The Four Different Tanks (Comparisons)

[Kazeyonoma]

yes, of course choices are good, but say you have a guild made mostly of friends and friends of friends. and just so happens, all your paladins of your 25 man small guild love holy and don't like to tank, likewise no DKs and druids love boomkin. But you DO have 3 prot loving warriors.

Is this the optimal setup? No.
Will this hold you back? No.

[boscosuma]

After running through Black Temple after the patch with a Druid, Warrior and Paladin tank, I can honestly say that the "niche" for each is still there. I play a protection warrior, and even though TC, Damage Shield and Shockwave are great crowd control, it still does not replace the awesomeness of paladin consecrate. TC and Shockwave are burst AOE damage, and can initially keep a bunch of mobs on a tank, but loosing mobs to AOE casters is still just as easy. With a palading dropped conscecrate, that effecttive DoT helps keep mobs in their place rather than running off to the casters. Even with Damage Shield adding threat/damage it may not be enough.

Druids also still have their niche, in my opinion. Though armor has been reduced, they normally still have more armor in bear, and therefore mitigate just as effectively, if not somewhat better than warriors and paladins. Frontal crowd control is also nice to see with their swipe, but they suffer from the same drawback as the warrior in keeping multiple targets. AOE damage to mobs infront of them can still cause a change of targets to the casters.

Over all, I think that Blizz has evened the bar on the tanking classes, but still gave them their special area's to focus in. Personally, even in a 5 man, I would still bring a paladin tank to Shattered Halls before I brought a protection warrior (myself) or a druid tank.

[Chunes]

(T6 Prot pally here)

At present I feel the 3 implemented tank classes are closer to each other in terms of viability and benefit to the raid than ever before. Running BT with a War, Bear and Paladin was so much fun as a tank corps simply because we all shine in little ways, but overall we are very competitive w/ one another.

Speaking specifically to druids, despite the armor nerf that happened, what of the ability that increases the bear's damage reduction by a certain percent based on the number of players in his/her party? Our bear tank was raving about that ability and it sure seemed to make his damage intake seem very managable for our heal team.

Moving back to paladins, I am supremely content with the direction of our class's changes. For all intents and purposes i think we are fine as-is, but i'd still love to steal one or two more fun abilities from our red-barred bretheren.

Namely some sort of anti-spell damage ability (i don't even think a reflect is necessary, but something)

[Knaughty]

yes, of course choices are good, but say you have a guild made mostly of friends and friends of friends. and just so happens, all your paladins of your 25 man small guild love holy and don't like to tank, likewise no DKs and druids love boomkin. But you DO have 3 prot loving warriors.

Is this the optimal setup? No.
Will this hold you back? No.

"All warriors" is probably the only single-class tanking team that works well in a 25. "All Holy Priests" is the equivalent healing team. In both cases that spec is the most flexible spec at its role (NB: Most flexible doesn't equal "best").

Triple-up on the other three tanking classes and you will have problems and likely be held up. Same if all 8 healers in your 25 are the same class.

I'd really try and find one more class for your tanking team.

[Shadevarr]

in hyjal last night I would routinely pull aggro off the tankadin once he had it established with TC and shockwave. Granted the shockwaves were critting in the 1700 range. All in all I prefer having a tankadin AoE tank but I do know that if he isn't there we can get the job done...just not as cleanly.

[Khandyman]

In these examples you guys are giving of warriors being capable at aoe tanking but not on the level of paladins was Vigilance involved at all? I'm just wondering how much difference, if any, would be had from slapping Vigilance on your nastiest aoe nuker. Could Vigilance be a key to warrior aoe tanking that we've been forgetting about?

[Vonbek]

In these examples you guys are giving of warriors being capable at aoe tanking but not on the level of paladins was Vigilance involved at all? I'm just wondering how much difference, if any, would be had from slapping Vigilance on your nastiest aoe nuker. Could Vigilance be a key to warrior aoe tanking that we've been forgetting about?

