Is this a passable group setup for endgame?

[Tensius]

Okay, so I've been playing for weeeeeeks, and after forever, I'm finally 61. I'll be 70 in about a month, so I'm starting to think about endgame. From level 1-61, I have played every single night with the same people, and our group consists of myself (a druid; currently feral, but will probably switch to resto for endgame if needed), a warrior (tank), and 2 shadow priests.

Now, we're missing AoE and CC big time, I realize that, which is why I'm asking if this group so far is passable for endgame instances. Even if we do get a 5th person for AoE and CC, would this make us a decent group?

The 2 priests and myself, we're open to suggestions on how to properly set up the group. The way we thought, if they both go shadow, and I go resto, it'd be good coz they can help heal through shadow damage, while I'm full time healer. But if you think that one of them would be better as a full time healer, let me know.

I'm really open to any suggestions on how we should prepare our equipment and builds as we level up and get closer 70.

[det]

I am missing your number 5 here?

Yes, it is very helpful to have some CC: mages and rogues with sap and sheep work in normals and heroics. Warlocks seduce seems to stop working on at least some mobs in heroics.

I have run Instances with the oddest setups..and I think yours would work in most if not all normal Instances. Druid is very valuable as OT, don't change until lv 70 (if at all). As gear gets better, we have done even Shattered halls and Shadowlab by just pulling the place on us and nuke without CC (but had a holy priest or tree of life druid). One full healer and one shadowpriest would be awesome.

[amgyn]

keep your druid feral <--- dps + offtank
make one priest full healer <-- main heals
keep one priest shadow <-- DPS + CC in humanoid instances (mind control)
warrior (obv.) protection spec <-- MT

+1 any class (rogue/mage pref) <-- DPS/CC

[Tensius]

I am missing your number 5 here?

Yeah, the 5th slot will probably be filled by other friends who don't play as regularly, or by a random player. That's part of the question I was wanting to ask. Basically to see how we should set the 4 of us up, and what we should look for in a 5th.

[AeroJonesy]

keep your druid feral <--- dps + offtank
make one priest full healer <-- main heals
keep one priest shadow <-- DPS + CC in humanoid instances (mind control)
warrior (obv.) protection spec <-- MT

+1 any class (rogue/mage pref) <-- DPS/CC

Agreed. But I'd put a warlock in that "+1" as well. This group would be able to rock most stuff. And a lot of instances have a few undead mobs so priests can shackle, which is just as good as a polymorph.

[Tensius]

Cool. I'll talk to the two priests and see if they'll be okay with that type of setup. I think it'll be fine. I'm not sure how I feel about dpsing forever, I actually preferred healing, but I do think that staying feral would be best as well now that I've had more inputs.

So, another question for you guys. So far I've been dpsing using gear that gives +str and +agi. I know that stamina is great for a dpser as well, but if I had to choose between a +20str +20agi item compared to a +16str +16agi +8sta, I've been choosing the +20 item. This means that I have very little hp and I'm pretty darn squishy in my cat form.

It's worked very well so far because our group is really used to it, however, if I'm gonna need to off-tank as you mentioned, do you think my gear selection should change to include stamina as well?

You can look at my profile/gears here:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Executus&n=Garaz

[AeroJonesy]

Yes. You do zero DPS when dead. Nothing is more annoying to healers than DPS classes who focus so much on DPS that they never bothered to pick up any stamina.

[sheepe2004]

it should be fairly eay to pick up alot more stamina between new gear and enchants as you quest.

In terms of tanking gear though look out for leather items with very high armour (check all the leather quest rewards) i missed most of them and now i'm very annoyed because i can never be a particularly good tank without some of them.

[amgyn]

feral druids with lots of hp and armor are some of the best tanks in the game.

sometimes you'll be asked to tank while the warrior dps's :P

i'd say concentrate on +stam +str gear, then +agil.

[bwirum]

If you're gonna tank, rack up armor, agi and stam. Anyting with +dodge is also helpful. If you're gonna dps, rack up str and stam and ap.

Best option, keep two sets and get yourself a wardrobe changing mod, like itemrack, for quick changing of gear.

[Kneash]

From my experience, great setups in the expansion are like this:

1) Tank (of some kind, Warrior,Paly, Druid) they don't even have to be Prot specced unless you're doing RAID stuff.
2) Shadow Priest
3) Warlock (Affliction is best)
4) Melee DPS (Warrior/Rogue)
5) Shaman (Elemental is best)

6) Depending on the situation, you can actually switched out any of 3,4,5 with a Mage as well (if CC is a BIG issue), otherwise stick with that setup.

For me, this kind of setup has absolutely rocked hardcore. When running with this setup, it's hard to fail, from my experience. 1st successfull Shadowlabs run was with that. Same with Mech & Arc too. Such fun and balls to the wall DPS with decent CC when the situation demands it.

[det]

Yeah, the 5th slot will probably be filled by other friends who don't play as regularly, or by a random player. That's part of the question I was wanting to ask. Basically to see how we should set the 4 of us up, and what we should look for in a 5th.

Well, you will come to a point where you see the benefit of mages (sheep), rogues(sap) and warlocks (just did a bloodfurnace heroic and it is 'lock heave: banish, seduce, enslave...wooot? that imp does 4300 damage???)

