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Help with a 3 person groupFollow

#1 May 11 2009 at 5:45 AM Rating: Decent
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I returned to WoW about a month ago and two of my friends have also decided to resub. I am playing a paladin focused on tanking and one friend is a rogue and one is a mage. That means I both heal and tank. At first it was a bit daunting, but so far there really have not been any problems. Both of them plan on changing jobs @ 55+ but I really wanted to play paladin and we all wanted to play together so they are leveling these alts at the moment. The rogue has a 55+ priest and shaman; the mage has a 55+ priest and plans to be a deathknight. I tell you all that so I can ask...

How far can we continue to 3 man instances? So far we have done ragefire, wailing caverns, SFK and BFD. We have been able to do them at the top end of the "correct" levels too (SFK 24, BFD 26, etc..) which has been fun. Can we expect to 3 man our way through the old world? How about BC?

Best spec for 3 man? So far I took the 5 points in holy to prevent pushback since I'm healing myself in combat. Then I put the rest into retribution since, for now, it seems to offer as much as protection. I'll also mention I am willing to buy dual-spec (although I don't know how yet lol) so I don't mind if my 3 man spec sucks for leveling as I can create a second loadout.

I won't tell anyone what job to play, but as we discuss getting ready for high level dungeons we aren't sure what class combo will make the best group foundation. Both friends have priest, but I think the mage is very interested in DK. What comps Pld/Dk best, shaman or priest? Or who cares?

Also, we all like to PvP so if its ever apples and oranges, we would lean toward PvP.
#2 May 11 2009 at 5:04 PM Rating: Good
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How far can we continue to 3 man instances? So far we have done ragefire, wailing caverns, SFK and BFD. We have been able to do them at the top end of the "correct" levels too (SFK 24, BFD 26, etc..) which has been fun. Can we expect to 3 man our way through the old world? How about BC?


I would say if you're good enough, keeping your gear in as good a shape as you can etc.., you can probably 3 man everything before BRD. I'm sure that with skill you could 3 man some of BRD as well, but I'm not too sure about many of the bosses. I wouldn't really expect you to get too far after that dungeon though without a full group, or at least without a healer other than you.

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Best spec for 3 man? So far I took the 5 points in holy to prevent pushback since I'm healing myself in combat. Then I put the rest into retribution since, for now, it seems to offer as much as protection. I'll also mention I am willing to buy dual-spec (although I don't know how yet lol) so I don't mind if my 3 man spec sucks for leveling as I can create a second loadout.


Well, you didn't mention what level you are, but I would say that around 30-35 you should go ahead and switch to Prot. If you're going to keep having to heal yourself, I'd keep a few points in Holy to aid with that, but the survivability in Prot will start to make a bigger difference in the higher level dungeons. That and you'll be an AOE grinding machine which your Mage buddy will really love ;)

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What comps Pld/Dk best, shaman or priest? Or who cares?

Also, we all like to PvP so if its ever apples and oranges, we would lean toward PvP.


I personally prefer Shaman with my Paladin or my DK, but since you like to PvP, I'm not really sure. It might depend more on what spec(s) you all would be. My limited experience, my Shaman just gets tore up in PvP, so I'd venture to guess Priest, but maybe someone with more expertise in the matter can give a better opinion. PvE though, I tend to prefer a Shaman.
#3 May 12 2009 at 7:11 AM Rating: Good
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I see no reason to enter Mara or Ulda, but they would be your first challenge IMO.

Follow that with ZF. ZF is thick with casters - they WILL cause problems. After that - I can't see you doing BRD. I'm sure these COULD be done - the question gets to "Why would you do it?"
#4 May 12 2009 at 7:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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Follow that with ZF. ZF is thick with casters - they WILL cause problems. After that - I can't see you doing BRD. I'm sure these COULD be done - the question gets to "Why would you do it?"

There are a couple reasons why we are trying to do this. None of us really did too many instances when we played before so this is mostly new content for us, or at least content we only did a handful of times. It also gives us something to do as a group. It is also pretty good exp, especially since we get the all quests before entering. It also allows us to quest or craft or whatever we want when our times don't over lap, but when we're all on we don't sit trying to think of something to do. We won't be especially upset if we reach a point where we can't do instances our level as three people. We'll just start tying to get a few pickups to join us and hope to make some friends!