I have been running heroics with a hunter who is at least a tier above me in gear. The only times I have seen a runner during aoe, I find that I have not been.... uh... vigilant in keeping vigilance up on him. I do think vigilance is a big help to our aoe threat.

[thunder]

This is an overview of the difference with healing tanks of similar gear level (just heroic as raids there are more healers and it's harder to judge). I haven't had a chance to tank with more than 2 classes yet so don't have reliable information there. This is not theorycrafting just basic observations only from a "how hard to heal are they" viewpoint, and obviously *very* generalised. Gear level is mainly blues, maybe a purple or three. By threat I don't mean TPS I mean, losing a mob.

warriors, mid to high level hp, easy to heal as not huge amounts of damage, still the best all around tank to heal. EH seems the best on average. Best single target threat, AoE tanking nearly up to paladins on threat.

paladins, mid to low hp, medium to heal but this may be more aoe pulls with less cc, and less likely to have stray mobs hit the other party members and spread the damage so it's all single healing. Best AoE tank still. Great dps as well as damage.

dk's, mid hp, take more damage than paladins and warriors on average - but I haven't been able to find many competent dk's to compare with other tanks. I haven't been impressed with blood threat so far compared to the others but there are still many people learning the class/specs so I imagine that will change.

druids, high hp, take more heals as they take more damage. In fact, from being the amazing dodge/armour tanks they were in TBC they are now the squishiest I've had to deal with. Very curious to see how this goes. Very well geared bears are closer to the other tank classes with similar gear, as opposed to the entry level tanking set I'm generalising about here.

From a healer point of view, the hybrids and others are still viable, but a warrior is my favourite in terms of mitigation. And yes, I have a bear, so this admission hurt

[Duriensbane]

As far as ive seen, and from the feed back i get from our healers, being good in your class makes you somewhat easier to heal. Sounds weird but if you look at the basics of tanking, first you need to know how to gear yourself and make yourself as best as you can, then you need to know what to do when the "oHHH S@#T" happens. Lastly you need to get the gear that you need to make yourself better.

I consider all of the 4 tanks prime tanks to MT, OT, AoE and Single target. I dont put any above the rest. It also depends on what your dps is like and how they know you and your style of tanking. There are times that you have to forgo "give me a sec to get aggro" to "the second it lands, blow it the Heck up" and all 4 classes have taunts that give you a little "leway"

I personally while tanking drakes on sarth, will taunt, tps rotation, mocking, tps rotation, taunt, yadda yadda yadda, even if im over everyone else, simply to keep that intinal 1-3 seconds over everyone else. Really bad specially when dps doesnt listen on boss setting and think, well, no one else is attacking so...attack attack, 13k starfire, pulled boss off tank, raid wipe.

So regardless of class all the tanks are panning out nicely. Slowly smearing the differances between them to make everyone worth having around. Our core...2 prot warrs and prot pala or prot warr, druid, pala. Since imo unless you have a fury warr, commanding is such a nice thing to have.

And honestly, i think they need to get in a Chain wearing tank....so i dont have as much compotiton for my plate gear.

[thunder]

Shamans used to be able to tank - it was a rare shaman that could do a good job at the time though. no taunt, just an amazing amount of damage and aggro. I only ever saw it done successfully in 5 mans - anyone try it in raid when you could?

I totally agree, although my main competition now is rogues and cat druids (and other melee dpsers not too embaressed to wear leather)

Skill is always a major part of tanking, naturally - my post was very generalised and I know it All tanks are viable, even if the niches are getting closer and closer.

edit: yay the thread is restarting!

[Lightmgl]

Haha we used to use shaman tanks back in early horde side wow.

I think DKs will have the best mitigation in the game by a gigantic margin due to their coming higher armor vs other classes and their already gigantic avoidance advantage. Cooldowns aren't even part of the issue, they just add insult to the injury.

DKs need single target threat help. It is going to be their achille's heel even though their mitigation is godlike.