Shamans are awesome for their totems and emergency tanking elementals..and so are paladins with auras and all. Not a bad idea to have 1-2 players that play occasionally so you see which class you like most. Safest CC is sheep and sap (unless it breaks around patrols^^). Seduce and fear are a bit russian roulette at times, but a shadow priest is a warlocks best friend :)

Talking heroics:

-Prot warrior
-Holy priest
-Resto shaman (with dps gear in bag)
-Mage and/or warlock and/or Rogue

Has beaten every heroic that I have done so far....

For normal your group wil work and you will learn what additional class you need where...

[moopy]

Safest CC is sheep and sap (unless it breaks around patrols^^). Seduce and fear are a bit russian roulette at times, but a shadow priest is a warlocks best friend :)

A hunter with the two-item beast lord set bonus (trap CD reduction) is godlike in heroics and Karazhan. Ice trap works on far more mobs than sap, seduce, shackle, sheep etc. A good hunter can keep a mob iced for at least four traps in a row while DPSsing hard in heroics- an MM hunter can scatter shot and conc kite to stretch the cooldowns, survival can use wyvern sting and probably has clever traps/entrapment. BM isn't so hot, but then you can't have everything, and it's fun for PvP, so don't be greedy. Hunters can also misdirect stray mobs back onto the MT or OT, which is a lifesaver.

Of course, this requires a good hunter. They do exist.

[det]

Damn, you are right..had great experiences with hunters in heroic Mechanar and normal SH...Sucky ones in heroic SV and all BM runs with hunters...strange strange...guess that is why I forgot to mention them..as our mages and rogues delivered 100% of the time....

[moopy]

Yep, you're absolutely right there, det. The thing is, you need to stagger the cooldowns a bit, as the traps don't hold for quite as long as the CD- so a smart hunter will put one down 15 seconds or so before the pull, so he can drop a second one as soon as the mob freezes/have some lattitude in case of resists. They can also buy themselves some time by kiting the CCed mob about a bit, or depending on spec, stunning them.

The trouble is, a lot of people made hunters to spec BM and slack (an "easy levelling build" etc., prevents having to learn much). This is bad, as in the old world, they could just press the petattack button and more or less idle, and if they were lucky, no-one would notice the mediocre DPS- the pet wouldn't die and they wouldn't need to take any risks. In the new high-level instances, things are much better-designed, so that all the classes need to use a fair selection of their skills to ensure success. There are also more fights where you need a load of DPS in a short time, and more situations where you need accurate and reliable CC too

It takes a lot less effort just to click "ZOMGsheep" every now and then, I suspect, and also, a lot of of the truly abysmal mages didn't ever reach a high level- they didn't have the supernatural survivability of the BM hunter, who stands a pretty high chance of living even when the player is afk. Maybe these factors contribute. I am hoping that the nice design of the new content will cause a shakeout to happen to hunters, so some lern2play, others just reroll. There are way too many crummy hunters out there. However, if you find a good one, hang onto them, they are amazingly useful to have around :)

I know that some hunters have rerolled and levelled paladins meanwhile since they couldn't stand actually having to play properly- they're going to be gutted when pallies are fixed in the next patch, and they have to learn to manage mana like any other healer. I wonder what the next refuge for people who can't play will be?

[Tensius]

Thanks for all the posts guys. I'm getting gears for dps by primarily relying on this list: http://www.gurgleblaster.net/emmerald/Cat_Sustained_DPS/Head.html

As you can see, stamina isn't a priority for them, so I've always wondered about how much it's actually needed. What do you think is a good balance between dps and hp that I need for endgame? I don't want to die due to low hp, but at the same time, as a class taking up a dps slot in the group, I need to be able to hold my end. So what do you think are some good hp numbers and damage numbers that I need to have?

[det]

If you mean heroics by endgame - Felguards in Bloodfurnace heroic can hit for 6000 on plate and a Laughing Skull Adept who resisted my fear tripple hitted me for 6000 each on cloth. King Maulgar can hit for 9000 on plate IIRC (up to 35 000 on cloth) and our warriors aim for 14k-16k HP.

If you mean just normal SH or SL runs, well, a holy priest can heal a protection warrior alone there, even if the warrior tanks 5 mobs at once. We pulled groups of 5 in the cathedral before Blackheart the Inciter, had a patrolling Maiden on us and an assassin add, still made it.

Ofc that was properly geared, specced and after running the place for the 10th time with people in good shape :).

As for gear and HP, I usually try to find players that are know are in a certain raiding guild on my server and check their stats in the armory...

[SwervinCL]

keep your druid feral <--- dps + offtank
make one priest full healer <-- main heals
keep one priest shadow <-- DPS + CC in humanoid instances (mind control)
warrior (obv.) protection spec <-- MT

+1 any class (rogue/mage pref) <-- DPS/CC

Exactly. You are going to have to make one of your priests respec to holy...
You have two. Even being in a group like that, I would rather have an actual holy priest over a resto druid any day of the week. Not saying that Druids are bad healers, but when you have two priests already... Make one of them go resto and you stay feral.. Make one of your priets go holy, then pick up a rogue, mage or warlock.