Invincible PVE Group (A New Twist on a Classic)

[gunsun]

Invincible PVE Group (A New Twist on a Classic)

This has been my pre-cata project and I think it’s ready to share with everyone.

Disclaimers:

I only use DBM, GS, and Recount, so no addons are necessary
I only broadcast keys with ISBoxer, no steps or click broadcasting or auto assists. So, this should work with hardware boxing or other broadcasting software.
I had 20 level 80s to choose from, so I could avoid shaman stacking, but this works better.


Goals for group:

This will be my first 85 team
Dedicated farm team for drops, justice points, boa gear, etc, etc
Almost impossible to kill
Minimum, if any, downtime
Almost no micro-management of characters
Quick recovery from wipes
No squishy characters (I love locks, mages and priests, but they seem to die more than shaman and druids because damage avoidance is more micro-managed).
I want the simplest interface and key-bindings possible


First, my bizarre class/spec combo:

Pally tank
elem shaman
Boomkin
resto shaman
resto shaman


My two resto shaman, in dps gear, pull 8-10% dps each, so I basically have the equivalent of 3 dps (albeit a weaker third dps) without needing any healer micro management. I like that I can keep them in dps gear too, much simpler to gear.

The resto-shaman macro is mainly dps but spams earthshield and riptide on the tank, which takes care of 95% of the healing. Riptide is only 412 mana, so I spam it every 6 seconds when the CD is up. Riptide x2 is overpowered. Group heals are also stronger and instant with nature’s swiftness + chain heal x2.

I considered a mage, but I park my mage in a city and use it to port (it’s on a sixth account). I don’t need Int buffs or water because mana-regen is a non-issue (innervate, and 2 mana tide totems). Also, the passive heals of the elem shaman, plus the fire elemental and the extra reincarnate is more hands-off.

The boomkin brings innervate, tranquility, battle rez, and the dru buff. Even if the tank drops, you can use 3 earth elementals and a battle rez to recover. Because of the buff the Pally can Might for mana-regen and the 3 shaman can all use healing stream totems. With 2 resto shamans it’s equivalent to 4 shamans with 4 healing stream totems. At 80, I get around 1400 healing per tick.

With this setup, and the macros below, I’ve run the ICC heroics with almost no micro management of characters or roles. I spam my one tank/dps/heal button. The only time I do more is if the tank loses agro (hasn’t happened, but might), there’s serious aoe (can ignore most minor aoe) or I have to dance on a boss. And, a random mob breaking from the group to hit a dps or healer isn’t a big deal.

The elem shaman is only dps and drops a healing stream totem, no chain heals or healing surges. So you have 2 dedicated dps at all times. But chain heal is an option if you really need it for a boss, as is tranquility.

This one-button design allows me to focus my attention on “events” that requires dancing, clicking something, etc, etc. I’ve run a lot of bosses only spamming my one button. The 3 dps setup brings about 10-15% more dps on one character, but requires a lot more effort to play.

I’m focused on stupid-easy game play because things are supposedly harder in Cata. It makes selecting one character and moving trivial. If one healer is cc’d I can wait it out. I’m assuming more cc means players get cc’d more too. My macros free-up focus for 3 hexes, so CC is trivial.

Group Comparisons:
Pally and 4 elem shaman is great but dps stops to heal and I’m not sure 4 dps will be viable in Cata-Heroics. If you are healing a lot then the mana is going to heals and nothing is taking damage. The group also lacks insta-heals, mana-tide totems, battle rez and buffs.

Micro-management isn’t as bad if you run 3 elem and 1 resto shaman, but the druid brings more to the group. 2 elem shaman and a resto shaman, in my experience, don’t fare as well if the resto shaman goes down. Also, having a staff/leather class makes farming gear less annoying.

Driving from the Pally I can cleanse and tank with no problems.

The rest (reincarnates, bubbles, heroism, 5 rezzers, etc ) is nothing new and self explanatory.

If anyone cares, I have the following tradeskills on the group:
Blacksmith
Jewel Crafter
Skinning
Engineer (With Jeeves :)
Enchanter
Miner
3 Alchemists (I have 14 total with alts) Oh, if you haven’t stacked alchemists it is awesome-free-money unless Cata changes transmute cool-downs.

Finally, here are some macros. Nothing special about any of these, but they’ll run in the standard ui without addons:

Heal tank (passive) and dps (x2 resto shaman). This setup frees focus for Hexing, but you could @focustarget and focus the tank instead if you want. I’m currently only Earthshielding the Tank, but changing the @Tank to a character name will Earthshield a healer or whatever. The multiple target specification is necessary because the resto-shamans target will change throughout the macro. I lead with a shock so the CD allows the riptide to cast and the CD on both spells works out well.

