Hi everyone, I have not played WoW in a few years and I tried some other MMOs and I found I enjoyed tanking quite a bit but never played it in WoW. Coming back to the game for the next expac makes me want to play a tank but I have absolutely no idea which to play. I think I am deciding between Demon Hunter, Death Knight and Paladin. I have no experience in raiding or Mythic+ so if that is a factor then please keep it in mind but I want all advice.
Ty.
I wouldn’t go with a DH tank as vengeance is getting heavily nerfed soon which will make it a dead spec. As for DK, they’re usually pretty good. However from what I’m seeing next expac-wise, pally will be the meta tank. Its the most fun visually, has the highest dps and utility.
Easiest one is DK, heal & Active mitigation baked in with main rotation.
I disagree. I think paladin is the easiest by a long shot. Rotation is extremely easy, basically hitting abilitys off of cooldown. Make’s it easy to concentrate on mechanics and figuring out when to use your defensive’s.
If you play it right too, you can also do quite a bit of healing. You have some of the Best CC in the game. Spammable silence that procs constantly. You can damn near perma silence an add if you choose too. It also means the paladin gets punished much less if they aren’t great at kicking, because a lot of the time you will just kick by default trying to deal damage.
DK also suffers super heavily from necrotic weeks. Some DK tanks just straight up wont do M+ on Necrotic weeks, as it requires them to kite a lot. And if they take to many hits their entire kit basically flys out the window at that point. Paladin does kinda ok with every affix in comparison.
What is this “which” tank to play?
There’s only one tank.
Protection Warrior.
You don’t hit SotR off cd, only DK does that.
Ok but that is one ability out of how many? If you cannot manage one ability in your kit, you should probably not play wow.
DK isn’t hard to play by any stretch either. I just feel like they have a much higher skill ceiling. Where with a Prot paladin you are kind a good at everything making it easy to learn. DK has a ton of glaring Strengths and Weakness’s both. However for a newer player getting around your weakness’s as a class can be some of the hardest things to learn. Paladin I feel suffers from heavy weakness’s much less than every other tank.
Strong mitigation, Easy rotation, Affixes don’t roll you like DK, Best interrupter in game.
The easiest tank is the one that can’t make mistake, which is Brewmaster and DK.
If you get out of Consecration, spammed your SotR or Demon Spike, you’re out, that alone would make DH and Pally have higher skill cap than DK.
Ask any Brew and DK only player if they ever get gibbed by Junkyard Boss, 99% of them probably say Junkyard boss dont have mechanic.
How can you ever get out of consecration? It stays on the floor for 15 seconds on like a 5 second cd. It’s almost spammable really and designed to be that way due to their mastery.
Secondly A Paladin can do the same on junkyard boss if you talent correctly. I use my bubble to dodge mechanics constantly, yes even as a tank. If I know there is fights that I can use the talent to my benefit ahead of time I switch too it. And use it no differently than a DK popping AMS.
You cannot convince me Prot paladin is harder to play just because you have to make sure you don’t overcast SotR.
If that is your logic, than BM is the hardest DPS in the game as well. They have to do the same thing with juggling barbed shot. However I bet you won’t get a single player to agree on this.
It’s clear that you don’t know which tank mechanic im talking about when you said AMS.
None of tank rotation is hard, but the one with limited AM is way harder than the one that has AM baked in their rotation.
Dead specs aren’t really a thing in WoW. They haven’t been since they stopped designing certain specs to be “leveling” specs or “pvp” specs. So, what, Cata or somewhere around there?
I didn’t expect this would be the quality of the thread I made 
Ok, but once again. DK has other glaring weakness’s. You just seem to be overlooking them like they do not exist?
They have the lowest mobilty of all tanks, which is rough on a ton of different affixes.
They get railed by Necrotic weeks, because their entire kit is designed around dealing damage to heal yourself. And the Affix literally counters that.
They have the slowest timed clears of any tanks.
They have less CC options. They cannot kick nearly as much as a Paladin.
DK has literally been rated as the worst tank almost this entire expansion mainly due to these glaring weakness’s. They are currently the only tank in the game being rated at the bottom tier.
DK’s are still going to feel really bad to play depending on the week, and how much mobility the current raid requires. Unless they completely change all the affix’s. Which I highly doubt will happen. They might add a few new ones, but just like going from Legion to BFA many of them will be in SL.
So to any new player picking this class up. They have to find a way to scale all these big hurdles that will be coming their way. Some weeks it will almost be miserable to play their class. Where as a paladin you feel solid in most situation’s.
Edit: Not to mention. Currently Paladin is simming as one of the best tanks come SL. You have nothing but downside to picking a DK. Unless the game changes drastically in the next month.
Contrary to popular belief, Guardian Druid is the slowest tank in the game.
I never understand how a RNG proc kick get factored into how easy a tank is, if it’s so hard to kick a cast, just bring more melee.
They’re not, they’re pretty much at the top half of the expansion.
Every tank is viable, OP. The only time you need to consider viability is mythic prog or high key pushing.
Easiest tank is, objectively, a guardian druid. I will also say if you like having a lot of buttons to press or things to manage, it’s probably not going to be your cup of tea.
Next easiest is probably a blood dk. Bone shield is a straight up mitigation maintenance buff. Just Marrowrend regularly to keep it up. Nothing more, nothing less. They also have the best self-healing among the tanks. Where they are sorely lacking is the mobility department. Thankfully the top covenants for blood both have movement abilities but still, if you don’t go night fae or venthyr, you’ll feel like you’re moving through a puddle of tar on a DK.
After that I’d say it’s a toss up between prot pallies and monks, but I haven’t played either at a high enough level to confidently talk about them. The one class I would absolutely not recommend to a tanking newcomer though is demon hunter. It’s not a difficult class to play, but it is the one plagued arguably the most by large active mitigation gaps. You’ll feel it, and boy will you feel it hard, when you don’t have demon spikes up.
Cheers, OP. Have fun. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Long-time players will inevitably give you crap and call you all manner of names when a wipe happens, but don’t let it discourage you.
Thanks for the reply. I would love to playing something enjoyable to play rather than numerically good because numbers can be ironed out where core gameplay takes an expac to fix.
If it was FFXIV you were tanking in - DK/Pally/Warrior are going to be the closest you get to that. Pick the aesthetic you like the most.
Yes, some are weaker than others in high end content - but if you’re asking this kind of question you’re obviously not rerolling to be worried about an additional small % of magic damage on the hardest content in the game during a time where you don’t outgear it.
I did tank in FFXIV most recently, most DRK and PLD.
Prot pallies are probably right up your alley then. What I have played was quite fun and I will also say that tossing a shield out like Captain America never got old for me.
EDIT: I’d also encourage you to think about offspecs for whichever tank you choose. You’ll probably end up doing WQs or Torghast as your dps spec to make things go quicker so don’t discount that. I ended up choosing to play a bear in Legion because it was the one tank I hadn’t yet played. One thing led to another and my small guild at the time ended up getting folded into a much larger guild that already had two tanks on the raid team. I tried out balance and feral and didn’t really enjoy feral so that left me dead in the water.
My point is don’t just think about what tank you want to play, but what kind of offspec you might enjoy when you aren’t tanking.
Yeah, their PLD is very similar to WoW’s Paladin.
DRK is essentially Death Knight in WoW, too.
The only downside to prot paladin is that it has a healing spec, so there may come a time that you’re asked to heal. If that aint your thing - Go DK.