I keep seeing a lot of people talking about how pallies and druids are gonna be so much better tanks than Warriors. I’m wondering how much better they are going to be realistically. Are they going to completely outclass warriors in every way or is it just they are better at certain things? I plan on maining prot warrior in TBC, and I wanna know how much worse warriors will be in the competition. I don’t mind being not as good, because even though I mained a warrior in classic, I was Two-handed fury all the way up to Naxx (alliance side), when I finally went DW fury, so not being the meta class doesn’t bother me that much.
All three are good. Just some differences here and there but all 3 are viable 100%.
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Its not that they are bad they are fine just palies and druids are better for different encounters/raids. Would I do hyjal again without a prot pali or illidans infernals without a feral druid? God no. But would I want a warrior tank for za? Absolutely
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Neither have the defensive cooldowns a warrior has.
Think they’re still the top tanks, just not by as large of a margin.
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This is the correct answer.
It isn’t that feral and prot pally are better, it’s just they’re lacking less compared to how they were in Vanilla.
Prot warrior is still the top tier tank except in 5 mans and hyjal trash.
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We ran a Warrior and a Pally back in the day. Both were beast! While the Warrior had some agro problems in dungeons he overgeared. Taking off a piece would solve this pretty easily. The Pally, nothing pulled off of the guy… Just a strait up tank 100%… Leave the Druids for healers. LOL
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warriors are fine tanks. Especially early on. Shield block really helps get rid of a lot of damage. Like Prince in 2nd phase. People are just caught up on the speed running with paladins
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Warriors are best single target tanks around, it’s just their lack of aoe threat compared to druids and especially paladins
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Single Target DPS/TPS:
- Druid
- Warrior
- Paladin
AoE DPS/TPS:
- Paladin
- Druid
- Warrior
Physical EH:
- Druid
- Paladin
- Warrior
Resistance-based EH:
- Druid
- Paladin
- Warrior
What is important to keep in mind is that every one of the categories above was assumed to be the domain of Warriors and Warriors alone during our first go-around of TBC.
In other words, even being in the No.3 spot doesn’t mean non-viable or even non-competitive, it just means that if you do a head-to-head comparison, Warriors fall behind everyone else on most metrics.
HOWEVER
Warrior utility is hard to oversell because it really is that good. Between buffs and debuffs, high mobility, and a few tricks that come in real handy on a few key fights, every raid is going to want at least one Warrior, if not two (1 Prot, 1 Arms). Further, Druids are best suited to Tanking roles where they can hop out of Bear to go Cat and put out half-decent numbers, whereas sticking us on something from start to finish sort of diminishes our full potential. Lastly, Paladins are just going to be beastly thanks to 2.4.3+ talents/gear, but their spell based setup and mana dependency does give them a few oddball hurdles the other Tanks don’t even have to think about.
Bottom line: Gone are the days of Warriors telling everyone else to go back to healing them, but Warriors aren’t going to be discarded either. People will progress all the way to the end of the expansion without a Prot Warrior, same as lacking any other particular Tank. Is that the best way to do it? Probably not, but there’s no reason you can’t.
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It is less that Warriors are bad, a more that by TBC 2.4.3 the other tank classes (Druids and Pallys) had caught up to Warriors in terms of Health Pool, Damage Mitigation, threat generation and spike damage recovery.
It is more a result of the normalization of all tank classes. In Vanillia, Warrior Tanks were the undisputed heavyweights Champs of the tanking world. By 2.4.3, all tank classes were fully viable main tanks in most if not all instances and raids.
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Warriors are legitimately awful for multi target tanking. You have pay very close attention and constantly tab target just overcome healing aggro. That can do just fine but it’s far more effort for the same reward.
Warriors have less health, but defensive stance does mean they take less damage overall.
They can also reflect things like Deaden on Reliquary to make the boss die a lot faster. They also don’t need a swarm of fear wards to tank Nightbane, Lord Sanguinar or Archimonde.
Reflecting fireballs on Kael’thas for 20,000 is pretty cool.
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Prot warriors have their fights, as do Pallys and druids.
TBC tanking is more about matching a raids encounters to the tanks you have available.
