A 2-class group: who would you pick?

[oldmandennis]

^^ agree with Tresh


Also, I've tried Priest/Hunter a few times recently, Meh. This is in my late 30's so maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem that great. Maybe we are doing something wrong, but it seems to take longer to level with the priest around.

Hunters are solo machines anyways. Pets heal XP insanely fast, rarely did my kitty need a heal. The priest does nowhere near the damage I was doing, yet still got half the XP.

Admittedly, this is a small sample. We were in STV hunting trolls for their heads, both shrunken and clan leader. I don't think I could have easily soloed the clan leaders, but I think I could have gotten more XP just grinding the headhunters the whole time. Rested is not a problem on this character.

But doing that quest with someone was more fun then just farming the lower villiage the whole time. Also, I'd gladly give someone leveling a priest in my guild 1/2 or even 3/4 of my XP :) And on a PvP server it is very nice to have a friend around, especially in STV.

Is there some Priest/Hunter synergy I'm missing? Maybe the priest is easy to set up macros for if you are a dual boxing farmer?

I'd like to second Warlock/Mage: COE + Fireball = dead mob

[Treesh]

Is there some Priest/Hunter synergy I'm missing?  Maybe the priest is easy to set up macros for if you are a dual boxing farmer?
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I don't see it and I'm part of a priest/hunter duo. Seeing what my solo hunter is capable of, the priest really doesn't add much. The dual box has to be why the popularity now.

[Roland]

I disagree completely with shapeshifting going "against the role the druid is meant to fill in this pairing".

I meant Talent-wise. I would never say a Druid should not use his/her Shapeshifting skills. Ever. I love Druids. :D

Edit:
Ok, so I guess Shapeshifting tree is now viable since... however many patches ago. :P Glad to see it finally got fixed, as it was pretty pointless when I started my Druid, despite how I wanted to go Balance / Shapeshifting. Sorry if I offended. :)

[Roland]

You know, I think I need to whip out my Druid to begin understanding them a bit more. :P It's been, literally, months since I've played him, i.e. several patches ago, so when I last played him Feral speccing was useless. Guess I need to shake that ghost from my brain. :)

Sorry if I offended any Druids. And yes, I agree that Shapeshifting is a very useful and essential part of ANY Druid, regardless of who they are with. There are DEFINITELY times where I'd rather the Druid be taking all the heat in Bear form, while I can sit back and Backstab the hell out of a mob. Generally, even level 40 mobs (I'm 37) I can solo without dying, although the ones I've been targeting definitely wear me down to the edge, so potion use is liberal. With a Druid along, I'd probably have zero downtime.

Anyway, thanks for correcting me on the usefulness of the Shapeshifting tree. I know they had planned to address some of the issues, but I never heard whether they actually did anything or not. :) For awhile I was just logging in to patch, then logging right out, and so I didn't even bother with the notes, except as it pertained to Rogues (my main). :)

[Raven Vale]

My Rogue and a friendly Priest have duo'd for slapping down the mobs to raise cash for Epic mounts , we both now have them and am in the middle of collecting for my other lvl 60 , not far to go now , we can pretty much handle anything together and I dont see him sit to drink that often , even those times he does I can still carry on , so hardly any downtime at all .

[Drasca]

You already have a very good combo...

ATM, I can't really think of a bad combo. 2 players tend to tear through any solo-quests, but it takes a while to learn how to play with each other. You have to learn to use complementary skills that make class weaknesses disappear.

Fear+Dot combos work very well with a Priest/Lock, because their original kiting style is very similar to each other. Safely wear down enemy and mop up with burst damage. Priest not doing enough damage? Not with CoS, mind blast will crit for over 1k!

Fear-dot tactic doesn't work well with mages or rogues. The game becomes about snares, stun and burst damage. Anything instant. Rogue/lock work very well in pvp, stun/fearing/snaring enemies off each other. PvE, Damage styles butt heads--must chage to burst forms of damage.

I've had very much fun doing lock/druid combos. Own very much. You've got stuns, tanking, crowd control, heals, damage, pretty much everything you could ever want.

Mage/lock is insane complementary ranged and aoe damage, everything dies before you do. If they get too close, howl of terror / fear and kite! Whenever you have serious firepower like this, just blast your way through the toughest of enemies and slaughter all weaker enemies en masse through massive dual aoe.

