I want to provide some examples of shaman tanking in P2. I have been tanking on my shaman since Classic (until Naxx) and leveled as a tank on my shaman since the start of TBC. I have tanked both normals and heroics as well as Kara. During P1 I did OT for both Gruul and Mags.
I have been able to still OT in P2 for both SSC and TK. Although my guild is still progressing in SSC and starting TK. As a good example, I wanted to share shaman tanking for Voidreaver below. I do plan to record some more to give more examples of the viability of shaman taking in TBC.
Feel free to ask me anything shaman-tanking related!
[EDIT] Someone asked below if I had tanked in other fights and I linked two additional videos. I’m adding them here just in case anyone else is interested.
Tanking the healer add for FLK a couple of weeks back:
And here is a non-raid example of H. SHH (not the cleanest and I recorded this back in September for TK attunement):
tho very interesting i wouldn’t call it viable
more like very very niche and most people will just have an actual tank do it and save themselves the hassle
Yeah, the other tanking classes definitely have an edge (to put it lightly). One of the things I wanted to highlight is that it can be done, during progression, and without having to over gear a raid/dungeon.
That said, I do think that a shaman can easily have a tank role in normals, heroics and Kara while being able to hold an OT role for 25 mans. I have not tried to MT another 25-man boss aside from VR, but it’s definitely one of my goals.
Any warrior pull up a shield, defensive stance and survive.
Plus, you’re wearing PvP gear… you’re hurting your raid by doing crap DPS and not helping at all. But by the looks of your raid and how you organize yourself in the boss, and how long you take to kill it, I guess they kind of deserve going through this?
You’re just taking twice the medium time that it takes to kill this boss.
And you’re not even tanking at all, you just pulled threat because the other two tanks couldn’t make enough threat to maintain aggro over all DPS, which might explain why your raid can’t kill the boss fast enough.
I guess this is what one might call “out of the box”.
True, but only if they’re using their tank set. Otherwise wouldn’t they be crittable?
Yes, because I’m one of the tanks and when tanking I’m not expected to have a high dps (although I usually do more dps than other tanks). That said, when I am not tanking I do have and use a dps set.
Sorry to break it to you, but have to agree with everything the orc says. It’s not a good video. You’re just on top of the threat meters for a few seconds in just a couple of intervals. That is NOT tanking. It’s no different than if a DPS warrior/pally rips threat, then take out a shield - they can survive too because Void Reaver is not a hard hitting physical boss and there’s no need for unnecessarily sacrificing DPS stats for survivability. When that happens to us, at least our DPS is in the 1.3k to 1.5k mark and we’re still surviving. Your tanks are in dire need of serious improvement if they’re losing threat to you pulling off… 500-700 DPS.
There’s no way you’re downing Astromancer Solarian or Morogrim Tidewalker with the whole raid pulling off sub-1k DPS on a patchwerk boss.
But that’s the nature of that particular fight right? Since the tanks take turns due to knock back. Actually, if you look at the video, aside from the warrior I hold the boss more times (3) than our other off tanks (2 and under). How can they be tanks but not me?
Stronger tanks will command higher boss tanking uptime with their higher threat generation. Sometimes they’ll keep aggro through a Knock Away (25% threat drop). It’s not that you tanked a higher number of times that I care about when looking at VR logs, it’s more the fraction of Knock Aways that your guild’s tanks each took that tells me who’s generating more threat on the most important threat generation fight.
Your Warrior tank, Iast, ate 11 Knock Aways (6 landed, 5 avoided), while the combined 4 other tanks took 9 Knock Aways combined (7 landed, 2 avoided). That’s a giant red flag to me that one tank is head and shoulders above the others. Iast lost aggro for the first time only after he took 3 successful Knock Aways, 1.7 minutes into the fight. To you, he only tanked one time, but he destroyed the rest of the raid (DPS & tanks included) in threat to hold aggro until he got his threat dropped for a third time.
Better tanks grant a higher threat ceiling to their DPS, allowing them to kill the boss quickly. Your kill is about twice as long as normal.
Better tanks generate enough threat to tank through threat drops. Bringing several tanks allows Void Reaver’s Knock Aways to be spread out across more tanks, so that each tank isn’t eating too many threat drops. Your raid brought 5 tanks. 3 is normal. 2 is doable, given some luck.
You know, as a rogue, I’ve had aggro a good handful of times. Whether it’s BF ripping aggro on a second mob, trash or Fathom Lord cleaving his advisors, or it’s hateful tanking on Gruul, or it’s Hellfire Orc in Mag’s room, bosses like VR, or just by getting to Alar faster than the tanks, I’ve had aggro, used Evasion, and tanked for a few moments.
Does that make me a tank?
No.
I did what you described, I gained threat through some means, I held it for varying lengths of time, and I mitigated the damage by outright avoiding it. I’m still not a tank though.
Like I don’t get why people are so obsessed with Shaman tanking. Like, yeah, in Classic the idea was that Shaman would be paired against Paladin, and that Enhancement was supposed to be a tank, hence the focus on melee and the ability to wear a shield. That, just like actual Paladin tanks, was dog water. Blizz gave up on that idea early on, and double downed with it in TBC by giving Alliance Shamans and Horde Paladins.
Like it boggles my mind. The TALENT that gives you the ability to parry is also the same talent that drops your threat by 30%. Yet, the idea that Shamans can be tanks is still paraded around.
Like you got aggro 3 times on a boss who drops threat and want to say you tanked it.
Go tank literally anything else and maybe people will start taking what you’re saying with a grain of salt.