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They’re good. They’re just not the gods they are right now.
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The bigger problem will be getting everyone to change their mindsets about Warriors being the end-all be-all of tanking. Hopefully going into TBC the playerbase will understand that Tanking in TBC is a different animal than Classic and you need to be ready to accept all tanks as viable and in certain circumstances a Warrior may even be the lesser choice.
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also another note to keep in mind is that class balance in the perspective of tanks will change a lot as we move through phases
Different item availability and gearing options make a great difference
Prot warriors will be king on open but will fall off towards mid and pick up again at the end if I recall correctly
The hardest part of being a prot warrior, if you’re pugging, is that dummies lean heavily on paladin tanking for 5 mans. Apparently it’s too much to ask some people not to starting dropping seeds of corruption in the first 3 seconds lol
Tanking pugs as a prot warrior in TBC is a special type of hell
As someone who played both, I loved druids more because of their versatility. I feel like through most of TBC warriors and druids were both top knotch. Druids took more damage but had a much larger health pool…
So less responsive healers I feel like had an easier time healing druids. You precast a heal because you know they are gonna take the damage, they just shrug a lot more damage off due to their incredibly high armor.
You could make the argument, especially early on, that a warrior is better due to utility, and higher mitigating factors. Warriors can dodge AND block and parry… Druids can only dodge or absorb damage. Until a druid becomes insanely geared their dodge is nothing compared to a warrior’s ability to mitigate.
Paladins are indisputably the kings/queens of aoe tanking. Until late TBC they were underdogs. The patch going in has them well balanced. They are still the aoe kings/queens. They can still lay on hands and possibly toss a clutch heal to save the day… However, if someone rips agro the paladin has to try to chase down a mob or simply watch as the poor sap deservingly dies.
That is when a warrior comes in best, they can save the day with their mobility and utility. A druid can as well, but to a lesser extent.
It is all about playstyle and personal skill/mastery of the class. I have seen warriors who outclassed both druids and paladins… With every intention to boast - I was a beast tank and I feel I outshined most others druids, warriors, or paladins… And I am also super super humble… In fact, probably the most humble tank you will ever meet (haha).
Either way, play what you enjoy, Warriors were certainly not scoffed at… What people are saying when they comment on druids and paladins tanking is that you will see a lot more druids and paladins tanking than there were in original TBC because back then the stigma of "warriors are the only “real” tanks " was only just beginning to be broken… Now, knowing what we know now - and with the stigma thoroughly shattered throughout the years you will see a lot more tank diversity.
I would go so far as to wager you will even see more shaman and rogue main tanks… Both existed in TBC… Both were successfull (at least through heroics with shamans and up to black temple with rogues - not kidding) but they were very niche and uncommon… I knew 2 rogue main tanks - I wish I knew more about their gear selection and rotation but it worked.
One final thing, Warriors and paladins both stepped up when it came to tanking Sunwell over a druid because sunwell had some kind of aura that knocked 20 or 30% of my dodge off… It was pretty brutal as a druid main tank… I hated it - it felt specifically targeted at nerfing me and those of my kind. But yeah, druids were able to main tank sunwell - I know, I did… But they lost their edge to warriors and paladins there…
Also warriors in arenas pretty much required a prot warrior to respec… Whereas if you had the right spec as a druid you could both tank and arena heal/tank.
I hope this book helps someone.
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Did some testing on the beta, mind u this is at level 60-64ish so end game and heroic content may be diffrent. But, honestly, prot isnt bad, it is a bit target capped, you will strugle on packs over 4 cause u simply cant taunt and tab sunder armor as fast as say pushing consecrate, but if your quick and nimble you can deff hold aggro on a murder party of mages. Beside the more the mages kite the less damage u take. You do struggle a little bit on aoe pulls cause your shield block gets eatin realy fast, but if u have 2 just polly a few mobs and ur golden. Hopefully that helps op.
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My only question here is why do you say the pally has to sit and watch someone get trucked if they pull aggro? Pallies have a full taunt which actually affects two enemies not just one. They do not have an AOE taunt but they can also shield the offending dps/healer as well.
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