Lock/Hunter vanishes the problem of enemies being too close to Hunter's dead zone. No more pitiful hunter melee, feel free to range forever.

Shamans: Will steal and hold single target aggro while self healing against one target, freeing any dps classes to freely output damage. Shaman's only weakness is the inability to sustain high dps, usually having a limited mana supply and powerful but very mana inefficient spells. Pairing up with dps class solves this.

4 locks and a shammy = Much much hilarity, especially doing the epic dreadsted quest. So many rings of fire. so much shadowbolt damage, so many enslaves!

Be afraid. Be very very afraid, when you see half a dozen locks around. They'll summon an entire army of players very soon.

[TheDragoon]

I've got a couple of pairs of characters that my girlfriend and I are working on, currently. It's fun to try and figure out ahead of time a good pairing. Generally, we've been shooting for classes that supplement each other well and don't prevent the use of class abilities. Also, we've been trying to make sure that we have a combo that works well for setting up 5-man groups for instances, hence we've been trying to have either a tank or healer (or both) in each pairing.

Here are the groups that we chose and why we picked them:

1. Rogue + Druid
With this combo, we figured that we'd have the great offense of the Rogue and the good defense of a Druid. In addition, both of these classes can stealth (once the Druid gets cat-form) so that we could sneak around together. Finally, the Druid can play main tank or healer in instances and so that should make it pretty easy to find other classes for instances.

The down side of this pair is that they both wear leather. However, this isn't THAT big of a deal since Rogues and Druids tend to wear slightly different types of gear (so we planned on giving the offensive stuff to the Rogue and the healer stuff to the Druid).

So far, this pair has been somewhat fun to play. We're only level 18, so far, so we haven't got cat-form just yet. At times I (playing the Druid) feel pretty bored since my girlfriend's Rogue can dish out more than twice as much damage as I can. I hope it will get better as we progress (GG & Treesh would know how that goes)

2. Priest + Mage
This group was dreamt up to provide countless hours of AoE fun. With a Priest for shielding and a Mage for Blizzard/Flamestrike/Arcane Explosion, we can run up and destroy groups that would be either impossible or very difficult for a Mage to AoE alone. In addition, we plan on having the Priest go shadow so that she'll be able to assume shadowform, eventually, to put her burst damage up on par with that of the Mage while still having shielding available for AoE occasions. Finally, this group has two very important parts of a good instance group (healer and AoE'er/crowd controler) so all we'd have to do is add a tank to the mix and we'd be gold.

Again, the drawback of this pair is that they're both cloth wearers. In addition, there isn't any real separation between most Priest gear and Mage gear so gear acquisition is a bit harder (since we'll need to find twice as much good cloth stuff to fill out the two of them). This drawback is kind of a pain, but since I've got a high level Tailor (Silverflail) with lots of money to burn, I figure I can fill in the gaps with tailored gear.

Thus far, this group has been just about the most fun duo I've seen in WoW. We're only level 19 so we haven't yet obtained Improved Arcane Explosion, Blizzard, or Improved Power Word: Shield. Once we hit level 24 (and have gotten all of those), then I expect that we will be nearly unstoppable for AoE'ing large groups. However, even now we have a lot of fun AoE'ing groups of 5 or more mobs at a time. The battles are always very chaotic and fun for both of us. :) This duo gets a very big thumbs up from me!

[Treesh]

At times I (playing the Druid) feel pretty bored since my girlfriend's Rogue can dish out more than twice as much damage as I can.  I hope it will get better as we progress (GG & Treesh would know how that goes)
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It will get better. You will never out DPS her rogue, but it will only get more fun the higher up you get. You'll have more options as a druid and she'll get more options as a rogue. GG got a bit bored at the lower levels too, but it really does improve after you get cat form. :)

[Kevin]

Those two pairings have opposite curves I think. The rogue druid gets more fun as you progress. Cat form with some talents to back it up can start to put out the DPS pretty quick too and both being able to stealth makes it more fun too. We can kill higher level mobs without either one of us having stealth available to go to the next one at times. A druid can also tag mobs with moonfire faster than just about any other class can and the pop a HoT and and go bear form while the rogue cleans them up. So you can still win the tag fest battles in the camped questing areas (anything that drops runecloth after 1.5 came out, sigh). You get more tricks as you level with this pair that gets more fun.

