you do with the druids?

I actually think that druid tanks will be very desirable and I figure a druid tank is still likely to have improved leader of the pack. I do agree that will be nice in the tank group assuming that you can cover two tanks with the auras.

I like to give a warlock to the healers to give them an imp as well for more life. Having more survivable healers is good.

Hunters are a bit odd. Beastmasters, depending on the instances will provide some nice group bonuses, if it is better than TSA for some classes I'm not sure. Marks hunters (TSA) provide less to rogues and warriors than a shaman or warrior does (battle shout is 3x the AP, shaman totems are more AP and more damage). Hunters also can't leach much from a group, except for what shaman provide. But Grace of Air is not going to be as big as it used to be with the changes to agility. Mana stream/tide won't be as big a deal with judgement of wisdom/blessing of wisdom (you want hawk up in a raid, not the mana regen aura is my thought, you want extrenal sources to give you that mana). Survival hunters don't provide group buffs. Like a paladin or improved hunters mark hunter they provide mostly raid buffs so it doesn't matter where you put them.

Druids depend a lot on spec. You want the tree in with the heal spec folks of course. Imp leader of that pack for a rogue is also basically a good VE heal too. You might even want one in with a BM hunter because the high crit rate on the hunter pets it could really help the longevity of the pet. My pet with only 90 trained FR pushes 200 FR buffed (just Mark) thanks to the pet getting FR from my gear now with the changes.

Shaman used to be a lot simpler. They gave huge benefit to melee DPS and horde side with the old windfury gave a big aggro boost to the tank. But if you only run 2 of them where do you put them? Aggro might not be as big of an issue, the MT might not need them as bad, so the new totem for mages and locks could be the way to go.


Only 2 paladins for blessings means you can do something like:
Hunters: Wisdom, Kings (no need for salv, FD takes care of that)
Warriors: Kings, Might (though DPS warriors probably don't want that, they want Salv)
Rogues: Salv, Might or Kings (not sure which they perfer, might is more DPS, kings is more survival)
Healers: Kings, Wisdom (again healer aggro isn't generally a big deal in raids no need for salv)
Shaman: Wisdom, Kings/Salv (DPS shaman burn mana pretty quick and the healers having more is all good, the DPS shaman will likely want Salv over Kings though)
Paladins: Wisdom, Kings/Might (again pallies don't pull aggro salv is mostly a waste)
Locks: Salv, Wisdom (maybe Kings for more crits from int, not sure how much extra DPS wisdom means from less tapping time)
Mages: Salv, Wisdom

Of course in the really aggro sensative fights that shaman in with the rogues and the DPS warrior might even want to stack salv and tranquil air and not take GoA or Windfury.

The issue with only 2 paladins is that no one will get blessing of light. No Blessing of light is a bit hit to the paladins supposed mana effeciency.


But yeah 25 means that you pretty much get 3 of each class. And I still think 2 dedicated tanks (be they warriors or druids or a mix) and 2 others that can tank when needed. 5 dedicated healers but 8 to 10 that can heal.

[Tuftears]

Yeah, I generally stick the paladin in with the tanks 'cause who doesn't love an extra 735 armor, maybe 918 if you have a paladin with improved Devotion Aura (+25%)? Top rank of devotion aura in BC is 861 and improved Devotion Aura goes up to +40%, making that 1205 armor.

I do often stick a shadow priest in with the tanks or the melee DPS, but I was specifically thinking '2 warlocks' for the caster DPS group 'cause the VE will let them lifetap more often, and VT will get them mana.

Coming from Alliance side, I don't expect to have any shamans real soon, and once I do get one in a raid, I strongly suspect he or she will be enhancement-spec'd, thus he goes in a melee-DPS-oriented group. I did not know that re: Windfury no longer generating rage for warriors, though. We'll see how it goes. Might just have to have two melee DPS groups, and spread the loving around.

[WildFire]

Magic DPS group
Mage
Mage
Mage
Lock
Shaman/Moonkin (If you have either)

At this point, I imagine this would only be true if the instance has any need for AOEing.

This can be reduced to Mage/Mage/Lock/Lock/caster-support-toon, or even Mage/Lock/Lock/Lock/caster-support-toon otherwise.

You only really need the mage along for AB/AI assuming everybody carries enough water into an instance ;)

[PapaSmurf]

Why the shadow priest here? They can do VE and VT (mana and health). Assuming you can have a hunter pet out (like you can in pretty much all of ZG, AQ20, and MC) the VE will keep the pet up, the VT will keep the hunters in mana (this may not matter as much with judgement and blessing of wisdom, but coming for a horde side keeping that hunter from having to FD drink and with the new damage models could be huge). The BM hunter can be anywhere really when the pet is usable. The pet proc is simply all damage by 3% so as best as I can tell this helps mages or rogues or anyone. If the BM hunter uses a pet that does a party buff like a wolf then that is still helping 4 people in that group as well. Leaching TSA from the marks hunter helps the BM hunter too.

