Karazhan Group Composition

[Tybalt]

Hey all,

My guild and our partner guild are organizing our first Karazhan run within the next week or two. Our current thinking is to run with two tanks, 3 healers and 5 dps (one of the dps is a feral druid who can OT or backup heal at a moment's notice). The specifics are:

MT: Paladin
OT: Warrior

Healers: 2x Priest, Druid

DPS: Warlock, Mage, Rogue, Hunter, Druid

A friend of mine was telling me his guild ran with 4 healers, and I'm not convinced 4 will be needed. Any thoughts on how this group should/could do, and anything I might want to consider before we start? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-Ty

[Lorath]

Congrats on getting started in Kara and good luck guys

Check the strat section in here for tips on bosses from a tankadin POV. Simple enough , group1 is MT+OT+Lock(imp)+melee dps (aura/imp) and g2 is the rest. Dunno how much you guys have raided before so I won't go into more specifics unless you wish...

You'll have a good range of buffs if all those can come. Attumen should be possible the first night, but don't worry if you fail. Things can and will sometimes go wrong even with the most experienced people around. Moroes is a more intense encounter and possibly a big hurdle. I recommend Bosskillers.com for detailed strats.

Is your tankadin uncrushable? If not, you may have a hard time keeping him alive. Check this thread about consumable buffs also.
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/ ... .php?t=369

[Mavrix]

I think Kara can be done with a wide variety of group compositions and I honestly do not believe there is any one "uber set up". Each variation offers a strength and a weakness for various encounters.

If you are at all interested, my group has me and a warrior co-tanking (depends on our mood and the boss in question), resto shaman, 2x healer priest, shadow priest, warlock, mage, rogue, and hunter. Seems to work out pretty well. No druid for GOTW, but we get by.
Honestly, shadow priests are vastly underestimated in their utility for raiding - they really are great and the synergy between lock and shadow priest multiplies both their dps pretty impressively. The extra mana (from the mana return talent) for casters in the group with the shadow pirest is impressive (although I'll personally miss the mana return from VE overhealing after the upcoming patch).
In our group, pretty much the only one I'd say I could see replaced with another class would be the hunter (in terms of offering something synergistic to the group . . . well I guess there's trueshot aura), but his DPS keeps up so that works fine (and traps for backup on shackles don't hurt our feelings either).

[Kvaern]

3 healers is enough but you really want a shadow priest to make things go smoother. They just add so much imbaness to a group, especially when coupled with a warlock.

Another improvement is swapping a holy priest out for a resto shaman to get max utility in the raid, with 3 tanks losing a shackle won't hurt much.
(spelldamage totem is <3 for pally tanks or alternatively WF totem will turn your warrior into a decent DPS'er when he isn't tanking + add some rogue love also)

But as mentioned before kara can be run with a wide varity of group setups.

[Lore]

Early Karazhan raids suffer a lot from group-stacking syndrome... we had to swap people around a lot when we were just starting.

Your group setup is pretty much what we run with most of the time nowadays though.

[Tybalt]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

I am the tankadin in the group, and I am 6 heroic badges away from uncrushable, which should be polished off by the end of the week. The main thing I was worried about was the healer/dps ratio, and it seems like we'll be okay. I plan on having a priest dedicated to the MT, the druid to the DPS, and the other priest on spot duty with an extra eye on the OT.

I've read up on Attumen, Moroes and Maiden on various places (bosskillers, wowwiki, wowhead, etc) so I think I have a pretty good grasp on how the encounters work. Its just a matter of experience and comfort at this point.

As a note, the warrior has a shammy alt that is getting up there, and we'll be swapping him in when he's ready. We'll slide the feral druid into the OT spot and put the shammy in the DPS group (he's enhancement/elemental). At least, that's the plan for now.

Anyway, thanks again!

- Ty

[Fridmarr]

Stack locks! Actually they are pretty nice for Illhoof, Aran, a couple of Opera events, and a 30k+ Curse of Doom on the curator never hurts.

[Sultan]

The makeup that our guild was running was

2 Tanks
4 Healers (2 Dedicated, 2 Hybrid)
4 DPS

Eventually, every raid will have to find out on their own how thier styles lend themselves to this makeup. Personally, I would rather go for "insurance" healing then to have OOM issues.

I'm building a 2nd Karazhan group now and I think I'll go with whats already been tried and done.

Let us know how the 3-healer setup goes. I'd be interested to find out.