I think the priest/mage is going to get less fun as the mobs start getting more HP and hitting harder. You'll have more trouble with elites than a rogue druid will, but you will still probably kill faster anyway. You will have the majority of your tricks early on and the play style doesn't look to be one that will evolve too much. It still looks like it would be huge huge fun but I just think that the fun level of this pairing will fall off some while the fun level of rogue druid has climbed at just about every level up. :)

[kandrathe]

I don't see it and I'm part of a priest/hunter duo.  Seeing what my solo hunter is capable of, the priest really doesn't add much.  The dual box has to be why the popularity now.
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Actually, Celethirian and Trispal were a good leveling pair. The cures and heals, a hard shell for tanking (in Cower mode), or keeping the pet alive while off tanking adds (in Growl mode). There were times when needing to kill X mobs or find X items where it was easiest for the Trispal to run in and aggro 3-4 mobs, while I would systematically pull them off with the pet and kill them quick.

I'd vote that Hunter/Druid or Hunter/Paladin would be more suited.

[Treesh]

Actually, Celethirian and Trispal were a good leveling pair.  The cures and heals, a hard shell for tanking (in Cower mode), or keeping the pet alive while off tanking adds (in Growl mode).  There were times when needing to kill X mobs or find X items where it was easiest for the Trispal to run in and aggro 3-4 mobs, while I would systematically pull them off with the pet and kill them quick.[right][snapback]83240[/snapback][/right]

Yes, but that's a pally, not a priest and there's the difference. :)

I'd vote that Hunter/Druid or Hunter/Paladin would be more suited.
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I would also rather do a hunter with a druid, pally or shaman before a priest. The priest just doesn't add enough to complement the hunter as well as any of the hybrid classes do.

[Kevin]

I'd vote that Hunter/Druid or Hunter/Paladin would be more suited.
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I agree. Just to re-iterate on my earlier general assessments, unless you need the priest shield then a paladin, shaman, or druid is pretty much always going to be the better choice in a duo combo than the priest is. The more flexible a character you have the more you can handle generally. The 2nd person adds a lot more flexibilty by itself, sure, but you generally aren't going up against things where the lack of mastery of some ability is going to be an issue. I would imagine there are times when the paladin/hunter team benefited a lot from the weak AoE damage that both of those classes can bring as well.

It's a similar thing when the duo has a tankish person in it. In most of the game play the part of the duo that is playing tank is better off being a druid, shaman, or paladin than a warrior as well.

That isn't to say that it won't be fun with the non hybrids. Gnolack and Aleri still had a blast and pulled off some stuff that would have killed other duos, but the hybrid duo's we have are much more fun in almost all case. :) Of course we are starting another warrior/priest duo but this time she is the gnome warrior and I am the dwarf priest. :)

[Hillary]

Griz and Ab . . . healer/rogue. Loved it - twice as effective when I was shadow spec'd. Things died fast. Only other group that I loved? Priest/Lock or Priest/mage.

Fun, fun stuff.

[Trien]

Must recommend the rogue/druid combo here as well. Especially once the druid hits 40 and gets the dire bear armor upgrade... can stealth with the rogue, druid tanks while rogue does damage. Druid will have to shift out to heal, but various rogue stuns make that easier as well.

As a druid who has paired with a rogue many a time, it's a heck of a lot of fun and quite effective, with the rogue's damage output and druid's damage sink. Well played, the combo can take out a lot of named mobs by stealthing in, hitting them, and stealthing back out, all the way to instances like BRD/LBRS (not all bosses, of course!)

[Brista]

It's just stupid to compete over all the drops in the game as you progress, so avoid combos like Priest/Mage or Rogue/Druid.

You overstate this, I think

Druid needs staves, leather with Int/Spi for caster mode, leather with Str for cat dps

Rogue needs one handers, leather with agi

Both benefit from stamina

When one adds in the benefits of stealthing through to bosses in instances, of one of the pair taking leatherworker and making gear for both, and of the pvp advantage of your entire team being able to stealth I think the pros outweigh the cons

[Brista]

A friend asked me to make a new character with him and we decided druid/rogue with two considerations uppermost

1) getting loot. The all-stealth team has an unbeatable advantage here until end game instance/raid loot. I anticipate being able to handle bosses pretty comfortably as long as we're one level higher.

