Easiest Follower Class (Keyclone)

[gstroud5891]

Hello,

WoW classic will be my first long term dual boxing experience (using Keyclone). I messed around with 2x mages on free accounts a few years ago, and in the past few months I have been pouring through these forums and everywhere else online trying to determine what the best dual box setup will be. I'm interested in leveling two separate classes so that I can diversify my experience at 60. I've been messing around on a few private servers, and on the retail version of wow trying out different class combinations to get a feel for what it might be like, but I know neither of these is perfect - macros on private servers use the old system, and retail wow allows for current macros and IWT but it has different spells than Classic will.

At this point I have decided that my main will be a tank class, either a warrior or a druid. I am hoping to get some insight on what the easiest follower class will be, and that might help me decide (based on if that follower has heals or not). It seems like single button rotation macros will not work in Classic, but I can sync up some spells on the keyboard and put other follower spells to the side of my MMO mouse which has 6 buttons available. Is there a class that you can suggest which will be easy to get value from using only a few buttons?

If not, what is the simplest follower class to control?

I am thinking it might be mage, lock, or priest, but am open to anything (except shaman, I'm alliance)!

I should mention that I really enjoyed warrior + priest because it was easy to throw up a dot, hot, and just wand while I played the warrior, but it was a bit slow. I tried to do this with a warrior druid combo, but both being melee felt clunkier and have to control stances and forms on both was a little much for me. I played druid with a warlock follower and loved how fast my dots killed things, but didn't love the pet and shard management. Seems like everything has a bit of a downside.

I'm interested in warrior with a mage follower, but feel like I will really miss the healing. I'm open to any out of the box kind of stuff too. Should I be driving from a ranged class and using the warrior as the slave with IWT? I'm very familiar with the hunter play style (my first 60 in original WoW), so this could be cool if its viable.

Thanks!

[nodoze]

I was thinking you may want to try Hunter_with_TankyPet + Druid.

You could let the pet be your "main tank" and have the Hunter talent spec in Beast Mastery at least upto 'Improved Mend Pet' and do quite a bit of content. In a sense your Hunter is actually the main Tank's healer/cleanser with your Druid off healing the Tank and rest of the party as needed.

In that scenario maybe it would be best for your Druid to be Cat DPS and use times when you shift from Cat to Elf and back to Cat (for increased Energy from Furor & Wolfshead Helm) to throw HoTs on the TankyPet & the Druid & Hunter if needed.

When not keeping the pet alive both the hunter and druid can DPS...

If the TankyPet goes down the Druid can shift to Bear with HoTs on and if needed Frenzy-Regen while the Hunter rezes his Pet and then retakes aggro and then you continue again...

As a bonus that duo can stealth to some bosses (Hunter Feign deaths and then ShadowMelds) to bypass trash.

In that scenario I would try to drive during Combat with the Druid in Cat Form maximizing Energy usage and combo points & seeing if Cower can keep you from taking aggro. Meanwhile the Hunter should be able to maintain a simple rotation of consistent DPS & Mend in the background. I don't know much about KeyClone so I don't know if this kind of Duo would be problematic but I do know at least with ISboxer I have successfully done that Duo and could switch back/forth between windows if needed for more precise positioning/unplanned actions/etc.

[xandorz]

If I was gonna use a tank + 1 more I would probably go with warrior + druid.

With macros I think you can use something simple like this to have spammable dps buttons: (not sure exactly how to write it, just guessed)
/assist WarriorName
/cast [nostance] Cat Form
/cast [stance:2] AbilityName

Against mobs you could probably easily use attacks that attack from behind target by just going past them with warrior. Harder to do against players (although if you want to do that you can play the druid as the leader so you can position it easily)

Then maybe having Natural Shapeshifter and Furor might be good to make it less punishing to shapeshift, and use rejuvenation to heal. If you went feral you could get +3% crit aura and some more dps or if you go Nature's Swiftness you can get some quick heal. With Feral Charge it will be able to get on target good, interrupt and immobalize.

I am not sure how good it would be, but feels like a good 2 man team, especially when 1 character has to be a class that can tank.

You would also get the benefit of having 2 tank classes so can pick the one that you enjoy playing the most, instead of going for 1 and then regretting you didn't go with the other.

[nodoze]

If I was gonna use a tank + 1 more I would probably go with warrior + druid.

[all good stuff!]...

Druid+Druid would play similarly and give you an all stealth option to bypass things.

