Raiding and the new (to your faction) classes
As you may be aware, I've been leveling a Draenei shaman up, to raid with my guild (Vision on Khaz Modan, fyi) in the not-too-distant future. Vision's been great about this, and has been encouraging and helpful in making room for those of us who have abandoned our 60's and elected to take the long and painful path back to raiding status.
I've been talking with other guild and raid leaders from the community, and with the change in raid group size, the addition of a new class seems to create a bit of an issue. Now you have 25 slots for 9 different classes, so how do you achieve balance in your raiding organization?
As I've heard different answers from virtually everyone I've talked to, I want to see if we can get some sort of consensus here on WoW Insider, so that the community may form a semi-unified approach going into the new endgame.
Read on for a couple of approaches, and to add your voice to the discussion.
Here are two ideas on how to form a raid group. I'd love your comments on them as well as your own ideas.
1. Class-based slots. Have 2 slots for every class, for a total of 18 raid members. Then, depending on the instance, fill with 7 as-needed slots. If an instance requires more tanks, fill with pallies/druids/warriors. If it requires more dps, send in the clowns rogues.
2. Role-based slots. This gets tricky, as you have to define your raiding roles now. Based on my discussions with some good friends (shoutouts to Kraezei and Redempshin!) I've established (in my mind) these roles, based on traditional old-endgame needs: Tank, Healer, Physical DPS, Magical DPS, Crowd Control/Support. Each raid would require a certain number of each role, which you could fill with members of certain classes. Will roles change in the new endgame?
The role of paladins/shaman need to be addressed in terms of both of these structures. Do you lump them together, as they're both support hybrids? With all the new gear for each specialization in the talent trees, do you allow the classes to go outside their traditional raiding roles? Lots of questions, so let's see what you have to say!
