Hey guys, so i was making this because i was thinking of getting into tanking for the first time and i havent really tanked before and was wondering what tank would be good to get into that isnt hard for someone new to the role and not punishing if something happened during a M+ or raid run.
Prot Warrior is about medium difficulty. Guardian Druid is probably the easiest. Blood dk I’d say is one of the hardest due to the complexity of the abilities and extra decisions you have to make.
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normally i would say guardian druid
in fact i usually play one when i return to the game
but having played it a little bit it just felt… off
i wasnt liking it
and on top of it i hate the squawking my flight form does every time i lift off
then i rolled this protection paladin yesterday and i must say i am liking it a lot so far
and i usually dont like melee but it is just so forgiving
lots of defensive and offensive cd’s of varying length of cd
and a pretty simple core mechanic of building holy power and spending it on a shield/defensive buff
does good enough damage and lots of “oh no!!!???” options
I came back into tanking on Deathbringer Blood DK.
I think I’m not very good at the game and it seems to take care of itself. You essentially put Death Mark on the highest HP target you see and use the exterminate procs you get (which gives you more Boneshields!). Besides that it’s the usually BDK stuff (Heart Strike/Blood Boil for damage, DnD for cleave and Death Strike for a bit of damage and self healing).
I think what appeals to me most is that it doesn’t quite feel like a tank like the others. I just feel like a DPS with tank privilege.
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Play the OG Warrior tank
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I think Bear is probably the easiest as a first tank. The only thing really likely to get you killed as a new bear is accidentally pressing a button that pulls you out of bear form, but that is easily avoidable by disabling that “feature” entirely:
/run SetCVar("autoUnshift", 0)
As long as autoUnshift is off, you can feel free to swipe and ironfur your way through some heroics and get some practice. You can add in some buttons as you go and learn how to charge around and kick stuff, do the cool ursols+typhoon round up combo, etc. IMO try bear first.
Lots of fun in a pink tin can.
Good luck, if you have any Prot Pally questions be sure not to ask me.
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I’d say bear. The gameplay is pretty easy, and it lets you learn routing, positioning, and tank-specific mechanics like aiming Dragon’s Breath in Gambit without being overwhelmed by a complex rotation.
The damage rotation is straightforward, and with Chosen of Elune you’re basically immortal until higher keys (I think around +12 to +13 is when I actually needed to use my full kit).
The core damage rotation is Thrash, Mangle, and keeping Moonfire on all targets. Any extra globals can go into Moonfire.
Rage is almost always spent on Ironfur, which you can even macro into another ability like Thrash if you want fewer buttons. Lunar Beam is great on pull since it helps hold threat, and the extra mastery plus healing gives you a lot of upfront sustain when you need it most. Barkskin can just be used on cooldown until about +10. Use Frenzied Regeneration when you’re at about 30% health or lower. You also have two charges of Survival Instincts for when the healer dies or you need to mitigate heavy damage.
When you have Incarnation up, pull big… It’s near impossible to die.
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Pull the whole room and pray.
i would ask how is gaurdian when it comes to raiding?
Little more complex since you run DotC and do some catweaving while not actively tanking to keep up damage.
Elune bears fine bulk wise for raid but struggles against other tanks for threat in single target, and a bad taunt swap can lead to a wipe pretty easy.
prot warrior is easiest to get aoe threat so choose that one. one button spam mostly
For myself i had the easiest time to learn and play paladin tanks. Whether im effective with it is another story, but i find pally tank relatively autopilot. I find warrior tanking the hardest overall with the remaining tankers pretty much the same in ease of use and effectiveness.
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Druid is hands down the easiest mechanical tank to play and it isn’t even close. Warrior is also very easy but also has niche CDs that generally aren’t going to make or break anything but still is a thing.
If you are talking dungeons, monk and DK are bad choices and if you venture into keys, while every tank is free up to a point, you will find yourself struggling sooner on said monk and DK…and again this is comparing the just raw ease of bears and warriors especially.
If all you want to do is dabble in raids and low end content like leveling dungeons, pally is also a free safe beginner choice since avengers shield make threat free and they basically just push their buttons and their stuff happens automatically but paladins have a very high group utility threshold and basically requires you to be comfortable binding and using all that useful group utility to make them work/useful when you could just be a warrior or druid and be a god and not have to care all that much about group/utility support.
Avenger’s shield is probably the single funnest button in all of WoW. And it seems to proc all the time now, which just makes it that much better. I love tanking delves as my paladin.
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Definitely agree guardian is a great first tank. I’d probably put prot pally second to that.
well im kind of stuck between prot warrior and paladin, but i would ask between the two which one is less punishing when it comes to mistakes when learning the class?
What are you going to be doing?
The answer is probably warrior but paladins are insanely easy at leveling content and no tank is particularly hard in low content levels and especially queue content.
Paladins have a much higher skill ceiling than warriors when you take their group utility into account but that hardly matters in babymode content.
mostly m+ with friends and maybe raiding one day