RaidGroupSynergies

From FuStrats

This is a page that explains how to make good raid groups with various compositions.

Contents 1 Types of Groups 1.1 Caster Group 1.2 Healer Group 1.3 Hunter Group 1.4 Melee Group 2 Strategies for Taking 30 people and Making Optimal Groups 3 Examples 3.1 Brutallus optimization 3.2 Kalecgos optimization 4 Quick Tips

Types of Groups

There are basically four types of groups that can be made (generalized).

• Caster group: centralized around Shadow Priest and Shaman (Elemental or Restoration)
• Healer group: centralized around Restoration Shaman and/or Shadow Priest
• Hunter group: centralized around a Shaman and a Feral Druid, with a minimum of 2, preferably 3 hunters
• Melee group: centralized around an Enhancement Shaman and a Warrior, preferably Arms

Due to the 25-player and 5-man-group restrictions in TBC, it's hard to create all of these groups in one raid. Most raids will end up choosing between bringing casters or bringing hunters and focusing the 3rd DPS group around that type based on attendance, skill, etc.

Caster Group

The cornerstone of the caster group is the shadow priest, with shaman if they are available. The mana regen from a shadow priest is absolutely key to both warlock and mage dps (approximately equal contribution to the classes on a ~6 minute fight), as well as to elemental shaman and moonkin.

Most of the time, if you run with two spriests, you will want to make two caster groups. Your elemental shaman/moonkin should go in with your highest dps'ers (since percentage buffs have a bigger effect on those who do more dps.) Failing that, mages and shadow destruction locks get a bit more out of crit than do fire destruction locks.

If you only have one shadow priest, or need to give healers a shadow priest, it becomes much harder to figure out what to do. First off, separate out your resto shaman and spriest: if one group gets the spriest, the other group can use the resto shaman for mana regen (and totems/lust.)

• Mages, if they truly run OOM, are in trouble. However, they do have mana gems, mana pots, evoc, and mage armor that they can use. But if they actually run out, they're dead in the water.

• Locks can always lifetap, however this is a dps loss. Their dps loss due to not having a spriest is about the same as what a mage loses by using mana consumables, but they also incur a healing burden because they need to lifetap.

For a 5-6 minute fight or less, give a spriest to the highest dps casters in your raid, regardless of class, unless:

• if there is AE, mages have priority
• if there are healing issues, locks have priority

For longer fights (Council, Illidan; M'uru) or fights with mana drains (Mother), mages absolutely need external mana regen.

Healer Group

Many guilds don't even bother with a group like this anymore, but if you are going to buff healers, the largest possible buff is giving them a shadow priest. Sunwell-geared shadow priests restore 300 Mp5 to their group, which is absolutely obscene for healers, and makes them happy little campers. The second buff that can be given is that of totems, and particularly Mana Spring (~ 70 Mp5) and Mana Tide (~ 10 Mp5, burst). If you give a group of 4 healers (one of whom is a restoration shaman) a shadow priest, they really can't ask for more.

Hunter Group

There is a lot of theorycrafting available as to what makes a perfect hunter group, but for most guilds, this group will consist of a token Survival Hunter (for EW), two Beast Mastery hunters (providing Ferocious Inspiration to their group), a feral druid (Leader of the Pack; often a tank fills this role), and a shaman (restoration or enhancement). If you happen to have a second enhancement shaman, it makes them extremely happy to be placed in this group, as 5% crit chance and +6% damage, along with no totem twisting requirement, results in some extremely high dps numbers.

If an enhancement shaman is not available (and especially if there is no Judgement of Wisdom available), hunters prefer a restoration shaman. The mana return from Mana Spring and Mana Tide helps offset the lack of mana from Judgement of Wisdom, helping them maintain extremely high dps.

If you happen to run only two hunters (1 BM, 1 Survival), an acceptable group is feral druid, protection warrior, BM hunter, Survival hunter, enhancement shaman. This can double as your tank group as well, and will do very good things for your feral/prot TPS. If you switch to a restoration shaman in this setup the hunters do not benefit as there will be no twisting and Windfury should be down for the benefit of the protection warrior's TPS (Threat-per-second).

Melee Group

Arms warrior and enhancement shaman form the core of this group. If you run two melee groups you have a lot of flexibility, but under most compositions, the other three slots should go to a retribution paladin and 2 combat rogues.

If you need to move people out of the melee group (and, e.g., into the hunter group), rogues can be moved since they can switch to poisons for a minimal (~60 dps) dps loss and just use GoA in the hunter group. Moving either a ret paladin or a dps warrior out is a huge raid dps loss and should be your last choice.

If you are hard pressed to come up with a group composition, the following can actually work if your tank has to have WF and you don't have an extra enhancement shaman to make two WF/GoA groups:

G1: Hunters, Resto Shaman, Rogue with poisons G2: Prot warrior, Enh Shm, other melee (ret paladin, dps warrior, etc.)