#show earth shield
/target Tank
/castsequence [@targettarget, exists] flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt
/castsequence [@Tank] reset=combat earth shield, null
/cast [@Tank] riptide

Heal tank (x2 resto shaman, just in case there’s a damage spike on the tank. You could use bigger heals or a castsequence if needed, but 2x resto healing surge is powerful and mana efficient)

/cast [@Tank] healing surge

Heal group (x2 resto shaman, I tossed in riptide to make sure healers stay up)

/cast nature's swiftness
/castsequence [@player] reset=5 chain heal, riptide, chain heal, chain heal, chain heal

Pally tanking (I have avenger’s shield and avenging wrath on macro’d to pull, the avenger’s shield here is for procs.)

#show hammer of the righteous
/click MultiBarRightButton1
/cast avenger's shield
/cast Hammer of Wrath
/use 13
/use 14

MultiBarRightButton1 (rotation with self heals)

AOE sequence
/castsequence reset=combat hammer of the righteous, judgement, crusader strike, holy wrath, hammer of the righteous, shield of the righteous, crusader strike, judgement, hammer of the righteous, word of glory

SINGLE sequence
/castsequence reset=combat crusader strike, judgement, crusader strike, crusader strike, shield of the righteous, word of glory

Pally cleansing
/cast cleanse
/targetlasttarget

Pally cooldowns (shares a keybinding with the Heal the Tank macros. I put all the cds in one macro based on refresh times so my big mess button is progressive). If you’ve never played blue-goats, the naaru thing is a racial skill.

#show divine protection
/cast gift of the naaru
/castsequence [combat] reset=5 divine protection, ardent defender, lay on hands

Druid dps (without IsBoxer steps, and a stop macro so I can use tranquility)

#show wrath
/assist Tank
/stopmacro [channeling]
/cast [nostance:5] Moonkin Form
/click MultiBarRightButton1
/use 13
/use 14

MultiBarButton1 (Don't spec Sunfire, it's breaks this)
/castsequence Moonfire,Insect Swarm,Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Wr ath,Wrath,Moonfire,Insect Swarm, Wrath,Wrath,Wrath,Starfire,Starfire,Starfire,Moonf ire,Insect Swarm,Starfire,Starfire,Starfire,Starfire,Starfire ,Starfire
/cast starsurge

Hexing (just to be complete)
/cast [@focus] hex

Elem Shaman DPS, no chain lightning to avoid breaking hex
#show
/assist Tank
/cast elemental mastery
/use 13
/use 14
/castsequence reset=combat flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, Earth Shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt
/cast lava burst




That's most of it, other macros would be situation specific or common ones on the boards. Let me know if you see any areas for improvement. At the moment I'm sold on the trade-off in dps because I can always off-spec 4 dps.

[Kalros]

Wow, thats alot to wrap my mind around! Sounds very unique though. Keep us informed as to how it is going!

[Owltoid]

I love the idea, and always want to encourage new groups and thinking out of the box, but my ego is telling me I have to say this: a team with 4 disc priests is more "invincible" than what you have :) Their survivability is insane.... INSANE I tell ya!

[gunsun]

Hmm, I had thought I had tried most combos but I've never tried that. Now i'm thinking my title is melodramatic :)

[Owltoid]

I was half kidding ;)

You do have some nice wipe protection with the battle rez mixed with elementals. Plus shamans are always valuable for wipe recovery.

Most important thing is you have fun with them, and by the detail of your write-up I'm guessing you've succeeded.

[Ualaa]

I like that you're experimenting.
And if it works for you, and is fun, that is what counts.

Double healer, with some DPS from the heals is a different approach.

I know people have done double healer, for heroics or new content anyway when they're gear is comparatively lacking.

[gunsun]

I've been playing so many mixed teams the last couple of months, and dealing with a lot of headaches to get things to work, that this team almost plays itself.

I geeked out when I realized backup dps is viable. I was laughing all morning as I tested them out in different heroics.

Plus I wanted to make the simplest to play, hardest to kill, heroic group I could. I missed out on a couple months of WoTLK because I had to level up 3 teams to make one that was capable of doing heroics. Just stupid mistakes that I didn't realize I had made until I hit 70s and 80s.

I want to avoid that with 85 and figured others might as well. I can't think of a better combo for learning new content and game mechanics with, at least not yet and this has been bothering me for about a month.

Once the new strats are down I can add in other classes or group combos.

[gunsun]

Some data to report. I'm still geeking out. I completed Heroic Nexus without a death or using any healing macros. I just spammed my riptide/dps/tanking keybinding, or '2' for the entire instance. No one needed healing.

The healers don't have the same range as the dps, which is frustrating relearning how far to pull mobs in. And they aren't using dps glyphs which I'm going to change. So I'm still tweaking the dps numbers but here's my recount data:

elem shaman 970882 (3602.8, 33.9%)
balance druid 750979 (3175.0, 26.2%)
Paladin tank 623387 (2196.6, 21.7%)
resto shaman 266551 (1023.9, 9.3%)
resto shaman 248007 (925.4, 8.6%)

It feels like I'm rolling with my BM Hunter who has a 3k gs, mostly quest blues and some heroic drops. But, and this part I love, I no longer have to heal. Granted I'm outgearing everything, but even outgeared you usually heal a little. The HOL and Nexus bosses with aoe attacks don't require healing anymore.

