5 Druids, Main Heals, 4 Tank/DPS

[Drarkan]

Ok so I got to talking to oldskewl in the guild, and he has 5 druids. He's been getting frustrated with wiping in dungeons so I suggest running with his main as healer, and his slaves to tank. So upon talking to him, I was getting the idea for myself too, this will be pretty sweet! I'm going to roll the toons up later today and give it a go.

Same basic method to Pally heals and 4 DK's. Main heals the 4 tanks and using IWT, and CTM, I think it'll do quite well. Might even try 5 Pally's too lol.

[Strom]

Ye ive been getting ideas of this to...
Im running a priest as main followed by 4 death knights and im flying through instances..just loving my team, ok ok there wrath instances, but still, never gone as easy as this before .

Currently just about to hit level 78. so far every collection quest is skipped except 2 in dragonblight as i like the quest chain there, with heirlooms and the cata boost, leveling in northrend is now not total torture.
I bet cata instances wont go so well :/

I was awful with melee leveling my palis not long after i started multiboxing. went oh so bad in stratholme. I just abandoned all hope of ever doing melee again, but with Ualaas posts with the DKs and before that the cats got me to try again.

Ive got 5 druids myself at 72. I stopped because i was failing bad with tank-3booms-healer
i was wondering if 1 heals 4 bear tanks would work..but problem being the bears dont self heal like the DKs.

Ive got 4 palis at 60 just sitting there since last year, my last team of RAF. I would really like to level. 4 pali tanks may be pretty good in instances.
There AOE heals going off every minute or on round robin could work
Or atleast 2 healers 3 tanks, ye im just guessing here.
But as someone mentioned in a previous post i asked, palis failed at the end of Wrath.

Erm 4 warriors :/ that would be something. warriors heal themselves now right?
I think any team works easy until you hit cata, although with 2 healers cata normals are really easy.

[Ualaa]

If you want an atypical group...

The Healer + 4x DK's sort of work, because each of the DK's can heal.
The bloodworms are passive healing.
The runetap is close to a quarter health in healing, every 30 seconds.
Deathstrike will help to heal a fair amount of the damage taken recently.
You can summon a Ghoul pet and sacrifice it too.

Plus you can bounce threat around, by round-robin use of the taunt key.

Not a lot of damage, which will mean slower runs.
But you should do most/all normals and most heroics.
More so as the expansion progresses and you can outgear instances.



The other take is dual healers.
The Paladin is a good choice for healer.
Protector of the Innocent results in a self heal, every time they heal another.
Each would likely Beacon a DPS, for a half heal on them, whenever they heal the tank.
And with two healers, each would only need half the mana to keep a tank up.
Two resistance auras, and both Kings + Might is nice.

The damage will actually be a bit higher, with a full tank and two full DPS, compared to four tanks and no DPS.
Not as fast of a clear as a traditional group, but still faster then the 4x Blood DK's.

Splash/AoE damage is mitigated completely, by the Beacon/Protector of the Innocent combination, so you just need to concentrate on movement and mob positioning.



Two different healers could work as well.
I'd probably go 1x Healer Type A & 1x Healer Type B, if I were not going Paladin x2.

Think Druid HOTs + Shammy heals, glyphed Innervate to give full mana to the Shammy and half mana to the Druid, and Mana Tide totem too.
Earth Shield on the tank, Riptide and Rejuvenation.
Wild Growth + Chain Heal on the party, maybe Healing Stream glyphed too.

That gets maximum buffs or additional crowd control optons.
Priest - Shackle/Fortitude/Shadow Resist
Shaman - Hex/Glyphed Healing Stream (Fire/Frost/Nature)
Druid - Root/Cyclone/Hibernate/MotW
Paladin - Kings/Might/Resistance Aura (Fire/Frost/Shadow)

[Drarkan]

Well if the main was the healer, and the one druid a bear, and the rest cats, that would sortta work right? The bear would take most of the aggro while the dps can actually do the damage. Though druid heals were nerfed a dozen patches ago which really sucks. You actually have to single target the rejuiv's

[Ualaa]

If you don't spam terribly quickly, you could use: /targetparty
That will cycle through the entire group, one after the other (but miss a toon if you spam faster than the GCD).
It will also always omit the caster themselves.



I've got a mapped key inside IS Boxer.
Modeled after FTL Target Me, which has all of the slaves target the master/active character.
It is modified for a target of my Priest.

Then the mapped key has five steps.
One per character on the team.
On each step a given toon runs the Priest Target Me mapped key.
And then sends the Priest their hotkey for Power Word: Shield.

The exact same thing would work with a Druid casting Rejuvenation.



For your DPS... 3x Cats I believe will have more DPS then 3x Boomkin.
Definitely a lot more burst, but you could dual-spec them if you had two decent sets of gear...
Boomkin are outside of AoE/Cleave range, and put out a massive amount of AoE damage.
The Cats basically aren't restrained with so much mana and then their damage is done, and will put out a lot more single target damage.

Plus cats, with melee crits regenerate mana and health.
And have some instant casts (nature spells, under 10 seconds cast time) quite often with finishing moves.

You could mix and match fairly well.
Play whatever combo was most advantageous for a given encounter.