In case anyone is thinking of trying the same - we just cleared Razorfen Kraul (I hope thats the correct one... its west of the road in southern Barrens) without any real issue last night. Only the guys with knockdown caused any concern. We would have been death free if not for the little ferrits that sniff out the veggies. Of course that death was mine and no one else could rez, lol!

Edited, May 12th 2009 11:26am by PageCCCXI
#5 May 12 2009 at 7:57 AM Rating: Good
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Like has been said, the lack of a proper healer is probably your problem. The pro about switching out a healer for a DPS is that your enemies die faster and you thus need less overal healing. The point is, you'll eventually reach instances where the bosses can't be killed fast enough to negate their burst damage (I'm thinking Bael'gar in Blackrock Depths here). Without an additional healer, this will kill you.

Seeing as very few pre-raid bosses have an 'enrage timer' or something of sorts, nearly everything is 2-mannable if you have a tank and a healer. A paladin doing both healing and tanking could probably get far (If you cross-spec and pick up holy talents that also help for tanking and vice versa), but you're going to hit a brick wall before level 60. In the best case your problem will be the inability to keep aggro due to the need to spam heal yourself.

Edited, May 12th 2009 6:10pm by Mozared
#6 May 12 2009 at 8:28 AM Rating: Excellent
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In the best case your problem will be the inability to keep aggro due to the need to spam heal yourself.

I was hoping the threat from healing would be enough to continue taking the hits, but that is something for which I'll begin watching. I'm sure I can look it up when I get home, but I can't remember if Righteous Fury works for any holy spell or only holy damage.
#7 May 12 2009 at 10:37 AM Rating: Good
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There are a couple reasons why we are trying to do this.


Page - you didn't take my meaning...

You CAN do what you are doing realistically up to and including both ZF and BRD, but, with respect to the latter two - I don't think it would be very efficient and your time would be better spent running around together questing - while sitting in the LFG channel and LF1m - heals...

My 80 Tankadin can do some really crazy stuff... I solo'd the Admiral quest line out in IC. While it was neat to do - When a Paly in my guild said he would try, I told him to bring my mage. It took me a long time to solo the group parts and was by no means "Exciting" - it was just slow and boring. We teamed up and did the entire quest (Group part = last 2 quests in the chain.) in about 20 minutes.

Saved a ton of time....

By the time you get to your 50s - You will start to get into instances that you could do, but that would take so long - that it might be boring or tedious. Also - by the time you are at the upper limits of the instance - your EXP really starts to trail off.

I'm not saying DON'T do it...
#8 May 13 2009 at 12:14 AM Rating: Good
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PageCCCXI wrote:
I was hoping the threat from healing would be enough to continue taking the hits, but that is something for which I'll begin watching. I'm sure I can look it up when I get home, but I can't remember if Righteous Fury works for any holy spell or only holy damage.


Yes it does work on heals, but heals generate much less threat than damage, particularly Paladin heals. This design was to combat exactly what you are talking about: heal tanking. If I remember correctly heals generate 1/2 threat, while Paladin heals generate 1/2 of that, or 1/4 the threat of damage. So, with Righteous Fury, you're still just below on threat what other healing classes would put out with the same healing done.

I didn't mention in my previous post, but regardless of what any of us here tell you I think it would be fun to give all these up and coming instances a try with your 3 man team, just to see how far you can get if nothing else. With good enough gear and if you know what the hell you're doing, you can do some pretty fantastic stuff. So if it's fun for you, go for it :D
#9 May 24 2009 at 12:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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208 posts
Well, we just finished Zul'Farak. 45 Pld, 45 Rogue and 44 mage. Only wiped once and it was avoidable - bad pull on the caster boss by the graves. So far so good!
#10 Jun 08 2009 at 4:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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208 posts
We've now completed Maraudon (both sides) and Sunken Temple with the Pld/Rog/Mage team. When we moved to Outlands our rogue moved to his priest and our mage moved to his Death Knight. As a 61/62 team we knocked out Ramps and went back and did Scholomance. So far so good. No wipes on Ramps, but a few close calls. Of course we were over confident going into Scholo and took a few dingers, but once we took it more seriously we cruised.

