Yeah, I know the meme, but also know that it can be done.
Have looked at builds and guides for both classes for tanking, and would like to ask for opinions for those with experience running with a Shaman / Warlock Tank?
How smooth does it seem?
Ease of use?
Strength of threat and mitigation?
Direct comparison of the two in the tank role?
Thanks, insight would be appreciated 
Warlock tank is not a meme, you use them on twin emps
Shaman tank is a meme, and what you really need to shaman “tank” is a group or guild willing to hold back dps unreasonably and for healers to oom in MC to keep you alive in order to humor you
Thanks Jedai.
Would you consider either in 5-man content?
I’ve heard of Warlocks running on Twin Emp, could they be viable in dungeons without too much trouble in consumables?
I don’t know about Warlocks tanking unless we’re referring to Twin Emps.
As for Shaman tanking, that requires a raid that is willing to coordinate with its members in a way that accommodates the Shaman. Tanking without a taunt is always an issue which is one of the primary reasons you don’t see a lot of Paladins tanking, let alone Shamans.
There’s videos of Shamans tanking MC and BWL. However, if we’re talking AQ40 or Naxx, I don’t know if they can cut it. But it’d be something worth exploring, right?
honestly anything can tank 5 mans at this point in classic, everyone is running around with at least aq gear and alot with naxx gear. Things melt too fast for a “tank” to be needed in 5 mans. If you’re talking about from a phase 1 perspective on a potential fresh in the future then probably not because 5man stuff hits pretty hard on fresh green chars
Here’s a cool video on the subject:
I’d only consider it once pre-raid BiS is obtained, and only in dungeons.
The videos are great, though I do worry about viability (threat & mitigation) without consumables and other buffs. I’m just concerned that it may be much less viable without all those special considerations.
Yeah, if people want to make it work, I don’t see why it can’t work. You’ll never know until you try it.
You’d be surprised at what classes can pull off in 5-man content.
Tank Shaman is actually good in 5-mans with their totems - and even UBRS and 20-mans to an extent - but anything beyond that and the lack of a taunt, instant AoE threat (besides mana pots), mana solutions AND Defensive Stance just makes them fall completely flat in comparison to Warriors as all do in Classic lol. They get a great defensive cooldown, better mana management, an AoE taunt pet AND a better Chain Lightning in TBC though so expect to see it at least a little of them as tanks/OT for groups in the future.
Warlock tank is a raid thing for certain bosses, although I’m willing to bet with the right pets/talents two locks can pull off duo tanking 5-mans as well.
In original TBC, I had a shaman tank in my guild. He did heroics, Kara, and Gruul. It can be done if you just try and don’t care about meta gaming. BTW he was squishy as hell in Kara and Gruul, but had amazing threat gen., though I’m sure we all sucked so it was easy for him to keep his threat up.
Ive been leveling a shaman, and pretty much tank everything.
Its near impossible finding tanks for low level content these days so have to make do with what you got
You can warlock tank dungeons not too badly until around level 40ish. Then the mobs start to hit too hard relative to your hp.
It picks back up again after 60, but you either need to be so overgeared that you don’t need anything from the dungeon and you’re doing it for lolz, or you’re gonna have to splurge on lots of consumes that make it not worth it.
Shamans are capable of tanking more than you think. https://classic.wowhead.com/guide=7995/shaman-tank-guide
Shamans are horrible tanks, it can be done for sure and I have been doing it.
It’s a lot of fun making what you have work.
Good ol casual alt leveling this late into classic, its a fun time
I have a warlock with P1 gear, around ~2350 armor (with buff). Not sure what overall mitigation that is combined with SL+void, but can tank Scholomance, haven’t been able to get any pugs on board with me MTing UBRS yet. There’s an indepth Warlock Tank guide floating around somewhere — supposedly it’s possible to tank Ony/MC, but you need stacks of all sorts of oddball consumes, trinkets, bombs, PvP gloves, and more — a whole lot of effort for what is still a subpar tank 
Fantastic!
