OK. We started with Druid/Priest, then swapped in a Pally about half way through. We only got to phase 3 once after that (in 4 attempts), but it did seem like people were dying less.
Again, I think my healers just suck balls.
Yes. We do it with two pallies in one of our ten mans. If they can do it, then a druid/priest should absolutely be able to do it. Your slowfall should be enough to keep you above everybody else in health at the end of the vortex. If you have time, call it out, and slowfall others. Since I only have a few instant casts, I have enough time to get 3 - 4 people. Saves quite a bit on raid damage.
We don't raid with any locks (fail) but I'll let our rogue know to cloak out of vortex if he comes.
Our tank is very bad at adapting to changing conditions. He obviously has difficulty picking up the melee and holding them during the transition to phase 2. I don't think there's anything I could tell him except "play better."
It is definitely an issue.
Get a new MT. Bring a prot pally who knows how to tank, and have all dps focus on his target, let his AoEs build aggro on the rest of the melee. A tank who can't adapt to situations quickly is a bad tank.
We were doing this. People still weren't grouping up properly, and the heals weren't coming fast enough so we lost the 7-8 players we had left going into P3 very quickly. Again, we only had 3 attempts at this phase... but it was like people had never been on a flying mount before.
Mark someone who is obviously not fucking up shifting his position, everybody stacks on him, nobody goes past him when shifting or you risk having to move fully through a charge instead of halfway through it. Tell the healers to target their own drakes, and use the AoE heal at 2 combo points. They need to follow the same energy rules as the dps.
Nobody should be dead going into P3, at all, move as a group in P2.
I'll mention this on Sunday when we're scheduled to try him again. It's obvious this guild can't cut it, but I'm at a loss on where to go. All the good guilds are packed full of average players and nobody is really recruiting because the content is so easy they can just carry their members through it and win every night. I don't really want to spend $150 to move my alts and bank toon to another realm.
If your guild is having this much trouble on Maly 10, the difficulty of coordinating 15 more people who don't have any clue what to do is going to be outrageous. My advice: jump ship, get into a good guild. Who cares if there are a bunch of average players in it. Every good guild has its lower echelon, just get in and get in on their raids. If they're worth their salt, they have the ability to swap you in and see how you do. Most of them likely are geared fairly well.
For example on guilds with bads, my guild has a tight group of about 15 people who can do just about any fight after 2-3 tries such as Maly in 10 man, but when we moved into the 25 man, the extra 10 people who hadn't run Maly with us in 10s just fucked up constantly, even with specific guidance. They had 3 stacks of the dot running, or less, for the entire fight; they ran with the tank when coming out of the vortex, or some other stupid thing like that. It took us 3 weeks of wipes for something ridiculously simple. Needless to say, many of them will not be in for the Ulduar 25s.
What I'm saying is cut the excess weight, if that happens to be most of your guild, its easier to just find one that isn't going to be.