The Druid tank was their Raid Lead, and I was pulling threat over both warrior and druid tanks the entire run pretty much. Not on boss fights because I didnt want to cause wipes by missing tank assignments, but on trash etc they didn’t have a chance. It’s not optimal, but it doesnt need to be, classic is ez af.
Edit: And also yes I do actually have snap aggro, best in the game in fact. Earth shock is not only ranged but can generate over 2k aggro instantly, at the begining of a fight, no need to wait for rage. It’s actually OP imo, even regular enh shaman pull off of tanks at the beginning of fights all the time.
Well, yeah. Anyone can pull threat if they really want to. This isn’t retail, it’s up to the DPS to scale their damage according to how much TPS the tank outputs. I guarantee any lock, rogue, or fury warrior could pull threat off YOU if they really wanted. But that doesn’t make them tanks. And it’s not the point.
The point is that warriors have access to higher armor values… they have better itemized gear with + defense and a bunch of other tank oriented stats… they can push crushing blows off the table with shield block… they have skills specifically designed for good threat output like revenge and sunder… they have “oh crap” buttons… they scale better with tanking gear, they have higher stamina etc… the list goes on and on.
It doesn’t mean you CAN’T tank. It just means their class is better at it. Their ceiling is higher. They get better results with less effort.
Classic is “ez af”, yes I agree. Which is why you can do it at all. Back in the day before the MC nerf you would have been destroyed by crushing blows and boss damage. I mean, these days a lock could probably tank most of MC if they really wanted to. Doesn’t mean they’ll do it efficiently.
That’s not what I mean by “snap aggro”. Taunt instantly forces the mob to attack the warrior regardless of threat defecit. Even if he’s below by 15k threat. or 50k threat. Boom. Snap aggro.
Plus they have challenging shout which is an aoe snap aggro… and a backup snap aggro with mocking blow.
You’re shifting your argument. I’m not arguing that my armor or itemization is as good as a warrior… that’s just stupid. I’m arguing that it is more than enough. Look at the log I posted, I take less damage and mitigate more damage than the Feral Tank spec I ran with. The proof is right there, shaman have more than enough mitigation to tank in a raid.
My point was that I do infact generate more threat than a prot warrior or feral druid tank, the only tank that beats shaman is a fury tank spec. If the other tanks aren’t getting beat on for rage, they have zero chance of taking back the boss without a taunt. I on the other hand can just auto attack with rockbiter and a low rank earth shock and maintain threat until someone pulls off me, at which point I max rank earth shock and get him back. I don’t expect you to understand this unless you’ve actually done it. We’re going in circles here. And no, a warlock definitely can’t tank MC the way I have been for weeks lmao
That’s pretty neat, thanks for sharing. I knew shaman tanks were definately a thing in 5 man content. But I wasn’t sure how it’d work in 40 man content.
How do you manage your mana as to keep threat? And whats your active damage mitigation…? Or is that just blocking and parrying?
I’m big into restoration shamans, but I don’t know much of anything about Tank Shamans, except the one I ran into that knew what he was doing was a absolutely wonderful tank for scholomance (Despite me initial hesitance, i’m glad he didn’t take it personally )
How dare you do all the work to form the group you are tanking for and not be willing to give your gear to some one doing subpar dps! BLACK LIST THIS MAN RIGHT NOW!
Fair. I must have misunderstood your point, because that’s exactly what I thought you were saying. Apologies.
Respectfully, that is irrelevant, imo. Anyone can out aggro a tank in Classic.
Regardless, I’m highly skeptical this is true. I doubt very much you can generate more threat (while tanking) than a competent and similarly geared prot warrior. But even if you could, you certainly wouldn’t out-mitigate him.
Which is pretty close to 100%…
What happens if a DPS out aggro’s you by so much that this isn’t enough? What then?
What happens if you get so far behind the DPS you can’t get him back? What happens with aggro wiping mechanics etc…?
Yes, I agree. We’re basically saying the same thing. Warriors are the most efficient tanks. We all know this. That doesn’t mean Shamans can’t also get the job done well enough if they’re good and know what they’re doing. Certainly good enough for MC OTs. This game isn’t hard, afterall.
An auto attack swing with rockbiter is comparable to a heroic strike, so you really just gotta grab a fast weapon and use a rank 4/5 earthshock as your main rotation, keeps mana use to a minimum. You can also use a rank 2 lightning shield to help increase threat, but I usually don’t have an issue with threat. Earthshock is also on a 6 sec CD which allows you to regain mana based on whatever little spirit you do have, if you can hold off on casting it on CD its even better for regen. Only use max rank Earthshock when you proc a mana free spell from Elemental Focus talent in the Ele tree, or when you need to get aggro back from someone who pulls off of you, which wont happen much in raid since you’re mainly tanking an off target. On the rare occasions when someone pulls off with a huge amount of aggro, I usually opt for stormstrike–>Earthshock because ss is an added rockbiter swing and it adds 20% threat to the max rank es. If that doesnt work, follow it with a chain lightning and another max rank earth shock. If the mob doesnt come back to you after that another tank should have picked it up with a taunt, because all of that takes 7 seconds to execute and most tanks are taunt happy monsters.
