Warrior or Pala

[crazy-daddy]

Hi fellow tanks

I've been tanking as a prot pally for some time now and am currently in FL HC with my guild. However I also started a warrior twink, with whom I'm arguably not as experienced and who's not yet as well equiped as my pally.
However as we have 5 ppl rolling on Pally/Priest/WL tokens and only 2 rolling on hunter/shaman/warri I'm kinda intrigued to switch to my warrior for the next contentpatch.
However I'm still having some issues with ye old warrior :-)

1) I REALLY miss the pallies imbataunt Righteous Defense - not all that important in raids but the lack of it gives me a little hassle in heroics
2) I can't seem to get my warrior to blockcap with mastery only scaling like 1.5 instead of 2.25 :-( If that remains impossible in 4.3 my concern is that damage will be less smooth as a direct result of it
3) The warrior's CDs feel a little weak compared to the pallies.
Pally: 50% less dmg for 12 sec every 3 min
Warri: 40% less dmg for 12 sec every 2 min
Not a huge difference here
Pally: 20% less dmg + You may die free of charge ;-)
Warrior: You get +30% HP
I would see slight fav. for the pally here on the other hand the warriors spell lasts longer so about the same as well
Pally: 20% less dmg for raid
Warri: 20% more HP for raid
Now here I definitely see the pally at the front... The 20% more HP means the raid will survive the same as with the pallybuff - but they will need to be healed. AND for the warri this is shared CD with Last Stand - not so for the pally
Pally: 20% less dmg every minute
Pally: +20% blockvalue
Warri: Shield Block
Warri: Spellreflect

Now unless I really stupidly skipped sth. that puts the pally in front of the warri in terms of CDs...

Any experienced warrior tank willing to change my mind on this? Would be heavily appreciated

[Durahide]

Hey Crazy, so from what I take from your post is, you are really looking in the the raid utility of the class and surviablity. Im in the "other boat" as it were. I have my Prot warrior for my raids and have an alt pali that im working with. So im not that well versed with the pali side. But i can touch base on why I prefer Warrior over Pali.

About the ever elusive Warrior (Passive) block cap, you are right, Pali has a far easier time reaching it than warrior, but warrior can still reach it in current content while sporting heroic gear. Prior to that its all about mastery food and elixer.

As for warrior CD's? Well, for the most part they all fall fairly close to a pali, so I cant really put too much into that other than its not only the big Cds that make a warrior and enjoyable experince. Pali tank are in a great place atm and are the most powerful tank in current content. So if any thing it should really boil down to play style. Pali with slightly better CDs and or a Warrior with the slightly weaker CDs, But the thing that trumphs all of the pali stuff for me, as prot Warrior you have truck load of stuns (atleast 4 depending on race). But For me its mobility, you can zipp around alot faster than a pali, 2 types of charge that can be used as an intrupts as well, innerve to save some asses or to quickly get out/away of something, and we get the skill "No path avalible" (also known as Heroic Leap) great for kiting and getting around. This mobility is that selling point for me.

Sry I couldnt put things in to a better mathmatical term, but honesty Play style should be what ur looking at. If your guild is chasing world/server firsts and you need to min/max, then I say get them both geared up, and use which ever one is strongest with current content at the time of need.

Hope this helps!!

[Tengenstein]

You seem to be unfamiliar with shield Block, it does not double your block value, it meerly increases you chance to block by 25% and any over flow past unhittable then increase your chance for blocks to double size, AND also reduces all magic damage by 20% for 6 seconds. you can also glyph shield wall to be 60% on a 4min CD so whilst we might not have the middle ground of the other tanks, we can go for weaker but more uses, or stringer but less uses dependant on the encounter.

Warriors to not have as smooth a damage intake as pallies, due to being harder to reach full CTC coverage, however they do have a greater raw damage reduction via their block mechanic than pallies. one thing to keep in mind that without any heroic FL gear warriors can be unhittable for a lot of the time due to Shield block and wind walk up times, and at the same time full CTC is getting harder as some bosses like Baleroc and Ragnaros appear to have expertise, this is something something a warrior can do some of the time (More so on taunt swap fights) with his holy shield equivalent, but a pally may struggle with.

While righteous Fury is nice, warriors have a sort of counter in Vigilance refreshing taunt. In a 5 man its pretty crap, but raid fight like Beth it can be awesome since your co tank is liable to be melee'd every couple of seconds you end up having taunt available every 2 seconds, which can be godsend for pulling spiders down.

and lastly you're totally ignoring the what is probably the best part of a warrior tank; The manoeuvrability, while this is a mediocre on tank and spanks, on some fights it can make some mechanics non existant. Nefarian P3 was a joke, Shannox's jagged tear tis pretty much a "clear my stacks button", al'akir its a means to ignore squall lines at will. Combined with Piercing Howl it really makes us rather powerful kiters.

