Raiding and the new (to your faction) classes
by Paul Sherrard 
Jan 31st 2007 at 2:09PM
As you may be aware, I've been leveling a Draenei shaman up, to raid with my guild (Vision on Khaz Modan, fyi) in the not-too-distant future. Vision's been great about this, and has been encouraging and helpful in making room for those of us who have abandoned our 60's and elected to take the long and painful path back to raiding status.
I've been talking with other guild and raid leaders from the community, and with the change in raid group size, the addition of a new class seems to create a bit of an issue. Now you have 25 slots for 9 different classes, so how do you achieve balance in your raiding organization?
As I've heard different answers from virtually everyone I've talked to, I want to see if we can get some sort of consensus here on WoW Insider, so that the community may form a semi-unified approach going into the new endgame.
Read on for a couple of approaches, and to add your voice to the discussion.
Here are two ideas on how to form a raid group. I'd love your comments on them as well as your own ideas.
1. Class-based slots. Have 2 slots for every class, for a total of 18 raid members. Then, depending on the instance, fill with 7 as-needed slots. If an instance requires more tanks, fill with pallies/druids/warriors. If it requires more dps, send in the clowns rogues.
2. Role-based slots. This gets tricky, as you have to define your raiding roles now. Based on my discussions with some good friends (shoutouts to Kraezei and Redempshin!) I've established (in my mind) these roles, based on traditional old-endgame needs: Tank, Healer, Physical DPS, Magical DPS, Crowd Control/Support. Each raid would require a certain number of each role, which you could fill with members of certain classes. Will roles change in the new endgame?
The role of paladins/shaman need to be addressed in terms of both of these structures. Do you lump them together, as they're both support hybrids? With all the new gear for each specialization in the talent trees, do you allow the classes to go outside their traditional raiding roles? Lots of questions, so let's see what you have to say!
Filed under: Paladin, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, The Burning Crusade, Classes
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
priest Jan 31st 2007 2:29PM
Lump 'em all together. It's not often you meet a non-retarded pally (or shaman) especially alliance side (dunno about horde, but I'm guessing a lot of the new Pallys are fairly retarded). Sad but true: the hybrids attract the worst players.
But, when you meet a good one, it's a relief. It's that they are rarer than birds teeth.
Kahja Jan 31st 2007 2:49PM
Maybe because you rag on all the paladins is the reason they don't do their job when you're around.
Argent Jan 31st 2007 2:50PM
heh. khaz mo0dan represent! :)
there was a post about a perfect raid layout on the DnT boards a while back that made a good deal of sens eot me. but personally, i'd take a more 'wait and see' approach. in karazhan, f.e. blizz follows a renged dps fight (curator) with a whole stretch of melee dps trash, which makes composing good raid groups kinda hard. some fights will require more stacking than others.
Kahja Jan 31st 2007 2:50PM
Seriously though I like the idea of 2 slots per class then fill with what's needed for the raid.
Melf Jan 31st 2007 3:52PM
Right now we only have one person who is levelling up a Shaman, as far as I know, so I'm not sure exactly how we will go about with the distribution. Because about 40 of us are over 65, but only 3 have yet reached 70, it will be tricky in the next few weeks to see what we do with balance.
Personally I like the "2 of each" idea and then fill in as necessary.
kerni Jan 31st 2007 5:26PM
I can see the Role Spots being the best option since BC is now allowing people to CHOOSE. No longer will Paladins be pigeon holed into the Buff/Cleanse-bot, Priests can go Shadow, Druids can go Feral (please God no Nubkin!) and so on and so on.
IMO, It'll only get better from here. I actually wrote a small article about this on my blog...
http://pallywithash.wordpress
Matt Park Jan 31st 2007 3:10PM
See, you can't just talk about 2 for each class when you're talking about hybrids, because having 2 enhancement shamans is radically different from having 2 resto.
The best that I've seen is work out what abilities you have to have (i.e. you're going to need a prot warrior obviously, an enhancement shaman is going to be incredibly useful, and you'll need at least 2 priests for shackle). Then figure out your groups and their role (tank group, melee DPS group, healing group, etc) and place your necessary people accordingly. Then fill in the rest based on the role that their spec plays.
Thirx Jan 31st 2007 5:14PM
@5
I can't see how having an enhance shaman is "incredibly useful." More than likely, in a 25-man situation, they'll be playing totem bitch and backup/support heals. Except maybe on trash. I've played Horde since I started, so I know shamans, and a shaman that tries to dps is /lol worthy. It's like a hunter trying to melee; you tell them to stfu and get to the back of the bus and go pewpew.
As for raid makeup right now, I think it's too early to tell. We might run into bosses/trash mobs that suddenly require five tanks and are all immune to CC (kinda like Auch Crypts with the 3 pulls that turn into 6-9 mobs at a time), so in that case, having three dedicated tanks and druids/paladins that can step up and take the extra run off will be needed (Shamans can't tank, stop pretending that shield makes you aa good as a warrior).
Best bet: run the thing a few times with a core group of players that fill the needed class roles, and see what you're lacking. Mobs taking too long to kill? Add in more stabystaby and pewpew. Need more healing? Add in another support healer (even feral druids can still support a priest to wonderous results). Even then, not all players are equal, so YOUR guild might need more dps, while mine needs more heals, so you're going to have to tailor make your raid groups.
