Raid Composition Guide for TBC Classic

You can find below a quick summary of our current recommendation for a 25-man raid, with swappable people for no-shows and specific fights in group 6:

This composition brings high DPS and has at least one of each class, making it easier to recruit for and gear.

Using the roster above as a baseline, we have created three optimized groups below: group 1 & group 2, group 3 & group 4, and group 5 & group 6. Take note that due to the tank and healer requirements, some players will have to swap specializations:

With the initial raid roster as a baseline, you can either optimize for maximum group DPS or maximum group convenience which includes summons, crowd control options, and spreading out armor types to minimize wasting drops.

As making specific groups is mostly useful during the early rush to level up and get attuned, we will focus on convenience and loot-waste minimization with the group suggestions below:

The first thing to consider when assembling a good group setup is class balance among the three required roles: Tank, Healer and DPS. While every class and spec brings valuable utility of some sort, a single member of that specialization is usually enough to achieve maximum benefit for the whole group.

This leaves three specializations as the most desirable to stack, with benefits that continue to increase for each new member in the raid:

• Destruction Warlocks — the best caster DPS in TBC, scale very well with group buffs, have no Mana issues, and buff each other with Improved Shadow Bolt. They have some issues with threat, which can be mitigated through Soulshatter and Blessing of Salvation.
• Beast Mastery Hunters, the strongest physical DPS in TBC, also scale exceptionally with group buffs, provide their own in the form of Ferocious Inspiration, and have no issues with threat due to much of their damage being split with their pet and Feign Death.
• Shamans of any specialization, as all three bring valuable buffs and healing on their own (Totem of Wrath, Unleashed Rage, Mana Tide Totem) combined with Bloodlust / Heroism for which you can always find a good use.

Therefore, our setups will focus on stacking these specializations, while bringing as many other unique buffs from other classes and specs as possible.

If you are interested in learning more about the ups and downs of each class and specialization in TBC Classic, check the links below:

Starting with the role setup, we want to have around 30 main raiders, split as follows:

• Between 2 and 6 Tanks, for subbing and small-group gameplay.
• Between 5 and 8 Healers, for tougher fights during progress.
• Between 14 and 18 DPS, which will fill the raid once tanks and healers are decided on a fight-by-fight basis.

Now, after doing the math, this would theoretically amount to a total of 32 raiders rather than 30 in a worst-case scenario, but it is virtually guaranteed that you will never need more than a handful of tanks for raids themselves; as such, the role numbers will be accounted by through respeccing when needed.

Tanks should be a mix of every class, as all of them have their benefits and are worth bringing at least one of. Feral tanks are the best to bring multiples of as they can double as a DPS when they are not tanking, making them very flexible off-tanks!

Healers should also include one of each class for gear optimization purposes especially. Once you are looking to bring multiples of the same healer class, look no further than the Restoration Shaman. Besides having the best area-of-effect heal in the game, Chain Heal, they also bring multiple utility totems for their group and Bloodlust / Heroism — the best buff in the game especially if you are doing in-combat swaps for your DPS groups.

DPS are all about Destruction Warlocks, and Beast Mastery Hunters, and their respective support. While we have tried to spread out the raid spots among as many classes as possible in the recommendation, ultimately the best DPS in TBC Classic for speedrunning comes from having as many groups looking like group 2 and group 4 as possible.

Feral Druids, Enhancement Shamans, and Warriors are the best group-specific physical DPS boosters, while Balance Druids and Elemental Shamans are the best for group-specific caster DPS-boosting. The rest of the raid spots are mostly filled with specializations that bring strong raid-wide boosts, such as Expose Weakness from the Survival Hunter.

10-mans are simple, role-wise. You want 2 Tanks, 2-3 Healers and 5-6 DPS for each raid. Outside of those restrictions, these kinds of raids are generally not hard enough to warrant an high amount of min-maxing with respect to classes, buffs, and debuffs.

That being said, since we provided a 30-man roster setup in the previous sections, it only makes sense to explain how to best split it apart into three 10-man groups in order to maximize gear and the odds of every group successfully clearing.

Our original roster contains enough classes to ensure full coverage of all crowd control requirements, a Shaman in each group, one blessing per player, and one optimized DPS group per raid.

Considering our role needs and the classes available, we would recommend that the Shadow Priest heals, possibly while maintaining Shadow spec in group 2 once the content is outgeared to turbo-charge the Warlocks even more. The Holy Paladin should tank for one of the groups to make area-of-effect pulls easy and the Balance Druid will tank for another to complete the 6 tanks, 6 healer requirements.

5-mans are equally simple for roles; you want 1 Tank, 1 Healer and 3 DPS for each group.

Following the same logic as the 10-man groups and starting from the same setup, we rearranged the groups in order to make sure there is a Tank and a Healer in each, while ensuring the different armor types are as spread out as possible to minimize loot waste from unusable drops.

We also tried to keep groups focused on either physical or caster DPS and spread the melee around since some dungeons are very punishing to melee. Protection Paladins are always coupled with a Mage who can help them area-of-effect kite large pulls in dungeons and ensures infinite water if the need to drink in-between pulls for Mana arises.

Finally, by spreading the Warlocks around, every group except one has summons and Create Healthstone, which is a huge convenience boost.