And I did the Anomolous achievement (guy in Nexus spl?) without a single healing macro. Just spammed button '2' (button 1 is my avenging shield pull) for the entire fight.

[zenga]

I only use DBM, GS, and Recount, so no addons are necessary



replace gs with omen and it's a win for cata

[gunsun]

Last post today, but just ran Utgarde Pinnacle with same result.

No need for healing macros, and I stood in the blue flame during the harpoon event, and one of my guys was rushed by the boss. Passive healing took care of it all.

Grant it i had pulled him far away from group so most of the whirlwind hit air, but still, no direct heals at all.

Dps didn't really change with dps glyphs, so that looks static.

[Khatovar]

/target Tank
/castsequence [@targettarget, exists] flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt
/castsequence [@Tank] reset=combat earth shield, null
/cast [@Tank] riptide

Might I suggest adding Earthshocks in there? You can get 2 Earth shocks in before the Flame Shock DoT expires. It should increase your healer DPS with the added benefit of 20% reduced attack speed on the mobs, allowing you to drop 2/2 Judgements of the Just on your tank and add those points to something more useful. Recasting Flame Shock before the DoT expires neuters the overall damage per mana spent.

[gunsun]

Thanks for that edit. Adding in Earth Shock was a consistent 1-1.5% improvement on each shaman. Numbers are a little rough, didn't test it much. But I ran the the old macro against the new macro and it outperformed in every fight.

Very awesome and a big thanks :-)

[gunsun]

So much of recount is situational, so I don't put a ton of faith in it; however, adding shock glyphs and searing totems on the restos along with earth shock has consistently upped them to 9-11% of damage each.

So, depending on the fight, the elem shaman does 28% or so and the 2 resto shaman do almost 22% together. They do more dps on trash than bosses, but the drop isn't that big.

Searing totem helps alot because healers don't have any damage bonuses, so another source of damage is huge. Also, the resto shaman seem to have about the same range as searing totems, so it helps with pulls too.

If anyone else can see a way to improve the resto-dps it would be awesome. They are real close to a third dps and I almost never cast a direct heal. So far, only 1-2 heals per instance and only if something goes wrong with a pull or a boss.

I'll play with Earth shock rotations and post an update macro when I get something I like against target dummies. Lava burst seems to hurt dps, takes too long to cast on restos.

[gunsun]

Well, I might regret this and should have taken a break a few hours ago . . .

But I swapped out the elem shaman with a mage. The passive heals are a lot stronger than I had thought (still a little over 1k a tick) and I have 2 earth shields, so I think the mage won't be a liability. And now I have one of each armor type.

I'm stress testing by being an idiot in heroics with bad pulls and not dpsing bosses to see how much aoe I can absorb.

[Littleburst]

I love the idea, and always want to encourage new groups and thinking out of the box, but my ego is telling me I have to say this: a team with 4 disc priests is more "invincible" than what you have :) Their survivability is insane.... INSANE I tell ya!

4x Atonement http://www.wowhead.com/spell=81749
When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health friendly party or raid target within 15 yards from the enemy target equal to 100% of the damage dealt.

Will be quite sick :D

I just spam smite with my disc priest and that covers like 40% of the healing done. That's in normals though, not geared for HC's yet. (like below 180, so can't queue)

[HPAVC]

4x Atonement http://www.wowhead.com/spell=81749
When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health friendly party or raid target within 15 yards from the enemy target equal to 100% of the damage dealt.

It has a strong appeal, but a lot of talents add nothing to synergy for the team with four discipline. So many buffs don't stack or just overwrite so prematurely.

[Mercurio]

Nice thoughts here, Gunsun.

In Wrath I ensured that I have an ele shammy in every leveling team in addition to my specced healer (sometimes a resto shammy, sometimes a priest). It really helps to have more healing when needed - either ele healing or respeccing to resto when needed. This is certainly a philosophy I'm going to maintain in Cata. You have taken this a bit farther.

My caution is that WotLK heroics really are a complete joke right now. I don't believe they give much of an indication of what the Cata dungeons will be like. With my traditional 3 DPS teams my dedicated healers are pretty useless - they cast an acutal heal about 4-5 times a heroic run these days - Riptide or Renew takes care of the rest for me. I certainly don't expect that to be the case in Cata.

For you, I would guess that the kind of incoming tank damage in Cata dungeons will cause you to have to spend much of your resto time healing. Also, since Blizz seems to be wanting to put more stress on DPS lately I would guess that many of the fights will be based on having very solid DPS to survive. Stacking boss damage buffs or additional adds running in over time that will overwhelm low DPS groups will probably see quite a bit of use in Cata. I think back to running WotLK heroics in quest greens and how many special abilities I had to plan for when battling each of the bosses. Now I completely ignore everything because my DPS is so overpowered that I kill things before special abilities are an issue. In Cata a low DPS group may have a much harder time dealing with all the special tricks bosses throw at us.

