The Four Different Tanks (Comparisons)

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I've seen an interesting debate in the DK beta forum, on how much some enemies in WoLK will have Frost or Shadow resist, that seems to hinder two out of three type of DK, which gives an unseen advantage to blood as they rely more on pure damage and less on disease.

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Yeah that is the one advantage Blood has over the others.

I agree that blood tanking will be the scariest for endgame guilds to accept, for a while at least. The more I think about it though it really seems like the one I'll do. (Granted my thought changes every other day because I enjoy each spec).

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Originally Posted by fr0d0b0ls0n

As a druid that usually raids on WOTLK with a Paladin Prot (sometimes a Warrior) I see myself as the worst AOE tank of the 4. Not by much, but all our AOE skills are directional and if we are the best for "snap" aggro generation, we are the worst for aoe "snap" aggro generation unless we use Berserk (and is directional too).

For example on Shartarion I never tank the adds for this reason, leaving the work for any other tank in the raid.

Anyway I'm ok with this, we're better AOE tanks than before (and capable of doing the same but with more work).

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Yeah, my Feral Druid definitely feels the weakest in AOE tanking at the moment. As far a snap aggro goes though, uncapped Swipe should help a ton.

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Originally Posted by Lore

Yeah, my Feral Druid definitely feels the weakest in AOE tanking at the moment. As far a snap aggro goes though, uncapped Swipe should help a ton.

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/Agree. I am hoping that the swipe changes will help. I know AOE tanking has been a pretty big concern on the beta druid forums for a while. I think it isn't so much that druids have bad AOE abilities, it is that the other classes have considerably better AOE abilities now. I would love to see some increased threat from thorns, even if the damage didn't increase.

Here's something to keep in mind, though. We really weren't terrible before. In my guild, the majority of our Dragonhawk kills in ZA were without a pally tank...I tanked the boss and the other bear tanked the adds and managed. Maybe it was tougher on him than it would have been otherwise, but we managed. We've been doing the eagle boss gauntlet for months with the same setup, just dealing with the aoe birds the best we can. We've cleared to the 2nd boss in hyjal with no pally tank, using warriors and druids to gather up the waves. Our first A'lar kill was with a druid tanking the adds. All these are fights where it was very common to hear people say "you can't do that fight without a tankadin." And yet we did.

None of this was because we didn't want a pally tank or didn't think it might be easier with one...we just didn't have one available to bring on these raids!

So I guess my point is, if we could do that when swipe only hit 3 targets and was all we had for AOE threat, I'm sure we could do better now that we have unlimited swipe, glyph of maul, and berserk.

At any rate, I'm mostly OK with not being as good at AOE tanking so long as there are some things I am really good at instead :)

Something interesting (imo) regarding the 4 different abilities to lower an enemy's attack speed. They seem to fall into different categories:

Instant multi-mob: Thunderclap of course.

Nearly instant multi-mob: Frost Fever. The DK must apply Icy Touch followed by a pestilence to spread it to all the enemies, but i'm pretty sure there is no cap on the number of enemies it can hit.

Apply to a single mob at a time: the pally version.

In between single mob and multi-mob: Infected wound. The druid one is sort of weird in that it isn't really multi-target and it isn't really single target. Here is what I mean. Technically it is single target since it is applied via mangle and maul. However, with the Maul glyph, you can automatically apply it to one other target pretty easily. With Berserk you can apply it to 3 targets rapidly, but only every 3 minutes. Using a combination of these abilities, you could get it on several enemies within a short period of time, especially with 3/3 improved mangle for the shorter CD.

Heck with enough rage coming in and the glyph, you could tab-maul through a whole pack, limited only by attack speed. Pop berserk and tab-mangle to infect them all every 3 min.

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Nearly instant multi-mob: Frost Fever. The DK must apply Icy Touch followed by a pestilence to spread it to all the enemies, but i'm pretty sure there is no cap on the number of enemies it can hit.

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Pest affects mobs infront of the DK. The Glyph increases the radius of it as well.

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Originally Posted by Urrick

Pest affects mobs infront of the DK. The Glyph increases the radius of it as well.

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I had no idea it was directional. Interesting. Thanks for the info.

You know I'm pretty sure that is correct but now I have the feeling its all mobs within 10 yards, and the glyph adds 5 more yards to that. Hopefully someone knows for sure, otherwise I can test it tonight.