I would argue that the shadow priest would be better served in the magic DPS group. You mention here wanting to be able to avoid FD and drinking, but at least you have that option. Mages/Locks that would make up the magic DPS group would not have this capability. The shadow priest may also enjoy leveraging either a shaman or moonkin to help increase their DPS.

It's interesting to see our natural tendency to favor our main classes. I certainly did it with druids, and I think it's just a function of being much more intimately knowledgable with what that class brings to the table. GG certainly has much more experience with a broader range of classes in endgame content so perhaps I should defer to him in this discussion:)

D

[Kevin]

I would argue that the shadow priest would be better served in the magic DPS group. You mention here wanting to be able to avoid FD and drinking, but at least you have that option. Mages/Locks that would make up the magic DPS group would not have this capability. The shadow priest may also enjoy leveraging either a shaman or moonkin to help increase their DPS.

It's interesting to see our natural tendency to favor our main classes. I certainly did it with druids, and I think it's just a function of being much more intimately knowledgable with what that class brings to the table. GG certainly has much more experience with a broader range of classes in endgame content so perhaps I should defer to him in this discussion:)

D

Mages have never seemed to have issue with running dry in longer fights in my experience. 3 different mana gems, mage armor, and the relatively short turn around on evocation, judgement of wisdom, blessing of wisdom, plus the need to slow DPS at times to avoid ripping aggro. And of course I had forgotten about the new mana based vampiric ability and was only thinking about the old health based one at first.

Warlocks do get a huge benefit from VE though with much shorter downtime on tapping cycles, but they suffer even more from having to slow DPS to not rip aggro than mages do. Perhaps mages were having more downtime in combat issues than I noticed. Or maybe I was around too many ice and not enough fire mages.

But the bigger reason I said hunters is that you can bigger benefit from both VE and VT. Even warlocks shouldn't really need to tap with VT going on so the VE part is wasted, depending on the encounter. In a group with hunters, rogues, warriors, pets, etc. There is a good chance that the VE will benefit the up close people and the VT will benefit the hunters + the shadow priest. Encounter design matters a lot for this. But agin the mostly useless comment was simply before I remembered VT.

And I even acknowledged that VT could be pointless for hunters as soon as we get judgement of light and blessing of wisdom. The extension on the mana pool of those two skills is pretty huge. I know most alliance hunters don't seem to go and hunt up demonic runes nearly as much as horde hunters and many of them didn't even bother with making sure to have mana pots until some of the BWL encounters. That's the impact of paladins on mana pools. Both sides wanted to avoid FD/drink since a 30 second block out of combat is a large chunk of damage and as one of the few classes that had no aggro limits (assuming FD wasn't resisted) that is valuable.

But I envision even with more mana return from paladins, that with the death of aimed as part of the cycle hunters will never see spirt regen again and will have to burn more mana to hit the same DPS levels (multi costs more mana now, arcane is less mana/damage efficient than aimed even with the changes, and steady shot could prove a big mana hog).

But my big limitation right now is the viewing of shadow priest as DPS that provides only healing and never recalling the are DPS that provides mana as well.

I also don't see a big problem with 4+ druids either. The buffs to that class and the versatility if you have the gear and can know ahead of time what to wear is very nice. I know from experience that it's easier for a druid to tank multiple mobs than it is for a warrior and I envision that being more valuable in a 25 man environment. I might even want one of the classes that gets 3 along to be the paladin depending on how well they could actually off tank as 3 buffs from pallies adds a fair bit too. Everyone can have kings + salv + one other. That means you up survival, damage out, and lower the aggro requirements of the tank. It's not as easy to do that with just two. With 3 you can also get away with blessing of light on the tanks instead of salv making paladin healing on the tanks more efficient by a fair bit.

It's very possible that encounter design and potential druid and paladin tanking could mean that you don't really care to have more than 1 or 2 warriors because they don't do the DPS of rogues, they don't tank that much better than the other classes than can, and you don't the extra mitigation they can provide. Then again they could also be the best DPS you can bring too.

And mages have often felt marginalized in raid encounters, posts to that effect have already been made in this thread.


My first concern though with groups is maximizing mitigation of the tanks, then maximizing aggro generation of the tanks. Though of course some encounter design makes that less important. After that I worry about maximizing the damage potential of the DPS. Rogues and warriors get the most increase in damage out of raid and groups buffs currently. So I try to maximize their damage output next. I don't call for shamans more for hunters in our current raids because I know that rogues and warriors benefit more, even though a 202 AP and 1.92% crit and potentially avoiding having to FD and drink is a pretty massive buff for a survival hunter (Its only 176 AP and 1.69% crit for a marks or beast hunter). But that will drop in the patch/expansion with the changes to hunter mechanics. So as mentioned hunters my be better as buff providers than buff recievers.


Edit: I also envison combat trapping being of more value as well even in raids. Right not there aren't a lot of places that benefit from good trapping (the supression room and Nef being two of the bigger exceptions). But without having to FD to put the trap down there could be more places where traps will be helpful and even man efficient, but it's another mana drain on hunters. But yeah still who knows.

[Tuftears]

See theorycrafting elsewhere (i.e. EJ forums) but downranking arcane shot and multishot is where it'll be at for hunter DPS.