As far as mitigation goes, there is very little you can do to activate additional mitigation. Your armor and your block are your only helpful stats, as parry/dodge are technically avoidance. To maximize that you want to take the +2% block enchant on your shield as well as taking as many armor enchants as possible with armor consumes. Which makes agi/armor elixirs a must. For active mitigation I’ve been turning to a Greater stoneshield potions, +2k armor for 2min, on a 2 min CD.
Sure they do and i explained fully that those logs are meaningless without knowing the gear and talents of the off-tanks who were most likely fully dps specced while you are specced to tank.
I never said anything about snap aggro.
Its also meaningless, because if and when you lose aggro, you will never regain it. Warlocks crit for over 2k damage and can cast shadowbolt 3x to every 1 of your earthshocks.
Pretty much everyone I’ve run with is surprised by the threat output of rockbiter. It increases AP by 783 and it also has a threat modifier. Because of that it is equates similar to a heroic strike. Every single time I auto attack. Without flurry thats every 1.6 or 2.2 seconds depending on my weapon of choice for that encounter. Add in Flurry Procs, it’s actually a pretty ridiculous amount of threat. so much so infact I max rank earthshock isnt used unless i do manage to get passed up on aggro, I typically will use rank 4 or 5 in my rotation.
Well that’s the fun part. If you’re on top of it, you can max rank Earthshock immediately and put out another 2k threat, even at range, the majority of the time it’s enough to get the target back, but in the case that its an enourmous amount of threat, one of two things will happen. Either the the dps who wasnt watching their threat like they should have been gets one shot and I take the target back immediately due to the max rank earthshock being a ranged ability and allowing me to keep my aggro up, or I stormstrike for the extra rockbiter swing, cast chain lightening, followed by yet another max rank earthshock. With the 20% multiplier from the storm strike, those two abilities are more than enough to regain aggro, provided the dmg dealer has halted their dps. If they havent, that’s on them. If that doesnt work out, 7 seconds have lapsed and another tank or warrior dps should have taunted by then. There are definitely limitations, but aggro really isn’t ever the issue from the last 3 MC’s I’ve run as an OT.
Typically, I make sure I’m assigned the a kill target that isnt the very first one as to avoid any circumstances resulting from not having a taunt. Knowing your limitations goes a long way!
The facts are that I mitigated more damage than everyone in that raid other than the main tank. I had better threat generation than everyone in that raid. We one shot everything but Domo, who took two attempts. A shaman OT was in no way a limiting factor anywhere along the way. A shaman can OT in a raid just as well as any other class, sometimes better. Definitely viable, and that is my only point. They’re not optimal, but they ARE viable. And I will continue tanking on a shaman until the end of classic, feel free to follow along and be incorrect the entire way.
Anything is viable as an offtank in molten core as long as it isnt wearing cloth. This is not really even in question.
Offtank isnt even something you spec for unless you are a shaman meme.
Healer specced druids can off tank, pure dps warrior can offtank, …who in the hell cares about offtanks? The difference between main tank and off tank is literally anything can offtank regardless of gear or spec, while a main tank actually has to be able to tank…
You act like off tank has any bar of competency it must pass. Guy, offtank is nothing.
I didn’t post a video? show me a melee hunter or a rogue, or a feral kitty tanking on a boss fight for 2 minutes continuous. With mostly blues and maybe 1 piece of MC/Ony gear. I’ll wait.
Mostly blues is all youll ever have as a tanking set in molten core. Stop acting like you can get better stuff and youll perform better. Shaman dont get tanking mail or tier.
Not True. And nicely done with the dodging of my challenge. At this point you know you’re wrong. I was able to mitigate more damage than everyone save the MT in a full clear MC with only 1 wipe on Domo, proving shaman are in the conversation with feral tanks and prot paladins when it comes to tanking. Get over it dude, you just look silly at this point.
Well of course you can mitigate damage, you have mail and a shield and tons of warrior tanks are dual wielding. Tanking isn’t about raw mitigation, it’s about threat, and as a shaman you’re going to struggle to out-threat other classes, and you don’t have the same tools to snap it back if things go wrong.
I’ll concede that playing without a hard taunt is a limitation, however if you think shaman are unable to generate adequate threat you have clearly never played one or with one. It’s is extremely common for enhance to rip threat, and with rockbiter you keep it easily. Other tanks can’t keep aggro off of me without taunting on CD. The threat generation is there, the hard taunt is not. Threat hasn’t been an issue for me at all.
I’m ‘going to’ have trouble with threat isn’t consistent with what has already happened. I’ve already tanked more than one full MC clear and had zero raid wiping issues with threat. We wiped one time on domo because one of the other tanks was dropped and we couldnt recover the damage output on the raid.
You’re doing similar damage to your tanks, so generously you’re close to them in threat, but you’re missing the “oh no” buttons.
I don’t disagree that it’s possible to do stuff as a shaman “tank,” but I tank stuff in half leather gear in berserker stance on my warrior. When bosses start hitting for a non-negligible amount and real dps start scaling you’ll see the shortcomings become very apparent.
