Shaman challenge mode

[Deleted]

I've done 6/9 gold runs so far as enhancement with a group of DK tank, Priest healer, Ret paladin and a mage. Only missing MSP, Brewery and GoSS, with MSP practiced with only a good run from gold and half the group with GoSS gold.

I'm curious what spec and the makeup of your group you're doing CMs with and how well it's gone, have you gotten gold or only silver?

[SenSayNyu]

Our setup was blood DK, me as elemental, SP, Holy Paladin (with retri offspec) and feral druid. Made 9/9 gold runs in 2-3 evenings. Elemental is absolute beast in CM's because of Capacitor, Ascendance, Ancestral Guidance and CL cleave.

[Pinklefairy]

I did mine early in the expac. Ran Monk tank, monk healer, rogue, dps dk, and myself: ele shaman. Brewery was our toughest one, sans Gate of bomb bridge of death. Brewery required our healer monk to go dps for the last boss, and it was still a really close wipe.

I remember having to make a lot of use out of different things, like speccing primal eles for burns (end boss brewery) or using earth ele to tank trash that was too rough on our squishy brewmaster.

[Deleted]

I did all my golds with a full melee group...DK tank, rogue, warrior (sometimes monk), shammy healer (sometimes priest) and me (EM/PE for burst and utility). Brewery was the toughest, and Jade Serpent's first boss was the toughest individual boss but otherwise it just took a bit of practice. (we even had the scholo realm best for a while too, after skipping Lilian's soul phase)

[Deleted]

Our setup was blood DK, me as elemental, SP, Holy Paladin (with retri offspec) and feral druid. Made 9/9 gold runs in 2-3 evenings. Elemental is absolute beast in CM's because of Capacitor, Ascendance, Ancestral Guidance and CL cleave.

I've grown to love Capacitor totem doing challenge modes .
Ancestral guidance + fire nova have helped a lot on the harder trash packs.

[Deleted]

I am 9/9 gold as an elemental shaman.

Our group was Paladin Tank, Holy Priest, Elemental Shaman (me), Frost Mage and a Rogue.

It certainly became easier towards the end as we just got better at them and learned eachothers habits a bit more with CC etc but no real difficulty although SSB is a pita completely, we did it last and I was so glad when it was over, although we ran without the rogue (he was away) and got a second frost mage from openraid.

Best advice I can give is to learn how your group can maximise each situation. I generally set the group targets 'we have to have killed this by 9.30 elapsed' etc and compare it to guides out there, some bits we just couldnt do as fast due to group comp but other bits we found other ways to gain time back, and totally developed our own ways of doing things.

They are great fun, so keep plugging away

Sepha

[Seriss]

9/9 as elemental (I'm main resto though).

Group setup was Guardian druid, Holy paladin, boomkin, elemental (me ), dps warrior (no clue which spec).

We felt that our poor melee was living a very dangerous life.

Double solar beam was awesome in many situations. And our Guardian got Consecration off the Holy paladin and said it was really nice to have.

That said, druid tanks are absolutely not ideal for challenge modes, but as shown by us, anything is possible if you learn to make things work and use everything you have. I earthquaked every trashmob group so they'd be knocked over sometimes in order to lessen the damage taken by the tank. I'd throw capacitors into the mob groups, I'd throw groundings whenever necessary. I'd earthbind mobs that needed to be kited for a bit. Boomkin and I would alternate our solar beams on caster mobs. The warrior would stun, etc etc.

The challenge mode we hated the most was Mogu'shan Palace. We spent hours figuring out how to best deal with the trash leading up to the first set of bosses. Our druid would just implode several times. And if he didn't die, the warrior often just keeled over. That was the hardest part of it all. Once we had managed that, we just needed to squeeze out a bit of time here and there and get a bit lucky with where the patrolling mobs on the upper floor were. Still, that challenge mode was probably the most difficult for us and allowed the least 'mistakes' if you can call it that. It just was such a PITA for our setup.

What we did in any challenge modes was to first watch a guide, just for orientation about which trash mobs could be skipped and which you need to do and which you absolutely had to do in order to get the required amount of mobs. Most of the times, we tried to follow a good guide, sometimes we found options that saved us some time (like in Mogu'shan Palace where we'd add a quilen trash mob that you'd usually not kill, just to get the required number of enemies killed, because we'd skip another trash pack instead). And we used the timer on all those guides for orientation about when we should be where in the dungeon. If we saw that we were too slow, we reset immediately. We never got a bronze or silver medal. We reset even if the endboss was at 5% or lower. We only finished when we knew we'd get gold.

Those were the most exciting, most fun and simply best weekends I've ever had in WoW, the weekends that we did 2-4 challenge modes a day, learning them, working on our tactics and seeing all the work paying off in the end.

But... *sad face* I hate our challenge mode mog set. Seriously. I have serious issues with how it looks. So I'm not using it. And it makes me sad, especially when I see how proudly my buddies are wearing their sets. And my poor Draenei just looks horrible with it.

[Knude]

I did 9/9 Gold as Elemental, though I usually play Resto. Was a little bit of a learning curve for me because I rarely DPS in any situation, ended up getting better as the CMs increased in DPS requirements as well as control from EQ and Capacitor.

We had a Holy Paladin, Prot Paladin, Frost Mage and Moonkin for Gate, Siege, Halls, Scholo and Shado-Pan, swapped between players and ended up with a Hunter instead of the Moonkin for Jade, Mogu'shan, Monastery and Stormstout.

Did them slowly over the course of the holidays when people were available, only took 3-4 evenings, we usually reset when we knew we were a little too far behind, I think we completed a silver once for VP.

Stormstout was probably the one I liked the least, spent a while learning how to best handle the first pull as well as how to get people to keep up through the hall to Hoptallus, ended up having to wait for exhaustion to be near expiring when we engaged the last boss as we had a few close wipes due to the length of the fight.

Our tank had done his gold challenge modes before on his main, he usually shared the strategies he'd used before and we made adjustments where necessary after seeing how we went.

Personally like the set for Shaman, but that's on a short little Goblin. :3

[Deleted]

I've done 9/9 gold as Elemental. The spec is just ridiculously good for CMs since lust/Capa/CL cleaving/Guidance.

The comp we use was Blood DK, Disc Priest, Ele Sham, WW Monk and BM/survi hunter. The comp has so much stuns that it's not even fun. Disc priests Spirit Shell is a saviour for some bosses, like Sha of Violence. When stacks started to get up he just popped Spirit Shell and everyone was safe.