[Kevin]

See theorycrafting elsewhere (i.e. EJ forums) but downranking arcane shot and multishot is where it'll be at for hunter DPS.

I've seen it. But it's a situation where again, the less downranking you have to do, the more DPS you do, and if you supply more mana, you can uprank more. It doesn't invalidate my thoughts on hunters.


Edit: All the TC also assumes that something won't be done to make down ranking less desirable for hunters like they did with priests and other DPS classes (remember the changes to downranked spells that are talked about for healers apply to DPS as well).

[Tuftears]

True dat. I guess you have to figure out where best gains are from your shadow priest(s), and this may actually vary from fight to fight. But warlocks look to me like a case of obvious synergy since they're the ones that suffer the most on mana, and rely on lifetapping to fix it. A shadow priest's mana restoration will help healers, but generally not the life restoration.

[Kevin]

True dat. I guess you have to figure out where best gains are from your shadow priest(s), and this may actually vary from fight to fight. But warlocks look to me like a case of obvious synergy since they're the ones that suffer the most on mana, and rely on lifetapping to fix it. A shadow priest's mana restoration will help healers, but generally not the life restoration.

Yep I fully acknowledge that it might be best to give them to locks. A lot depends on the encounters though. As mentioned a pet can be used to do damage on every mob in MC. And BM pets looking to push 150 DPS already with just the changes in the patch that is something that should be considered. Too many people simply rule out pets because of encounter design and because they are such low DPS even for beastmasters now when they can be active and because the BM spec'd hunter themselves loses so much DPS. A lot of that is changing in TBC. Some theorycrafting shows that BM spec in the new patch will out damage other specs in both MC and BWL (BWL the pet may not be doing damage but on many fights can parked in a safe spot used to buff the hunter with activation of beastial wrath). And I don't expect the party buffs that pets can provide to be only good for 5 mans.

I know we often give a shadow priest to hunters on Vael and don't change the groups around sometimes afterwards and if I get VE healing for the pet it's another 50 DPS for me on all the trash packs in BWL because the VE healing keeps up with all the cleaves and other AoE attacks.


The other thing with hunter mana is that current shot cycles thanks to aimed have the hunter getting spirit regen a fair bit which isn't negligable. New shot cycles even with down ranking (if it will still work effectively) are going to change that as well.


But yeah I'm not sure I can say without seeing encounter design the best place for a shadow priest to go since VT and VE are both highly valuable. I do know that I will still want at least one around though. :)

And yeah I speak a lot on hunters here because I do play the class a lot and because there are a lot of thoughts about hunters and raiding that I've found are simply wrong if you are willing to pay a bit more attention (pet usage being one of the biggest) at least in MC, BWL, ZG, and AQ20. Haven't really been in AQ40 or Naxx with a hunter. I don't see hunters trying to trap enough in the suppression room, explosive trap + entaglement off an FD then back on the hatchers with pretty much no DPS time lost isn't just good DPS, entrapment means that some of those whelps end up not being able to hit the mages because they can't move. So I speak up on it when I see hunter abilities simply ignored in raid situations.

[Tuftears]

Certainly not ruling out pets, but I would group a BM hunter with a feral druid over a shadow priest 'cause most of the melee DPS group won't be able to make use of the restored mana - you have two mana users in there, the hunter and the priest.

Honestly, my conclusion from this thread would be 'too many potentially useful buffs to try to get every last one into the same party at once'.

[Kevin]

Certainly not ruling out pets, but I would group a BM hunter with a feral druid over a shadow priest 'cause most of the melee DPS group won't be able to make use of the restored mana - you have two mana users in there, the hunter and the priest.

Honestly, my conclusion from this thread would be 'too many potentially useful buffs to try to get every last one into the same party at once'.

3 mana users since I have 2 hunters + the priest. But yeah. But it's no different than have 2 or 3 mages that won't make use of the returned health. :) The thought was that you would get 4 in melee range (2 pets, warrior, rogue) that get benefit from the health assuming no major environmental damage, and 3 that get benefit from the mana. But yeah I still don't know. Tank groups most people seem to agree on. And basic melee DPS groups as well.

It's where does the shadow preist, and where do hunters go that is the bigger issue.

The other reason for VE healing of pets is that it if it really isn't a huge benefit to anyone else it means pets are being added in without any other maintenance. If the VE healing isn't enough and they die, they die you rez them after combat. But I'm actually anticipating that there could be situations where actively healing a pet is a good thing too, like it can often be in 5 mans.

[Delc]

True dat. I guess you have to figure out where best gains are from your shadow priest(s), and this may actually vary from fight to fight. But warlocks look to me like a case of obvious synergy since they're the ones that suffer the most on mana, and rely on lifetapping to fix it. A shadow priest's mana restoration will help healers, but generally not the life restoration.

While I certainly wouldn't turn down a shadow priest feeding me health and mana on my lock, I'm not sure how much you would really gain. The biggest limiting factor for locks is usually threat. Soul shatter should help a bit, but with a 5min cooldown it will be pretty easy to push the threat ceiling a second time in a long fight.