choice of team

[Bobby79]

Now i have 2 teams about the same level and i want to know which team to go with. I have a 5 man druid team and a shammy and 4 x dk team.
help me decide which team to use and focus on, give me pros and cons for each and what your choice would be and why.
Always tnx in advance to those who give any ideas

[Ualaa]

Druids can be all three roles, four if you include both Melee-DPS and Range-DPS.
So that is a point in their favor.
They're easily the quickest team to quest with, as Feral has zero downtime; crits are plentiful and they replenish your mana, the rotation is simple (Mangle, Rake, Mangle, Mangle, Rip) and that's around a 97% chance (per druid) of making your next nature spell an instant cast.
My 5x Ferals were able to take on +1 Level elites (everything except the flaming pulsing guy in Hyjal) without issue; none of my other teams were this powerful.
You can do ground-spawn collections from flight-form without killing hostile npcs standing over the items.
If you're into collections (herbalism/mining), nothing gathers as fast as a Druid.
You can PvP as Boomkin, Feral or Resto, or some combination of those.
You can PvE as Tank + Heals + 3x DPS, including stealth runs to whatever.



4x Death Knights + 1x Healer, is the premier PvP team of the expansion.
From a PvP point of view, nothing is even remotely close.

DK's have Anti-Magic Shell for 7 seconds of immunity to any effect that imposes a debuff icon, plus a large amount of magic damage mitigation.
They can Pillar of Frost, for immunity to knockback effects, for 20s every minute.
They have Icebound Fortitude, which breaks Stuns and makes you immune to them, and reduces damage taken by 20% which is substantial.
The DK's summon pets for extra burst damage, then sacrifice them for a 20% heal.
Lichborne (usually combined with the racial) is effectively a second trinket vs most of the nasty pvp effects.

DK's have Death Grip, which makes them immune to Root/Snare.
Howling Blast is a 50% snare (talented/glyphed), castable on targets 30 yards away and hitting everyone within 10 yards of the target; you'll be no slower than anyone else, when they have a 50% snare.
Plus root is a non-issue, when you can round-robin Death Grip others to you; Frost Mages are rather easy to deal with in Arena/BG's with 4x DG.
You can use DG to pull/peel things off of your healer.

They have two rotations.
a) Howling Blast > Frost Strike > Necrotic Strike.
b) (Outbreak to apply both diseases, so OBL hits harder) Obliterate > Frost Strike.

I generally combine Hungering Cold (point-blank, aoe, CC) with Obliterate.
Also Empower Runic Weapon, to refresh all my runes.
HC on round-robin rocks; /cast [@arena1] Deathgrip (change arena # for each DK), then HC to Crowd Control most of their team, then kill the last guy... re-HC when they trinket... and repeat the trick in 30 seconds.

Have two Focus based macros.
Dark Sim at Focus and a macro for Bloodtap + Strangulate at Focus.
Have DK's 1/3 set Focus on one keybind and DK's 2/4 on another.
That way you can effectively lock out two healers for 5 seconds or so.
I generally have a Dark Sim button that is not @Focus, so I can use it on the main target.

Work Mind Freeze into the DK rotation, ideally going off once every 2.5 seconds.
If you're Blood Elves, have Arcane Torrent do the same.

Most generally go with a Paladin or Priest healer.
Pally because bubble makes you a poor initial target; Priest because you have guaranteed healing, even after dying.
The Shammy has Earth Shield, Tremor Totem is effectively a raid-wide Lichborne (trinket vs Charm, Fear and Sleep effects), glyphed Healing Stream Totem is very similar to Resistance Aura (Fire/Frost/Nature instead of Fire/Frost/Shadow).
Shammies wear Chain and use Shields, so are the second best at mitigating melee damage.
A very good choice for BG's, and probably #3 for arena play.

You can run them 4x Blood or 1x Blood, for PvE content.
All non-heroic 85 dungeons have been done by 4x Blood, 1x Healer, in PvP gear.
Most 85 heroics are down too.



My main team now is 4x Frost DK's + 1x Holy Paladin.
Between the two, I'd go with the DK's + Healer.

However, my first team to 85 this expansion was 5x Feral.
I dropped them, when they removed Powershifting = Root Break and Berserk = Fear Immunity/Fear Break.
The 83 spell is now 8 seconds of raid immunity to root, which you can round-robin; Dash is also single target (self only) immunity to root... so that is close to 3/4's of a minute every few minutes of root immunity.
Still lacking on the fear immunity.

[Drarkan]

Yeah I don't like how they nerfed druids myself. The healing tree was epic and could HOT heal the whole party with two clicks, then stand by for regular heals as needed, or do some dps too.

I have a few 5x druid teams, one i have 3 at 72 or something, and two at 60 I added later on when I did my second round of RAF. All in all, I have so many to choose from, I have a hard time picking one team lol or server for that matter

[Bobby79]

Ok nice replys but first can i ask Ualaa where you a blizz employee at some time as you know alot about the game i have read numerous posts and everytime you reply there is a plethora of answers and knowledge

Now back to the topic in hand i am mainly going to do pve content. so with that bieng said can you help me out with my macros.

The rotation macro i currently use for my dks is

/assist focus
/castsequence reset=combat/target/3 Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike, Death Coil, Death Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Death Coil 
/cast Icebound Fortitude
/cast Rune Strike

If i need to improve it pls give suggestions and also can you show me a macro for blood tap and strangulate as was said by Ualaa

[Ualaa]

I'm just a boxer... no affiliation now or ever with Blizzard.
I read a lot, and try to stay current on a bunch of things.



I don't have much experience with Blood DK's.
I was running a very simple macro:

#show
/castsequence Heart Strike, Death Strike
/cast Rune Strike

I'm pretty sure that is not optimal for a Blood Tank.
It did work to get the gnomettes from the low 60's to 80th or so.
But once I tried the Frost spec, I've not looked back.
Still have the Blood spec, as it was cheaper to dual-spec than re-spec, but haven't even placed all the available talent points.

Checking the other boxing site, I see two DK Tank rotations.

One with diseases:
/castsequence reset=combat icy touch, plague strike, pestilence, blood boil, death strike, icy touch, plague strike, blood boil, heart strike, plague strike, blood boil, icy touch, heart strike
/cast rune strike

One without diseases:
/castsequence reset=combat blood boil, death strike,blood boil, blood boil, blood boil
/cast rune strike
/cast blood tap



I've got Strangulate and Dark Simulacrum, both as the straight spells (so they can be cast at the current target) and as target=focus variants.

#show Strangulate
/cast Bloodtap
/cast [@focus] Strangulate

(Have to spam it, as Blood Tap is not off of the GCD... but even if you're Frost and have Death Runes in the place of Blood Runes, it is a guaranteed rune when you press the macro).

I'm playing around with:
a) Round-Robin set focus key.
-- Press 1 = Assist Lead and DK's 1 & 3, set focus.
-- Press 2 = Assist Lead and DK's 2 & 4, set focus.
b) Round-Robin Stangulate (as the macro above)
-- Press 1 = DK's 1 & 2 Strangulate their focus.
-- Press 2 = DK's 3 & 4 Strangulate their focus.

Which ideally means, we can do back to back Strangulates on two different targets.