So, the one thing I’ve never done in WoW is tank. It just seemed like a daunting task but after finishing out my healers vaults for the week I decided to give it a shot. Just running through different tank specs in leveling dungeons and what not. It seems like it could potentially be fun, but since these are just leveling dungeons I don’t know how that really would translate over to M+.
I found I quite enjoyed Prot Pally and Veng DH, particularly. But anyways, my original question is for those of you who tank in M+ is it actually enjoyable and not as crazy stressful as I think it would be? I feel like it probably isn’t that bad and that healing would be the more stressful of the two. I do that all day now anyways. 
curious to hear some input.
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I don’t do much m+ but I do a lot of heroic raid pugging. Yes I enjoy tanking, it’s nice not worrying about having to compete with dps meters in raid. Learn the fight, pop your cooldowns at the right time, get your loot. You also get invited to raid much easier. That’s a big plus if you pug.
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I enjoy it a lot. My tank damage is just about on par with average DPS players and I get enjoyment out of big AOE numbers and simply not dying. I make my own m+ groups as a tank and my groups are almost always instantly filled, which is nice.
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My recommendation is to turn off your xp, gear up, and smash some leveling dungeons at level 10 as a prot pally.
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Do you play all the tanks or do you happen to have a preference?
Right now I have a prot warrior, prot/holy paladin, and guardian druid. I like my prot warrior the most, but they are admittedly busted right now to play as. Prot warriors have a decent toolkit and my build I use has plenty of stuns/CC to compensate for a pug group that may not use interrupts/follow dungeon mechanics. I’m leveling this monk now, in-game I am level 68, we will see how I like tanking end-game stuff.
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Yes, but the tanks I enjoy playing are lesser than they used to be.
I only really tank on DK now
I’ve usually enjoyed it when it didn’t involve having to walk away from the mobs a lot.
I just often found myself with people who also enjoyed tanking so I’d heal/dps.
I usually like to DPS through the season before I Tank so i can study other tank’s movements, tech, and routes to morph them into my own style.
lmao.
If you’re asking I enjoy having an entire instance of mobs swarmed on top of me while I laugh at their fleeting attempts to dip me below 90% health, then yes.
If you’re asking if I enjoy having those same mobs teleport halfway to Africa and then for whatever reason decide they want my healer instead even though I have a full threat table on them, then no.
If you’re asking if I enjoy having a swarm of mobs to put me under so much crowd control that I’m basically a naked warrior fighting a BWL rogue, then I live for the pain.
Levelling with a tank:
NPC: “Go kill 15 Fel Touched Slobberdonkeys”
You, one fight later: “Okay, I’m done. Now what?”
For group content I’d highly recommend grouping with friends to begin with, as PUGs aren’t always that patient with beginners.
Good luck, and have fun!
I loved tanking. But other players and their routes made me not want to do it in pugs anymore so I went the ezmode route.
tanked for over a decade, including in TBC when there were no prot paladins because they weren’t warriors. It was the most fun I had in WoW. Now I’m just dragging myself as dps… old and tired, waiting to be put out.
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Tanking is a blast. Honestly would rate
- Heals
- Tanking
- dps
Hopefully you’ll one day find a guild who’s willing to listen to you and your routes, so you can tank at a pace you prefer.
To OP: I’ve only really tanked a little bit, my one time for BDK was Off Tanking for a Black Temple TW. Otherwise, I’ve done a couple Normal Dungeons on a Prot Warrior for fun.
However, I will say that when people aren’t being rude and you’re doing well enough, it’s actually quite fun at least for more casual settings. BDK especially, I dunno what it is about the Yo-Yo Health, but it’s and exhilerating catharthis putting all the pieces together to basically tell my foe “You gonna get me this time? Oh, tough luck, got to Death Strike, try again in 3 seconds!” While doing things like putting up Dancing Rune Weapon and crunching them with Heart Strike to set up for another Death Strike.
Prot Warrior is more fun when you have a way to keep track of Ignore Pain. It’s unintuitive otherwise. But if you can do it, it’s nice seeing it basically never drop below half because by the time the enemy hurts you enough, you’ve hit Ignore Pain again. And then stacking Seeing Red with Revenge only to chunk them with a Shield Bash that also grants Ignore Pain, it’s the cherry on top.
Personally, BDK seems more fun to me, but you can’t go wrong with Prot Warrior either. I have a low level (I think Level 22) Prot Pally as well, and it seems pretty neat too so far. But the minute 10.0.7 drops, said Prot Pally will probably not get any screentime in favor of a Worgen Fistweaving Monk.
Having played all tanks except DH they all are very different an rewarding in their own regards.
The tank I found the easiest was Prot paladin, EXTREMELY versatile tank against all forms of damage an great utility for just about everything. Also for new or struggling tanks bubble taunt/immunity. A great kit for ranged silence an off heals sac+freedom BoP even some abilities to allow u to die but be alive cause LOL Ardent Defender.
Tanking is incredibly fun, but like everything I suggest finding a group of friends or guildies if u plan to do m+ only so u can learn the routes u need to take effectively.
Side bonus Prot and ret paladin share similar stats priority haste/mastery soooo ur only needed to swap weapons an trinkets to still be effective. Which is another big win for me.
I ve recently began tanking on my pally mainely it is dps but thought I’d start with low keys,listed my group with new to tanking in custom dungeon group , . Before I started everyone was fine with me being new. Before reaching the 1st stairs down in Azure Vault the hunter and mage decide I’m not pulling fast enough and manage to pull everything including whelps and kill me and healer then proceed to tell me I suck . It’s not a 15 key I’m trying to get a feel for tanking. Then people wonder why no tanks.
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I see we are in the same group of Realms Shantari! If you want a healer friend I’d be happy to help you practice tanking. I have a couple of friends and we usually run keys together but we are always looking for nice people to group with 
Loki#16796 is my tag!
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most tanks seem to love a spec before they love the role
tanking is boring imo but never mained it
Ah, the average key experience. Some DPS decides they can be a hotshot and do someone else’s job too, getting everyone killed before blaming it on either the tank or the healer because they can’t be at fault.
The only thing you can do is shrug it off and keep trying. Try specifically +3’s, +2’s will just get Bonus Valor farmed (meaning you’ll get tons of requests from 415+ ilvls that trivialize all the content and make you learn nothing) and anything higher starts to exacerbate the hotshot DPS problem.
Edit: As an extra tip: Tell your team before you put the Key in that you’re new to tanking and trying to practice with low keys, some people don’t read the descriptions of groups (or even the names) and an extra warning may help.
I used to until it became a job. Made even worse by having to perfectly rotate my cds to live as long as possible because ot/dps couldn’t help/push mechanics fast enough.
I pretty much only tank dungeons these days. And even then, it’s usually only leveling dungeons.
Tbh it’s only stressful if people aren’t doing their part. Same for healing. If everyone is doing their part, it can be super easy. Pugs, there is always someone standing in fire. Interrupts aren’t happening effectively so needless damage is happening. Over pulling/not waiting to drink.
It just all depends. Generally I’d say neither are stressful unless you are pushing higher content.