None of us have ever done any of the BC instances (with the exception of Ramps, now) and we're pretty excited. I'll trying and find a write up when I get home on what instances are easier or more difficult then there levels would indicate so we can plan an order to tackle them.

Right now the Paladin (me) is protection, DK is blood and the priest is discipline. Any pointers for this group in particular? We lost a lot of CC and some DPS, but I think over all this is a stronger setup. Having a healer that isn't tanking is very convenient. But I noticed that I actually lost agro once or twice to the DK. I blame him for using "high threat" abilities more intended for tanking. Meh, its a new class for him and the buttons are all new and shiny still. With his plate armor this isn't nearly as much of a problem as it was with his mage!
#11 Jun 08 2009 at 10:11 AM Rating: Decent
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1,912 posts
PageCCCXI wrote:
We've now completed Maraudon (both sides) and Sunken Temple with the Pld/Rog/Mage team. When we moved to Outlands our rogue moved to his priest and our mage moved to his Death Knight. As a 61/62 team we knocked out Ramps and went back and did Scholomance. So far so good. No wipes on Ramps, but a few close calls. Of course we were over confident going into Scholo and took a few dingers, but once we took it more seriously we cruised.

None of us have ever done any of the BC instances (with the exception of Ramps, now) and we're pretty excited. I'll trying and find a write up when I get home on what instances are easier or more difficult then there levels would indicate so we can plan an order to tackle them.

Right now the Paladin (me) is protection, DK is blood and the priest is discipline. Any pointers for this group in particular? We lost a lot of CC and some DPS, but I think over all this is a stronger setup. Having a healer that isn't tanking is very convenient. But I noticed that I actually lost agro once or twice to the DK. I blame him for using "high threat" abilities more intended for tanking. Meh, its a new class for him and the buttons are all new and shiny still. With his plate armor this isn't nearly as much of a problem as it was with his mage!


Now that you don't have to heal yourself while tanking you can do real threat and shouldn't lose aggro to a DK that isn't in Frost Presence unless he attacks ahead of time or attacks the wrong target.

The team setup is good now that you have both a healer and a tank. You may need a few PuG members for Blood Furnace but that should be easy because HFP is crowded with DKs.

#12 Jun 09 2009 at 12:01 AM Rating: Good
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You also gotta take into consideration that the DK has very high quality gear from their starting quests, while the Paly (the OP in this case) may not have as good of gear. I remember needing to hold off a bit on my DK in those earlier Outland dungeons on I'd pull threat from tanks, even while in Blood Presence.

That said, and as you mentioned (the OP), your DK pal is going to be able to take quite a bit for a while due to the high quality of their gear. I wouldn't be too concerned with losing threat to them at this point. Mostly I'd say just go AOE happy, you and the DK (but maybe have them wait a couple seconds before DandD =P). If you keep the majority of the aggro, I don't think there will be many problems.
#13 Jun 09 2009 at 5:50 AM Rating: Excellent
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That said, and as you mentioned (the OP), your DK pal is going to be able to take quite a bit for a while due to the high quality of their gear. I wouldn't be too concerned with losing threat to them at this point. Mostly I'd say just go AOE happy, you and the DK (but maybe have them wait a couple seconds before DandD =P). If you keep the majority of the aggro, I don't think there will be many problems.

We solved the problem last night. Some people march to their own tune, and some people have their own twelve-piece band complete with lighting effects and smoke machines. The DK is my best friend so this was not news to me. Once we got him out of frost presence and got him assisting the tank (which he always did with the mage, but suddenly stopped doing when we switched to DK) things smoothed right out. This didn't happen right away though, it was an interesting debate...

Me - "Why are you in frost presence, isn't that for tanking?"
DK - "I keep getting hit. I remember when you used to be good at tanking"
Me - "And how come my addon says you're not assisting my target?"
DK - "Your addon shows that? I thought you didn't notice. Plus I'm badass, I can take down my target as fast as both of you take down yours"
... the DK now spouts something about corpse explosion and how awesome it is to have his own target and I understand almost nothing coming out of his mouth.
Me - "Don't be stupid. We avoid pugs so we can avoid dps who don't assist the tank."
Priest - "And I'm targeting the tank, so if you want heals you better be hitting his target"
... implying that your heals are coming from JoL, dingbat.
DK - "Ya ya ya, but it was a good run while it lasted!"


