I play brewmaster, but it’s not what I would suggest if someone was interested in getting into tanking for the first time.
I’d say probably a shield class like prot warrior or paladin. I don’t think the classes are overly complex and having a shield to help mitigate some incoming damage isn’t a bad thing.
I am a pug m+ tank with a 2k season score. I have bear, BDK and VDH this season at 2k. not high keys by any stretch, but high enough to understand their differences.
TL;DR:
-bear or warrior to learn
-paladin to push
-BDK or VDH for personal control and fun
-Brewmaster if you want to earn a PhD in Brewmaster
YMMV
right now if your goal really is to run high keys (12 and higher), then paladin is your choice. you are unlikely to get pug invites unless you are a paladin.
to learn tanking as a role, I would go with bear, warrior or paladin. so paladin might be a good start.
For pug m+ content, my strong preference is BDK. mob control and self-sustain are simply the best. you don’t have much mobility, but you don’t need it like other classes do.
my favorite tank for flavor is VDH, second best mob control in my opinion. the sigil kit has been nerfed from DF, but it is still amazing. mobility is the best. but the downside, is sometimes you need it. VDH must kite sometimes when the crap hits the fan.
paladin has the best interrupts in the game. Warrior is just a solid all-around tank.
I have the idea the brewmaster is secretly an OP tank but no one except Equinox knows how to play it. mobility is great, but I simply don’t care for its complete lack of mob control. sure people who understand ring of peace can do some cool things with it, but i think the main job of a tank is gather mobs, not push them away.
P.S. check out Quazzi’s youtube channel
The phrase “folding into a pack”. in 19 years of playing this game, I can honestly say that is a phrase. I have never heard. I know rotations and I know global cool downs and I can think of about 100 other terms that don’t apply but folding into a pack is new to me.
Ah yes, folding is a new term youve mever heard of. Folding under pressure, under the weight. None of those have ever been coined terms before.
Lol mental gymnastics when youre proven wrong and cant accept it.
Typical Drac post
stop being a jack wagon. The way you said folding 2G CDs into a pack. Folding in that instance is a verb and it implies taking two objects and literally folding them into something like you would fold eggs into an omelette or a pancake batter. It’s no wonder nobody around here likes you or your responses. I was asking a legitimate question trying to figure out what the exact tone and definition was and you had to come back with some smart alec answer not surprised
Paladin is a very good one for you to start.
And it happens to be the best right now and seems it will continue next season as well.
To play well, absolutely. Paladins have a low bar to entry, but has a very steep skill curve.
Maybe in low-tier content where defensives don’t matter. The amount of active mitigation buffs we need to track and defensives to rotate compared to other tanks definitely makes it not the easiest.
Lmao again, mental gymnastics because you cant handle admit being wrong lol.
Heres a few quotes for you:
Because yes, in a video game discussing tanking, ita absolutely 100% with no discussion needed, talking about cooking terms lol
Typical Drac
well, then, I guess this is the part where I just pop up a middle finger and walk away from the conversation because you’re not interested in doing anything except bating me. i’d say I’m shocked, but I’m sure you’re anxious to get to that 20,000 post count so you can catch up with some of the other losers on this forum.
It’s really a matter of personal taste and opinion as you can clear any content with any kind of tank, especially the more skilled the tank is. imo all tanks are easy to learn, mastering them is the real challenge. The first question I would ask is what kind of tank you think you might like to play.
Do you think you might want something that’s traditional sword and board like a warrior or paladin? They can tank hits with their shields and have a decent amount of dodge to them. Where as others may simply dodge or such, these guys hold up their shield and block.
Do you want a more dodge focused tank like a druid or brewmaster monk? These tanks rely on their ability to dodge attacks more than outright tanking the hits. While they can certainly take hits it’s somewhat of an opposing approach to paladin and warrior. Druids and brewmasters prefer to just not get hit at all, but can absorb damage if they have. Also with brewmasters they can stagger out some of the damage they take so it’s not just one big hit. That can be a bit tricky at first until you get used to it. But once you do it’s not so bad.
Do you want a more active mitigation tank like a DK or Demon Hunter? DK can take a little bit more damage upfront but they heal a large amount back too. Just to keep the numbers simple, lets suppose a hit of 100k comes in. Warriors and paladins may block most of it and eat say 30k of it. Druid may dodge the largest bit of it and eat say 35k. Brewmaster eats the 30k upfront but staggers 5k of it. DK and DH may eat 45k in damage, but heal 15k of it back super fast.