[Barter]

both runs in my guild is with 3 healers + 1 shadow priest, no healing issues
we kill everything but terestian, never really tried him

[Mavrix]

Just thought I'd say one quick thing about the maiden fight that I'm sure most who have been farming maiden a long time know, but this is for Tybalt who is just starting kara.
For maiden, you may find it easier to accomplish the take down (due to her repentance) if you collect up heal gear and let your warrior OT be the MT for that fight while you help heal him. Why? Blessing of Sacrifice will keep you from being stuck in repentance and the MT being healerless for that period of time (if you keep BoSac on him at all times - 30 second duration of the buff makes it teh suxor).
Just a thought to consider.
That is, if you don't take a holy pally along to do the job.
That's just been my observation.
Our guild has 4 kara groups going. The ones who were able to down the maiden with the most ease and convert her to farm status (a while back now) were the ones with a pally able to do what I listed above.
If you have a shadow priest and 2 other priests, shackling 3 of moroes' adds makes things light work overall. Kill one add, swap over to moroes and down him, finish off the previously shackled adds 1 at a time.
For the huntsman, have your warrior OT pick up the huntsman off you (keep consecrate down at the beginning so he grabs onto you instead of running off to wreck your group - let it drop once huntsman can be picked up by your OT).
For all the fights you MT, make sure your warrior still keeps demo shout and improved thunderclap on at all times.

(sorry that my list of random comments on the first 3 bosses is in reverse order)

[Promdates]

We've been running Kara with the following setup:

Prot Paladin (me)
Prot Warrior
Holy Paladin
Shadow Priest
Aff. Warlock

Holy Priest
Tree Druid
BM Hunter
Fire Mage
Combat Rogue


At first we had some issues, but we've since smoothed them out. Now if only I can teach the warrior to stance-dance properly for BBW We should be good. And sadly, I havn't had the balls to try to tank Maiden yet, so I run around and be the Cleanse-bot/FoL-bot with about 900+heal

[Everlight]

At the moment, the usual composition we're running with is;

Prot Pally (MT)
Feral Druid (OT)
Holy Paladin (MH)
Holy Priest (MH)
Feral Druid (DPS / OH)
Arms Warrior (DPS)
2 x Hunter (DPS)
1 x Mage (DPS)
1 x Warlock (DPS)

Composition changes slightly depending who's around. The fact we only have one Priest in our team complicates Moroes, but it's workable with some nifty trapping and offtanking tricks.

For the Maiden, what we've been doing of late is swapping our Arms Warrior into tanking her, while I swap to healing gear and act as a second dispeller. We only have one Dispeller (besides the Holy Paladin who has her hands full on Maiden), so we're finding it's gotta be that way.

What I'd do for a Shadow Priest

[Dorvan]

My opinion is that you want the following for Kara:

2 tanks
3 healers
5 DPS (preferably one of whom can offheal)

Beyond that, skill and gear are more important than class for Kara, though subbing certain classes in and out for specific fights is helpful while you're learning them (and one of my biggest complaints about the instance).

[dern]

/agree with Drovan (as usual)

we tried Aran last night with 1 rogue, 1 warrior was close, but no dead shade. I tried to do some dps then tanking the elementals . . . was fun as hell, not very effective, but very fun.

But, on the bright side a run with no priest, 2 holy pallies and 1 druid we cleared thru chess with 1 wipe on maiden (I swear my cleanse went off). I carry a set with like 1200 healing and ridiciulous mana/5 to fill in healing on certain fights and it has been effective even tho I trail on the heal meters.

We've also run our first night with no mages whatsoever and done Wizard of Oz without a lock or preist . . . one of the funnes fights I've been involved in in that place.

Can you tell we have 1 kara group and more dps than healers in my guild /lol keep at it, anything is possible even if it isn't ideal.

[Tybalt]

Well, our first Karazhan run was last night, and things went very, very well. One of our priests couldn't make it, so we had a resto druid sub in.

We one-shotted Attumen with only 9 people, as our warlock d/c'd right before the fight and we would have had to deal with respawns if we waited for him. I got my Vambraces of Courage from the drops, and now just have to wait until 2.1 to equip them.

The AoE pulls on the way to Moroes are a BLAST! The priest would shield me, I'd pop holy shield, toss my shield, drop a consecration and cast holy wrath. From then on, the DPS was going full out AoE and I *never* lost aggro once. And the healers never let me drop below 50% health.

We downed Moroes on the third try. With only one shackle and one freeze trap, things we're a bit tricky. On the pull, we shackled the ret pally, froze the MS warrior, had our feral druid OT the prot warrior, and the DPS kited/killed the shadow priest. Once the priest dropped, the druid moved off the warrior, onto the ret pally, and we swapped the shackle to the prot warrior. Once the ret pally was down, we went after Moroes. All in all, I was very impressed we were able to down him our first night in there.

From Moroes, we went to Maiden. We got 3 solid attempts on Maiden before we had to call it a night. Every time we got killed by holy fires. The strategy with the healers spread out along the pillars made it all but impossible to dispel/cleans the holy fire from several people because of range issues. I'll have to re-evaluate the plan and maybe change things up when we go back on Monday.

Anyway, so far, I have to say the 2 tank, 3 healers, 5 dps setup is working just fine. Once we get a little more comfortable in there, we should be burning through the encounters at a nice clip.

Thanks for the advice!

-Ty