Again, I love the thought, and running heroics now can definitely help you tweak your macros to optimize, but I think your group's performance will change significantly come Cata (as all groups will). I'm excited to see how you fare!

[Redbeard]

Sounds like a fun group, I love the fact that blizz added ways for all the healers to throw in dps.

Im working on something similar to Owls' 4 disc priests, im throwing in 1 elly shaman to ramp up the damage of smite. Hoping the group will still be very survivable. Unfortunately theyre only level 17 right now and though ill work on them this weekend, they wont be remotely near 80 by Tuesday.. oh well, i still have my main group =P

Let us know how it goes!

[Ualaa]

Still... a pair of Resto Shammies, can easily dual-spec.
If you need the damage, for an enrage timer or stacking debuff...

If you're using IS Boxer, have some toggles to add/remove a toon from the healer group to the DPS group.
Any other software could simply go with keybindings... 1) everyone DPS's; 2) everyone except both Resto's; 3) One resto only, the other is a healer this fight.

I really like, not focusing on healing at all.
Just kill the mobs, with the one button spam.
And concentrate on movement or whatever the mechanic/trick is for the fight.

I'd hate the slower kill speed, because two resto's looks to be lower dps than one DPS type.
So that is the trade off: longer runs, slower boss kills.

[lightstriker]

4x Atonement http://www.wowhead.com/spell=81749
When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health friendly party or raid target within 15 yards from the enemy target equal to 100% of the damage dealt.

Will be quite sick :D

I just spam smite with my disc priest and that covers like 40% of the healing done. That's in normals though, not geared for HC's yet. (like below 180, so can't queue)

Dont forget Divine Ageis, it procs from Atonement. I want to level 3 more Disc, but Disc dont have AoE. This is the only thing lacking. Do you and Owltoid throw out Mind Sear for AoE? Is it weak on Disc?

Disc Priest
#showtooltips
/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=target/combat Penance, Shadow Word: Pain, Smite, Holy Fire, Devouring Plague, Smite, Penance, Smite, Smite, Holy Fire, Smite, Smite,
/cast Archangel

My Disc and Boom never runs out of mana anymore. On Hall of Reflection run my 2 EleShammy run out faster now. Probably because of Chain Lightning and Earth Shock and heals.

My team is similar to GunSun's but i don't have one dedicated healer. I won't know what to do with 2.

[gunsun]

Thanks for the feedback, Mercurio. I've been thinking similar things and trying to stress test with pulls of 12-15 mobs in heroics.

I went into ICC10 and trash there is just like heroics. The passive heals are all you need and the restos still pull 8-12% dps each. Some fights the two of them out dps my Boomkin. Fights are long but danger free. No mana issues, no heal issues.

I've wiped on Marrowgar so many times that I swear he's laughing at me.

My best attempt I had him near 70%, which was a fluke because I'm lucky to get him to 85% most attempts. There's just no margin for error. A great 4 min attempt is ruined with a bad dance. Most wipes were from stupid things, like botching group placement on the pull. It's an unforgiving fight and most of the team is low 5k gs.

You can chain heal through bone storm, with almost no frost resist, so the survival build works. The shaman still pull 7-8% on a raid boss, which is nice. But killing bone spikes while healing the tank is a mess.

I think it's doable with 3-4 situational macros, depending on who is spiked (if I brought back the elem shaman I'd have four options for backup heals, nukes, etc depending on the spike).

But I'm tired of repair bills and respawns and typos in my macros.

[gunsun]

Does anyone have a link for Healing Stream Totem scaling? I've been searching and don't understand some of the stuff I'm reading. Is there a good site explaining the mechanics?

I just noticed that with the mage in the group their is a proc adding about 70hp per tick per totem. Not sure what is doing that, but with the mage they're comparable to 2 resto + 1 elem.

I've never spent much time trying to max healing totems :)

[Mokoi]

a war5lock would be better than a boomkin. more survivable, and more DPS.

I have both, I prefer the lock by a huge margin.

[shadewalker]

Battle Rez? Inervate? Off-tank if you need? MoW so your Pally can cast might? Extra hots in case of emergency. I still see a lot more utility from a Druid.

Yea the dps is lower but I want to look at the big picture for my entire team here. Granted, My lock is still a lowbie while i have 2 druids at 80, so I might have a biased outlook on this. But i guess that is just my opinion.

[pinotnoir]

You can always have 1 of the 2 resto shamans go elemental and offheal if needed. My pve group has a holy priest and elemental shaman. When I first started doing heroics it helped a ton having the shaman join the healing if I was taking a beating.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I didn't know riptide stacks lol ...... I hadn't been using it on my main cause then chain heal kills it and I been using chain heal a lot.

I think Ill just stack up riptides on the main and cast chain heals inbetween targeting the mages. If I ever get my whole crew up I think 7 riptides should be sufficient ....

[gunsun]

Yeah, riptide stacks and it is amazing, especially with Earth Shield. Even on Marrowgar I very seldom needed another heal on the tank.

