After all the talk on Dear new tanks. I was hoping to hear what everyone thinks what classes to start as and where to learn. Either as class that can tank or heal.
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Leveling a prot warrior atm. Fun, but it’s like, at the same time, there’s a ton of abilities and I’m a bit overwhelmed so if there’s a better choice I’m open to it. I’d rather avoid monk/druid/dh. Not a fan of the tanking styles. Mained the first two in two separate patches in bfa, had a dh alt.
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Honestly, prot warrior’s probably the simplest tank next to guardian. Any spec’s bound to be intimidating if you’ve never played it before, but there’s really not a lot going on with prot war. Only buff you have to track is Ignore Pain, since Shield Block can basically just be cast on cd in combat.
As for healers, both Holy Priest and Resto Shaman are good places to start if you just want to pick up the basics.
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Doing the same actually.
Mostly because I think they have the most raw mitigation without any fancy defensives rolling.
Personally I hate this whole active mitigation thing. My character is supposed to be good at not dying by default. It’s really annoying trying to juggle active defensives while also leading people around a dungeon, getting interrupts, doing my DPS rotation, dealing with affixes and all the crap the mobs do.
I just wish tanks played exactly like a DPS, and their defenses were completely passively baked into their kit (Outside of major CD’s).
It’s also annoying that 95% of the game as a tank you rofl stomp everything, then you get into hard content and it’s like you’re playing a completely different game. (Until you get gear, and then it’s basically just like it was while you were leveling.)
They basically are, though. Outside of the healing-based things, tank mitigation mostly comes from their main resource dumps and/or things that are off the GCD (so they don’t interrupt your dps).
Are you interested in learning the fundamentals of tanking, or simply starting with the easiest tank.
I think learning VDH will give you a good grasp on the fundamentals of learning Tanks. They have a very straightforward damage rotation that varies slightly based on how many targets/resources you have. Their defensive aspects are a bit more complicated since they’ve got lots of small cooldowns, but the cooldowns all do different things, but once you know the class (and the content you’re tanking at), you’ll know when to layer or spread your cooldowns out.
Doesn’t hurt that they’re disgustingly broken right now either.
The easiest Tank is bear. They got their damage rotation and a couple of defensives. I don’t think they’re very good for learning how to Tank simply because the decision making isn’t anything more than when to use a big/small cooldown and when to use Rage on Maul vs Ironfur.
I gotta disagree here. Prots have a pretty large toolkit with a lot of abilities that overlap. Where a DH has Infernal Strike and Vengeful Retreat if talented (I dont count felblade as mobility), Prot has Leap, Intercept, Charge and Shield Charge. Prot Warriors are also similar to VDHs in that they have a lot of defensives that do slightly different things (the min-maxing with Spell Reflect can get very spicy) so it’s easier to lose track of things.
I would recommend Prot Warriors to new tanks, not because they’re easy, but because they have a very wide toolkit that makes them suitable for many different jobs as a Tank.
/shrug I’m not sure Intercept is taken any more. And Shield Charge is used less as a movement ability and more as a short cd defensive/offensive buff in your rotation (or an emergency stun if you’re feeling spicy).
I’ve always found VDH a bit awkward to play. But I’ve been off and on with prot war since TBC, so someone else’s mileage will vary.
Lol that was such a dumb post imagine getting so offended by someone not being up to your standards that you make a forum post whining about them under the guise of “teaching them how to play their class”
Back to this post though play paladin were built different
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Every Tank has a very simple DPS rotation because of this. Like Bears damage rotation boils down to:
Hit Thrash on cooldown
Hit Mangle on cooldown (replace this with Swipe in heavy aoe where you don’t really need rage)
Spend Rage on either Ironfur or Maul.
You don’t even need to Moonfire unless you need to hit something far away since triggering a free Moonfire will spend any amped Moonfire charges you currently have.
And Bears aren’t even outliers in how complicated tank dps is. Every tank has a DPS rotation you can do in your sleep because of the rest of the stuff the role has to do.
Paladins, Warriors and VDHs are the best tanks to learn how to Tank IMO. Every other tank is too weird (Monk/DK) or too simple (Druid) to learn the role well.
Again, this level of decision making is why I would not consider Warrior “easy”. The spec has a broad kit that does a lot of different things, but they’re basically all small 30-60s cooldowns, its not like Druids where Incarn is the everything button that you just hit every 2 minutes or so.
