You were literally recommended to go to Caperfin’s guide, whose entire schtick is that Shaman are just as good as real Tanks.
Hahaha
His videos all start with a disclaimer about how its doable, far from optimal and is going to be far more challenging.
Word for word quoted on his guide:
“So, question is - can shamans tank? Yes, but with some restraints.
Of course, shaman tank never was and never will be meta in TBC, due to it being less developed than other tank classes. So who needs this guide?
Basicly it’s for all people who want to try something new in this 15 yo game, someone who would like more hardcore gameplay, or everyone who prefers to go into dungeon and not wait for tank for 30+ minutes.”
What is wrong with you? Who hurt you so much that you need to blatantly lie about readily available information that can be checked in 20 seconds?
Bolded the relevant part. Caperfin’s entire guide completely avoids the shortcomings and simply chalks up any discrepancies as “you’re not trying hard enough”
It is why he made frequent posts here, and on the Vanilla forums, to show that Shaman can and should be used as MTs in all raiding content, including Naxxramas.
/shrug
He’s an idiot, and he has an idiot following.
So you can’t read then eh? That’s okay.
https://www.warcrafttavern.com/wow-classic/guides/shaman-tanking/
When experienced players Shaman tank and put in the effort, it shines tenfold. Shamans can fully tank 5mans, 10mans, off-tank & main-tank raids. But, this is reliant on personal and guild experience. Our overall defensive statistics won’t reach a warrior’s. However, it isn’t necessary to do so, to tank.
Anyway you can now sit down and think about being wrong.
Nowhere in what you quoted is it ever stated that Shamans are better tanks. Anywhere. What the f are you reading? Shines tenfold? “But this is reliant on personal and guild experience”.
“statistics won’t reach a warriors”.
Never once it is stated that Shamans make great tanks. He’s stating that it can work when the player and their group put in extra effort.
Your bizarre agenda paints everything you read into something that simply doesn’t exist.
Let’s try reading for a moment:
He even has an entire paragraph set aside for viability vs optimal and deliberately obfuscates the distinction to make his claim that Shaman are equally viable as any other Tank. This is a lie, but Caperfin hasn’t cared about lying ever.
Yeah, and then he immediately disregards the difference as unnecessary to successfully MT all content, including raids. That’s lying, the difference is staggering.
…I’m sorry you can’t read.
That poor healer…
2 Likes
I don’t want to give up on the idea of shaman tanking either. But GoA totem improvement is probably important. I think the answer may lie somewhere down heavy resto with enhance to back it up but I don’t know how effective it would be. Possibly just to survive?
Mere survival is only the first step to trying to Tank anything successfully, and there aren’t many levers to toggle in the TBC Shaman kit without super powering something like Rockbiter Weapon with a very deep talent choice to make it akin to Dire Bear Form’s multiple modifiers. Talents just aren’t that strong right now (we get really strong ones in Cata at the earliest) and everyone still has access to all abilities so it can’t be a baseline change either without letting any spec of Shaman simply become a Tank by slapping on the right weapon imbue.
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Not to be a debbie downer, but you probably should.
A Demonology warlock has a better chance of dungeon tanking than shamans.
Unless you do something out of the box like kite “tank” with frost shock and earthbind totem to control 3+ mobs in say Heroic Shattered halls…
…which really isn’t tanking any more than a frost mage.
Gear options, supporting talents, and underlying game mechanics do not support shaman being a tank class.
3 Likes
I totally agree. But I also still waste a few hours a week looking at talents and gear lists to see if there’s a magical better 2h weapon build.
Shaman tanking only works if you way out gear the instance,
Some builds put two points in Enhancing Totems for the improved GoA. Not as much Strength of Earth since you’re going to be using Earthbind most of the time for better field control.
But you definitely want 5/5 Reverberation because Frost Shock will be used off cooldown. Other than that, most of your melee improvement will come from the Enhancement tree, including 10% more armor from 5/5 Toughness and converting your AP to SP with 3/3 Mental Quickness which makes Frost Shock more effective. Also, Enhance has access to Shamanistic Rage which is pretty much your only defensive cooldown.
From what I’ve gathered, if you’re throwing out enough threat to out-threat your party, then Spirit Weapons becomes a legit talent to take up. Dual-wield talents will come after that and you’re pretty much relying on Parry, Dodge, and Stam for survivability. Otherwise, you’re basically gearing yourself like a Bear. Go for Stamina, Armor, and Dodge. Even though you have a shield, you don’t benefit a whole lot from Shield Block or Block Value items.
