When you hop in a group, which tanks make you groan, and which ones make you confident?
What class do you like to heal the most?
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Only level 30 on my paladin and priest but I prefer bears by a mile so far. They arent really more “tanky” but they seem to hold threat so much easier than both paladin and warriors at this lvl.
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I prefer a warrior tank. Bears have very limited skillsets. Great when things are going smooth but have a hard time handling accidents and oh snaps like wars. And Paladin doesn’t have a taunt, so I usually end up tanking with my Warlock. Healing the Paladins is also typically the worst of the bunch. They tend to have the lowest health amount so are prone to spiking. I also dont like healing bears that much because they take constant damage. With warriors I can often sneak outside the 5 second rule where bears need almost constant attention.
That said, I’ll happily group with any tank willing to try to do the job. You just asked me what my preference was.
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Depends on the player not the class.
I even prefer to heal as Shadow Spec in order to make the game a bit more resource-intensive & challenging/fun with my Priest. It worked well-enough for me back in Vanilla & TBC & I’m doing it again.
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Bear. Larger health pool for me to work with.
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Leveling up and healing through dungeons made me really hate warrior tanks, because they were so inconsistent in both their ability and the amount of damage they could tank per fight. I also had some rockstar druid tanks in the upper levels and up to 60 that could handle all the aggro, innervate me, even pop a brez to keep us from wiping. Druids all in all were more consistent to heal for in my experience although I haven’t had many tank since I hit 60.
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Druids.
One way to think about the problem of healing is to consider how much time a tank gives a healer from 100% -> 0%.
With Druids, that time is pretty hefty. Druids take predictable amounts of damage on a massive hit point pool. So you can use larger, slower heals (more efficient) while also having more time to cover healing various other players in the group.
With Warriors and Paladins, that time is actually quite short unless they’ve got fantastic gear. Because they have less predictable mitigation, you have to heal them more aggressively - and that often means using quick, small (less efficient heals). It also means that you have less time to deal with other healing demands.
Druids also have far lower variance due to the gear/playstyle. If you get a random Warrior/Paladin tanking, you have no idea what you’re in for. The entire early part of a dungeon is spent healing them over-aggressively because you just don’t know how well they mitigate. In contrast, with a Druid, you have a pretty good idea before you even enter the dungeon what kind of healing you’ll need because their hit points are visible and their armor tends to track hit points closely.
Druids also have a much more predictable tanking pattern. Warriors are a mixed bag - some of them are decent tanks, but many are awful tanks who tunnel vision on a single mob (often the wrong single mob). Paladins can tank multiples, but they’re so tied to Consecration that once they lose control it’s gone - if anyone screws up, your Paladin tank is left standing around useless as stray mobs run around killing players.
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Dungeons - Druid
Raids - Warriors
Palis - When everyone is willing to drink after every pull do better than warriors in lowbie dungeons.
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In 5 mans?
- Bear
- Paladin
- Warrior
Bear-I heal them very little. More time to netflix or dps.
Paladin-good aoe threat, wreck strat, but seem a little RNG’y.
Warrior (majority of all pug tanks)-Most pug warrs have a hard time holding threat on more than 1 or 2 mobs.
war and bear are equally easy in 5 mans.
bear is sometimes easier in raid than war depending on fight.
pally, usually always have a rough time in some way or it takes twice as long because they need to drink more than me.
My 34 druid tanked SM Library yesterday (I joined the group as DPS, but was 4 levels higher than the tank so we switched). It reminded me how frustrating trying to hold aggro is. We pulled a group of 3 about 100 times. I held aggro on all 3 for the whole fight exactly ZERO of those 100 times. As a 34 bear (specced on bear aggro stuff), I simply don’t have the tools.
I have one single-target “taunt” (Growl) on a 10-second cooldown. So it takes me 30 seconds just to taunt 3 targets once. By then they have been hit 47 times (yes, I counted!) by the other 4 players.
All my other abilities use aggro, which I only get by mobs hitting me. If they don’t hit me, I can’t aggro them, so they don’t hit me. You see the problem? That’s my problem, every single fight. Aggro.
The best I can do is get 1 mob attacking me to build aggro. Eventually I will have enough aggro to Swipe 3 mobs. A couple of those and I keep aggro on all 3…but by that time the mobs are dying, so they run away. They ignore aggro…
(This post is in response to the poster who’s not holding aggro as a bear…)
As a Druid, you could try any of these methods…
Feral Faerie Fire (say that 3 x fast!) Mob A.
Swipe or hit the other 2 mobs (B & C) first.
Cast rejuvenation and regrowth on Yourself
Moonfire on mob A.
Swipe or hit the other 2 mobs first.
Unless you have some crazy aggressive AoE spamming DPS, you will not lose aggro.
I’m certainly not the best tank, but in my experience it’s easy to hold aggro as a Bear.
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Thanks for the suggestions. I will copy them in my notes so I can review them, and try them next time I bear tank a group.
Hope it helps.
Also, in Classic, you’d generally want to mark skull (kill 1st) and X (kill 2nd) for the DPS.
They would then ideally all focus on Skull until dead, then X next, etc.
Most people sorta skip CC nowadays, but blue square (sheep/trap/maybe sap) would make it easier too.
Druids are the go to because they generally are playing with much higher mitigation than the other classes
This is because they are Fury with a shield.
I find Warrior Protection spec’d tanks by far the easiest to heal in any setting. The rest can hang, but Warrior Prot Tanks are kings/queens.
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feral druid easily. They’re so easy to heal
Druids can get some large health pools as bears, but Prot Warriors are EZ mode for healers. Throw a HoT and then browse the forums.
… I may be doing this as I type…
Very true. I’ve had wars, druids, pally’s that were a breeze to heal, and others that were complete nightmares.
If you’re pulling a pack, grab them all with demo roar. This means you have the initial aggro and for anyone else to rip aggro off of you they will have to exceed the 110% threat for melee or 130% for ranged thresh holds. If you have around 3 mobs just tab maul, if its more than 3 you can do a swipe then a maul then swipe.