Raid Group Composition

[Air]

This is my own personal way of setting up groups for our raids.  We have had this discussion before but it wasn’t really focused towards raid composition.  Now that we have been doing ssc/tk and hyjal/bt for awhile now, we get to see what works on certain fights and what doesn’t.

My mindset is to have a dps orientated raid group.  The faster a mob dies, the easier it is on healers and tanks.  And enrage timers aren't a problem than.

Usual raids are caster / range dps heavy, because of this I usually will group accordingly.  On certain fights I will group for threat or avoidance for tanks, or for healers.  Examples are:

Morogrim Tidewalker: Will group tanks towards avoidance and threat.  Important part is that the tanks take as little damage as possible, easing the stress on healers.  Melee dps will be threat capped since there focus is on boss alone with no interruptions.  Caster dps focus on aoe and single target dps.

• 1 Warrior or Druid tank
• 1-2 Paladin tanks
• 1 Restoration shaman for grace of air and flame tongue
• 1 Warlock for imp

Fathom Lord: Will group tanks towards avoidance.  Important part is that the tanks take as little damage as possible, easing the stress on healers.  Very healer instensive fight.

• 1 Warrior or Druid tank
• 1-2 Paladin tanks
• 1 Restoration shaman for grace of air and flame tongue
• 1 Warlock for imp

Naj’entus: Will group towards giving healers best mana efficiency.  Healing is by far one of the most healing intensive currently for us.

• 1 Warrior or Paladin tank
• 1 Restoration shaman for grace of air and flame tongue
• 1 Warlock for imp
• 1 (sometimes) BM hunter for threat

Our raids usually end up having certain amount of classes and specs.  Usually end up looking like:

• 2 Protection Warriors
• 2 Protection Paladins
• 1 Feral Druid
• 1 Balance Druid
• 2 Mages, fire or frost
• 4 Warlocks, destruction and affliction(?)
• 2 BM Hunters
• 1 Survival Hunter
• 1 Shadow Priest
• 1 Rogue
• 1 Enhancement Shaman
• 1 Warrior, arms or fury
• 1 Retribution Paladin
• 1 Discipline Priest
• 1 Holy Priest
• 2 Holy Paladin
• 1 Restoration Shaman
• 1 Restoration Druid

Our raid usually will end up looking like this, 5 specific groups.  Remember that this is the most ideal setup, and is usually not the case for every raid.  Raids are done based on what we have and not what we want to have.

Group 1 â€" Tanks

• Usually 3-4 Tanks
• 1 Warlock for imp
• 1 (Sometimes) Restoration shaman for grace of air and flame tongue (for avoidance)
• 1 (Sometimes) BM hunter (for threat)

Group 2 â€" Healers

• Usually 2-3 healers, priest’s or paladins
• 1 Restoration druid for tree of life
• 1 Restoration shaman for mana tide and wrath of air
• 1 (If available) Shadow priest

Group 3a â€" Melee dps
***this is a hard group to group for.  Most raids we only have 3-4 melee dps, on occasion will have the 5th needed.

• 1 Enchancement shaman weaving wind fury, grace of air, and strength of earth
• 1 (If available) Fury warrior for increase to melee attack power or reduction to mobs melee attack power
• 1-2 (If available) Rogues
• 1 (If available) Retribution paladin
• 1 (If available) Arms warrior for blood frenzy and increase to melee attack power
• 1 (Sometimes) Survival hunter

Group 3b â€" Caster dps (Mages)

• 2-3 Mages
• 1-2 Warlocks
• 1 (If available) Shadow priest for mana regen

Group 4 â€" Caster dps (Warlocks)

• 1 Boomkin druid for 5% bonus to spell crit
• 2-3 Warlocks
• 1-2 Mages

Group 5 â€" Hunter dps

• 2-4 BM hunters for %3 bonus to damage
• 1 Feral druid for 5% bonus to crit

Warriors

• Protection: Usually put in tank group, sometimes will put a bm hunter with one for extra threat.  Thunder clap and demo shout.
• Fury / Arms: Usually put in a melee dps group.  If no enhancement shaman or feral druid, will put in with bm hunters to offset dps loss.  Battle shout and commanding shout buffs.