For both Warlock and Shaman tanks, are you able to do this without crazy amounts of consumables?
What are the major point you’d struggle with on grabbing agro and holding mitigation for Shaman / Warlock?
I have concern with AoE snap agro for the Shaman. Is chain lightning enough? Likewise, Warlock cycling Seating and Hellfire?
Yea this. I mostly just “tank” in dps gear in zerk stance at this point
You won’t really be too successful holding aggro, you’ll throttle your raid . The important bosses in there are immune to fire so no searing pain sadly, and shadowbolt is too vulnerable to pushback to try and keep threat with while being beat in the face.
You can do some interesting range tanking on Sulfuron Harbinger tho. A lot of times he won’t try to melee you, he’ll just stand back throwing spear that don’t hurt that much.
Get a real tank and stop trying to make memes work?
Not really. A lot of the “X class can do it too!!” memes and faux-guides rely heavily on you being exceptionally geared, enchanted, consumed up the butt, buffed further, and wbuff’d even further.
Onyxia is one of those raid bosses that almost anyone can “tank” because she melees so hilariously weakly. Like… 10man trash mobs can hit harder than her. Her only real threat is her flame breath, which is still anemic and resistable, and the fear issues. But people use it as a jumping point to “prove” that certain classes/specs can do the same job as everyone else, which is just silly.
MC has been Tanked from start to finish by single digits worth of Shaman, but only at the end of the tier, with the most success coming from the fact that a Shaman can throw on FR gear and be nearly as sturdy as any other Tank while handling an all-fire boss like Ragnaros.
BWL on the other hand really trounces all of that. Bosses hit harder, the mechanics are far more punishing on Tank health/survivability, there are a host of taunt swaps, and the non-Tanks just don’t get gear to keep them progressing while everyone else continues to grow. Shaman in particular just can’t survive the Drakes or Broodlord in BWL and all of the videos and logs of people clearing BWL with a Shaman “Tank” have the Shaman dead on the floor most of the time while Warriors and Druids do the rest of the heavy lifting.
AQ40 is even worse and Shaman have only been able to show off their ability to hold random adds that die quickly (think Sartura and Fankriss) but can’t do O’uro or Twins without insane luck.
Luck is basically the name of the game. If you dodge and parry enough, you can probably live this time but you won’t everytime because you just don’t get that kind of RNG all the time. That’s why you only tend to find highlight reels for these things, not the slogfest that led up to the perfect storm of favorable RNG. Those BWL clears with Shaman “tanks”? Over 4 hours. People clear Naxxramas in half that amount of time without even necessarily pushing super fast or hard.
CL on the pull is great, but it doesn’t hit enough targets to be useful on say something like a skitter pack in Naxxramas, and once its out well… that’s that. You cast while being melee’d and all that luck I talked about above goes out the window because you can’t Dodge or Parry or Block while casting.
Warlocks would be far better at the AoE threat thing, but Hellfire is also self-damaging and those skitter spiders will one-shot the Warlock that pulls all of them.
That’s why Druids and Warriors use AoE Taunts and LIPs, which not only protects us entirely from death, but means the Mages/Warlocks/etc can go absolutely ballistic on DPS, never pull, and not die.
It just… isn’t enough for them.
In TBC Shaman don’t get any better, even if they get loads of Arena gear, because the expectation is that all the Tanks, Druids included, become crit immune while also soaking exceptionally huge damage. Plus, if Shaman want to be able to Parry, they have to give up a huge hunk of Threat on top of it, so they become actively worse.
Warlocks get additional Tank-caster duties like they have now on Twins. A lot of guilds use Warlocks on Leo’s demon form, the caster on Kael, and Illidan during his big-bad-demon mode at the end of the fight. As for more traditional Tanking though… not really. The new talents and gear don’t really beef them up exceptionally well, even if they go Demonology and use a pet to help them out. Warlocks get their own demon form in a later expansion that makes them actually capable Tanks, but it isn’t permanent unfortunately, so its used more like a DPS CD or a PvP survivability/burst combo.