2) pvp. The druid with travelform, the ability to break polymorph, Nature's Swiftness is one of the hardest classes to kill, so too is the Rogue (Vanish, Sprint). Offensively both can stealth and both can stun multiple times.

As for pve effectiveness the rogue's damage is so much better than the damage of other dps classes that I very much wanted a rogue in the team. Looking at the damage meters when I do instances the Rogue is almost always +50%-+100% ahead of any other class in the mid-game

I realise we may have problems end-game but my friend is much more casual than me and I'd be very surprised if we ever reach 60 with these characters. So for mid-game fun I think it's a good choice

[Arethor]

Griz and Ab . . . healer/rogue.  Loved it - twice as effective when I was shadow spec'd.  Things died fast.  Only other group that I loved?  Priest/Lock or Priest/mage.

Fun, fun stuff.
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Ah, very fond memories.

One other fun combination that was tried out yesterday was Druid/Druid. Treesh and I would take turns beating on things and healing each other. Things died quickly and we could both heal if needed. We're both only level 15 at the moment, but should be fun to see how it progresses. Especially if we catch up to Quark's druid. Bear/Cat/Healer anyone? :)

[Treesh]

Ah, very fond memories.

One other fun combination that was tried out yesterday was Druid/Druid.  Treesh and I would take turns beating on things and healing each other.  Things died quickly and we could both heal if needed.  We're both only level 15 at the moment, but should be fun to see how it progresses.  Especially if we catch up to Quark's druid.  Bear/Cat/Healer anyone?  :)
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Now, if I can just break myself of my priestly/shaman habits and heal like a druid (because yes, they all heal differently and what works best for one, doesn't work best for the others), life would be better. ;) Of course, in that three druid group, guess who would automatically heal more. ;) :whistling:

[Kevin]

Ah, very fond memories.

One other fun combination that was tried out yesterday was Druid/Druid.  Treesh and I would take turns beating on things and healing each other.  Things died quickly and we could both heal if needed.  We're both only level 15 at the moment, but should be fun to see how it progresses.  Especially if we catch up to Quark's druid.  Bear/Cat/Healer anyone?  :)
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I've wanted to try and five man with all druids for a while now. But we have never had 5 in the same level range. :) It could be really fun especially if they all have different major/minor talent specs. :)

I'm also thinking about trying the druid rogue instance boss gank squad just because as well. :) 2 or 3 druids and 2 or 3 rogues I think you could deal with a lot stuff with that. I've been to several places where people have said AoE is required or at least highly desireable but we didnt' need it with enough tanking or healing or single target DPS available. :)

[JustAGuy]

I too must endorse the Druid/Rogue combination.

My brother and I started up this pair, me being the druid, and we flew to level 41 in no time. The kill speed is spectacular, and it's always safe. I love the dual stealth attacks -- my bro leads in with cheap shot, he stab stab stabs away, then I pounce or do my backstab equivalent, we feint and cower passing the aggro back and fourth so neither of us takes much of a beating. I go mage style for certain situations, such as the two of us taking out four mobs; he saps one, I root the other, then we each take out a foe. Either that, or I bear mode to tank while he cuts their knees out.

Also, my Druid is a Goblin Engineer. He's got added weapons like "The Big One", the "Goblin Sapper Charge", as well as the ol' stand-by "Mithril Frag Bomb". The "Goblin Rocket Helm" is a hilarious bonus -- my druid, once every 20 minutes, can charge an enemy, knocking them silly for 30 seconds. It works in PvP too, it's a funny in-combat sap-equivalent. So when things get rough, I can take an enemy out of the picture. All the bombs and trinkets that engineering affords my druid makes him this weird super-hybrid class. This, in addition to the jack-of-all-trades style of play through shapeshifting, makes him a bucket of fun to play. The rogue partner is a great choice simply because of the stealthing, the reliable dps, and wonderful crowd control (sap, blind) and the practical stun-locking of single targets.

The other combination that I started my post-beta WoW career with was Paladin (me) with Mage and Warrior. In most situations, I was primary healer. This combination was able to full-clear all instances up until Uldaman. We were 40 when we cleared Scarlet Monastery, just the three of us. Uldaman, though, we couldn't beat the final boss. Once those extra elite stone golem guys came into the mix, we got clobbered. Zul'Farrak proved to be slightly more than we could handle as well, since those damn elite trolls would leech life off of us, and when in packs of 4, we couldn't take them down fast enough.