Paladins:

• Protection: Put in tank group with warlock for imp.  Judging wisdom or crusader.
• Holy: Put in with healing group for mana tide, tree of life and vampiric touch.  If theres a retribution pally, judging light.
• Retribution: Put in with melee group for buffs from other classes.

Druids

• Feral: Usually put in with hunter group for 5% crit bonus.  Depending on fight, sometimes tank group with restoration shaman for grace of air.
• Boomkin: Usually put in with warlocks and mages, warlocks having precedence.
• Restoration: Put in healing group for tree of life, getting mana tide and vampiric touch buffs.

Priests:

• Discipline / Holy: Put in healing group for buffs from druid, shaman and shadow priest.
• Shadow:  If only 1, put in healing group for vampiric touch.  If 2, 2nd one is put in with mages and warlocks, mages getting precedence.

Shaman:

• Healing: If only 1, put in healing group for buffs from druid, and shadow priest.  If 2, 2nd one is interchanged between tank group or hunter group.  Tanks getting precedence for threat and avoidance.
• Enhancement: Put in melee group for wind fury and unleashed rage.  Gets buffs from fury / arms warrior.
• Elemental: put in with mages and warlocks for totem of wrath.  Mages getting precedence.

***Limited  understanding here, rarely have one around to raid with.

Rogues:

• Combat / Assassination / Subtlety: Put in melee group.  Gets buffs from shaman and warrior.

Mages:

• Fire / Frost / Arcane: Put in caster group for mages.  Gets buffs from shadow priest and or boomkin.  Arcane would heavily need shadow priest for mana.

Warlocks:

• Affliction / Demonology: Usually put in with tank group for imp buff.

***Limited understanding here, needs more info

• Destruction: put in caster group for warlocks with boomkin and sometimes shadow priest.

Hunters:

• Beast mastery: Usually put in hunter group with 2-3 other bm hunters.  Sometimes put in with melee group when no enhancement shaman available.  Sometimes put in with tank group for extra threat.
• Survival:  Usually put in hunter group with bm hunters.

***Still trying to figure best place to put a survival hunter.  I’d like to place one in with a shaman for grace of air, but is hard to do without hurting rest of raid.  Benefits are that expose weakness will see a boost from expose weakness, which in turn will increase melee dps and tank threat.  Current thinking is to place in melee group when enhancement shaman is available.

• Marksman: Usually in hunter group with bm hunters.  Group buff is lacking and doesn’t really help hunter or melee group.  Does get benefit from other bm hunter’s 3% to damage.

I’m open for discussions, this is why I made the thread   There’s certain spec’s and classes I’m not well versed on.  So any info would be helpful.  Hopefully this will help others out in learning more about other classes a little.

[Nasanna]

Great guide and thank you, Air, for taking the time to put this together!

For Fathom Lord, you want a shaman in the group of the tank who is tanking Tidalvas (the shaman) to be dropping grounding totem to help eat some of the frost shocks (this means no grace of air totem). Since groups are so spread out for a majority of that fight, I would suggest grouping people by what mob they will be killing so auras and group buffs will be put to use.

I have a few thoughts on the warlocks. Some of our warlocks are affliction, so spell crit from a moonkin aura doesn't affect them too much. However, holy paladins get mana back from crit heals. Put them with the moonkin, especially on healing intensive fights. Additonally, warlocks can life tap for mana regen. Healers can't, so put them with the shadow priest first. Also something to consider: With that extra spell crit, will mages and warlocks be pulling aggro or having to back off on their damage where a healer is pumping out bigger heals?

I'm not too familiar with the theorycraft to resto shamans and totem dropping in raids, however, I think its kind of wasteful in most cases for a resto shaman to be in the main tank group. Then only any pally tanks, the warlock who can lifetap, and the shaman are getting use of the mana tide totem instead of 4 other healers. And a lot of these fights are very mana intensive so your healer group is also losing out on [spell=25570]mana spring[/spell] (50mp5, which is a lot) and [spell=3738]wrath of air[/spell]. Finally, all totems that affect friendly targets only have a range of 20 yards, 30 with a resto talent (which most shamans get). Usually ranged stays as far aways from the boss as possible (40 yards) and then the resto shaman in the tank group will have to be running in and out every 2 minutes to refresh their totems.

