Most fun tanking class in TBC?

Heh, those pairs of unCCable door guards in all of the instances were always so much “fun”

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ZZ Top trim my whiskers

To me fun means bringing a refreshing and challenging spin to the game instead of playing the same boredom ridden dribble that’s been regurgitated for +10years. I want to feel like I am actually playing the game and not watching Netflix on the side because everything is handed to me, so…

I am torn between Shaman tank and warlock tank. But considering Blizz might trivialise TBC once again (like Classic) I might go rogue tank.

Probably paladin, they can run into heroics and just go nuts. Super fun tank class

most fun = paladins with block rating chanted. fun fact, this shield https://www.wowhead.com/item=25828/petrified-lichen-guard with block rating buffed and aoe your way to 70. :grin:

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Depends what you want to do tbh. Do you want to be a dungeon hero or main tank?

Tidewalker was brutal as a Warrior. That was the first fight we swapped a Bear tank in, because his Earthquake chewed up Shield Block charges, meaning he could do a Block Melee → Block Earthquake → Crush combo on your Warrior and just drop him from 100% to dead. It was actually funny how certain fights favored different tanks based on “Do they do Crushing Blows? If they do, can Warriors and/or Paladins guarantee to push them off the table?”.

I’m scared to ask when is the last time you played TBC.

Druids do more threat than warriors in TBC though so no idea where this is coming from.

By Sunwell most guilds were using Druids as their MTs.

Warriors were used in earlier content because bosses still had mechanics that only Warriors could deal with (e.g. spell reflecting Kaelthas Pyro)

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This was mostly because the end boss of literally every raid up to and including Black Temple was designed with mechanics that only Warrior tanks could deal with.

Nightbane: Fear (berserker rage)
Kaelthas: Pyro (Spell Reflect)
Vashj: Horrify (berserker rage)
Illidan: Shear (Shield Block)

Now people eventually found ways around this (eventually giving fear ward to all priests helped a lot too) but at the time it was basically accepted that you needed a warrior tank to deal with these mechanics.

It wasn’t building threat that was an issue in TBC heroics. It was all the CC abilities used by mobs that would wipe you if successfully cast, since they made the tank drop all threat if they went off.

Slave pens Naga that charmed, Mana Tombs crypt stalkers that gouged and numerous mobs that feared the tank would wipe you if you were trying to AOE tank them.

Even with a paladin you had to CC these groups, especially as Paladins had no interrupt of their own.

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2: Berserker Rage

But I assume any TBC classic will use the version of the game that was after priest racials had been changed and therefore both factions and all priest races had access to fear ward.

Fear was a big deal in TBC because it didn’t just make your tank run around, it also made them drop aggro.

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Belf pallies did.

How many people are going to be in the top end raiding guilds? And if they are, they have already planned all this out ahead of time and wouldn’t be asking randos on the forum.

It’s very effective, but Paladin tanking in TBC is almost 100% passive and painfully boring.

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Ahh yes the person who doesn’t remember Tide Walker adds, Hydros Adds, Lurker adds, Solarian Adds Kael Weapons Vash adds. Nearly every non boss pull in Hyjal, and even some of bosses. The copious amounts of aoe trash in BT

Clearly the class thats the best at AOE tanking would be a waste in TBC

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This isn’t true at all.

Tremor Totems and Fear Ward. Druids MT’d Nightbane without issue, why would a Paladin?

You only need the Spell Reflect if your DPS is too slow between usage of the Legendary Shield you get during the fight. Druids are the only actual liability Tank on Kael’thas himself.

Uhh… are you talking about the Strider fear that you didn’t actually Tank because they melee’d super hard and the AoE fear was a pulse? The ones you had Shaman, Mages, or Hunters kite?

Vashj only rooted and stunned, the former being countered by Blessing of Freedom and powershifting, and the later being countered by Grounding Totem.

Paladins could passively avoid this since their baseline Block scaling was so much better than Warriors. Druids could just eat the Shear and live if they stacked Stamina gems/trinkets.

This really isn’t true though, with only Mana Tombs stalker packs being the worst offenders… which you could just butt-tank them and avoid it entirely.

The rest, like the MCing Enchantress in Slave Pens, were either very easy to focus fire first, or throw literally anything at them to interrupt it. Again, I did all of these as a Druid without even half the tricks of Warriors or Paladins and did so without a full escort of Mages and Hunters to control everything for me.

Not all fears drop aggro, not even close.

I am going to at least attempt tanking as both Shaman and Hunter in TBC purely for science. They do really well in Classic dungeons so I’d be tickled if it extended into TBC Heroics and even some raids. Resilience gear will be mandatory at some point but that’s fine 'cause I’ll do plenty of PvP as well.

Shaman in TBC end up being in a worse state for attempts at Tanking thanks to Spirit Weapons. You have to pick between having Parry or avoiding a 30% threat reduction, and the mitigation gap just widens substantially with all the normal Tanks getting improvements to their EH and passive damage reduction. Plus a lot of useful things for Tanking are buried deep in other trees and also have anti-Tank centric passives.

If you want 6% crit reduction from talents, you have to go 33 pts deep into Elemental and you miss out on tons of melee-centric threat in Enhancement, as well as a Defensive CD in the form of Shamanistic Rage. Your best bet is also rocking Gladiator gear nonstop… which is sturdy enough but just pales in comparison to what everyone else gets.

TBC Raids as a Warrior without the crit cap, from what I remember, was a difficulty hurdle for me. The thoughest gameplay i’ve had in WoW in all of my history, but also some of the most fun. Hellfire Citadel dungeons were a nightmare, haha, and I was carried in ZA/Kara raids by over-geared Resto Shaman namely; If not for him, i’d of died many times over.

Not sure how well a Shaman without appropriate stats and mitigations might function in TBC.

My only memorable time playing through TBC content was too recent to be an authoritative voice, but I can tell you what I liked about soloing and the outcome of tanking attempts in dungeons. My favorite spec was protect, because a solo Paladin is actually very survivable. I was able to solo dungeon and raid content ten levels or more lower. Warrior cannot do that. Paladin can for two reasons: self heal and cheap persistent ae. Never underestimate the entertainment value of a simple and effective tool. That shield throw? I don’t know what it is about it, but thousands of times doing it never got old. It’s a strange ability for a Paladin, but it felt good. It did feel a bit like Captain America sometimes. Trying to main tank was still a problem, because DPS will always exceed the threat of the little that Paladin generates. Even on a single target. Also, DPS tends to behave lazy, so they are more than likely to blame the Paladin for failing to hold aggro rather than their self flattery in parsing while ignoring the threat meter and not using their threat cancellation abilities.

My thought is that one should go warrior for general tanking, and Paladin for specific purpose, like throwing a shield or for solo farming old content. That is what I will be leveling a Paladin for.