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The latest patch 5.4 newsWhat's your favorite 5-person group?
by Paul Sherrard 
Mar 16th 2007 at 7:12PM
With so much 5-person content in Outland, I've been having a lot of discussion with my guildies as to the "perfect" group makeup. With 9 classes, there are tons of options available to anyone starting a group.
Tanks: Warrior, Bear Druid, or Paladin. Maybe a Warlock if you have an insane warlock in your guild (I'm looking at you, Turinok!)
Healers: Priests, Resto Shammies, Healadins, Druids. I'm personally a big fan of having as much healing as possible in a group. Fewer wipes = shorter runs = happier Paulie.
DPS: Pretty much everybody else.
I'm going to share with you what I think is my favorite 5-person group for the normal Outland instances. This group likely wouldn't work in Heroic instances, and it's been long enough that I've been out of Azeroth that I couldn't attest to the effectivesness of the group in the "old world." I look forward to your comments on it, and your comments about your own groups.
- Tank: Paladin
- Healer: Paladin
- DPS: Mage
- DPS: Enhancement Shaman
- DPS: Elemental Shaman
Strengths: Only 1 true squishy in the group, and 4 potential healers surrounding her. 2 blessings, 8 totems, arcane brilliance for more mana for everyone. As I play an alliance shaman, I still come off as shiny, new, and exotic to my guildies. With spell damage and crit buffs from me (the elementalist), and windfury and Strength of Earth from the enhancement shaman, there are benefits for everyone. With Blessing of Wisdom and Mana totems, mana regen is doing just fine.
Weaknesses: No rogue to pick locks on chests, no Priest for stamina buffs. I'll count on you lot to tell me further weaknesses.
What's your favorite 5-person group? Is your group best for Azeroth, Outland, or even Outland Heroic instances?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Qik Mar 17th 2007 2:11AM
no love for the rouges =/
Lex Mar 17th 2007 5:30AM
Never tried exactly this, but could be fun:
Feral druid
Enhancement shaman
marks hunter
arms warrior
holy pally
Or the same idea, but more casting oriented:
prot pally (imp concentration aura maybe?)
balance druid
shadow priest
elemental shaman
disc/holy priest (imp divine spirit)
It's all about the synergy. In each group, you might say there's a slot that a rogue or mage would be better for, but the idea is that each of these classes dramatically improves the performance of the others, which should make up for not having one pure dps class.
Acceptable Risk Mar 17th 2007 3:23AM
As a Warlock, I love tanking (with the Voidwalker offtanking for me). Most people are skeptical but with a good Assist, and an understanding healer, it's actually pretty smooth. A lot of people are really surprised at how effective it can be.
As a Priest, I think my favorite group is a bear tank, Shadow Priest (myself), Warlock, a healer of pretty much any sort, and one of pretty much anything else. A second Shadow Priest is always fun but it means a lot of competition for equipment.
People seem to vastly underestimate what a Shadow Priest can bring to the group. Nobody ever runs out of mana and the main healer can pretty much forget about everyone but the tank. It's really the way to play.
Erich Mar 19th 2007 3:05PM
Simple.
- Warlock
- Warlock
- Warlock
- Mage (frost)
- Priest (not shadow)
I was privelaged to do a group like this once. You can do a 6 pull in heroic instances and the mobs are dead in less than 14 seconds.
how?
SoC spam, Fnova + CoC and imp Blizzard. preferably 1 warlock is demonology fights where tanking is needed. But if not, a voidwalker will ussually suffice. Shit dies so quickly, tanking is rarely an issue, as long as the priest is on the ball with shields and heals, it's the fastest instance run you'll ever have.
reafer Mar 17th 2007 4:10AM
Proc warrior
Mage
rogue
Dis priest
enhansment shamen
this setup owns 5 mans
Sanx Mar 17th 2007 6:40AM
Holy/prot pally (me)
Combat Rogue
Balance/resto druid
Prot Warrior
and a random from our guild. Usually either a mage, rogue or shadow priest. This core of 4 people suffices in just about any 5 mans, if we include a random of course.
