I read what you have, but the link to the FTL thread didn't work. I found some FTL thread though.
Uhh, and I tried a few setups. I must say I'm a bit disappointed over the 5 shaman performance in instances. They got the versatility all right, but I'll trade a bit of specialization for that any day. Healing with blasters? Why? I would only do that if the healings were instaspells, and the shamans dont have any.
Shaman is the best leveling tank I've come across with. Since they don't need the greatest damage mitigation, they can do extremely well with their superbly aggro generating shocks. I've really never had as easy time leveling with a player controlled tank as I've had with the shaman. I'm just sad his time will be over in endgame. But then, perhaps I could level 0-60 with shaman, make a lvl 60 paladin with RaF bonus levels, and continue from there.
I must say, I've never ever had as easy, fun, thrilling time in WoW as with my 5 hunters. I can not imagine anything can be just that easy. Clearing instances was almost automatic. It was mind-boggling.
Yet, it was limited at times; couldn't heal other ranger's pets, so there was often a hassle with a pet dieing and such, when I tried the higher instances (as compared to my level).
The ranger experience was awesome. It really made me desire just one thing; and extremely capable healer and/or tank in one person. Other 4 would have remained rangers. I could use this kind of setup to have the 4 rangers shoot from a safe distance, stationary, while my healertank was running. I would heal the pets, and draw some aggro to myself when needed. Perhaps paladin would be the best choice for this kind of position? (Oh, this would be PvE setup.)
I played that team I mentioned in OP. I really loved it's efficiency and capability in everything. The priest and the druid could throw insta HoT while blasting, and their weak heals were almost always more than enough. I used a seemingly odd combination of Shaman tanking and Paladin healing. I just found that at the early levels, Shaman could much more easily maintain aggro. I'm sure it will somewhat change at a later time, but that was the situation early. It's easy to switch roles of course.
With all the fun experimenting, studying the possibilities with the FTL setup, too, I find that I can't probably play. Nice experiment and all, but.. I have only few days time to play, and then I can't play again for several months. I just don't have the time. I have sinusitis at this time, and time to spend at home. Not so in the near future.
I'm quite sure that the FTL setup will be the one I want to do in the future, when time allows. I'm sure it would make many new setups viable. I'm sure it could solve some of the problems I've had in PvP. It just seems very cool concept.
Oh, so what more?
Some observations.
Ranger doesn't fit in with a team where I allow mobs to close proximity with my blasters. It would make too much trouble to control ranger separately from rest of the team so he could maintain the 5-yard separation from the target.
Instant HoT (Heal on time) spells from primary casters are invaluable. They really can turn the chances in an encounter.
Buh. There's more. I think that does it for the time, though.
Oh, and I found the class quests the most annoying things to do. They are very small part of the game, though, so it isn't enough of a reason to keep me from cherry-picking the best possible class combo for my teams.
One thing I want to say of my 10 lvl team performance. They could kill a lvl 20 elite while in lvl 1 equipment.
I think that combo has a good future to it.
So, thanks for hints, I'll be experimenting more the next year when I might have more time on my hands!