[crazy-daddy]

Indeed the mobility of the warrior made me have a really fun time at Shannox hero.
I indeed totally FORGOT shield block (*selfslap*) the +20% blockvalue is of course for the pallies tiny CD.

I did not yet realize Raggi had Exp. He did not seem to have hit my pally in any encounter (acc. to worldoflogs that is). Maybe I just got extremely lucky *g*

I didn't think of using Vigilance in that way for Beth... guess I still need to familiarize myself with the warri quite a lot

Anyway, thanks for the input so far - guess I will try to get my warri up to the ilvl of my pally and then decide kinda "as we go" which one will go for "progrees" and which one goes to the twinkraid

[Fetzie]

Hi fellow tanks

I've been tanking as a prot pally for some time now and am currently in FL HC with my guild. However I also started a warrior twink, with whom I'm arguably not as experienced and who's not yet as well equiped as my pally.
However as we have 5 ppl rolling on Pally/Priest/WL tokens and only 2 rolling on hunter/shaman/warri I'm kinda intrigued to switch to my warrior for the next contentpatch.
However I'm still having some issues with ye old warrior :-)

1) I REALLY miss the pallies imbataunt Righteous Defense - not all that important in raids but the lack of it gives me a little hassle in heroics

Warriors can put vigilance on somebody and have their taunt cooldown refreshed every time that player takes damage.

2) I can't seem to get my warrior to blockcap with mastery only scaling like 1.5 instead of 2.25 :-( If that remains impossible in 4.3 my concern is that damage will be less smooth as a direct result of it

Nobody really knows what Blizzard wants to do with mastery scaling for block tanks, they have said in the past that they are OK with block capping, then they say they want it to be harder to block cap and redesign Holy Shield to no longer provide block chance.

Pally: 20% less dmg for raid
Warri: 20% more HP for raid
Now here I definitely see the pally at the front... The 20% more HP means the raid will survive the same as with the pallybuff - but they will need to be healed. AND for the warri this is shared CD with Last Stand - not so for the pally

Damage reduced is indeed better than damage soaked. However DG only has a 30 or 36 yard range, sometimes you really need to move to have it on everyone (using it in P1 at Nef as the onyxia tank will leave half the raid (the melee dps on Nef for example) without the cooldown)

Pally: 20% less dmg every minute
Pally: Double the blockvalue
Warri: Spellreflect

You forgot Shield Block which effectively reduces you melee damage intake by 30% for 10 seconds on a 30 second cooldown (it also does a lot of other stuff and is totally bloated)

In general I would say that warrior, paladin and druid tanks have never been more balanced. Yes, there are differences; for example bears do not have an in-form raid cooldown (they can make the group run faster which is worth a lot in certain situations), paladins block more often than warriors, warriors have overall the most movement. I won't talk about Deathknights because I know diddly-squat about them.

Since when does Ragnaros have improved Expertise? Baleroc is a bit screwy, but as far as I know Rag is normal in that respect (the only change to rag that I am aware of is the 270° "back zone").

[swelt]

Changing tank class just because of the tier tokens seems like a pretty bad idea to me. You will always perform better in a class that you like and have more experience with. Offset gear is often as good as, or better than, tier slots. And aren't they mixing up the token classes again for next patch? A much better reason to consider changing class would be if it helped your raid synergy, or if you wanted the extreme mobility (and the resulting extra boss strategies) that a warrior tank brings to a group. Whatever you decide, now is probably the ideal time to switch: a nerfed firelands is a great place to gear up.

I thought the phantom 'hits' had been tracked down to fully absorbed hits or some such error in the log parsing. There is a blue post which states specifically that expertise as a boss mechanic was not developed.

[Charon]

DKs have Death Strike, Which is like a heal and a small priest bubble at the same time. Icebound Fortitude is a pretty large damage reduction (30%/15sec every 3 minutes), and AMS to soak big magic attacks by turning the damage into Runic Power, which in turn means bigger Death Strikes/Self-Heals/Blood Shields. The down side to DK tanks (From my LK-based knowledge, and logical deduction) is that they're likely VERY hard to cover CTC. For a magic-heavy fight, I'd love to see a DK tank taunt-swapping with a warrior. Not sure how Dark Simulcrum factors into boss fights, if at all, but that's another tool in their kit that seems VERY powerful despite the strain on the healer which again could be reduced with a couple timely Death Strikes.

[swelt]

Who said anything about DKs? I'd avoid talking about CTC with respect to DKs, it's just not a relevant concept. But anyway, the OP is trying to decide between warrior and paladin.