The Druid dps is a little lower than the elem shaman. I haven't found a good way to bump it up, but the rest of the utility aspects that shadewalker mentions are incredibly handy. I've also swapped out the elem shaman for a mage, so my overall dps is higher than it was.

Also, I've accepted that Boomkin are a hybrid mage/lock, with a couple nukes and a couple dots. So, on trash, they do a lot less overall dps but on boss fights they fair better. I've started using recount as per fight only to get a better feel for team performance.

My two resto-shaman, combined, will occasionally out dps the boomkin. They have two shocks in their rotation though and the boomkin is forever casting.

It's funny seeing resto-dps his 22-24% while the boomkin is around 20%. I could do that in ICC10, on trash, without needed direct heals other than my riptide/earthshied/lightning bolt/shocks macro.

[gunsun]

I was just talking to a friend, and I think it's important to point out that this is a survival strategy. So giving up 10% dps isn't that big of a deal. There is no dps race to nuke things down. Boss fights might be a min or two longer, but they are a lot easier to play.

[Mercurio]

Thanks for the feedback, Mercurio. I've been thinking similar things and trying to stress test with pulls of 12-15 mobs in heroics.

I went into ICC10 and trash there is just like heroics. The passive heals are all you need and the restos still pull 8-12% dps each. Some fights the two of them out dps my Boomkin. Fights are long but danger free. No mana issues, no heal issues.

I've wiped on Marrowgar so many times that I swear he's laughing at me.

My best attempt I had him near 70%, which was a fluke because I'm lucky to get him to 85% most attempts. There's just no margin for error. A great 4 min attempt is ruined with a bad dance. Most wipes were from stupid things, like botching group placement on the pull. It's an unforgiving fight and most of the team is low 5k gs.

You can chain heal through bone storm, with almost no frost resist, so the survival build works. The shaman still pull 7-8% on a raid boss, which is nice. But killing bone spikes while healing the tank is a mess.

I think it's doable with 3-4 situational macros, depending on who is spiked (if I brought back the elem shaman I'd have four options for backup heals, nukes, etc depending on the spike).

But I'm tired of repair bills and respawns and typos in my macros.

Are you trying to 5-box him? I've soloed him about 40 times, but always with 10 toons.

I certainly remember all the difficulties of getting each boss down the first time. Lots of repair bills and macro tweakage. It is painful, but I'm kinda looking forward to more challenges in Cata.

[Ualaa]

A druid could heal (no matter what their spec), and has both normal rez and battle rez.
That's more survivability then the mage.

Warlock has a healthstone and a soulstone, and more versatile crowd control.
Compared to the druid at least.

Mage is only DPS, but is strong in that.
And has a nice CC too.

[Mooni]

Happy to hear it's going well! Good luck with your Swiss-army-knife group.

[gunsun]

Are you trying to 5-box him? I've soloed him about 40 times, but always with 10 toons.

I certainly remember all the difficulties of getting each boss down the first time. Lots of repair bills and macro tweakage. It is painful, but I'm kinda looking forward to more challenges in Cata.

Yeah. I have a 10 box setup but I never tried ICC with them. A few have gear issues. But this was a 5 box attempt. I could last 4-5 min and get him down a bit, but it's a mess.

Dividing things into heals for the tank and dps for the bonespike, at the same time, is the issue for 5 boxing it. If there weren't bone spikes it would be a very long but simple fight since the shaman can heal through the bonestorm.



Happy to hear it's going well! Good luck with your Swiss-army-knife group.

Thanks :-)

[gunsun]

A druid could heal (no matter what their spec), and has both normal rez and battle rez.
That's more survivability then the mage.

Warlock has a healthstone and a soulstone, and more versatile crowd control.
Compared to the druid at least.

Mage is only DPS, but is strong in that.
And has a nice CC too.

I agree that a lock would be better util than a mage. But I don't have one ready for Cata. I have a team of them and they're close, but not 80 yet. The raw output of the mage is nice in a group with lower dps.

Plus, I really like my portals, it just makes the whole group more mobile. And I have an offspec of Frost for replenishment if I really need it, currently running arcane.

[zipzip]

This sounds fun & appealing, and I may experiment with the two healer setup once my team is 85. Currently my team is:

Pally tank
2x warlock
ele shaman
resto druid

I have other shamans, and thought momentarily about swapping out the druid for 2x shammy in this team, but then I realized I can just as easily have a resto druid & resto shaman for the 2x healer setup. dps is dps, so I like the idea of two different classes worth of healing spells.

I am curious if a resto shaman does more dps than a resto druid...I suspect it would.

[Bollwerk]

Does Earth Shield stack?

[Ualaa]

No, but you could E.Shield one target per Resto Shaman.
Presumably going with Water Shield for PvE.

And E.Shield on healers in PvP.

[valle2000]

#show earth shield
/target Tank
/castsequence [@targettarget, exists] flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt
/castsequence [@Tank] reset=combat earth shield, null
/cast [@Tank] riptide

This macro looks interesting.
However I'm no expert so I'm wondering can the same be used with a priest to assist with holy fire,smite and at the same time making sure tank is shielded and renewed?

