Originally Posted by
Dasani
I have sold 23 WOD carries so far as well as literally hundreds of them in MOP.
I find challenge modes to be the most enjoyable content in the game because it is the most challenging. My guild has long since had mythic blackhand on farm and I find CMs to be far more enjoyable and challenging than mythic raids in general because the most challenging part of mythic raiding is just having all 20 people not suck dick.
Because I enjoy CMs so much, on occasion i'll get bored and look for a pug to do them with just for funsies. I find it's very difficult to find a halfway decent group to do them. 9 times out of 10 the DPS are terrible and drastically underperform. When I join a group and am doing 30% more damage than all the DPS on every single trash pull, that group isn't going anywhere and won't get gold.
Sometimes though, i've been pleasantly surprised to get some people who actually know how to play their classes and I can guide them through the dungeons easily enough. Almost always the folks in there have no experience running them so i'll usually take em down to Iron Docks and get a pretty quick and easy gold.
Ultimately you don't need the best players in the world to get gold, but they do have to be at least halfway decent. If any of them are doing shit levels of DPS they need to be replaced.
For group comp you'll want a blood dk tank, any healer will do really but I find resto druids to perform best, and for DPS the buffs they bring aren't that important as long as you have a lust somehow. Instead of trying to maximize your group's buffs, you should focus instead on making sure you have certain things like heavy AOE classes that can also do respectable single target damage and having AOE 5 second stuns is useful as well.
Ele shaman are probably my top pick for a DPS because they bring lust, earthquake is useful as a quasi-interrupt/cc to reduce tank damage, and they have cap totem for that 5 second stun for every pull. Those aoe stuns are insanely useful for killing large groups of enemies before they kill you and can mean the difference between a pull being a pushover or being impossible for your group. Ele shaman also have purge and that can be extremely useful as well because an offensive dispel is pretty rare, limited primarily to shaman and hunters, but hunters with the new tranq shot cost aren't as good at it as they used to be. Offensive dispel is really important for UBRS because if you don't have one you aren't even going to get past the second boss and they're useful in other places as well, auchindoun comes to mind if you pull all 3 groups together at once in there and a void shell gets off, if you don't purge it off your primary kill target it's not gonna die (mass dispel works better, but after you kill the cleric/soulbinder you can just aoe the rest down easily enough without relying on mass)
I'm also fond of Moonkin because the aoe blanket silence is also extremely useful. When used after a cap totem or other 5+ second stun (remorseless winter, leg sweep, etc) it can extend the time you have to kill enemies without their casters shredding you. Pulls like the 2nd pull in everbloom or first pull in shadowmoon after first boss and first pull after second boss and a few others can go from being scarey to piss easy with a stun and blanket silence combo. Starfall is also an extremely useful pulling tool and by coordinating your moonkin with your DK tank you can pull enemies much faster and safer than most other ways. First pull in iron docks is simplified fantastically by starfall, same for first in auchindoun and first in everbloom as well. Starfall is kinda fantastic like that.
Combat rogues also deserve an honorable mention because their AOE damage is off the fucking charts. As I mentioned earlier, i've run many of the new CMs with many classes and comps and I feel safe in saying combat rogue aoe is the highest of anyone by far. If the mobs are all stacked up, which they should be because all good tanks are DKs and can use gorefiends, the combat rogue will absolutely SHIT on them all. Rogues are also useful because you can use their aoe stealth field to skip mobs instead of invis potting, letting you use dps potions. If you want gold, you should pre-pot and pot again for every single pull and certainly every boss, aside from a few exceptions where waiting is needed or preferred for one reason or another (everbloom 1st boss).
Hunters are good jack of all trades types. By shuffling their pets around they can bring any buff you feel you need in your group, can also swap out for a bloodlust pet if your group lacks that (only for the specific pulls/bosses you want to lust on and go back to buff pet the rest of the time) and can also pop out a battle res pet on demand if need be as well. Their traps are useless as you really don't want to CC just about anything but their AOE dps as BM is good and their mobility as ranged is also valuable. Their stun arrow is great for a lot of pulls if you lack any other kind of aoe stun on demand. A good hunter can be a real asset, for example the first boss in shadowmoon you can have all dps stay on boss the entire time and have the hunter keep consussion shot on the summoned add and binding shot it as well. If boss is tanked far enough away, you never have to waste dps killing the add, and all dps can stay on the boss 100% of the time.
Ret pallies and warriors are about the same. They do good aoe damage, especially bursty aoe damage for warrior bladestorm, but nothing to write home about usually. They both can bring damage mitigation cooldowns for your tank if you need that. An extra 30% mitigation cooldown can help sometimes.
DK DPS aren't all that fantastic for most dungeons, but the couple of them where there are really powerful abilities you can dark sim, they can be extremely valuable.
I will say I have yet to see a class that just completely sucks ass in WOD challenge modes. For example, in MOP i hated selling carries to shadow priests and moonkins because both of them were complete garbage for dps in challenge modes. In WOD, I have yet to see any class/spec that is just completely useless like that, so that's good. You can make it work with just about anything if your players are good enough but the aoe stuns/blanket silences, and so on really help. AOE damage is king. Also NEED an offensive dispel for some dungeons.
One last piece of advice, when you do a pull and the tank dies it isn't necessarily the tank or healer's fault. If they die in the first like 10 seconds, sure, it's one or both of their faults and they are bad. However even if you do everything right as a tank or a healer, the tank is GOING to die if they dps aren't doing their jobs. Keeping enemies under control and killing them quickly is vital to success. You cannot survive tanking some of the shit you need to tank indefinitely and if your dps aren't doing their jobs the tank will die.
I'll use Auchindoun as an example. If you pull all 3 groups together at the same time and that soul binder casts more than 1 dominate will or whatever the MC is called, it's because your dps aren't doing their jobs. If the cleric casts void shell, that is very bad. It should be stunned, but aoe and single, to prevent that, but if it DOES cast one, it needs to be purged off him so he dies before casting a second one. If he casts two, your dps are bad. If he casts one, they aren't the cream of the crop but it's doable still as long as they purge quickly. If all those mobs get shelled they aren't dying, and if they aren't dying the damage on the tank never goes down. And once the tank and healer cooldowns are exhausted, the tank will drop like a sack of potatoes and there's nothing anyone else can do about it. If dps do their jobs, the soul binder and cleric will both die in seconds after they are pulled and the rest will melt under heavy sustained aoe damage. If they don't do their job void shells will go off, none of that shit will die, and you will have to reset after your tank turns into a pancake.
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Just as an aside, back in the day when I was bored and wanted to CM for funsies, I used to goto openraid and find a group there in seconds. Nowadays openraid is dead, usually only about 10 folks in a channel at any given time. The in game finder is kind of lackluster because it's pretty rare to see groups listed in there for CMs. Kinda disappointing.