Shared Topic : Classes in Raid

Recently I’ve been working with my guildmates to figure out what classes to bring to our 10-man Cata raid. Since 10-mans are no longer the smaller easier child you can overgear with 25-man gear, the buffs you bring are even more crucial to setting up a successful raid groups.

And this has gotten me thinking about how we think of classes. We tend to see them mostly as what buffs they bring and their DPS. But often other things are important too, and even more so given that Blizzard wants us to pay more attention to things like CC, mana management, that sort of thing (no more simple stand and DPS fights).

So the topic would be about people posting the interesting and useful things their class brings that won’t appear in a buff per class spreadsheet. I haven’t made my post yet, but I’ll talk about Death Knight-y things like survival techniques, slowing abilities, run speed, things like that. And I’ll add the link here when I write it.

edit: Here’s my post on the subject: http://runeforgegossip.wordpress.com/20 … aid-buffs/

 

I think this is a very interesting topic, likely to get a few people offside and heated if we were too discuss this real time, but I shall attempt to delve into the madness….

I have never really looked at what buffs raiders can bring, I have always looked at the player and not the class, Blizz think they are finally going to make this better and have already said multiple times they want you to be able to do these fights irrelevant of what buffs you have.  That statement is fine for a group of mates who just want to play together and have some fun, but the majority of people out there – trying to run guilds will not be looking at that, they will be looking at the most beneficial group of buffs to have in any team set up.    I think that is very sad, as I am sure there are some great players out there that could shine if given a chance.

However there are some things that I think are just awesome in a raid aside from the standard group buff they provide.  Replenishment is a major one for me.  Any kind of replensihment – health or mana – any class that can give back to the raid is in my top 😀  It may not be much but when you are having a longer than expected turn of events that one last heal that got provided could be the difference between dead or alive tank.

Not that I am being biased in my next one at all, but you have to have a mage.  Food and portals at the end are just a necessary thing in a raid environment.  I have been in so many raids where people forgot to go to the vendor before hand and are left scrounging around for food off people.  Unprofessional, time consuming and just annoying 😀  So Mages are always a must have 😀  They also do have the single most awesome CC ability in the game, noneof the other CC’s are as good, there is just nothing you can compete with regarding a non cooldown CC.

Someone with the Cooking, alchemy and enginneering – yes I know not a class based thing, but I would rather take someone with something useful to the raid and has good DPS then someone who gives me a buff and can’t play 😀  Cooking for fish feasts, alchemy in case poeple need potions (which most of the time they do – and will be very useful come cata with the cauldrons) and enginneering for repair bots because you can bet your best brain cell SOMEONE will forget to repair when they go to the raid and after the first boss fight will have zero durability because one add hit them over the head with a big pointy stick  😀

The only other thing that i worry about with raid make up – is who can play versus who can’t?  I won’t take a person to a raid because they offer some buff if they are the one who is constantly standing in the damn fire or dying.  So based on that logic, I don’t care what my raid make up is regarding buffs, I would much rather take the person than the class.  But maybe I am taking Blizz too literally, I guess we will see once Cata comes out and we start building a raiding guild again.

I did have a thought the other day though, it would be so beyond awesome to have a class raid all the time (like the VA class runs), just one of each class in the raid and no double ups.  I was laughed out of the vents channel when I said it, but gear would never get sharded for not having a certain class with you, buffs would be pretyy much a non issue, CC would be a non issue since you have one of every type, and the most important factor being you would have a mage with you on every single run 🙂  Yeah I think that would be a sexy raid 😀