Pally heals, druid off-heals and adds some dps, rogue dps and CC and warrior tanks. Basically, we hardly ever wipe. We do, however, tend to take a bit longer than we have to :)
tyger Mar 17th 2007 7:51AM
My Outland group has been:
MT: Prot Warrior
OT/DPS: Druid Feral
Heal: Druid Resto
DPS: Mage/Rogue
Range DPS: Hunter/Warlock
Only problems we've come across has been lack of rezzing... :( But it doesn't happen not very often since our resto is pretty good at keep up the group.
Matt Mar 17th 2007 9:03AM
Now, I'm not much for pve but playing a druid(pvp resto-spec'd) I've had to say my most sucessful runs have been:
Prot Warr
Mage
Priest
DPS of choice (Rogue/Warrior/Mage/Warlock)
myself as a druid
I do lack the Crowd control but being a versatile healer who is really used to making quick decisions with healing etc I add as a great backup resource healer. I lose out on Mangle so the dps is a little slower but it always works out!
Fadge Mar 17th 2007 9:00PM
I'm currently running with the same 5 person group I've been with since level one and it's still working great in Outland.
Warrior
Shaman
Priest
Mage
Warlock
We've got healing and rezzes covered, as well as all of our transportaiton needs and the Shaman is a great off tank. Between the lock and the mage, we also have full transportation needs covered.
I rode with some pallys in my guild a couple weeks ago and would love to have some of their buffage, but wouldn't really want to swap out any of the other members to do it.
moink Mar 17th 2007 5:50PM
The shadow-priest/holy-paladin combination is insanely good. There's also a lot of synergy between shadow priests and warlocks. My favourite group would be:
Prot warrior
Holy paladin
Shadow priest (me)
Mage
Warlock
However, since my husband is a rogue and puts together most of our runs, I usually end up with him instead of either the mage or warlock. He's good for the sapping and has comparable dps, but if I weren't married to him I'd drop him for a magic class :). I'd probably drop the lock before the mage: arcane brilliance, polymorph, frost nova, and free water beat out the demon cc, curse of shadows, and me feeling useful with shadow weaving.
I'd be willing to switch out the warrior with a druid bear, but I have little experience with druid tanks at level 70.
This is a good general group, but there are instances where hunters, rogues, resto druids, or warlocks make things much easier. I like a hunter in Shadow labs, a mage in Black Morass, a rogue in Durnholde, and a warlock in the Mechanar.
The best 5-person group I was ever in was the other night.
Prot specced warrior (guild leader)
Holy paladin (class officer, extremely skilled)
Mage (again extraordinarily skilled)
Rogue (my husband, raid leader and good strategizer)
Shadow priest (me, and the worst player of the bunch, though not too shabby).
kraoro Mar 17th 2007 6:09PM
To number 6: if you think Shadow Priest dps is on par with Mage dps, then you've been playing with some really crappy mages.
zinoi Mar 20th 2007 3:31PM
Jheesh, I should have never picked a rogue :P It seems like we are not that wanted overall.
Stonehide Mar 18th 2007 5:36AM
Top 3 Favorite Groups
1. Pally Tank, Priest Healing, Balance Druid DPS, Elem Shaman DPS, Mage CC/DPS, Works very well for heroics and regulars alike
2. Pally Tank, Pally Healer, Shadow Priest DPS, Elem Shaman DPS, Rogue DPS. No one will ever die with mindflay up and pally's can tank groups like a pro.
3. Bear Druid Tank, Pally healing, 2x Mage, and Elem Shaman
BTW, I'm the Shaman =P
Tovort Mar 18th 2007 5:18PM
Most fun group I played (Hellfire Citadel and Blood Furnace):
3 DPS Warriors
1 Feral Druid / Tank (me)
1 Resto Druide
Another good group was (Botanica eg)
Feral Druid (Tank)
Holy Priest
Warlock
2 Mages
dfv Mar 19th 2007 3:10AM
We've had some good runs recently in Auchindoun/Coilfang with a combo a few of you have mentioned:
Feral Druid (tank)
Shadow Priest (dps)
Warlock (dps)
Holy Palladin (heals)
Balence Druid (dps/off-tank and heal)
4 people can resurrect (including 2 battle-rez's). If the
skurm Mar 19th 2007 5:10AM
We usually run with this config for 5mans
-Bear Tank for bosses (tanks almost as good as a prot warrior, and buffs the group, innervates his priest and brez's when needed), dps's effectively on trash.