[Drarkan]

Yeah, I can't resist trying it. Probably won't be as uber as 1xPally/4xDk's, but still I think cat DPS will outweigh the need to heal more on the team. I'll post specs and method when I get down and dirty with it. Probably won't be for a while since I want to get my main team on blackrock to 85 first, but I'll create the team and get them to 20ish or something.

[Tim]

By the way, 5x Druids in BGs is terribly, terribly.... AWESOME!

It was probably my favorite BG team ever.

[Ualaa]

Boomkin and Elemental Shammies are probably in the worst shape now, compared to any other one spec, at least in solo pvp.

Playing with five of them, is different in that you have a lot more fire power.
But they don't have the oomph that they've had in the past.

Elemental can still heal from their DPS form... but still suffer from a lack of mobility.
And Boomkin have both stealth and impressive AoE... but still need to drop from their form to one with no defenses to heal.

Feral is easily more DPS then the DK's, and not just because of having five toons killing instead of four.
In 4.1, with the level 83 roar providing AoE root break/immunity for 8 seconds, and having five of these on round-robin... plus Dash doing the same, but for only the druid...
And still having Power Shifting to break any snare effect (although this is 90% used to run away from superior numbers, not for an advantage in combat)...
Feral will once again have a shot against all the snare and root classes.

I still think the DK team is superior, if someone is going one or the other.
The DK's have a lot more durability and can survive a lot more focus fire.
Even if you were to run four Ferals vs four DK's, and give each whatever healer they wanted.
The DK's have Plate armor for 20-25% less damage taken from physical attacks, compared to the Kitties in leather.
The have defensive cooldowns which is another big thing...
Anti-Magic Shell prevents the application of any spell icons against you and reduces spell damage by 75% until you take damage equal to half your health, this for 7 seconds every 45.
You get a Stun break every 2 minutes, which is stun immunity and 20% reduced damage taken for 10 seconds.
You get 20 seconds per minute of immunity to knockback effects like Blastwave or Thunderstorm.
And then Lichborn acts as a second trinket against Fear (and Charm/Sleep) effects, which when combined with the gnome racial (if you're alliance) also breaks root effects.
The DK's are essentially immune to all root and snare effects, because they snare just as effectively as anyone else, and Death Grip you in.



I would look at a Druid team as incredibly fun, but probably not the most effective.

You could google search for the "Moo's".
Most of their stuff (NoLife, from dual boxing) will be on Youtube.
He cleared basically every heroic, back in the Burning Crusade era... when heroics were much tougher than anything we faced in WotLK.
His composition was Tree - Healer, Bear - Tank, and 3x Boomkin - DPS.

I've found Feral leveling to be insanely fast.
You auto heal (and regain mana) from melee crits.
Four moves, gets you a 97% chance for the instant nature based spell, from any finisher... which nets you the big heal spell x5, on whoever needs it.... think Everquest's Cleric's Complete Heal spell.
In PvE, your problem is things are dead before you have five moves on them with five druids.

Collections are a breeze, as you DPS much faster than anything else period. And have no downtime for mana.
So if it is kill based, you kill faster.
If it is ground-collect, then you fly to almost ground level and pick things up.

I like that the team can run 5x Healers, 5x Ranged DPS, 5x Melee DPS, or mix those roles.
You could even run as a PvE composition for AV, and rush the general.

[Strom]

Well im seriosuly new to druid cats and trying to sort this out aint easy.

I need to make 2 sets, 1 for bear tanking on things that prove difficult and the second for cats for powering through.
Trying to work out rotations for all and making macros specific to each form
#showtooltip
/Cast Feral Charge(Bear Form)
/Cast Feral Charge(Cat Form)
Maybes something like this may work

Currently my priest and DKs are half way through lvl 82 and running great, taking a break from them today incase i burnout on questing.
Hopefully i can get these to run just as smooth.


Well got most of it sorted. Kept most of my settings and layout as i did for the DKs.
They run just as good except self healing is a bit limited. I mean they could also quickly break out and cast an instant heal and straight back into form but if that toon is on aggro then it wont be so good.
Got taunt and Skull bash on a round robin.
Not gone through most of the abilities yet for Cat.


Rotation so far Charge, Faerie Fire (Feral)
Swipe, mangle, Lacerate, maul, pulverize
At the moment ive just stuck them the same way as DKs,, getting used once one is off CD, see how effective that is.

[Ualaa]

For leveling, I would really only care about the Cat spec.

If you're Feral, you won't use a Bear spec until you want to do instances, and with the changes to spells and when you get them (Cata mechanics in particular) you won't have all your tools to effectively bear tank prior to acquiring Thrash at level 81.

Almost all of the action bar addons, or even the default action bars... have a bar for the Cat and another for the Bear and still another for the Caster form.

I'd stick with.... (Cat macro)

#show
/castsequence reset=target Mangle(Cat Form), Rake(Cat Form), Mangle(Cat Form), Mangle(Cat Form), Rip(Cat Form)

If you want to manually pull with Feral Faerie Fire, that is up to you.
With a team of Ferals, you'll be lucky to get to the second Mangle in the sequence before the mob falls over dead.