Perfect / Ideal Raid 10 Comp.

[Quinafoi]

This is a lie.

Which part?

The part about the topic coming up too often? While I don't have actual statistics for how often posts about this topic come up I do know that I've personally responded to at several of them with the same answer.

The part where I suggest you should raid with the people you want? I'm pretty sure even the most offensive of players in the world have their standards for the type of person they play with.

The part where I say so long as their is balance it doesn't matter much? Running with 8 warriors in a 10 man isn't "balanced". Some combinations aren't viable. However if there is a proper balance, then it is viable. And if you have a "reasonable balance" the amount of buffs and debuffs covered are "reasonable" for the content. It may not be optimal however what is actually optimal will be different on every fight, not the same accross all fights. Simply covering all buffs and debuffs isn't necessarily optimal on a given encounter.

So... tell me again, which part is a lie?

[Ion]

The cake?

[Airowird]

So... tell me again, which part is a lie?

The part where people say they got a raid comp with all buffs and yet have no Ele Sham or Demo lock for the super SP buff ^_^

[Lohk]

Of course on normals you will not see a big difference between 2 Rogue/3 Ele shaman DPS team. You will more than likely kill Rag before you get 7 meteors.

However, on Heroics it is an entirely different story. You need to have intentional class make up with off specs in order to tune your raid to the encounters. I haven't seen many H Alys. kills that have 3 healers, same with H Baleroc. I'm also not sure how you're suppose to do H Rag without less than 2 healers given the current gear available.

"Bring the player, not the class." is a great mantra for guilds that are either: 25 man or 10 man without progression into Heroics. If you want to push Heroic content right now, you must plan for things like: DPS kiting, 3rd tank use, interrupts, or 2 healing, etc... etc... Without that planning, you may run into another Anshal situation or Magmaw where kiting makes the fight significantly easier.

What part of your statement is a lie? The simple fact that players will read your post and think that they will be "just fine" when they put together their own 10 man guild. Only to sharply realize that without intentional class make up, their Heroic progression will have to rely on out gearing the content.

[Quinafoi]

And what did I say is a lie? Yeah, they will probably be "just fine". You're applying logic of a heroic mode progression raid to that of a raid that just formed today. The raid that forms today, doesn't need to meet heroic mode progression standards, because they won't be running heroic mode progression today. By definition, you don't start in heroic mode, you progress into it.

[Lohk]

Yes, because planning for today and not a week from now is a great way to run a guild.

[Fetzie]

A guild just starting "today" has more important worries than having a not quite optimal setup for content they will not be seeing for potentially months. Things like, you know, having ten people online for the raid. A guild which will be starting heroic modes next ID has much different problems than a totally new guild.

Progressing normal mode Firelands with a shaman healer is perfectly fine. Progressing heroic mode firelands with a shaman healer is perfectly fine. It might be better another way, but that doesn't mean it can't work at all.

[granimal]

And just because I love replying to an old thread...

One additional consideration that I have been thinking about lately is gear/drop usefulness. Making the most use of the gear that drops also helps get your raid better gear faster (at least at first). If you have 3 DPS clothies, two tank plateies, and a couple plate melee, the team is going to be gearing up much slower initially (70% of the raid is going to need a small percentage of drops for their MS). Then all night long gear that cannot be used drops until the one dps cloth piece drops that 30% of the raid needs.

Of course, eventually any makeup it is going to get to the point that few drops are needed. However, when that happens, the group is going to be geared very well for that particular raid.

[mikar]

Update for MoP. My opinion as an experienced raider (16/16 HM):

Prot-Pala
Guardian

Holy-Pala
Disc

Balance-Druid (3rd Heal)
Mage
Lock
Warrior (3rd Tank)
Ele-Shaman (4th Heal)
Shadow (w/ Heal-Offspec for Emergencies)

I'd say Healers and Tanks are pretty much mandatory like this. Double-Paladin is almost game-changing in T14 with 4*HoP. Feral-Tank for great DPS especially with HotW on tankswaps with tight enrage timers. Same goes for Disc, smite wins.

DPS setup is not set in stone but you kinda want a warrior for Rallying Cry and the Banners as well as best melee dps (together with DK who doesn't bring that support).
Mage and Lock are also pretty much a given, aside from amazing dps they have great utility/survivability with Dark Bargain, Portals, Healthstones, Ring of Frost, Cauterize, Ice Block, Blink etc.
Balance-Druid is also a very good choice in dps and utility (roar, tranq) as well as wearing leather, so easy to gear as caster. Resto-Druid is the Off-Spec of choice for 3rd heal (bringing extra dps with Heart of the Wild for some encounters)


That leaves 2 open spots for DPS. Personally, I'd go with shadow and Ele-shaman/Hunter. The latter brings the missing raid-buff (melee-haste) as well as great slow/stun and Misdirect/Deterrence etc. The former brings Ancestral Guidance and great cleave dps.

If you really want to go hardcore you'll want to have a roster of 12 reliable people over anything else. Add Hunter and DK to the above roster of 10 people. Each of those 12 raiders also needs an appropriate twink, i.e. tanks have tank-twinks, ranged dps have ranged-twinks etc. One Melee should have a rogue twink.

Regards

[Bovinity]

10 decent players that are dedicated to winning.

Yay, I won the topic. Please mail my reward post-haste.