[gstroud5891]

Thanks for all the feedback so far!

Xandorz, using spammable macros on the druid would be helpful, its my first time around so my macro game isn't at its peak. I'll give that a shot. I thought the warrior druid combo sounded good on paper. It may get easier at higher levels, I only played to about 12.

Nodoze, I have not tried running the druid with a hunter, but it does seem like a hunter would be a good set and forget character - especially since I am familiar with the playstyle. For personal reasons, I'm less excited to play a hunter again, and would rather try new classes but it does sound like a really good combination. I appreciate the insight and I'll keep it in mind. I was avoiding double druid because I would like to have two different classes to play around on separately at endgame - perhaps one for a raiding main, and one for instanced PvP, with the option to break out both together for world pvp/pve shenanigans.

[xandorz]

Druid+Druid would play similarly and give you an all stealth option to bypass things.

Ye, I think both are probably two of the more interesting choices.

Warrior + Druid = 2 classes, so if he want to play 1 at a time then it is beneficial (tanking with warrior was one of my favorite things, other than pvp in vanilla). I think it would have way more dps also (I remember druid dps was a bit of a joke in vanilla, it was hard to kill them because their healing but they didn't deal much damage either)

Druid + Druid would be a nice ganking team in pvp with the stealth. Hots doesn't stack so wouldn't be much more healing except for when hardcasting.
They also give the option of using double ranged attacks so can stand on ledges and attack people and stuff, and can use 2 dots each.

[nodoze]

Ye, I think both are probably two of the more interesting choices.

Warrior + Druid = 2 classes, so if he want to play 1 at a time then it is beneficial (tanking with warrior was one of my favorite things, other than pvp in vanilla). I think it would have way more dps also (I remember druid dps was a bit of a joke in vanilla, it was hard to kill them because their healing but they didn't deal much damage either)

Druid + Druid would be a nice ganking team in pvp with the stealth. Hots doesn't stack so wouldn't be much more healing except for when hardcasting.
They also give the option of using double ranged attacks so can stand on ledges and attack people and stuff, and can use 2 dots each.

Good points especially on the Tank side as the Warrior could actually do Fury in an Offensive stance when content allows and put out solid DPS swapping in shield & defensive stance when needed. Likely in either case doing substiantially more DPS than a Druid Tank.

Actually a Druid Cat can do very solid DPS if they farm Manual Crowd Pummelers and leverage increased Energy from Furor talent & Wolfshead Helm due to Shifting forms... Druid can use those moments of shifting to refresh HoTs on the Tank (and self if needed) and go back to DPS.

I think you are right that a Warrior+Cat would be faster than Bear+Cat.

[gstroud5891]

I spent the last few hours running a druid with a priest as the follower. Turns out its pretty solid. Wrath and smite have the same cooldown. Healing touch and lesser heal have the same cooldown. Moonfire and SWP can be mapped to the same key. I was typically able to kill everything in two rounds of wrath + smite. Auto attacks while regening mana worked well enough too. The damage meters had them within 2% of one another, the priest slightly behind on damage. I imagine once bear form comes online, it will benefit from tanking multiple mobs for rage generation while getting heals, and I should be able to chain hots, dots, and wanding for near infinite sustain. I think this might be the move. Everyone talks about how warrior + healer duos are powerhouses, shouldn't bear be the same?

[nodoze]

...running a druid with a priest ... I imagine once bear form comes online, it will benefit from tanking multiple mobs for rage generation while getting heals, and I should be able to chain hots, dots, and wanding for near infinite sustain. I think this might be the move. Everyone talks about how warrior + healer duos are powerhouses, shouldn't bear be the same?

First be aware that priest shields or anything that prevents damage to a bear/warrior reduces the bear/warrior's rage and DPS/abilities...

There are similarities between Warriors and Bears but I don't think they are the same.

I am a huge Druid fan but I understand druids were often mocked in Classic and often pigeonholed in progression raids and often only allowed in relatively limited numbers in progression raids... What I don't know is whether those attitudes and actions were still warranted around patch set 1.12 or not as I understand there were several patches along the way which buffed Druids but a lot of their reputation may have been "solidified in stone" before 1.12. Progression Raids by then were already dominated by Warriors from before Druids got buffed and generally "if something ain't broke then don't fix it" so there was little compelling reason to give Druids a second (or fourth, fifth) chance at that point when there are 40+ people's time on the line and people may be racing for world or server firsts...

