Shaman tanks

just bring a warrior drop windfury totem and he’ll dps tank the entire dungeon for you

Yes it will. I am doing it now at 50. I have also tanked Molten core, and so on with a shaman, in vanilla. I have also tanked heroic content in BC.

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well fam, i am looking for people experiences with shamans, so far, some like you tells me its not viable at all and then i have others who tell me that they are tanking as shamans so ofc i am biaised toward those who do what i want to do

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I’ve personally tanked as a Shaman up through Sunken Temple without issue. Anything beyond that was more of a challenge. Not impossible, but challenging.
BRD would be the cut off point for most PUG groups I would say.

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Hcalling bullsht.

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Shamans can technically tank any 5man in the game. However, and this becomes more of an issue in late game, it’s a major pain in the D. Go watch TipsOut deep dive into shaman tanking. You have to put a lot more effort into tanking as a shaman, and it’s almost impossible to do in PuGs, because everyone wants to speed run through instances.

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This is generally true for all tanks. IV seen many warriors, even after being told to spam Demo + get explosives, complain about aoe threat. To be honest, druids are the only ones with an easier time with this, but even they can still have issues.

This is why explosives are paramount to aoe tanking in classic.
For example, i can pull and instantly do 700-800 damage. With rockbiter, this is HUGE threat generation.

I dont use stone claw for anything but gathering people, and peeling them personally.

There is a discord community with many great players, and streamers who are pushing this heavily. We are collectively working together to find ways to move shaman tanks form being viable, to being optimal. together we are working on ways to optimize the builds.

Nerd Math stuff, you know.

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Did you tank MC as shammy AFTER 1.6? if so that makes sense there was ALOT of gear added that was better than MC gear so i could see you simply Strong arming the threat and medigation through pure stats.

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For anyone interested, you can find out more here

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Shaman is a tier3 tank, you can tank any 5 man with varying results from just OK to Good and off-tank raid non-bosses. Hardest thing you’ll have to deal with is people that think only warrs can tank.

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Have you even played a shaman? lol sure you can tank, and sure you can mitigate alot to some extent… but you will be oom and drinking every.single.pull.

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The first time I ever tanked in in an mmorpg was with a shaman in sm cathedral, and it went well. I thought after-words “gee wiz I like tanking”.

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Good for you :slight_smile:

The key will be itemization. Its going to be a very eclectic gear list when all is said and done.

Thankfully Shaman threat tools are pretty much by default and it frees up a lot of leeway in that regard.

As someone who healed on a Paladin very early, when I was told it couldn’t be done. Tanked MC and BWL on a Paladin, tanked raids on Bears, did top 5 DPS in raid while cat I have one piece of advice:

Don’t let the naysayers bother you. Most have little to no understanding of class mechanic breakdowns…let alone have math skills :stuck_out_tongue:

Most of all have fun!

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I played a priest back in vanilla and a shaman guildie tanked a lot of my dungeon runs. Here is what i can tell you.

  1. Shaman are very good keeping aggro and when chain lightning comes on line the shaman can do big pulls.
  2. Shaman tank DPS in no joke and can help burn down packs quickly.
  3. Shaman’s need mana after almost every pull so the run is often very slow.
  4. shaman need a TON of healing, so your healer will HATE you unless your guildies/friends.
  5. because of no taunt your healer will die more often and in a pug your healer will have to “save” the group. (pugs don’t play optimally and shaman don’t have the tools to recover)
    most runs will look like this…
    pull, drink, pull, drink, pull, drink, ect

After ZF running with a shaman tank was just to painful and as a healer you can really tell the difference between the tanks. Even a Oomkin Bear tank is much easier to keep up and makes the dungeon run faster and more fun.

So in short; can a shaman tank – YES
but your healer is doing most of the real work and better be a friend of yours.

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How many of those warriors want to tank? How many only tank for their guild/friends?

Shaman tank is fine (if not better) sub 40, and doable after that. There are guides.

If you have a tank slave, thats great, but most people dont, so you roll with what you have.

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I had a shaman tank our Ulda group on Elysium, he did surprisingly well. Has to stop and drink often though

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Yeah, it used to be you used cc in dungeons. The new meta is aoe - guess what, aoe wasnt the way it used to be, you were crazy if you tried it that way. But it works, and people are doing it. Same with shaman tanking.

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I usually end up accidently tanking because im higher lvl then my “tank”, and I heal myself.

All the time I accidentally pull threat as enhancement. I have stacked agility gear and have over a 12% crit chance which is pretty decent for a lvl 30. I never use rockbiter or earth shock (unless its to finish off a mob at 5% HP) and yet I still pull aggro.
I don’t get hit hard in RFK and haven’t since I started running that instance at lvl 28. I don’t pull aggro intentionally, but sometimes just my auto attack will crit (now especially with windfury) and I take aggro even after letting the tank damage for 5 seconds before attacking.
I’ve even been the back up tank several times now when the tank pulls too much and dies.
Now, with that being said, imagine what I’d be like if I used my shield and axe instead of 2h, if I had put talents into shield block and parry (and later into dodge), if I stacked stam gear instead, and if I were to use the specific threat generating moves like rockbiter and earth shock? Hell yeah shamans can tank just fine in dungeons. Believe it or not, enh shamans don’t have to drink after every pull nor are they that squishy.
Sure, I’m only lvl 31, and dungeons aren’t bad yet. But right now a sham tank could overkill it, so I imagine that they are on par and up to the challenge with later levels too IF the player understands the shaman class well enough.

I know OP isn’t asking if shamans can tank because we both know they can tank in dungeons just fine. But there is my experience/opinion on the matter after having played this one to lvl 30.

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shamans are good 5 man tanks

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