Naturally, you carry a shield if things get a bit too tough, but otherwise you to wear stuff like the Heavy Clefthoof set and prioritize Stamina when you gem. Unfortunately, you won’t have as much health as a Bear, but at least Spirit Weapons affords you the ability to parry and you get some block from the Shield Specialization in the Enhancement tree.
The downside to Spirit Weapons is, of course, that your melee attacks will be 30% less threatening. The upside is that LB, CL, and FS are all spells and won’t be affected by it.
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We may want to look outward to what party we would bring to successfully tank. I think another shaman for a earth shield to help us with threat and things like CC and misdirects could be hugely important while we could be making a lot of use of our stone claw totem
So this is still 100 percent a meme tank but i would question why you dont prioritize more in the ele tree. You could do something like 40/21, since your main threat is coming from your ele abilities anyway and elemental shields would push crits off the table, while still letting you get the dodge and shields from the enhance tree.(and a point into flurry elemental devestation). Rather than trying to be an upfront tank, youre more likely better as a caster tank.
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There’s no need to go down to Elemental Shields when 99% of the gear you want for pure survival purposes is Arena/Honor gear which is laden with Resilience. You’re left with only being able to supplement the skills you can get away with using while “tanking” which are:
- Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning on the pull only
- Frost Shock
- Stormstrike
- Lightning Shield for threat, Water Shield for longevity
- Autos with either Flametongue or Windfury on your MH
Half of Elemental and Enhancement are basically useless to you because you can’t hard cast while fighting, your fire totems transfer zero threat, your fire spell is occupied by Frost Shock CD instead, and you aren’t DW anything. So it comes down to what kind of offensive stats scale fastest: spell or physical.
If physical stats make up the majority of your threat and scale faster, then going a more true Enhancement build would be the best utilizing Windfury, likely never using anything other than Water Shield and potentially letting Frost Shock lapse in low threat situations in favor of more Stormstrikes.
If caster stats make up the bulk instead, you’d want all the extra oomph you can get out of Elemental and you’re really only in Enhancement for the few defensive buffs that exist, some efficiency (Mental Quickness), and the free instant Stormstrike.
I think I’d favor Elemental “tank” over Enhancement “tank” since it lets you have a much stronger pull, a significantly better Mana pool, and SP scales everything except Stormstrike.
You don’t really need +defense to tank. As long as their EHP is high enough to survive healers can usually just heal more. I bet you could make this work if you could hold enough agro wearing maybe half a set of mail pieces with the Stamina suffix.
No no no no no. The only reason Druids get away with minimal/no Defense is because we have a built in 3% reduction and we have more EH scaling than any other class by miles and even then we can get smashed to pieces by just Crushing Blows, let alone Critical Strikes.
A Shaman can’t touch the EH of the lowest EH Tank, a Warrior, so you can bet they cannot beef up enough to handle Critical Strikes.
Caster “Warden” Variant
https://seventyupgrades.com/set/7DoVXMX225FgMMnGtXQGDM
Health: 13,375
Armor: 12,561
No-PvP EH Stacked Druid
https://seventyupgrades.com/set/6MV87PizkRSDdWzpWqEWhx
Health: 16,254
Armor: 27,423
Once you add in buffs like Blessing of Kings, Prayer of Fortitude, etc, the gap just widens even further.
Health: 13,375
Armor: 12,561
Those stats are probably good enough.
That druid set isn’t even approaching armor cap, what stands out is lack of decent trinkets and boots. Agility enchant to cape eww.
…for what? Doing Normal Botanica?
…?
(27,423 + 2,500) * 1.25 = 37,404 Armor
Armor Cap is 35,880. This set is trivially over cap when using raid consumables and proper healers, and could actually lose a bit more Armor. That’s why raw EH is selected while maintaining uncritability with Defense/Resilience. That’s the only reason the KoT trinket is used over a second Engineering trinket, because this set was made for folks who aren’t going to do, or lack the time to grind, all the Honor acquisition for bracers/neck/etc.
…as opposed to what enchant? 150 Armor doesn’t scale with our forms and we’re already over cap as is, we don’t have access to Steelweave yet for other options regarding uncritability, and resistances are best applied to more specialized cloaks.
Oh and 12 Dodge Rating is flatly inferior to 12 Agility.
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Yeah and its almost 10k armor under cap if you aren’t consuming. I thought this thread was about tanking heroics not raids.