Warriors need aoe threat help. I dunno why they are so afraid to give us a spammable move or raise the dmg on what we've got.

Druids need serious mitigation help. They do not have nearly enough avoidance (The loss of the 5.6% miss from defense is big) combined with the fact that they only have a single avoidance stat which eats severe diminishing returns. Their large hp pool does nothing, they take so much freaking damage.

Assuming gear levels and skill are equal, I think Warriors and Pallys would make a great baseline. Bring Druids and DKs to their level. DKs will most likely need serious retooling, they scale too well. Pretty soon DKs will be matching Wars/Pallys at hp in endgame gear with better cooldowns, better armor, and better avoidance.

None of it matters until encounters get more difficult but the DK advantage is pretty significant from what I've seen. You hear stories of DKs trivializing Sarth +3, Enraged Faerlina, and even tanking Razuvious for significant amounts of time.

[kolben]

Warriors need aoe threat help. I dunno why they are so afraid to give us a spammable move or raise the dmg on what we've got.

I have a theory on this. Gear scaling.

Historically whenever new content with more powerful gear is released the best geared warriors start showing up and doing ridiculous things. Going all the way back to the early days of WoW classic (1.x) this has been the case.

Reference the ancient Rank 14 tauren warrior "Pat" videos. He made a point to show what a superbly geared warrior buffed to the hilt was capable of.

The opposite has been true whenever warriors go on the forums and complain about this, that or the other thing. Blizzard's answer has always been along the "Gear up Warriors!!!" line.

Other classes *think* they are gear dependent, but don't realize it's not nearly as drastic as it is for Warriors. Dozens of examples on this, but look at what T6 gear did for Fury. Chimps to Champs right there.

Short version of the story is that I imagine that Blizzard is thinking that at some point down the road that some Protection Warriors in some far away epic gear are going to need the nerf bat because of unforseen scaling.

[Duriensbane]

well i honestly think the single target threat of a DK tank is there for a reason....they dont need to be hit to produce aggro.

So why would you make it so they are on par with the other tanks that require getting hit to produce aggro. I think the whole point of that, though it does need a little more, is to prolong the fights so their chances of getting hit increase. If i were a tank that didnt need to be hit, produced 6k+ tps on every fight, and had such a high avoidance i never got hit, you could bring roughly 1 less healer, 1 more dps and blow through encounters in no time. Thats not what blizzard wants, they dont want a tank that doesnt require healing and still produce the aggro desired by the rest of the raid. It might gimp them in the long run but i only see it as fair.

[Auranar]

I've really failed to notice through practice how warriors are better mitigators. With the massive cooldown on shield block there isn't any way to mitigate damage on unstunnable mobs. While paladins have the ability to basically mitigate or avoid any hit that comes their way. The only exception to paladins not being able to front some sort of damage reduction (other then armor) is when they are tanking a lot of things simultaneously. While I love the changes they made to warriors (except to the cooldown of shield block). I think paladin's blow everyone out of the water right now.

[Feanorr]

Pretty soon DKs will be matching Wars/Pallys at hp in endgame gear with better cooldowns, better armor, and better avoidance

As far as I know we already have better hp than pal/war at same gear level (at least when the gear is good enough). +10% Hp is better than 11 or 12% stam (I think it's what war and pally get).
However, we dont have any damage reduction like the 3 other tank class (defensive stance, improved righteus fury and shield of the templar, and protector of the pack) and warrior/pal mitigate a lot of damage through shield block. And the little difference in armor dont make up for this.

So comparing avoidance and armor is not enough and we definitly need our CD and our better avoidance to make up for the difference.

Infortunatly there is only a druid at my gear level in my guild so I cant really compare in game with pal and war; and compared to druid, yes we take a lot less damage overall (but more spicky too); and the next patch should reduce both of it, we should take more damage overall cause a 20% increase in armor is less than 4% reduction in physical damage but a bit less spicky

[Satorri]

I was gearing up along side my warrior and paladin tanks and I've always had higher health (I'm a DK these days for those who don't know). Part of that was getting certain drops first, but otherwise I've maintained a slightly higher level. I think the added sockets to the BS helm will close that gap in current content a bit.