But what happens exactly when the macro is activated? If tank has a target, won't the result be only the dps-spell is cast and the others lines will be rejected due to "can't do that yet"?

[Redbeard]

Seems like it would be similar to the other fall through we're doing now.

For example:

/castsequence flame shock, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightningbolt
/cast lava burst

youd think lava burst would never cast but it will cast on cooldown.... somebody correct me if im wrong for the macro quoted above,

Thanks.

[gunsun]

This sounds fun & appealing, and I may experiment with the two healer setup once my team is 85. Currently my team is:

Pally tank
2x warlock
ele shaman
resto druid

I have other shamans, and thought momentarily about swapping out the druid for 2x shammy in this team, but then I realized I can just as easily have a resto druid & resto shaman for the 2x healer setup. dps is dps, so I like the idea of two different classes worth of healing spells.

I am curious if a resto shaman does more dps than a resto druid...I suspect it would.

The benefit of the 2x resto shaman group is the huge passive heals from earthshield, riptide, and the enhanced healing stream totems. With all three of these stacking the tank almost never needs a direct heal and the group very very seldom needs an aoe heal. (EDIT: earth shield doesn't stack)

The reason I avoided other healing classes is to avoid casting healing spells whenever possible. Also, the CD on earthshield and riptide allows the shaman to dps. So the synergy of the two resto shaman is amazing.


This macro looks interesting.
However I'm no expert so I'm wondering can the same be used with a priest to assist with holy fire,smite and at the same time making sure tank is shielded and renewed?

But what happens exactly when the macro is activated? If tank has a target, won't the result be only the dps-spell is cast and the others lines will be rejected due to "can't do that yet"?

When I was 10 boxing I tried setting up similar macros for my two priests. I ran 3 healers, a pally healer dedicated to the tank and 2 holy priests dedicated to group heals with aoe. The priests seldom did much and I tried to macro some dps for them.

Other than a few dots, the problem with priests is that they have long cast times. So you can't really spam one dps button because your priests end up casting holy fire or smite more often than the heals.

The reason the resto shaman macro works as well as it does is that riptide has a 6 sec CD and it also stacks. Two of them, plus earth shield are all the heals you need on the tank. (I also earth shield the mage.) Shocks also have 5-6 sec cooldowns, so the two castsequences chain together well. You cast riptide when it is up and you spam lightning bolts most of the time.

Take that spell synergy and multiple by two characters. You now have a team that mostly heals itself and has a low-but-acceptable 3rd dps.

[gunsun]

I'd like to note that I haven't started playing this team in cata yet. I'm letting rest exp build up to instance grind a couple levels and I'm scouting out the new content by single boxing my fury warrior who should be 85 later today.

I've found that deepholm has a bunch of dailies, but you have to do every quest in the zone to unlock them. Things like this are helping me identify leveling strategies for the team. I think I'll instance grind about half of 80-85 and then run a group of 2 and then a group of 3 through certain areas for quest gear and to minimize the horrid collection quests.

There are tons of collection quests and phasing, which I absolutely hate, but the money and gear from quests, plus unlocking dailies, is too huge to ignore. I've also found that questing is more interesting than instance grinding.

The real test of the team is cata-heroics. Having pugged the some new instances, I'm not that concerned about boxing them. It will be a lot slower than a pug, but I haven't seen anything that looks impossible yet.

[gunsun]

So I decided to try Blackrock Caverns.

Wiped twice on the first boss trying to be clever and heal through his chains ability instead of dpsing them down. That was pretty dumb. Other than that I face rolled the place in all Wrath gear, average gs of 5.2k on all toons. Lost a toon on a couple boss fights but no other wipes.

Second boss (caster lady i think) I could aoe tank the two adds and heal through damage, shaman were still able to dps as they healed. So it was a one-button fight.

Third boss (flame armor guy) I could passive heal through aoe and didn't need any heals at all. Trained him into flame, dps, repeat, repeat, dead. Also a one-button fight.

Dog boss I lost the druid to a poorly managed fear, but other than that, just a tank and spank.

Fifth boss I pulled too early by walking in close, lost the mage, but recovered and dropped him.

With drops that were upgrades and some experience I don't think I'll lose anyone on the second attempt.

[valle2000]

The reason the resto shaman macro works as well as it does is that riptide has a 6 sec CD and it also stacks. Two of them, plus earth shield are all the heals you need on the tank. (I also earth shield the mage.) Shocks also have 5-6 sec cooldowns, so the two castsequences chain together well. You cast riptide when it is up and you spam lightning bolts most of the time..
So if I understand correct, for it to work you need spells with cool downs?

And using emtpy cast slots like
/castsequence smite,,smite
to make time for a heal spell doesn't work any more right?

[Ualaa]

Commas as delays don't work anymore.
They cause a castsequence to lock up and not advance.

