I used a naughty word and someone reported it, so let’s try this again in nice flowery language.
the Tankbuster warning they added in Endwalker is pretty great.
Big red arrow that says “You’re about to get hit really really hard, use mitigation now”
Overall, FFXIV is very good and consistent with their telegraphs. You see a telegraph a couple times and then 2 expansions down the road, when you see that same telegraph on a different boss, you still have a general idea of what’s about to happen.
In wow, you automatically generate enough threat to hold aggro by pressing ANY button.
You jump into the mobs. Spam anything. And stand where you are supposed to. In raids, you taunt swap when you’re told.
Easiest role in the game. Plus you get to act superior for doing it.
How would ya’ll rate the WoW Tanks in terms of
Biggest difference is don’t butt tank. Mobs will wreck you if they hit your bum.
TLDR: No tank stance. Threat is a non-issue. Use your mitigation abilities as soon as they become available. Don’t hold on to your small CD’s in case of emergencies. You have your larger CD’s to deal with tank busters. Put all the mobs in front of you at all times and face them AWAY from your group. Put your butt against a wall to prevent knock backs.
Yes, except for three things.
There’s no tank stance here. Your threat is based on the amount of damage you do. But right now threat is set to 5x so it’s largely a non-issue.
This means that for every point of damage your deal you generate 5 points of threat on the target. DPS and healers are both set at 1x. So a DPS would have to deal 5x your damage in order to pull off of you. Which isn’t likely to happen. And your taunt spell will put you 1 threat point above the highest threat threshold and increase your threat generation to 8x for a few second.
And secondly, you’ll need to use your mitigation abilities more than in 14. In 14 abilities generally have a 25 sec CD to them, so you save them for the telegraphed tank busters and toss in your tank role ability from time to time. (Can’t remember the name. The one that looks like a castle wall. All tanks get it.)
In wow things hit harder more frequently and your mitigation ability either won’t have a CD at all or has a super short one. You’ll be using them pretty much every time they come up. Whether that’s shield block coming off CD or getting enough rage to hit ignore pain.
And lastly; mob control. In 14 most AoE’s are circle AoE’s which means your attack will hit enemies behind you. In WoW there are more frontal cone AoE’s which means you need to place all the mobs in front of you. (There are obvious exceptions to this like Druids, but it’s a good habit to get into.)
Mobs can also crit you from behind. Even with your crit reduction. You also can’t parry or block attacks from behind. So mobs will deal quite a bit if extra damage to your back. So position them in front of you.
And lastly, in 14 mobs rarely have frontal cone AoE’s. In WoW they’re a lot more common. Which means your group can and will take damage if you have the mobs facing them. Turn the mobs/boss AWAY from the group. Put your back on a wall to prevent knock backs and you should be good.
Tanking in this game isn’t the best I’ve ever played, but it’s pretty dang good. I enjoy tanking a lot personally. My Bear Druid is my main this season and I just leveled my DH and Warrior.
Good luck and have fun with it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve tanked in WOW, but from what I remember WOW has more active mitigation than FFXIV. In XIV, I only remember hitting my defensives when either it’s a big trash pull or the boss is doing a tank buster. In WOW, I remember having to constantly maintain uptime on things like DK’s Blood Shield or Warrior’s Ignore Pain while still doing the DPS rotation and boss positioning.
There are no major differences these days apart from the mechanically-oriented ones other replies already addressed.
The one big difference not yet mentioned though is you have a lot more utility and hard/soft crowd control options as a WoW tank. There’s no general expectation from PuGs that you use your support skills, but if you want to get anywhere in an organised group, you kind of have to help out with things like stuns, dispels, interrupts, group defensive CDs, etc.
Also - and you already know this - the GCD is a lot shorter in WoW and OGCD abilities are few and far between. There’s a much bigger emphasis on balancing your damage rotation, defensives, and utility abilities.
You don’t really need to prio though. Like on BDK, you can just taunt and then spam Heart Strike for “threat”, you literally do not need to press any other button, you can stand there and do 1,000 Heart Strikes with the occasional Death Strike.
It’s probably the biggest thing I miss from that game, tbh. The consistency was really nice and the game itself did a good job of teaching its players–something I find WoW does a very poor job of.
I don’t miss a whole lot else, though.
which tank in WoW has the smallest learning curve?
Tanking in FFXIV is a lot easier. I’ve played every tank in WoW except Paladin and ever tank in FFXIV.
Tanking here is far more reactive.
Learn curves
Smallest Learn Curve - DH = Druid = Warrior
Med - Pally
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Monk (Highest)
Disclaimer: I said nothing about fun and I left out DK (reasons)
Tanking is the easiest role in this game to perform…especially at the highest levels of play while also affording the most generous leeway for non 1 shot mistakes. It’s only intimidating to people because it’s expected to have a high upfront source of knowledge which actually is no different than what DPS and healers need to perform optimally in higher tiers of content. Tank mistakes leading to group wipes are often more visible to others but as someone who plays all 3 roles, once you have the knowledge bit down, it’s absolutely the most easy and low stress roles to play in content…especially raids since Blizzard absolutely can not mechanically challenge tanks in raids.
Monk and DK are the hardest mechanical tanks to wrap your head around while paladins and ESPECIALLY bears are the easiest. Paladins are generally considered the best introductory tank while also being phenomenal higher end tanks that offer the near maximum group utility out of all the tanks.