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Originally Posted by Lore

Yeah, my Feral Druid definitely feels the weakest in AOE tanking at the moment. As far a snap aggro goes though, uncapped Swipe should help a ton.

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i think the biggest problem with feral druid AOE tanking is the range on swipe.

i know when im tabbing between even 8-10 mobs, i will sometimes tab to a mob that is hitting me, is getting hit by swipe, but is out of melee range. so there you sit spaming swipe and you lose 1-2 swipes before you realize "o hey they still havent fixed druid hitboxes yet" and things that can melee you are 2-3 yards out of your melee range.

also when 8 mobs are running at you, and all running at different speeds, or start running at different times off the pull. you swipe you hit the first 4-5, but by the time you get off global the other 3 are on 3 different healers all spread apart, all the time exposing your back while you try to get them.

I'll do some testing with my feral druid this weekend. If we can AOE enough to make heal aggro a non-issue in heroics and up, that will be sufficient for my purposes. So what if the DPS has to focus-fire a little. If it stays on me and doesn't chase everyone around, that'll be fine.

Sure, I'd like it to be as good as my warrior will be, but, I'll be happy to not be told "Oh, we wanted a pally tank, sorry."

What's bear-tank damage like now, btw?

I tested Pestilence tonight and I was incorrect, it does affect any mob within 10 yards. So even better than I thought.

Yeah, I was going to say, it's a non-directional aoe. I'm undecided about the Glyph for Pesti. On one hand it helps for better spreads if things are on their way in. On the other hand it makes it a little more dangerous around CC (if you use it...).

For anyone interested, I whirlwind tanked my way through 3 straight heroics tonight on my warrior, and cleared Shattered Halls with 45 minutes left on the timer. That was crazy fun, I've never enjoyed tanking SH on my Warrior so much. And even outgearing the instance, I still had no rage problems thanks to Charge and the rage from Zerker rage and Shield Blocks. Love the new Warrior arsenal!

I break it down this way.

burst AE threat
consistent AE threat
being mobile with AE threat

Burst AE threat
Warrior, DK, Paladin/Druid

Consistent AE threat
Paladin, Druid, DK, Warrior

Mobile AE threat
DK, Warrior/druid, Paladin


While i'm not 100% sure if the above is correct. That is the way i see it right now. When i look at an event i see what type of AE threat we need.

I was able to tank Felmyst adds but i'm sure a paladin and even a druid is better at it because of how consistent their AE is. People can simply run into the AE during the gathering. With a warrior doing the AE tanking the players have to stand around and wait for Shockwave or Tclap. A DK could keep a pretty good up time on DnD but that sitll has a 5 sec window of downtime which causes them to use other abilities to fill the gap.

Being mobile with your AE threat can be important at times. a DK can cast DnD wherever they want. Warriors / Druids have charge and paladins have to hoof it.

I don't really see it being an issue between the 4 tanking classes. Each can probably do every AE tanking job that there is. Some might have an easier time with it then others but that will change from event to event.

The only issue with DnD is that it is on one area of the ground, if you move out of it it doesn't work. Also there is a cool down to it.

Icy touch-pest-blood boil is a bit better for mobile threat.

Same thing for a pally, usually you will try to stay inside the radius of the consecration.

I've always seen this spell as a boxing ring, no matter what happens, I can move, I can do everything but I must stay inside the ring ;)

Of course, its not as true now that HotR has been added, but remains that on real tough pulls you will use it.

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What's bear-tank damage like now, btw?

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So my guild ran two groups in ZA last night and I got to actually try out my new toys. My group had myself with a full bear tank spec and a prot warrior for our two tanks. I was probably too conservative in using CC and 2 tanks for a lot of trash pulls out of habit. I also assigned things the way I always used to treating the warrior as a MT and druid as OT, so he tanked all the single-tank guys.

My DPS for the overall run averaged around 690-ish or so. I was switching between tank and dps gear and went full cat on the Eagle boss. My dps gear is mostly T4/Badge gear; my tanking gear is also mostly badge with T5 Shoulders.

The warrior averaged around 485...I suspect he hasn't yet swapped out for more damage-oriented gear.

All of the AOE pulls were crazy...no problems with aggro and the mobs died really silly fast. I did try to assign things a little differently here and there...for example, on the pulls with the 1 big lynx and all the cubs, in the past I'd put the warrior on the single target and I'd tank the AOE guys...I reversed it this time so that he could have his fun with shockwave and TC. Even so, a few swipes tossed in did grab some of the little guys.