[fiere redfern]

Something that can help mitigate the crit problem for Moonkin aura is to have a feral druid in the tank group. They'll receive the 5% crit from Leader of the Pack (as well as the heal [spell=34300]Improved Leader of the Pack[/spell] provides), helping to balance out the +crit all around.

The +crit from LotP is also welcome in the melee DPS groups, especially if there's more than one feral druid available.

[Vengeance]

Thanks for the guide Air!
Demon locks are likely to have fel guard. Aff on the other hand is almost guaranteed to have an imp out. Aff is also very useful in a raid, with malediction, shadow's embrace, more imp shadowbolt charges for everyone, and not too shabby dps.

[Grendeel]

Warlocks.... The majority of the locks we have are destro i believe.  Usually we only have 1 or even 0 afflction locks on any given raid.    The moonkin buff is huge for us and is as good  for us as  any other caster class. With the improved sb buff up and if we have an affliction lock with maledicton it could be a more beneficial buff for locks than any other class.  We need sb crits to keep the improved sb buff up (increased 20% shadow damage taken iirc). With 3 destro locks in a raid and each having the boomkin buff, we can keep tha imp sb buff up constantly.  Without the buff it tends to fall off once in a while.  Also i believe spriests benefit from our imp sb buff as well,  so its extremely important dps wise to keep imp sb buff on the boss.  Speaking from a dps point of view, with 3 destro locks in a raid, the boomkin buff is more important for them to have than any other class imo.

Man regen is huge for our dps output.  Having a resto shaman in the group (just by comparisons ive done with and without) our dps goes up over 200 with one.  Yes we can life tap but everytime we do so, we lose 1.5 secs of dpsing.  Life tapping ideally would be great if we had a priest dropping circle of healing for us, however we dont have that.   So effectively if we life tap we are going to need heals.  This pretty much neuters the bonus mana regen a healer gets by giving them the mana regen classes instead of us.  Not only does it neuter the bonus but it also wastes time having a lock life tap and also wastes time having a healer heal the lock.  As well if we dont get mana regen in our group its pretty much guaranteed that we will never be using destruction pots  (also a big dps boost).  We will be resigned to saving that cd for mana/health pots.

Affliction locks dont need mana regen because they have dark pact.  As well the boomkin cirt buff isnt near as benefical because 50 percent of casting is dots ...which dont crit

[Melonni]

Agree with most of what has been said ... also like to point out that (this is from theorycraft forums, didn't do the math myself ) supposedly fire mages are the best recipient of [spell=32182]Heroism[/spell] over other stand & nuke style casters due to their [spell=31680]Molten Fury[/spell] talent - obviously saving the haste for when boss is <20%. Just on the rare occasion we get an Elemental shammeh.

[Grendeel]

Agree with most of what has been said ... also like to point out that (this is from theorycraft forums, didn't do the math myself ) supposedly fire mages are the best recipient of [spell=32182]Heroism[/spell] over other stand & nuke style casters due to their [spell=31680]Molten Fury[/spell] talent - obviously saving the haste for when boss is <20%. Just on the rare occasion we get an Elemental shammeh.

Even on the lock boards, it says mages should get the heroism over other casters.  Supposedly they have many more cds to burn and maximize the benefit of heroism

[JohnnieRat]

Mages and heroism scare me. Just imagine a scaled down version of Arcane Machine Guns from the spell steal in ZA. Icy Veins + Heroism = Boss under 20% HP = A Mage calling for a BoP

[Darkstar]

Elemental shamans just add a big bonus to any caster group they join 

[Nixphire]

Mages and heroism scare me. Just imagine a scaled down version of Arcane Machine Guns from the spell steal in ZA. Icy Veins + Heroism = Boss under 20% HP = A Mage calling for a BoP

There are a few things mages can do to prevent that.
1 being cast invisible before 20% so completely wipe aggro. 2 Ice block. 3 have a Soul Stone 

[JohnnieRat]

If we could get a dog gone enh shammy you'll see the melee grp wreckin house too.

On a unrelated note: someone needs to get panz back in raids more often

[fiere redfern]

On a unrelated note: someone needs to get panz back in raids more often

This. Whar mah panz at?