Warriors don't need more aoe threat, though it takes a little more skill to do it well, and sometimes more work. A warrior can't quite hold aoe threat from a paladin or a good unholy DK in Naxx, but they can certainly hold it off of aoe dps (I've watched my guild mate do it for weeks).

[Blacklac]

Maybe I'm missing something. I can not find another tank class that can gen more threat than my pally. It is actually quite impossible for me to offtank, I generate too much threat. Single target, AOE, it doesn't make much difference. I don't know if it is lack of effort, or gear, or knowledge from the other tanks in my guild and on my server, but warrior/bear/DKs just cant keep up with the pallys. I've seen the fights, cleared naxx, sarth, havent killed maly yet.../cry. Theres only 2 fights I can think of where a pally tank isn't the best choice.

1) 4 Horsemen - Obvious, 2 AOE taunts just doesn't work. (Being fixed from what I hear)

2) Patchwerk - Possibly better for a Beak/DK/Warrior tank to be offtanking. Pure HP for the hatefuls. But you can, and we have, get by with avoidance stats to replace the high stam.

Right now everyone I talk to is screaming bloody murder about how overpowered paladins are. To some extent I agree. On the other hand Frost Presence is like 4 pally talents and still goes way beyond making up for the lack of a shield.

When a well geared DPS DK in my guild can accidentally leave frost presence on and have close to the same HP as me, it makes me cry. I understand DKs are the new bears, and IMO bear tanks are broken, but that might be because I haven't had very much experience with post patch bear tanks at all.

[Sintrie]

What do Paladin tanks do when not Main tanking (essentially DPSing for a boss fight)? Warriors and Druids can still generate a fair bit of rage through auto attacks, and also have procs to allow some abilities to be used with no rage cost.

I'm not sure if Paladins have similar talents. But not having played one, I could forsee them having an issue when they are not needed to tank for a certain fight. How long can they go before going OOM? Do they have ways of regenerating mana, or is it simply not an issue? I understand they will not need to maintain the same rotation they would while tanking, but they would still want to do more than just auto-attack I would think.

That was the first thing I thought of with these new changes.

Umm yea, to be honest, I hope I dont have to OT, one major weakness with pally tanks, is Mana generation. You either rely on a passive tallent that gives you mana everytime your healed, or you have to choose equiptment that gives you a bigger mana pool and better regeneration at the cost of mitigation. To be honest, without having to carry 2 sets of armor, I would have to seriously tone down my rotation, as well as possibly un-equip some equiptment slots to increase the damage I take, so I can get healed, thereby getting more mana, but that can put extra strain on the healers, Its tough. Though I could see also useing Hand of Sacrifice to take 30% of the damage off the MT, which would result in needing to be healed, resulting in more mana, but that just distributes the dmg more, and I am not sure how that would effect the healers job.

Paladins:
...Weaknesses? Scattered gear requirements hurt. You need to balance mitigation with spell power, mixing casting weapons, warrior gear, spell damage trinkets, funky enchant mixes. ...

I did not see a comment about this, with WotLK they made a change to Paladins that have them wearing equipment with the same kinda stats as you would see a warrior wear. This was due to a new talent in the prot tree called Touched by the Light which when you put 3 points into it, Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%, makes reaching uncritable alot easyer as you dont need to use that 'mixed' stat gear.

Maybe I'm missing something. I can not find another tank class that can gen more threat than my pally. It is actually quite impossible for me to offtank, I generate too much threat. Single target, AOE, it doesn't make much difference. I don't know if it is lack of effort, or gear, or knowledge from the other tanks in my guild and on my server, but warrior/bear/DKs just cant keep up with the pallys.

I agree with this, only thing that keeps me off the top of the threat chart is if I run out of mana, and even then, I usualy have so much threat built up, I can recover before I loose threat.

