Run ICC 10 Heroic without a shaman?

[Rosechyld]

must feel great for shamans knowing its close to required to bring one :P

Not really. My priest was my main for close to two years, and because of lack of shamans, I'm now playing my shaman full time. I miss holy healing Q_Q.

That being said, per the OT:

You can do anything with the right mix of classes. There's 10 classes and 10 slots - ideally you'd want to bring one of every class. It doesn't always work out so easily though.

A Shaman is replaceable with a resto druid or holy priest, a frost DK, or a Warlock. Heroism/Bloodlust is an added goodie, but its absolutely not a required buff unless the rest of your dps or healers or tanks absolutely are replaceable ( aka they're terrible).

Player, not class - if you like your shaman better (and they're available) then you like your x class - bring them instead. If not, rogues are pretty beast - bring one of those. I think my group would kill for a rogue instead of a second hunter.

[Takki]

must feel great for shamans knowing its close to required to bring one :P

No, it isn't. it's VERY frustrating sometimes :/
My main is a mage, my twink an elemental shaman(with resto dual). my main doesn't have a 10man-grp since the beginning of ulduar, but with my shaman i have the free choice in which grp i'll take part. it lasts until today, got asked 2-3times a week to join those grps (most of them 8-10/12 hc)with my twink... T_T
i love raiding, but i wanna do it with my mage.. :/

[Ghengie]

I find it amusing that most posters refer to their 10 man HM progress, while also gearing in 25 mans. No, a shaman is not needed, but when progressing at the ilvl it was balanced for, it will make a huge difference on some fights.

It is not about reducing the fight length with a few seconds, heroism is great as it enables you to burst through a tricky phase. Though on our first Bloodqueen kill, we downed her with about 10 seconds left on the enrage. Without a heroism, that timer would've been a close call.

Overgearing the encounter decreases the difficulty by a lot more than popping a heroism yes/no. Take this in account when replying to a question like this, most likely the OP is not as geared as the posters declaring they got most of the HMs down already.

[frott]

I like how this thread is talking about it being "required" to bring a shaman, when every group comp posted has 2+ paladins.

Try doing it with 0 paladins and tell me which class is required.


LOL at the LK 25 heroic having 5 paladins and 0 resto druids.


Spoiler: the game can be figured out on paper. You need certain styles of healing, protection and dps at certain times. You can remove bloodlust from that figuring out if you are covering it in other areas.

If you do not have a paladin healer, bloodlust is nearly required unless you massively outgear the place in heroic ICC25 gear or something.

So you really have to look at the comp and make that on a fight by fight basis you will be able to make the dps/heal/tank requirements. You can build a comp for every single fight that doesn't include a shaman for bloodlust, but doing that limits your flexibility with what other classes you can bring.

I've found that the bloodlust is only useful for DPS if you're coming close to enrage (within 5 seconds as reported earlier). To be doing the heroics you're at/near haste cap and unless you're heavy on classes that require it it really doesn't matter. The 5 seconds is very useful on add fights, as letting adds get out of control means a wipe. So don't just think of it in terms of boss health.

The real benefit is on healing spikes / attention needed. Again it all depends on your healing makeup. ICC's damage style has more big spikes. Paladin anyone? They're more than single target, intentional healers. Derp.

[Deleted]

Bringing a Shaman is definately not necessary. Buffs are overrated. Playing correctly is the #1 way to clear content. That being said, Heroism/BL is very handy in some encounters, just how Paladin auras/buffs help out a lot during other encounters.

Currently at 10/12 without shammies. :-)

[Izichial]

Excellent topic.

I agree with frott, (holy) paladins are quite frankly a lot more crucial than a shaman of any kind. I don't think anyone would sit down and argue the other specs off the roster either if they were already running with prots and retris (as pointed out, LK heroic kills had loads of paladins in both 10 and 25) either. On LK it's not even remotely possible making up for lack of holypaladin with Bloodlust/Heroism because you're gonna need the throughput most of the fight.

As for no restodruids on 25man (in particular), it's a bit of a curious effect removing them. It makes priests a ton better. It's also a healing style than you can do without. I haven't really looked into it but as far as I can see Paragon took a fairly standard healing setup (for LK, @2x holypaladins) and dropped the resto druid for a dps. I believe they've been killing most hardmodes with one less healer than quite a lot of guilds.

The semi fixed icc10 heroic group in my guild currently at 10/12 is running with an elemental shaman but it has never been an issue of "if he doesn't show up we're not gonna make it", which HAS been the case with the holypaladin (we've only had one holypaladin raiding since LK25 normal kill when one quit; currently at 9/12 25hc, if he doesn't show for the 10man they're pretty boned).

I find that the people who argue that you absolutely need BL/H for whatever are generally less aware of how much it actually gives. My take on it is that it's great for progress when you actually have problems with enrage timers (blood queen heroic25 is a great illustration of this) but as several people have said already you should always be able to make it work without.