Obviously there’s more to it than just that, but that’s a super super basic overview.
Now personally I like DK because I like some of the stuff in our toolkit. I don’t think the rotation is that hard with any tank. What can be hard is knowing when to use certain defensives and how abilities can combo together, but that will come with experience. If you want just pure simplicity in rotation, I’m gonna agree with others that paladin is a simple start. Again any tank is a viable and valid choice to go with.
For me personally I typically recommend either one of the sword and boards to start with or druid. If I’m the one training them then of course DK I would recommend as an option to druid. Only reason I don’t typically recommend DH or Brewmaster to newer tanks to start with is because of how some of their toolkit works, such as the brewmaster stagger. Ultimately it depends on what you think you would like. And if you get stuck, folks here can help.
“Folding 2 GCDs in” means effectively, you’d die in the first two GCDs of the trash pull.
That’s it. It’s nothing fancy or new, it’s English.
I’m familiar with the usage in that context, but I can understand why not everyone would be.
Yes because im the one referring to cooking terms in a video game with very common terminology
Well, it’s new to me. Also, I don’t run M+ and the ONLY time I have “folded 2 GCDs in” was getting smoked trying to solo a world rare with 57M HP and lookin like a rookie 
Well, if you don’t run M+ then you may or may not have known that the start of a trash pull in higher keys is when it is the most dangerous for the tank because a lot of active mitigation (shield block/iron fur/whatever paladin uses/bone shield and death strike) requires a bit of build-up and isn’t up before the pull starts. It is usually mitigated by chaining pulls after the first to maintain the mitigation or resource required to use it but the very first pull they go in with nothing.
Tanks in open world content are so easy anyone can do it as long as they have functioning limbs and eyes to not walk off cliffs. Tanks in Raid are next, being incredibly easy and usually the easiest role to manage with only a few fights requiring them to do more than taunt swap to not die and stand in the right spot. In M+, tank difficulty spikes up because there’s a lot more knowledge required and they are threatened by a lot more damage.
So as expected, some knowledge would be pretty useful there for an informed decision.
OP wanted tanking help to learn how and “possibly” tank heroics and mythics. Had it only been Mythic advice, I never would have said anything. Norms and Heroics are a cakewalk. I stopped messing with M+ in Shadowlands.
I’ll go ahead and tell you the reoccurring theme for 90% of WoW is that the three easiest tanks to learn (Warrior, Paladin, Druid) also tend to be the three most effective tanks. The only time this trend is bucked is when a new class with tanking is added for the expansion.
Never once mentioned normal and heroic dungeons
So there are 2 types of content to think about when considering a tank.
Easy content - queue content and all modes of raids.
Hard content - Mythic+ keys in the +8 and beyond range.
For easy content there is minimal risk to tank since damage intake is insanely low outside VERY niche circumstances (like Queen’s Liquify hit) and especially when it comes to raids, Blizzard next to never has relevant tank mechanics besides taunting when a condition is met and moving. Avoidables often are survivable and a lot of the time barely even seen/felt. For easy content, you want fast/easy aggro and for dungeons fast or at least bursty speed to round mobs up and nothing does that job better than warrior or paladin with the high edge to paladin because avengers shield goes brrrrrrrrr.
For higher keys your tank choice is way more impactful because the strengths and weaknesses are very readily felt and when fortified is active death can LITERALLY be in seconds in a pull and the need to have intricate knowledge of the dungeon including specific abilities every mob does to know when and how to play is massively high meaning you need to be super familar with your spec and thus the inherently “tankiest” classes are better to give you some breathing room. For this, bear is the clear winner for being the objective simplest class with very clear and obvious buttons. Bonus: Bear utility works pretty well in keys too since they can dispel themselves/others, bres, has AOE CC options, etc.
I would avoid BDK like the plague. In low level content, their self healing is barely impactful and their slow AF and in high keys the yoyo HP is more like an anvil falling off a building under Jupiter’s gravity. Monks also aren’t near as bad as the community cries about especially in low content. In fact, I’d even put monks above DKs even in mid tier keys though neither is great.
This is the answer full stop.
Prot warrior is sturdy enough to be played average to poor and still not fold to normal pulls. There is so much room for error and still be standing at the end.