-Prot pally for trashmobs(frontload multimob tanking specialist), offheals on boss fights)
-Mage for poly and dps
-Warlock for dps, soulstones, healthstones and some cc
-Resto shammy for healing and support. Manatide and Earthsield really are awesome, as are his elementals, so he's always doing something more than just mashing his heal spell.
Strengths - 3 potential healers, 2 potential tanks and 3 potential dps allow the group to transform very easily. It relies strongly on the 3 hybrids flexibility to adapt to any encounter's needs. Lots of dps when needed, lots of tanking when needed, lots of healing when needed.
Weaknesses - no priest buffs (Prayer of Shadow Prot, Fort buff), no shadowpriest+pally brokenness, light on quick heals/no hots, no real specialist classes can make certain boss fights tricky without a prot warr, no lockpicking, somewhat light cc vs humanoids
Meg Mar 19th 2007 11:19AM
Balanced Druid - dps
Aff/destro Lock - dps
Rogue - dps, lockpicking (too many locked chests)
Feral Druid - Healing (don't ask)
Prot Warrior - Tank
I'm blessed to be in an awesome guild who's druids actually know how to be druids. It also doesn't hurt that our lead feral druid has over 1200 +healing so he has no issue healing. We have succesfully competed every instance with this group (not heroics though).
I think it also helps that the people behind the keyboards are awesome too!
Mogalthorn Mar 20th 2007 12:29PM
I have been running lots of normal and heroc 5 mans over the past couple months and the best group I have run with was as follows
Prot tank (tank)
Feral druid (OT/DPS)(me)
warlock
resto shaman
rogue (with imp sap)
or if I can't find a good prot tank to run with us
feral druid (MT)(me)
rogue (imp sap)
mage(poly & DPS & kite killing)
resto shaman
shadow Priest(off healing, DPS, & MC)
hisk Mar 22nd 2007 12:58PM
the best grp i have ever been in is (we were running ST) was a 57 mage that will AoE a copple mobs then bring them back were i as a marks hunter would lay my exsplosion trap and the mage would freze them while i multi shot and dpsed untill i ran out of mana to those who were wandering ma and this mage 3 maned st and i was a 59 hunter marsmanship and she was a 57 frost mage we also had a preist lvl 58 holy speced waiting at the entrance so she could exit and enter agin if we got in troble lol sorta cheap but it worked and the loot was fair i took all mail mage took all leather and preaist took all cloth (mage took leather for an alt) and weapons were rolled opon.
Kuta Apr 9th 2007 7:56AM
Tank:
Druid (Feral Bear)
Strength: The druid will have a significantly higher AC then do more DPS a comparably geared warrior and dodge a lot more. In a pinch, the druid can pop out and battle rez, innervate healer or DPS, or hibernate a mob.
Weakness: The druid cannot use a sheild to block with, or parry incomming attacks, so may take a bit more dmg then a well geared protect tank.
Healer:
Paladin (Holy)
Strength: Can bubble if she gets aggro and can take a lot more damage then a preist. Also she is able to off tank for a short time if nessacary. Has lay of hands for emergencies. Blessings are more specialized then a generic fortitude buff.
Weaknesses: No fort buff limited healing capabilies compared to an equally geared priest.
DPS:
Hunter (BM)
Str: ranged physical DPS and frost traps for CC. Pet for extra dmg or to give the healer a little breathing room for those large pulls.
Weakness: Probably weaker DPS but versitility will definatly make up for it.
Rogue (At least a little sub)
Str: Can pick locks and sap. Strong physical DPS.
Weakness: Without imp sap and/or a preist sheild the rogue will tend to die a lot.
Mage (any)
Str: polymorph! Best CC ability in the game IMHO. Also AoE dmg is unparalleled, and counterspell is handy for pulling those pesky caster mobs into tanking range. Ranged Magic dmg comparable and more versitle then a warlock.
Weakness: She's very squishy.