Tankadins and Raid Structure aka Building a solid tank group

Having to run the raid I have become pretty involved in the meta-game of raid structures. But what I have been trying to do is find the best balance for a strong tank group, melee DPS group, and caster group. Obviously this is much easier to do in 25-man groups but how do you handle this in 10-man groups? I typically run with a shaman, two warriors, a rogue and myself in one group and our ranged and casters in the second group.

I am usually getting Wind Fury plus Commanding Shout, but I am wondering how other tankadins handle the group makeup. Do you have a preferred setup in 25-man encounters, and to a lesser extent 10-man encounters? I guess I am just looking to maximize both raid DPS and the strength of the tank group.

Plus I like to hear how others have handled this fun little meta-game of group balancing.
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I almost like to be put in the caster group, even baring Commanding Shout, in 10mans. This is especially true if there is a Shadow Priest and Restoration or Elemental Shaman in there.
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Dream Team (lol):
Warrior (Commanding Shout)
Warlock (Imp)
Shaman (Grace of Air/Wrath of Air)
Ret Pally (Sanctified Crusader&Imp Sanctity Aura)
That guy who gets hit by the big scary things

This is the team I'd kill for. The Ret Pally's EPeen is going to die but that doesn't really matter, I know for a fact that s/he is contibuting more than any other DPSer by being in this group and providing SC&SA.

For mana-starved fights you could swap out any one for a Shadow Priest, or if your raid is too stupid to use a Ret Pally.
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I really like this topic.

As for wrath of air versus windfury, go with whatever the group needs more. They both provide similar threat boosts. Windfury scales, wrath of air does not, therefore windfury will pull ahead at some point.

On farm content with good dps, I need a shadow priest. Being overgeared means I put out less aggro due to mana, and the dps is pulling more aggro.

I think a good starting point for this discussion would be outlining the benefits of grouping with each class. Are there any other synergies besides (?):

Warrior
Warlock
Shaman
Ret Paladin
Tree Druid
Shadow Priest
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<3 Tankadin at Heart.

That is the group I typically roll with. I love ret paladins, can't wait for the upgrade patch, if it comes.
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It really depends on what your group makeup is like and what is necessary to complete the instance. For instance;

If your tank has plenty of Hps and isn't in danger of really dying to any of the bosses in Karazhan, he probably doesn't need the lock in his group for Imp.

If you have a large number of melee dpsers, group them with a BM hunter and a shaman.

If you're running with mostly caster dps put the mages, locks, oomkin druids and a shaman together and toss them a shadow priest, they'll love you for it.

If your healers are running into mana problems put the shadow priest in with them because if they run oom you all die.

Typically we put both tanks in one group with the healers and then try and optimize the dps group as best we can to maximize damage being output. The reasoning behind this is that Karazhan is fairly easy so survivability isn't really an issue nor is healer mana efficiency, so we want to get through it as fast as possible. We typically run with Warrior tanks and the mobs typically hit hard enough to produce a decent amount of rage to generate threat, so we rarely need to optimize our group for that either. With Salvation threat really shouldn't be an issue anyway.

Here are a couple group compositions that seem to work well together...

Melee Dps:
Rogue
Dps Warrior
BM Hunter
Enhancement Shaman
Rogue / Feral Druid

Ranged Dps:
Mage
Warlock
Shadow Priest
Ooomkin Druid
Elemental Shaman

You're certainly get more options with 25 mans than 10 mans and I always end up wishing I could have 1 group of 6 and 1 group of 4!

<Edit> If we actually had a ret pally we'd put him in with our LolSmite Priest (Yes...we actually have one...)

Well typical raid Setup is usually as follows for me in Karazhan:

Melee/Tank
Paladin – Tank
Warrior – Off Tank
Warrior – DPS (Fury or Mortal Strike)
Shaman – Restoration or Enhancement (I really like the Enhancement Shaman really helps the melee DPS a great deal.)
Hunter/Rogue

Caster Group
Shaman – Restoration
Druid – Restoration (Tree) *
Druid/Mage – Restoration (Tree) or Mage if the Shaman in the Tank group is Restoration
Warlock
Hunter

Basically I try to run with three healers, two tanks, and five DPS. We are lacking a solid priest at the moment, and tend to be heavy on shamans, we just picked up a Holy Paladin though which will be nice.


Edit: I rarely use Wizard Oil, if ever.
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For handling trash, we run like this:

Group 1
- Prot Paladin (MT)
- Warlock
- Shaman
- Shadow Priest
- Resto Druid

Group 2
- Feral Druid (OT)
- Rogue
- Mage
- Balance Druid
- Holy Priest

This helps keep my mana up, so we can pull mobs faster. It also makes the healing load a little easier with the Healing Aura from the druid. Group 2 benefits from the Feral Druid's LoP and Omen, while the Mage gets the Balance Druid's Moonkin Aura.

For boss fights, we rearrange like this:

Group 1
- Prot Paladin (MT)
- Feral Druid (OT)
- Rogue
- Warlock
- Resto Druid

Group 2
- Holy Priest
- Balance Druid (healing)
- Mage
- Shadow Priest
- Shaman

This setup provides the casters with some extra longevity, and the melee folk with some extra healing and armor.

So far, its been working pretty well.

-Ty
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ProtPally: The Other Main Tank - http://protpally.blogspot.com/

For Karazhan I'm generally in the melee group.

Something like

Prot Pally (MT)
Prot War/Feral Druid/Arms War (OT)
Rogue
Rogue/DPS War/Hunter
Resto Shaman

The second group is primarily casters, usually:

Warlock
Mage
Moonkin/Elemental Shaman
Holy Priest
Holy Pally


For 25mans we try to optimize a lot more for the MT group

Prot Pally
Prot Warrior
Resto Shaman
Warlock
Tree Druid (What I wouldn't give to put a ret pally in this spot )

We try to make melee groups that have an enhancement shaman/feral druid in them, and put shadow priests/moonkin/elemental shaman with our casters to optimize our dps.
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(not always accurate, I spec holy for arena)

While not doing any 25 mans just yet (most likely will be attempting Gruul's in the next 2 weeks however), I typically put together our Kara group like this:

Group 1
Main Tank - Prot Paladin/Me (rawr)
Offtank - Prot Warrior (Thunderclap & Commanding shout bitch )
DPS - Warlock (w/ improved imp sta buff)
DPS - Feral Druid or Rogue
DPS - Hunter


Group 2
Healer - Holy Paladin
Healer - Holy Priest
Spot Healer - Holy Paladin
DPS - Shadow Priest (mana battery FTW) or Elemental Shaman
DPS - Mage, Warlock, or 2nd Shadow Priest (yup, our healing pallies love 2 shadow priests)


WTB Ret Pally and a Fury Warrior for DPS & utility.

Unfortunately being a horde guild, most of our pallies decied from the beginning that they wanted to spec holy, with only a couple of prot exceptions (like myself), and all of our warriors think that being a warrior means they must be prot specced (managed to convert one prot specced warrior to fury though, and helping him gear up) (have a couple of arms warriors who are not into raiding of course).
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