Strategies for Taking 30 people and Making Optimal Groups

• Figure out how many tanks you need for the boss you're on.
• Figure out how many healers you need for the boss you're on.
• Build one complete melee group with your 5 best melee dps.
• Build one complete caster group, getting your top three casters (mage/lock), a shadow priest, and a shaman slotted in.
• Build another mana-based group, getting a 3rd warlock, a shadow priest, a shaman, and 2 others slotted in (the 2 others can be mages or healers as your composition allows). Optionally replace this 2nd mana group with a hunter group.
• Decide if your tank(s) deserve a custom group, or if they can sit with the healers in group 5 (either one or both of them).
• Build a 4th group, either a dps group (without tanks) or a dps/tank group, optimized as much as possible with what you have.
• Review to make sure you are getting all the raid debuffs (curses, shadow weaving, scorch, JoW, etc.)
• Slot whoever is left in, shuffle slightly. Pull.

Note that essentially you will have one dedicated dps caster group, one dedicated melee group, and one other dedicated group: it can be a 2nd melee group, a hunter group, or a 2nd dps caster group. Once you have these three, if you can, get a 4th group synergized, and then slot whoever is left into 5. Shuffle as needed to get some healers buffs (the ones who need it most).

Examples

Online are:

• 3 warriors: 1 prot, 1 arms, 1 fury
• 3 rogues: all combat swords
• 3 hunters: 2 BM, 1 Survival
• 3 mages: all fire
• 3 warlocks: all destruction, 1 shadow
• 4 priests: 2 shadow, 2 holy
• 3 paladins: 1 ret, 2 holy
• 5 shamans: 1 enh, 3 resto, 1 ele
• 4 druids: 2 resto, 2 feral

Total : 31 raiders

Brutallus optimization

• Need 2 tanks (1 prot warrior, 1 feral druid)
• Need 8 healers (3 resto shamans, 2 resto druids, 2 holy paladins, 1 holy priest)
• Build Group 2: 1 ret paladin, 1 arms warrior, 1 enh shaman, 2 rogues
• Build Group 3: 1 ele shaman, 1 shadow priest, 3 warlocks
• Build Group 4: 1 resto shaman, 1 shadow priest, 2 mages, 1 holy paladin
• Build Group 5: 1 resto shaman, 1 feral druid, 3 hunters
• Build Group 1: 1 resto shaman, 1 protection warrior, 1 holy paladin, 1 holy priest, 1 resto druid

This leaves 1 resto druid to fit in for a 8-healer strategy. You can sit a hunter, a mage, or a warlock easily; alternatively you can sit a melee dps and put the protection warrior from Group 1 into Group 2 (not recommended; the dps loss is severe, as the only possible sit options are the rogues, as all other classes provide too much synergy). For top dps, you drop to 7 healers, and provide every class with as close to their optimal group as humanly possible (except the protection warrior, and tanks don't get buffs!).

Kalecgos optimization

• Need 3 tanks (1 prot warrior, 2 feral druids)
• Need 8 healers (2 resto druids, 2 holy priests, 2 resto shamans, 2 holy paladins)
• Build Group 2: 1 ret paladin, 1 arms warrior, 1 enh shaman, 2 rogues
• Build Group 3: 1 ele shaman, 1 shadow priest, 3 warlocks
• Build Group 4: 1 resto shaman, 1 shadow priest, 2 mages, 1 holy paladin
• Build Group 1: 1 resto shaman, 1 protection warrior, 2 feral druids, 1 holy priest
• Build Group 5: 2 resto druids, 1 holy paladin, 1 holy priest, 1 <random ranged dps>

Kalecgos is a pain to balance groups for. Firstly, you need as many decursers as can easily be fit into the raid (so 2 druids, 2 mages). Secondly, you can't drop below 8 healers easily, and you need three tanks. This basically means one group gets screwed, and it's normally hunters. Warlocks bring curses, mages bring decursing; hunters really bring very little for this fight with the way groups are split up.

Of course, if your hunters are rock stars and regularly top the meters, you may want to seriously consider balancing a group of

• Group X: 3 hunters, feral druid (tank), resto shaman

and make everything else shuffle around to match. That's the beauty of raid formats: there are (ignoring constraints) hundreds of thousands of possible group compositions. Pick whichever one works for you, provided it's at least partially optimal.

Quick Tips

• Don't forget about the possibility of putting your protection warrior in the melee group on fights where threat is difficult or critical. The DPS boost to your whole raid from his TPS boost may outweigh the DPS loss of a rogue moved to the hunter group.

• Don't forget about the possibility of your feral tank in the hunter group: not only does he benefit from GoA like the hunters, but FI procs from BM hunters will increase his TPS.

• If you run with a Ret, they absolutely need Windfury. Same with Warriors. A rogue can use a poison and take GoA if need be (this is a better solution than dropping a ret or warrior from a WF group.)

• Arms warrior and Survival hunters are amazing additions to your raid, the gain far, far outpacing the personal DPS loss. Do whatever you can to convince someone to switch specs, it's well worth it for all of sunwell (except perhaps M'uru.)

• If you are putting a spriest with a healer, paladins and shaman have less innate mana regen at this point than priests and resto druids do. But always pay attention to what area is lacking heals and prioritize giving those specific healers a spriest if need be regardless of class, so they can pump out more heals per second: e.g. tank heals are usually the issue on Brut, but raid heals are usually the issue on Twins.