Depending on the class, you could put something in like Water Shield, which is a GCD and a delay in the macro, without hurting you.

[gunsun]

Commas don't work.

You don't need cooldowns for it to work, it just works really well because of them, a nice coincidence. The combination allows one resto shaman to do nice damage for a healer. Multiple by 2 and it's like you have 1 dps with bad gear.

[Ualaa]

Not sure how well it will work, but you've inspired me to try a new PvE group.
They'll be the fourth set to level, so not going to be 85th anytime soon.

Blood DK Tank, because four of my five DK's will go Frost for the new team.
And the Paladin (Prot) will be leaving my PvE team, to join the 4x DK's.

Go with the Resto Shaman and Disc Priest, for dual healing power.
The Disc will bring PW: Shield, Pain Suppression and mostly Smite spam to the team.
The Resto gets Earth Shield and will be the primary healer.

Then going with a Mage and Warlock as the DPS.
Aside from the DK, everyone is ranged to make things a bit easier.

Should CC's be needed, the team will have a few.
DK - Hungering Cold
Mage - Polymorph
Priest - Shackle Undead
Shaman - Hex
Warlock - Banish/Seduce

I think it will be a nice change from Prot Pally, Demo Lock and 3x Elemental Shammies.
Plus that will free 4x Shaman, to run battlegrounds as a 4x group.

[Redbeard]

Im going to give this a try but with a disc main healer and a holy pally backup... I was going to make my holy pally the main healer but im a bit nervous about his group healing capabilities. Ill let the disc priest do his thing and let the holy pally boost that through good self healing, and 2 target healing with bacon of light.

Well see if it works.

[gunsun]

Just an update . . .

My guys are about 84 so I haven't done the 84 instances.

As far as the first 4 heroics go, I walked over everything but the last boss in stonecore. I think my firenova's are too weak to do anything for that and I'm going to try off-specing to frost mage/2 elem shaman/resto dru just for that fight.

As far as everything else goes, the team plays itself.

They can absorb a massive amount of punishment, and the frost mage/mana tide totems/innervate allow me to even brute force healing packs. I just wait for their mana to run out. Not the best way to play, but when the cc breaks or you're learning a new pull it is nice.

I'll update after I try the 3 84-85 instances.

[Bollwerk]

You did 4 heroics at 84? Don't you have to be 85?
=)

[Maxion]

Hearing about a mage, I assume your first post is out of date.
Also, be warned that the step up in difficulty from normal to heroic in cata is a lot more brutal than in wrath.
You have been warned, good luck. :)

Though I do think double healer will be decent for cata heroics since bosses usually don't have an enrage timer as far as I've heard.

[Multibocks]

Some have indirect enrage timers like filling the room with bad stuff that you can't heal through, but most are without them like Vanessa Vancleef. If you can do the rope swing you can take as long as you like to kill her :)

[Redbeard]

So im trying to set this up (or something similar), id like to rock a resto shaman who will:

-Cast earth shield every once in a while on the tank (will have to judge the amount of time it normally takes it to drop)
-cast riptide on cooldown
-cast chain heal towards the end of the riptide duration

Otherwise, run a dps sequence doing shocks and lightning bolts.

I know I could use a 2 button setup, but im not sure how i keep it from spamming spells on the healing side.

Curious how you work out the dpsing without spamming too much healing.

[Ualaa]

Lightning Bolt restores mana equal to 40% of the damage you deal, as a Resto Shaman.
So you could likely include a bunch of Lightning Bolts, as the timer mechanism controlling how often you cast your heals.

I might go with Earthshield,Null and a reset=combat/alt.
That way you can force it to recast, but otherwise it is a full Earth Shield at the start of every fight.

If you're spamming the macro, then the number of GCD's (ie, spells) would likely get you a Chain Heal towards the end of the Riptide; err a bit early, so you get the bonus for sure.

[HPAVC]

So im trying to set this up (or something similar), id like to rock a resto shaman who will:

-Cast earth shield every once in a while on the tank (will have to judge the amount of time it normally takes it to drop)
-cast riptide on cooldown
-cast chain heal towards the end of the riptide duration

Otherwise, run a dps sequence doing shocks and lightning bolts.

I know I could use a 2 button setup, but im not sure how i keep it from spamming spells on the healing side.

Curious how you work out the dpsing without spamming too much healing.

I have tank healing rotations, healordie, touchup, dps, and mute. They both work off the same "dps" grind, but i shift they target binding on the multiplexer. I jamba I have a healbot tag if a class is an active healer spec and their dps rotation is usually a "token contribution" like your suggestion.

I will be mashing Backspace, all the non-tanks will be doing their dps rotations. I can with one key turn those dps rotations into the boss (debuffs, manage cooldowns), allout (unmanaged cooldowns), or trash (no cooldowns) macros in jamba (again, those will differ if you have the healbot tag). During the combat runtime I will shift the keybindings to healordie or touchup.

