Firstly, I want to take the opportunity to say that it’s a great thing that Paladins and Druids can finally be tanks. But this leads me to question… for what reason would someone choose a warrior now?
For instance, if the Paladin can taunt like the warrior, has as much armor as the warrior (even more with their aura), but can also heal themselves with their magic… what is the advantage of the warrior? The Paladin can do everything the warrior does in SoD but can also heal others and themselves, use Lay on Hands, etc.
I know this is a sensitive topic, as warriors have been #1 for a long time, so I expect to receive trolling responses like ‘QQ your time is over,’ but I’m looking for a serious discussion.
If the Paladin and Druid (to name a few) can tank as well as the warrior with taunt now and can additionally heal themselves, what advantage does the warrior have that they don’t? Why be a warrior tank now?
I think it’s a valid question, and we’ll soon find out! If warriors do end up being the worst tanks in SoD, then it’s likely that they won’t be tanking nearly as often…
I would just like each of the tanks to have a different specialization. For example, warriors could be the best single-target tanks, paladins the best AoE tanks, druids better against casters, and so on. Make each of them unique and useful rather than having one class simply better than the others…
There was one paladin that I know of who had Thunderfury on the server I played on, before TBC launched. A lot of raids had at least one bear tank though.
With elemental warding I would say shamans will be good against those who do fire/frost/nature damage. paladin will be good at aoe, bear will be good but better. Warrior has a cooldown which is really powerful which gives a flat reduction in damage.
Sounds like you had bad bears. I had bears who could hold threat on the best dps on the server. Alliance has blessing of salvation though so maybe they sucked for horde idk.
As a holy paladin I absolutely loved running dungeons with bear druids. The healing I had to throw at them was considerably less and druids as a whole seem to be more chill than zug zug.
It really depends on the tuning of the raid. If mana mangement becomes a thing, raids are finer tuned, mobs hit harder and fights are longer, fury prot won’t be a thing - leveling the playing fields. DPS might actually need to worry about threat again.
There’s no way they will be the worst, not with the damage boosts they got. Mitigation wasn’t an issue with them and honestly damage wasn’t either lol but they had to get something, and in the end it’s probably more fun to get damage boosts.
Warriors are unlikely to be unseated as the best tank, their mitigation is still much better than both druids and paladins.
The first point I will address is that healing while tanking is not an efficient use of mana. A tanks job is to hold threat, and that is what a paladin should be doing with their mana. Druids would need to get out of bear form which isn’t a good idea while tanking.
Paladins were already passable dungeon tanks, and the changes will likely make them the best dungeon tanks in the game. But they will still not be able to take damage the way bears and warriors can. So far they still won’t be able to maintain enough block at all times to push crushing blows off the table. They will probably be passable raid tanks, but will take much more damage than druids and warriors.
Druids will be able to close the gap with warriors on taking damage, if they choose sotf over ws. They have a choice to make though, more threat, or less damage? More than likely druids will either take less damage than warriors while generating less threat, or generate more threat than warriors while taking more damage.
Warriors are still on track to be the king of tanking. Even with the buffs other classes are getting, warriors remain the best mitigation tanks in the game, and are getting buffs to their threat generation this phase.
As horde with WF bears just couldn’t hold threat to save their life. I’m sure they’ll be strong in SoD with mangle and the other new runes but in vanilla classic they were trash on horde.