-Sintrie

[Duriensbane]

As stated before, maybe not this post but in others, current pala threat is broken. Judgement of Light i belive produces more threat then needed, and honestly i would hope you can produce more threat then another tank class, you can open up with your best abilities right off the bat, me, a warrior, has to wait a second or so to begin if i dont charge in, even then parry and dodgies effect how much im producing.

String Crits land me in the upper 8k's but string parry/dodge can drop me to 2k. Its all about how many hits i land. And even then i might go 10-15 seconds w/o a crit.

[Lightmgl]

As far as I know we already have better hp than pal/war at same gear level (at least when the gear is good enough). +10% Hp is better than 11 or 12% stam (I think it's what war and pally get).
However, we dont have any damage reduction like the 3 other tank class (defensive stance, improved righteus fury and shield of the templar, and protector of the pack) and warrior/pal mitigate a lot of damage through shield block. And the little difference in armor dont make up for this.

So comparing avoidance and armor is not enough and we definitly need our CD and our better avoidance to make up for the difference.

Infortunatly there is only a druid at my gear level in my guild so I cant really compare in game with pal and war; and compared to druid, yes we take a lot less damage overall (but more spicky too); and the next patch should reduce both of it, we should take more damage overall cause a 20% increase in armor is less than 4% reduction in physical damage but a bit less spicky

I agree you guys need an avoidance advantage, I'm just saying you have too large of one.

Me: 31.3k unbuffed hps, 24k armor, 54% raidbuffed avoidance, 1300 SBV, 20% block chance, Defensive Stance

DK: 29k unbuffed hps (Hes too stubborn to go JC), 26.3k armor, 68% raidbuffed avoidance

Assuming a boss hitting for 12k.

Currently my Defensive stance = 10% postarmor mitigation which is about 3.7% in a raid situation so my effective armor is raised by 3.7%. Hes got 2% more armor than I do. This is a 1.7% mitigation advantage for me.

46% attacks land on me and I have a 20% block chance (so I block just under half the hits that land on me). My average block is 1690 taking crit block into account. Thats an average of around 734 dmg removed per attack that lands for 12k, around a 6% mitigation advantage for me bringing my total advantage to 7.7%.

He has 14% more avoidance then me. Out of the 46% attacks that land on me this is a 30.4% mitigation increase. Thats about 4 times the advantage I gain from passive blocking and defensive stance. How can someone even argue that this is fair? Obviously this advantage decreases or increases with the mob's damage but the only point where we are equal is on mobs that hit for 3k or less.

Next patch he'll be looking at armor levels that completely negate my defensive stance bonus and he'll be taking up JC so his health will equal mine. He'll have an even larger advantage.

This doesn't even look at all the other nice little factors like Shield Block/Shield Wall vs IF/Lichborne/Bone Armor or the fact that he has way less attacks that can be parried compared to me because of his slower attack speed, less special spam, and specials that cannot be avoided. DKs are completely superior without their cooldowns already in endgame gear, people are just too distracted to realize it. The cooldowns just make the situation even more lobsided.

Believe me, endgame DKs are tanking gods. If things were to be equal his avoidance advantage would need to be closer to 3% or 4% and it would still be tremendously in his favor as bosses hit harder. I don't know why Blizzard fails to address this stuff but it is extremely clear after watching him tank compared to all of the other classes. Compare him to a druid and it is even funnier.

Whats gonna happen in a couple of raiding tiers when all of the sudden DKs are lookin at closer to 75% or 80% avoidance. If the avoidance scaling is linear the favor fall's into the DK's court. All the sudden his 14% advantage is of 35% of the remaining attacks instead of 46% which would be a 40% advantage. Add in mob hit debuffs and it just continues to scale more and more in favor of the DK. Blizzard should know better than this by now. They're risking a class getting to or close to 100% avoidance in this case and ensuring they have a large advantage over any of the other tanks. Avoidance is a dangerous tool, any gap becomes more and more skewed as you get closer to the cap.