So if there is a fight that starts out slow and will progress later, like Novos for example. I would have the healer muted and everyone will trash dps. So all the dps are doing their thing and the healbot is doing nothing (mute being just --- for a macro). Then the lich pops and i will shift the dps to boss and the healbot to touchup.

All the while i am still just tapping backspace into the multiplexer and the multiplexer is pushing keys out to the wow windows. After combat my "buffup" key resets everything to "trash/dps" so I don't accidentally blow heroism / elementals or something.

I still have access to the keys when the healer is "mute", so if i want to manually toss stuff at them I can do so. its just in the muted state nothing from the backspace button mashing effort is going to the healer.

I don't roll with earth shield, but I would treat it like a tank buff that the tank would need to maintain and just have an poweraura alert if its missing and manually reapply it.

[Khatovar]

So im trying to set this up (or something similar), id like to rock a resto shaman who will:

-Cast earth shield every once in a while on the tank (will have to judge the amount of time it normally takes it to drop)
-cast riptide on cooldown
-cast chain heal towards the end of the riptide duration

Otherwise, run a dps sequence doing shocks and lightning bolts.

I know I could use a 2 button setup, but im not sure how i keep it from spamming spells on the healing side.

Curious how you work out the dpsing without spamming too much healing.

I use a 2-button setup with

/castsequence [@party1target] reset=3 Flame Shock, Earth Shock, Earth Shock, Water Shield

/castsequence [@party1] reset=5 Unleash Elements, Chain Heal, Riptide

UE is a 15s cooldown, so it'll lock out the rest of the sequence until the tail end of Riptide if you have it glyphed {21s}. You can replace Water Shield with Earth Shield, and stick LBs between the shocks.

I don't personally use Chain Heal at all, it's not worth the cast time and GCD to me, nor do I have TC so no LBs for me {Again, I don't like needing to heal and being caught in a GCD}.

[Redbeard]

I thought the chain heal might be a nice touch with the 25% buff from the riptide effect, but if its a waste (ive heard other people saying it heals poorly now, too) then i can drop that part.

Thanks for the ideas folks.

I forgot about unleash elements, thatll be a nice one to space things out.

Dumb question here... a couple talents(and the mastery) reference direct heals. Is that anything other than chain heal, healing rain and healing stream? If riptide and the heal from earthshield are affected, then thats good times. If not, then ill probably skip those.

Thanks.

[Kalros]

So I was thinking about my own 2-healer team. Here's what I'm thinking about trying:

Tank: Blood Death Knight
DPS: 2x Elemental Shaman
Heals: 2x Holy Paladin

I've always loved Holy Paladins, and I'm thinking this team could be pretty hot! The main concept behind this will be each Paladin will Beacon of Light on each Shaman (yes, I know I'll lose out on Holy Power this way, but it shouldnt matter), so basically, each time a Paladin casts a heal its 2x heals on the tank, a heal on each Shaman and a heal on each Paladin. That combined with 2x Healing Stream totems should make this combo very survivable.

I was also going to throw in a Judgment, Holy Shock, Exorcism with each paladin when I can.

Thoughts?

[Redbeard]

I originally was going to try a holy pally as healer but got nervous about their lack of group healing mechanics. I know when things get hairy a) i didnt want to hope i had holy power for their cone deal and b) i know when shit hits the fan i cant always rely on my positioning...

Do you think the 2x healing stream and the single targets getting spread out will be enough to handle heavy aoe damage?

Other than that, looks pretty awesome.

[Ualaa]

I like the idea with the dual-Holy Paladins, and the double Beacons.

As with the other builds in this thread...
We have a tank's level of DPS.
Two full DPS toons.
And whatever level of DPS two healers are capable of outputting.

But, we gain twice the healing power, which should rock anything that doesn't have an Enrage timer or the equivalent.

There's no Earth Shield, but the entire team receives healing.
2x Heals on the tank, who should have the majority of the threat.
1x Heal on each Shaman (Beacon) and each Paladin gets a heal too.
Very strong vs any kind of AoE/Splash damage.

[gunsun]

Two pallies could be pretty awesome. I'm not using group heals much at all with 2x resto.

The group heals are just weak when the group has 600k health. I've macro'd healing surge and divided labor. So button 1 heals the 2 dps and button 2 heals the two shaman. Group is usually saved/topped-off in 2 globals.

So many of the talents and glyphs seem oriented to direct heals that this option worked better for me.

[gunsun]

the more i think about this, the more i like beacon of light, this could be a lost stronger than 2 resto shaman. I'd have to crunch some numbers and see how scaling works and whatnot.

I'd be concerned about backup dps.

Atm, my two resto shaman totems heal between 1900-2100 per tick (total) depending on the character. So a lot of random small aoe can be ignored if it isn't persistent. This frees them up to spam a lot of lightning bolts.

I have noticed that just 2 dps makes killing things fast an issue. The adds on the last stone core boss and the adds on the last grim batol boss are a lot harder without a 3rd dps.

On the other hand, the paladin's seem more efficient on healing, so if you never die . . . you never die.

Very nice theorycrafting.