I wish I could give you more direct numbers for comparison but I never raided with my Druid as my Druid was for Flag Running in WSG, stealth capturing of GraveYards/objectives in AV, stealth capturing of objectives in AB, and stealth scouting/ganking in World PVP parties, etc... Come to think of it I leveled my druid by questing and never really ran my druid in dungeon instances except to get BiS gear as generally I used my already geared 5 box team to do that...

In 1.12 think Druid Bear DPS is still less than Warrior DPS in a Defensive stance though I don't know how much less in terms of DPS (or some kind of relative %) so hopefully someone who has more specificity can chime in.

If I recall correctly the general comparison is that Paladins and Druids are among the lowest DPS with the Paladin being approximately 1/3 the DPS of a Warrior on single targets and the disparity grows as you face standard packs of 3-6 mobs as Warrior damage more of them more effectively. I don't know the relative % the Druid Bear is at but at least the bear's damage does scale up some to at least 3 mobs...

Keep in mind that when a Warrior switches to an offensive stance and weapons to increase DPS he is still wearing Plate but when a Bear switches to Cat to increase DPS he is wearing Leather.

Solid Warrior DPS involves a more standard rotation while semi-decent Druid DPS involves shifting in/out of cat form (leveraging a headpiece and talent) and only approaches optimal if you really "try hard" by prepping before hand by farming the Gnomeregan boss over-and-over ad nausea because the manual crowd pummelers only have 90 seconds of DPS boost per boss drop (3 un-rechargeable 30 second charges per drop). You have to be really committed to pull it off in any sustained manner while the warrior is just a fricken energizer bunny...

Druids are less gear dependent and Bear's start out likely somewhat ahead but the more gear the Warrior has the more the Warrior can pull ahead.

There is a lot more that can be said on the differences like Druid tanks are arguably better for this and Warrior Tanks for that... There are heated arguments that Druids just can't tank at least 10% of the content and lack defensive cool-downs but are optimal in others but for a duo much of that is irrelevant anyway.

Note that most of the above discussion is more from a PVE standpoint... The general saying of "Warrior+Healer being a powerhouse" I think is more for PVP than PVE (though it applies somewhat to both). In PVP Warrior's have things like Death Wish, Ham String, etc. in their toolbox that Druid's just have no equivalent for. I haven't really played Warriors much so maybe someone who has played both on PVE & PVP can chime in.

Again sorry for not having more specific numbers or relative %'s...

For the record I plan to main both a Druid and a Paladin (Druid main for WSG Flag running, AV stealth GYs, AB stealth objectives, and Open World PVP Stealth solo-scouting/group-ganking and Paladin main for everything else) so I don't want to push you away from Druid but feel compelled to make sure you are as informed as possible...

[gstroud5891]

Thanks for the insight! I’m pretty well read regarding druids (I spend a ton of time in the Druid classic discord), but appreciate the word of caution. I think that if I roll with this duo I would end up using the Druid to run 5 mans and PvP, and the priest to raid. Most of my vanilla experience revolved around playing WSG ad nauseum and I will love being a god tier flag carrier.

You make a great point about DPS warriors in plate vs the relative squishiness of cat form. I’ll have to test that out, it’s probably more efficient to stay in bear form and take multiple mobs. I’m wondering if it might be worth it to play as balance, dumping as much mana from both toons as I can on one mob, then shifting into cat form for the next mob and letting the priest wand while we both regen mana. I know that for solo leveling feral is the go to, but with two characters it may change the optimal talents. If you’ve ever done testing on this I’d love to hear about it.

When I mention the warrior healer being a powerhouse, I was more referring to a lot of the duo leveling theory crafting that Kargoz has been doing. It seems the main downside to leveling a warrior is the lack of healing (which means multiple mobs is certain death) and downtime between pulls. The addition of an efficient healer is supposed to turn him into a leveling machine, since rage comes from taking damage and otherwise the warrior is “resourceless”. I’m assuming if I throw on thorns, dot up a huge pack, and swipe them down I should be able to mow through packs of mobs with relative efficiency. As far as PvP goes, I’ll never be able to pull off the duo shenanigans that a warrior can, especially since the Druid playstyle seems to be more of a mobility and attrition style - probably not the best match for a priest partner, but again I’m enticed by the duo caster possibilities of balance. SWP, moonfire, insect swarm, faerie fire, and some coordinated smite/wrath spam might be enough to take down enemies fast in world PvP, I’ll just be mana starved in extended fights.