Just try it. Tanking is a love/hate stuff
If you love you’ll love it, if you don’t you don’t
I fall in love with tanking, although i still heal/dps but I’m a tank by nature.
Give it a proper go (and I mean proper tanking at max level, not some “I tried leveling a prot and it sux”)
All six tanks are effectively on a scale. One extreme end, bdk, takes the most damage, but has the most healing. The other end, warrior, takes the least damage, but has the least healing.
BDK-vdh-paladin-warrior.
Monk and druid are a bit weird, as they both mitigate damage well, but also rely on external healing to a varying degree. Both recieve increased healing, and can increase/decrease that reliance. Effectively, where they sit on the spectrum shifts, above and below paladin, but still between vdh and warrior.
All six tanks are specifically weak to magic and bleed damage. None of them are “good” against either, more a comparison of being less-weak. Against bleed, the “best” is bdk, due to raw healing being the best defense against it, followed typically by vdh.
Against magic, the “best” depends on the situation and the damage profile. Against constant, blockable damage? Paladin. Against unblockable, regular magic? Bdk. Against occasional (25s+) magic damage? Warrior.
The other three tanks are all pretty similar in their vulnerabilities. Monk is not notable the weakest to magic by any means. It’s just equally weak.
VDH is not actually that spikey. Certainly, more so than say, a monk or a warrior, but nothing extreme. It’s healing/damage intake profile is relatively smooth, especially compared to earlier in BFA.
Honestly, the biggest change to this scale of comparison going into Shadowlands is paladin. They exchanged a bit more damage taken, but instead of increased self healing, their damage output is higher. Notably so, they’re relatively weak in terms of damage mitigation+self healing, but doing very, very good for a tank dps.
It’s the confluence of azerite traits synergizing extremely well with essences and the new talents. We shall see how this migrates into SLands but I loved prot before and digging it now.
Even without Azerite, the Protection Paladin I’m currently leveling feels super nice compared to what it used to.
Though waiting til 44 to get the Avengers Shield interrupt is annoying.
Prot Pal also currently does bonkers damage.
If you’re new to tank, my tips is pick
Paladin / Druid
if you’re bored they have 2 more specs to play with.
Don’t go into full tank toon like “warrior/DH” , they technically only have Tank or DPS spec.
But if you have time (we all do, hence we play) might as well pick one you like and see how it goes. The 120 oppsss… 50 trial a toon works wonder if you only want get the feel of it
plsu it’s prepatch time, not like there’s much to do