Ideas for new team

[Ualaa]

Your composition has to include a class that could be a tank, irregardless of what you spec/play that class as. This means, at least one of: Death Knight, Druid, Paladin, Warrior.

Similarly the LFD system wants you to have at least a healer on the team. So one of: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman.

These two toons cannot overlap, meaning you cannot go 4x Warrior + 1x Paladin, as the Paladin will queue as either the tank or the healer but not both.

A mixed team will work fine. You can give your DPS a castsequence (not as strong as Click Castsequences, but those are going away) or several spells which will loop in the order you list them. Have your DPS assist your tank. Drive with the tank. Then pick a healing method for the healer.

Probably the top PvE team composition is 1x Paladin, 3x Shaman (Elemental) and 1x Warlock/Druid/Shaman. The Warlock/Druid gets your team 13% additional spell damage, while the Shaman is another toon that runs as easily as the first three.

You can run Druid and 4x Shaman, which lets you go Bear for PvE and Boomkin for PvP, which is quite a bit stronger in PvP, and pretty decent in PvE too.

Lots of neat combos. I like 5x Druid, which gets you Boomkin or Kitty DPS, possibly mixed with some Resto(s) for PvP. It also gets you Tank (Bear), Heals (Resto) and DPS (Feral/Balance) for PvE.

A very strong team is 1x DK (Frost/Blood) tank, and 4x Ret Paladin. This is very devastating in PvP and quite capable in PvE, although with the change to Art of War (Exorcism only) you'll probably need to spec one Holy (dual-spec, perhaps) for instances.

A mixed team is fun. It has the most flexibility in what you can accomplish. You can have Crowd Control effects, all the buffage or cooldown abilities you care to have, etc. Plus it is the most rewarding/challenging to have everything work well together.

Almost anything you want to try will work. With the caveat of 1x Tanking capable and 1x Healing capable, in the mix, purely for the LFD tool.

[Longshot17]

You gotta run something with multiple shamans... I don't have a ton of experience Multiboxing different group comps. I'm still thinking about doing another group to 80, and all I can think about is how will I accomplish different things without shamans in the group. They got so much stuff. Bloodlust, Elemental pets, the tremor totem, the cleanse totem, stuff you don't have to think about or do, it just happens automatically, plus multiple chain healing, all three of my shamans are deep(ish) elemental, and I have no problems with healing.

I feel like I do better without a dedicated healer, because if I lose one of the shamans mid-fight... I still have a real good chance of finishing, but if you lose the only healer mid-fight... restart... imo.

I'm a real multiboxing noob, started in May, my group's been 80 for roughly 2-3 weeks, and I've managed to do ToC Heroic, did my first FoS Heroic the other day, and I'm now farming Bronze Drake epic mounts from Heroic Culling of Stratholme (complete in under 25 minutes). Paladin + multiple Shamans are two super easy classes to macro (1 button for each). I have a hunter and they are a bit more tweaky with the timing, but again doable in one macro (click macro). As mentioned though (and I'm considering this) my group would be ideal with a Warlock or Druid instead of the Hunter and I've used single button Druid dps macros (well it's 2, for the Eclipse proc) fairly straight forward.

[Ualaa]

Shammies are particularly nice, but they're not essential. An elemental shaman adds a ton to any team with casters, just as an enhancement adds to a melee team.

Staggered Tremors is very nice against fear. That's probably the single biggest thing you get, which other teams don't have. The Heroism/Bloodlust is quite strong too, although mages are supposed to be getting something similar. A lot of the cleanse/decurse mechanics seem to be changing, with only Resto/Holy specs have all the tools for a given class; shammies are losing Cleansing Totem entirely, for example. The pets are nice, but they're a portion of the DPS, and in theory other classes can DPS too, although it remains to be seen how well.

Multiples of the same class will definitely be easier to play, then different classes. A castsequence might not be optimal, but it can be close. But having say 4 shammies, and you manually hit each spell, with all four getting the same spell -- that's pretty close to playing one shammy. You might miss out on some proc based effects, or you could macro on the assumption that on average you'll have "x" charges/combo points by a certain point into your rotation and go from there.

I've found, with Prot Pally, Demo Warlock and 3x Elemental Shammies, I can do all 5-man content. Some like a dedicated healer, while others prefer an extra DPS. Initially my team was four shammies, and one was Resto spec. I traded her to another team for the warlock, which gave the other team two Shammies and gave the first team the 13% additional spell power buff; both teams improved because of it. A dedicated healer certainly makes initial attempts easier for challenging content. But I prefer more total DPS for trash.

If you want to go with a given composition, you'll find a way to make it work. This is especially true for PvE, and in battlegrounds it will work too. Rated Battlegrounds might be like Arena, which forces a composition closer to optimal, but we're not really sure on how that stands as of yet. Pick classes that you enjoy playing, and have fun while you play; that's about the only advice that really counts. You know you need at least one toon who could spec tank and another who could spec healer -- and that opens the LFD tool.

[Paws]

Weekend is nearly here, it's lunch time Friday where I live. When I get home from work I'll set up the raf accounts as in Current Main -> A -> B -> C -> D -> E. I imagine it'd only take about 12 hrs with a team to get to a level high enough to see if I enjoy it. I'll try out a couple and see how I go. Probably looking at bear + 4 rets and prot pally + 4 ele's first up and go from there.

If I did a tank, 3xhunter, healer team which tank/healer classes would be recommended? Maybe a paladin and druid at 80, but level them as ret/boomkin and let pets tank 1-60?

[Janus]

Second guide is published. You can find it here:

Multiboxing 101: Macros, part 1

I will be posting my team's DPS macros, as well as hints for other classes' DPS rotations on a separate page.

Tanking and healing rotations will follow shortly, as well as the all-important button layout for all of this