I kept an eye on debuffs and noticed that many times, the mobs I was tanking were just out of range of his TC. I am leaning more heavily to keeping Infected Wound, just for the flexibility of being able to move around and still debuff my targets effectively.

Dragonhawk was my big test. As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the past most of our kills were with 2 druid tanks and I would always tank the boss. There have been a few times in the past when I went in with different raid makeups and I had to deal with the birds, and I always hated and dreaded it, and usually didn't do a very good job (the druid who handled this on our kills is just better at this task than me).

So, we got to that boss, I assigned the warrior to tank the boss and I handled the birds. The ONLY time any birds got away from me was when I had to move away due to the bombs before I could get a swipe off. It was actually...FUN...to take down those birds!! We took an entire side at a time, and had no issue at all.

The only downside in the evening were some server glitches and people locking up here and there. That prevented us from making the chest timer. Also caused a wipe when the entire raid lagged out at once...then finally came back to find us all dead :( Also had a nice server crash at one point and it took a while to get everyone back in.

The guild's other group decided to try an experiment and ran the whole place with just ONE tank (a druid). They cleared it and got all four chests. The tank for that group did comment to me later that the bear boss is "scary" with just one tank.

This is the spec I used: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

I am thinking of adjusting it, as I didn't need to spell-interrupt very often and I'd like to get the points into Improved Mangle if I can. I might drop KoTJ and 1 point from Brutal Impact to pick that up. I hesitate because of the need to still go cat for some fights, and without OOC, I really want SOME way to get back some energy quickly.

Appologies if this is the wrong thread for this but it seams to be the best fit so far, and I'm really glad the subject has been brought up.

The guild I'm in is what I would guess is your above average raid guild, we're not nailing server firsts or anything nor are we casual raiders. I'll be tanking and Raid leading and want to make sure I've got a tank group that fits those needs. So from that point of view.

Assuming player skill is equal are all 4 of the tank classses truly viable progression raid level MTs. I'm not asking who the "best" MT is but rather are the margins close enough on all 4 that your not hurting yourself by picking x to tank 90% of the bosses.

Are there any "must have" classes. If my tank group is DK, DK, Druid and Pally am I golden or will I be hurting w/o a protection warrior (outside of buffs/debuffs). Are there synergies that are just to good to pass up?

Are there any bosses that any class can't tank (other than fight mecahincs = no threat table). Can't or it's so rediculously hard that your slowing down progression by not having another class tanking.


Thanks, great discussion so far.

You'll be fine with whatever makeup of your tanking core. That's the goal Blizzard set and it seems to have come to fruition, any errors on that part should be notified and blizz will rectify it but so far I don't see any tanks falling short.

Just noticed that our paladin and druid tank are both producing ALOT more threat than me during raid times. Baffles me abit and also feels abit overwhelming since I am trying my best to produce what I can, the funny thing is really that I am limited by my procs.

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Originally Posted by mavfin

I'll do some testing with my feral druid this weekend. If we can AOE enough to make heal aggro a non-issue in heroics and up, that will be sufficient for my purposes. So what if the DPS has to focus-fire a little. If it stays on me and doesn't chase everyone around, that'll be fine.

Sure, I'd like it to be as good as my warrior will be, but, I'll be happy to not be told "Oh, we wanted a pally tank, sorry."

What's bear-tank damage like now, btw?

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Update: Bear can tank all the stuff my warrior could just fine. It wasn't the same, but it was functionally as good. Just worked different. I don't have a pally to test with, but, we knew they could AOE tank.

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Originally Posted by Kazeyonoma

You'll be fine with whatever makeup of your tanking core. That's the goal Blizzard set and it seems to have come to fruition, any errors on that part should be notified and blizz will rectify it but so far I don't see any tanks falling short.

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I'd make one tweak: Mix-n-match is better than "all one class".

It just doesn't matter what the mix is. But (for example) triple-warrior is worse than DK-bear-tankadin.

All-one-class is perhaps the only circumstance I can think of where you might actually get stuck on content due to a bad tanking team.

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Originally Posted by Knaughty

I'd make one tweak: Mix-n-match is better than "all one class".

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I would have to agree. Choices are good.