Personally I think Prot Warrior is one of the harder tanks to play really well, but my preferred tank over the years has been Blood and it’s skills don’t really translate well into Prot.
I like VDH (for reasons I’ve listed above) but mostly cause its a bit of a fresh air as a DK player where most of my gameplay revolves around managing resources more than defensives.
I just don’t know. I always felt vengeance to be squishy and didn’t like that much.
I’m maining Holy Paladin this time around and just now getting to +7s in M+. I still need to run the occasional M0 so I’ll off-spec as needed. Had to do tank once or twice and got royally destroyed.
Long story short, Prot Paladin is timer/resource-based complex. The other thanks are somewhat similar. That’s the beef a lot of folks have with the game right now. So many “buff” timers to keep account of that aren’t just easily accessible on the UI (Or obvious as you have to go digging through talent descriptions).
Almost all of the tanks will be the same. Most of the healers have a similar problem at the moment (As do a good number of DPS). Blizz really needs to help the UI help the player. Or at least hire some UI-modders to give them deeper access into the LUA optimization or something.
I remember in vanilla and BC when the tanking and healer roles were vastly different. Tanks were all about threat generation with mostly passives and a few Hail Mary actives.
Healers main role was keeping the tank alive and spot healing others with AOE heals and the occasional direct heal.
well, regardless of some smart mouth responses you’ll get by a handful in here, THIS forum or the class forum is a good place to start with specific questions one might have.
Youtube videos are another good source.
Tanking for me was just watching other tanks to get a path thru the run.
Healing I went out and healed people fighting big world bosses so there was no pressure to get used to healing and doing some damage in down time.
Bear is new tank friendly. Warrior is also a good one to learn. For healers, holy priest or resto shaman are fairly straightforward.
There are guides on wowhead and yt that can help you with the basics. Follower dungeons might be a good way to get familiar with the layouts.
FOR ANY NEW TANK OR HEALER
Well, if you are a new tank or healer the first suggestion, Start at the earliest possible levels for the character. Do not buy a boost. Start early tanking or healing dungeons. BFA is where new players are generally sent so start there, even if you’ve played wow before the dungeons in BFA pop way more than any other old zone currently. Or start in Remix.
All the tanks and all the healers are viable for a new player. Some like the disc priest are harder to learn. I would just play the one you are interested in; you will learn if you follow the first suggestion.
Finally, as something I’ve seen I’d suggest as a tank focus on your defensives over your damage. Once you have more confidence you can start worrying about damage. I’ve seen new tanks fall over because they try to play as a dps.
A warriors shield block, or a druids Iron fur these are the types of abilities you should be pressing as a new tank.
Good luck
Class isn’t nearly as important as the fundamentals that go for all tanks and all healers.
Your user interface and understanding the universal basics are what matters.
There is a very diverse range of classes in terms of complexity an approach to tanking and healing. It really depends on what type of game play you enjoy and are looking for.
Some tanks are a simple few button rotation while others are complex and mistakes in the rotation will get you killed. Some healers are simple whack a mole style healing while others require you to actively deal damage to heal effectively. So without knowing more of what your actually looking for in a class its hard to recommend a starting point.
For the absolute “i’ve never tanked or i’ve never healed” I would say a Druid to tank and a Shaman to Heal. Simply because those two classes at least to me are the easiest to do the role on. Their not the strongest at their role but they are the easiest to learn the role doing because their’s not as many buttons for performing the role for those classes.
You absolutely have to invest in addons if you want to heal and tank and do so effectively in modern WoW. There’s a dozen different addons that do the same stuff so you need to figure out which ones you prefer.
A little time on google searching for youtube videos on a given class and the recommended mods or weakauras will get you to a good starting point.
Where to learn these roles is when you are taking a lot of damage or healing a lot of damage, not too much to be overwhelmed but enough to where you must use your role/class kit.
For healing queue random BGs forces you to heal and respond fast to switch targets its less stressful because you wont be the 1 guy bricking a key and you have to learn to not die while healing, you can also learn in dungeons. For tanking, dungeons are the best place to learn.
Now that is funny I’m imagining a healer with a magic mallet and table beating on spell moles during raid boss fight. lol I want that interface.
Been going between my Death Knight and Paladin for Tanking as I main tank. Have yet to try a Warrior Tank funny enough. Though I have been trying to learn the Healer role as well with my brother who is experienced in the role. Just so that if I ever do decide to run with a guild outside of the one I am in I can perform all 3 roles.
Though I will always main Tank.
(Sips 
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