Crooth Jan 31st 2007 8:15PM
We seemed to have preferred having some classes more than others in the past, and I doubt that will change. We'd like to always have 3 tanks (Druids are OK) and 4 (Holy) Priests on pretty much every run - either 20 or 40-man. We haven't been impressed with hybrid healers in general, so we've avoided that except in a pinch. Not having Shamans means I haven't had a chance to see if their hybrid nature gives them a reasonable role in either niche, that will only come with time.
jpc Jan 31st 2007 4:16PM
You can't say x of y class, it's better to say something like:
1 MT (prot spec'ed war)
5 tanks total (I like a tank in each party)
5 good* healers (they heal their party and are healing spec'ed)
Try for 2 pallys (buffs and auras)
At least 2 druids (B-res and inervate)
At least 1 of each class (other effects like trueshot aura, etc)
No more than 3 of any class besides warriors and priests.
* Priests and druids can be off spec'ed, but a pally or shaman cannot fill this roll if they aren't heal spec'ed (maybe if they have awesome gear).
jpc Jan 31st 2007 4:19PM
When I said,
"No more than 3 of any class besides warriors and priests."
I meant 'tanks and healers', not 'wars and priests'. My bad.
Dave Jan 31st 2007 5:22PM
I think the guilds that start with the incorrect assumption that there are "9 classes" will find failure early and often. The guilds that start by figuring out the encounter and what it needs, and then filling roles appropriately with properly speced and geared people, will succeed.
What's good for one raid, may not be good for another raid. You may need people to spec differently and gear up differently from raid to raid. I think people (guild leaders especially) need to be prepared for this and not keep the old stagnant thinking "all warriors should be prot spec, all priests are holy, all druids are resto, etc" around for very long. With significantly shorter, winged intances with 3-4 bosses rather than epic "tons of variety" bosses we've been used to, I think based on what i've read so far.... people are going to be very very surprised.
I think the guilds that "trimmed the fat" so to speak and got rid of a lot of excessive people might end up very disappointed when it comes to an encounter that may more or less require 10 "tanks", but they only kept 4 warriors around and they've told their druids to all go resto and the shamans to be enhancement. They'll be short somewhere, either tanking or healing and people will get tired very quickly of respecs. Yes, this might mean that not every single guild member will be entirely useful in every single raid encounter... but it's definitely what I've seen the Blizzard team indicating with what they've told us so far in their desire for designing endgame raids.
Gman Jan 31st 2007 8:04PM
@9:
An enhancement spec'd shaman can provide improved melee/attack power buffs for his group that a resto shaman cannot.
My guess is that the enhancement shaman's role will be to totem-buff his melee group, but use 80% of his mana for spot-healing. If mana gets low, he can pop shamanistic rage and go in for some melee to regen a good amount of mana--more than Mana Tide totem would give. His heals may not be as powerful as a resto-spec, but what good is Mana Tide totem in a melee group?
But no one has raided enough 25-man instances at level 70 to test their usefulness, so I don't think you should dismiss them so carelessly.
Ephor Jan 31st 2007 8:57PM
Tanks: Warrior, Bear Druid, Prot Pally
Healers: Priests, Tree Druid, Resto Shaman, Healadin
Phys DD: Rogues, Fury Warriors, DW Shaman, Ret Paladins,
Magic DD: Mages, Shadow Priests, Warlocks, Eleshams, oomkin?
The way classes are balanced now, raid distribution needs to be done by subclass, NOT class. Thank God for the Arena, because I'll readily /gquit if my raid leader doesn't see that off-specs have been rebalanced since 2.0
Frederik Feb 1st 2007 7:45AM
I agree with the first poster, there are a LOT of piss-poor paladin players out there, but a great paladin player (if you manage to find one) can do wonders. A skilled protection paladin can tank a lot better than most warriors.
Todd Feb 1st 2007 10:37AM
I'm going to fill raids with good players and let the classes shake down as needed. A good player will make their class work as needed and make raids succeed, idiot-proof raid structures only encourage more clever idiots.
Saying 'you need X persons of Y class' before seeing content is pointless. I'll bring what I have available and trust my guild's members to make it work - either by logging on an alt of the needed class or respeccing.
Deusirae Feb 1st 2007 1:21PM
I really like what blizzard did with the sub-classes (and it seems that most posters here did too). A Paladin can play Ret or Prot spec and not be shunned. A Druid can go Feral and we love him/her for it. An enhancement Shaman can dish out constant DPS (No, they aren't rogues or locks but, they can still hit fairly hard and not get killed immediately).
The people that have a lot of experience raiding in the past either will be forced to quickly adapt to the new methods of raid builds and abandon the ideas that a specific class is meant for only one thing, or else they will be holding back the guild's progression through things that Blizzard obviously targeted hybrid classes to help with.
BTW, as a Pally, I still agree with the 1st poster's statement about Paladins. Hunters are just as bad if not worse though. However, if you can find good ones, they are priceless in your group. Guess the same could be said about most classes though.