[kopcap]

There is hardly any doubt Palladins are BiS tanks on most fights and are very easy to gear. That said warriors are not far behind and arguably the most fun tank class to play. They also provide some good tank utility that no other class can. If you already have a number of paladins in the raid, likely no one will even notice a transition. If paladins are rare, I would not recommend it.

[klausi]

I won't start talking deeply about cooldowns, there are plenty of discussions about that and in it's current game state paladin may only come ahead slightly due to LoH (instantheal to full on anyone in your raid you want to ~ once per try) and ardent defender's undieable component, everything else is totally in line. You can't use bubble on any bossfight in FL effectively, Blizzard did a good job there (after the Disaster in t11 content) and with raidshout warrior got their own raidcooldown.

I love my warrior (high mobility, lots of quick decision making depending on rage), but paladin just feel superior due to their resource system (and only from that!). Mana is always around unless you hit the wrong buttons to often in a row while for a warrior you actually need to get slapped (hard!) in your face to gain some rage. With my paladin i just can do my single or multi target rotation/priority system and don't have to alternate my heroic strike/cleave usage depending on the enemies i'm facing, my current gear state etc. That's just easier and i can focus on party-/raidleading and utilising my huge arsenal (hand of sacrifice, salvation, protection, holy radiance) on the group. Another plus: if you know there's a huge burst coming you can start saving some holy power and use your word of glory right after a breath/electrocute to further aid your healers. That's the active tanking model Blizzard is talking about for a while and they took mostly DK's as an example but to an lesser extent paladin could do that as well for the whole expansion. One WoG doesn't seem much but proper specced that's up to 60k crits and with the Guarded by the Light talent you can use it even before a burst to absorb a huge chunk of it.

[crazy-daddy]

I won't start talking deeply about cooldowns, there are plenty of discussions about that and in it's current game state paladin may only come ahead slightly due to LoH (instantheal to full on anyone in your raid you want to ~ once per try)

Indeed I forgot LoH (foolish me xD)

You can't use bubble on any bossfight in FL effectively, Blizzard did a good job there (after the Disaster in t11 content) and with raidshout warrior got their own raidcooldown.

You can use it while tanking the little birds during Alysrazor as you won't lose aggro on them. Not a dramatic thing, but useful for your healer to catch his breath *g* And with the fight being quite lengthy on hero I found I can use it once per phase 1.

[Nehama]

You can use it while tanking the little birds during Alysrazor as you won't lose aggro on them. Not a dramatic thing, but useful for your healer to catch his breath *g* And with the fight being quite lengthy on hero I found I can use it once per phase 1.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you unable to preform half of your attacks while bubbled?

From personal expiriance on my warrior/watching our other tank [dk] on the birds, you usually want every spare second you have to DPS them down. They don't hurt that much, espacially once you learn to avoid/reset tantrums in the right way. (Warriors can do it without being hit or having to run through fire-balls with 1 well placed heroic leap on every bird, as a contra, if you'd like).

[Fetzie]

You can stand in the Firestorm without dying to finish your bird off while bubbled. It is Hand of Protection that prevents you from performing any moves that are not spells or require an equipped weapon or shield.

[Tengenstein]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you unable to preform half of your attacks while bubbled?

From personal expiriance on my warrior/watching our other tank [dk] on the birds, you usually want every spare second you have to DPS them down. They don't hurt that much, espacially once you learn to avoid/reset tantrums in the right way. (Warriors can do it without being hit or having to run through fire-balls with 1 well placed heroic leap on every bird, as a contra, if you'd like).

Divine shield makes them immune to all damage but decrease all done by 50%. Hand of Protection makes you immune but prevents you making physical attacks

[Durahide]

Aslo on a side note, if your bird isnt dying prior to ground phase, there is pobably something wrong there. More so with the nerfs!

P.S. tornados are very easy to avoid, even if tanking a bird!

[klausi]

Aslo on a side note, if your bird isnt dying prior to ground phase, there is pobably something wrong there. More so with the nerfs!

Depends on the tank to be honest. If i'm lazy and won't swap to strength food/flask and don't crit often enough (who don't love those 6 digits back to back shield slam crits during heavy repercussions with reputation trinket up) i still have some trouble killing birds from time to time before and even after the 15% hitpoints nerf on my warrior. But maybe i just tend to play it down safe (keeping up tc/demo instead of killing it three globals earlier) and that's the real problem there For one of your sets you also got a golemblood potion as backup but for the other 1-2 (depending you rdps and how many healer you bring) you'll have to do it all by yourself (unless you have a rogue or druid to back you up with tricks/thorns).

There's no issue whatsoever on my paladin due to way higher critrate (50%+) with SotR and wings being ready for first and more importantly third bird.