After which we knock out the furnace three man style. Schwing!
#14 Jun 09 2009 at 7:20 PM Rating: Good
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lol, glad you got it figured out :)

I've got a DK guildmate that switches between tanking and DPS roles, and sometimes he'll remember to swap his gear back to DPS when running with me (Prot Paly), but he'll forget to jump out of Frost Presence. Makes me feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong, till I start wondering, "Why is his health so high in ... ohhhh. LEAVE FROST NOOB!!"

Good times ^^
#15 Jun 16 2009 at 11:29 AM Rating: Default
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Maulgak wrote:
You also gotta take into consideration that the DK has very high quality gear from their starting quests, while the Paly (the OP in this case) may not have as good of gear. I remember needing to hold off a bit on my DK in those earlier Outland dungeons on I'd pull threat from tanks, even while in Blood Presence.

That said, and as you mentioned (the OP), your DK pal is going to be able to take quite a bit for a while due to the high quality of their gear. I wouldn't be too concerned with losing threat to them at this point. Mostly I'd say just go AOE happy, you and the DK (but maybe have them wait a couple seconds before DandD =P). If you keep the majority of the aggro, I don't think there will be many problems.


I thought I would discard this due to the fact that HFP quest reward gear is far superior than DK starter gear. DK starter gear is similar to being fully geared from Molten Core. Which gets obsolete as soon as you step into HFP.
#16 Jun 16 2009 at 6:51 PM Rating: Good
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xorq wrote:
I thought I would discard this due to the fact that HFP quest reward gear is far superior than DK starter gear. DK starter gear is similar to being fully geared from Molten Core. Which gets obsolete as soon as you step into HFP.


You miss the point that just starting in HFP no one has DONE those quests yet. That, and it takes some time to actually complete those quests before obtaining the gear that makes the DK stuff obsolete. You have to compare the quality of gear they have actually obtained, not the quality of gear they have yet to obtain. Armories would help in this case, but since we don't know what they had and had not completed at the time, you can't just assume they've done everything and gotten the best gear from that zone.

He mentioned they were 61/62 and hadn't done any Outland dungeons yet. I don't know about you, but at that point in my experience I did not have a full set of "Outland gear" yet. In fact, when going through Outland with my DK, I didn't replace all my gear until about level 65-66.

Please, think before you insult me with a blatant disregard for my opinion. You can disagree all you want, but what you said I found very rude.

EDIT: fixed quoting mistake.

Edited, Jun 16th 2009 7:52pm by Maulgak
#17 Jun 17 2009 at 4:49 PM Rating: Decent
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Maulgak wrote:
xorq wrote:
I thought I would discard this due to the fact that HFP quest reward gear is far superior than DK starter gear. DK starter gear is similar to being fully geared from Molten Core. Which gets obsolete as soon as you step into HFP.


You miss the point that just starting in HFP no one has DONE those quests yet. That, and it takes some time to actually complete those quests before obtaining the gear that makes the DK stuff obsolete. You have to compare the quality of gear they have actually obtained, not the quality of gear they have yet to obtain. Armories would help in this case, but since we don't know what they had and had not completed at the time, you can't just assume they've done everything and gotten the best gear from that zone.

He mentioned they were 61/62 and hadn't done any Outland dungeons yet. I don't know about you, but at that point in my experience I did not have a full set of "Outland gear" yet. In fact, when going through Outland with my DK, I didn't replace all my gear until about level 65-66.

Please, think before you insult me with a blatant disregard for my opinion. You can disagree all you want, but what you said I found very rude.

EDIT: fixed quoting mistake.

Edited, Jun 16th 2009 7:52pm by Maulgak


No blatant disregard for your opinions there. I don't know what could have made you feel that way.

As soon as the pally tank reaches HFP (typically at level 58-59) it's pretty logical that every quest upgrades his gear and a few quests will suffice to put him on par with a DK on starter gear. It's the typical course of things. It'd be rare if the pally tank was still using his level 57- gear at level 61 in HFP.

Edited, Jun 17th 2009 8:50pm by xorq
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