Counter-intuition
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Unconventional Group Makeup
Today was an interesting day for me in the game.First off, I respecced to protection and tanked a Mechanar run just to help out a dude advertising in general. I didn't know him, don't know him now (don't even remember his character's name) and when I saw the group makeup - rogue, paladin, enhancement shaman, feral druid and myself - I cringed for a moment about the lack of CC and then I figured, what the heck and flew to Tempest Keep.Quite frankly, the run went nearly flawlessly. We had one wipe on Pathaleon and that was it. I tanked, the paladin healer marked the pulls, the rogue sapped the mobs that he could, and otherwise we just dealt with it. I held aggro, we didn't die, I got a new toy to tide me over until Despair or Gorehowl finally drop or Season 3 comes out, whichever comes first. Buoyed from this experience (it was really fun to tank for complete strangers without the usual CC and just hold aggro the old fashioned way) I then went about my day. Later, my guildmates asked me if I wanted to come along to SV. We ended up in a group with two warriors (myself, respecced back to arms/fury, and a tank), a rogue, a feral druid and a priest. One CC again, and no ranged DPS at all, just melee. This run went even better, so much so that we went back and did it again just to get some folks to revered before the patch hits. You'd think having a tank and three melee DPS on Thespia might be problematic, but it wasn't. People just ran out of the AoE without even being told.This got me to thinking about unconventional groups. Often, people resist doing a run unless they have exactly the 'right' makeup, but I've done all of Shadow Labs witth a group consisting of a warrior tank (me) a warrior DPSing, a rogue DPSing and CCing, a priest DPSing and a feral druid healing and we did fine. Or the infamous Shattered Halls run with a warrior tanking, paladin offtanking, warrior DPSing, another paladin DPSing and a paladin healing. We called it the plate run, and no, no plate dropped.Now, I've also done runs like these and wiped. The 'all-shaman Ramps' run did not work at all. And let us never speak again of the shaman, hunter, rogue, rogue, rogue attempt at the Botanica. Have you ever thrown caution to the winds, ignored the common wisdom on class balance, and run a dungeon with a group of unusual composition?
