I am a total noob to tanking but was thinking of giving it a shot. From my research i found a few contradictory suggestions so was hoping to clarify. Being a total nubtard to this way of play, i would like to ask you good people for some suggestions and clarifications.
could you please rank tanks from ease of use?
of the top choices, what is the most fun tank to run?
in the off chance that i git gud, can this class potentially hold his own in a tough spot when a few people are down and you need to win?
historically speaking, has this class been consistently loved and adored by its developers?
I want to sincerely thank everyone who replies! I know im asking a lot and your time replying will save me months of work.
Personally, the easiest three are prot warrior, guardian druid, and prot paladin. I’d rank the warrior slightly more user-friendly than the druid only because Frenzied Regeneration being on the GCD feels awkward as hell.
Most fun is going to be down entirely to your personal preference. I’ve always found Blood DK and Vengeance DH to be very clunky, but there are plenty of people who swear by them. Just try out a few and see what gels with you the most.
Blood DK is probably always going to be the best when it comes to surviving stupid situations. DH is a close second. They both have crazy self-healing and their cheat death mechanics will bail you out more often than not.
I have no idea about the last question. Which tank is meta shifts from season to season. It’s not really something you should worry about. Again, just find one you like the feel of…and leave the min-maxing to the bleeding-edge nerds.
Prot Paladin. They have tools for absolutely every situation and they’re very easy to pick up. Blood DK has a bit of a learning curve- they have the best self healing but they also take the most damage.
Prot paladins have great utility, great mitigation, great healing, good damage, and again, they’re very easy to pilot.
I don’t recommend blood dk to start, it’s usually the strongest end of xpac (or up there) and bottom (or mid) at the beginning. They scale very well. Until you learn to treat your resource bar as more important than your health bar, it’s a wonky class to learn. They level like garbage, they need the kit and gear.
I find prot warrior to be very natural and easy once you have the full talent tree. They level very well.
I am honestly surprised to see warrior on the list above druid. Always thought warrior tanks have been bad in terms of maintaining threat and surviving.
I have no evidence that support my strange opinion though LOL!
Paladin, as said above, has tools for everything and can even double as a healer for the group in many situations.
VDH is very easy too due to their barriers and leech.
Warrior - you need to start paying attention as your rage usage will be a choice between mitigation and damage.
Druid I sincerely do not know as I have never played guardian, but I’d tentatively put it as slightly harder than warrior.
Blood DK takes a lot of damage but self heals a lot of said damage. Timing for Death Strike is important here, and your RP bar is pretty much a second HP bar, due to the mentioned Death Strike, as long as there are enemies nearby.
I have tried brewmaster and it’s really hard to grasp the concept of staggering damage and balancing their skill usage. It’s by far the hardest one compared to the others, which play very much alike, despite their quirks, so I just gave it up.
TL;DR - You only gotta really know what you’re doing with a Monk, the rest are kinda autoplay.
bear is by far the easiest tank to play. If you are learning to tank it has the simplest rotation so you can focus on learning dungeons and pulls and have less to worry about.
If your looking to invest time into it I would go with paladin. It has the most utility and once you learn the ins and outs can pick up a lot of a groups slack and help carry groups.
I did mess with a pally to do some solo farming. I would NEVER trust myself to tank for a group - Let that be said. - But I didn’t die while out farming so that tells me that I kinda got how to play it without too much hassle.
Plus, they do look cool doing their thing. Especially as a Zandalarian Troll. wooo baby.
Warriors are excellent, but have some severe weaknesses against bleeds and magic and not much group utility. But they have an excellent damage profile, a great group buff for physical damage, excellent mobility, and they mitigate physical damage the best out of all the tanks.
Play monk! They have millions of buttons!
Srsly though OP monks are complicated, best beginner tanks are prot paladin, guardian druid and prot warrior.
I think prot warrior is the most straight forward but get a weak aura to track your ignore pain. It makes a huge difference.
Coming in with a spicy take and would like other people’s opinion on it too. I mained Bear last 2 season.
Yes Bear is easy to learn but I don’t know think it is a good one for new players. Let me run over why.
Tanking is about keeping aggro, pathing for the party, pulling mobs in a way that matches party ability to kick/damage and move the mobs.
A new bear comes in and has healing through both thrash shields. But biggest issue is the start of a mob pack beginner Bears suffer a lot more than other tanks.
Protection Warrior: passive shield blocking and ignore along with fat burst shields while taking no damage with shield block.
Veng DH; Incredible sustain, utility and mobility.
Monk: You can fail a mechanic or over pull and recover well. For bosses this means focusing on blackout kick in your stagger maintenance on ST, or defensive plus brews. I copped a hit from the DHT Druid on his charge and Brew easily handled it. Most others expect Paladin might be hard getting away with it.
To actually make the most of Bear you need to know how to use your abilities like Wild Charge/Free Regrowth etc.
