Way back in the early days you could only pick either alliance or horde on a server… shaman was also only horde and pally only alliance…that would mean alliance had warrior druid and paladin tanks… whilst horde had warrior and druid only so i wonder… was enhance ever a tank spec or meant to be and just didnt?
Shammy were sometimes used as offtanks through vanilla and tbc. Hell, you might even find the occasional main tank shammy on certain fights.
Pretty solid in a lot of dungeons back then too. Not top-tier, but doable.
4 Likes
Some Shamans say we were supposed to be a tank spec since we had threat gen and what not. But blizzard never did anything with it and removed the threat gen from our abilities that gave it.
A lot of us want blizzard to give shamans a tank spec for a 4th spec but we have been asking for this for many years hasn’t happened and doubt it ever will.
5 Likes
No they were never actually intended to be a full tank in the same way that a paladin or druid was. The reason they had some of those abilities was so in open world content you know like grouping for an elite quest or something if nobody else could they could fill a similar role but they were never intended to do it as an actual thing for like dungeons
5 Likes
Kind of. They used to have a taunting ability for a very long time, and the shield made them able to off tank in very specific fights. However, it was never the optimal strategy, it was just something they could do if the group had no other option.
1 Like
The old WoW website described them like this:
The old phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” is an excellent way to describe the Shaman; they are the only real “hybrid” class in World of Warcraft. While they do not excel at any one aspect of their repertoire, they function passing well when performing most tasked called upon by a party. Need a support healer? Looking for a secondary tank? After another damage-dealer? Have an empty slot that needs someone to support the group in general? The Shaman can provide. They have a number of utility spells as well that help make life easier for any party. We’re not telling you how to play the game - one of the fascinating practices of this genre is the ingenuity exercised by the players every day!
Having mained this character since vanilla, realistically the game never actually supported them as a tank. They never had gear or talents for the survivability required for tanking raid or dungeon content, and they didn’t have abilities for managing threat. Rockbiter generated some threat and Earth Shock generated a “high” amount of threat, but not enough to hold against DPS nor to manage an entire group of mobs. We didn’t have a direct taunt, either. Stoneclaw Totem could taunt, but also only had enough health to survive a single attack and none of the threat it generated transferred to you.
In vanilla, their only real role in dungeon and raid content was as a healer. Elemental was considered a PvP spec at best, 1H enhancement didn’t do enough dps to be viable, and 2H enhancement was a liability because you had no threat mitigation so if you got a string of Windfury procs you’d pull threat and die. Our tier sets from raiding also pretty much boosted healing abilities. DPS shamans didn’t really become a thing until TBC launched.
Paladins didn’t tank either, fwiw. They were healers as well. Same with druids.
Warriors were the only real tanks in dungeon and raid content. The game gave the appearance of talent trees offering multiple possible class roles, but it really didn’t actually start supporting that idea until TBC.
7 Likes
I resent being called a warrior druid. We are nothing like them. (There is some dude at the bottom of the ocean from some expansion that goes off on how shaman and druids are totally different that I liked)
Yeah, people did it or got it done and are still working at it in WotLK classic but in an absolute form nah we were never fully tanks in classic. But it was a lot of fun doing things with 5 dps in dungeons where a rogue opens up and dodges till it starts getting hit and we pull threat off of him and heal ourselves until we have to drop a earthbind and mages or warlocks finish by kiting while the rest of us bash mobs. Passing threat around with the old Earth Shock and rockbiter weapon was fun.
The main reason shaman had tanking-style abilities in early World of Warcraft was because paladins did as well, and shaman were originally the Horde counterpart to the Alliance’s paladins. That said, they only had a couple of abilities (Rockbiter Weapon and Earth Shock) that gave threat and only a few defensive talents (that weren’t optimal to take). At most, they were a dungeon tank who could occasionally work for a raid encounter if everybody got cool with how squishy they were compared to bear druids, warriors, and paladins.
They were never a legitimate tank.
Anyone who says they were is lying. The only reason they had threat on abilities is because they were the direct mirror of Paladin. Paladin has threat, shaman has threat.
3 Likes
No, they were not.
The only reason they could “kinda sorta” tank is more due to how trivial classic content was.
2 Likes
Yeah, you could tank all the leveling up dungeons for funzies, and if you memed on your entire raid group to support it you could do Molten Core. But after that there was no gear for a shaman tank, and the kit lacked a taunt just like paladins, so even to meme that’s as far as you could go.
When classic originally came out, I was excited to sham tank. I got up to level 45 and did Zul Farak, as well as everything before it. Uldamon was… Impossible tho. Last boss immune to earth shock. I got super bored with leveling past that though.
I think someone else mentioned it: you could tank because classic was super easy mechanically. When I did Uldamon in those 40s levels? The Shadow priest tanked the last fight. It’s fun to meme, but the game design didn’t cater to it. If sham tank spec ever was designed for retail, I could finally drop the paladin and just main sham.
Others have said most of it. I did tank L60 dungeons on my Shaman regularly back in vanilla, and pretty successfully. I had to use some underlevel pieces to get enough +def to be relevant, alongside +hit gear. Tanking as a Shaman was certainly more difficult than other classes. Pull with double CL, get a basic Rockbiter swing on one target, switch to another and Stormstrike, work like mad to make sure you’re hitting any target that’s taking AoE damage, keep your pulls small, and Stormstrike the main target whenever it’s up.
It wasn’t really optimal, but it did work.
1 Like
As tanks in lower dungeons and as OTs in raids. Rarely ever as a MT in a raid. You ran with a shaman as MT in a raid when you got desperate and couldn’t find anything else so you took what you could get.
You tanked them as for fun. not for viability in most cases. And at best they have always been viable, but never optimal.
Here guide I just found about shaman tanking. It is long but is accurate.
(3676) Advanced Shaman Tanking Guide | Classic WoW - YouTube
We dont generate enough threat to maintain the focus of our target.
Yes shamans can tank the best in vanilla. Tbc nerfed it but there are shamans tank in tbcc. Wrath im not sure about.
They had a taunt in Cataclysm, although it was kinda slow & awkward to use (had to change your weapon imbue, cast Unleash Element, then change your weapon imbue back). But it was definitely usable for some fights that needed a ranged taunt (heroic spider in firelands).
Wont see them in Wrath anymore.
In TBC they could do some content and bosses, but youd have to ask your other 4 people to use cooldowns on them and also not out dps/threat pull. Healer’s would have to work harder too. So it requires a lot of extra junk to make it work and they still fall flat on many heroic bosses if they cant meet certain gear requirements ( which was hard because real tanks need that gear and you’ll beg/fight for scraps and poorly itemized mail/leather ). Not to mention there not being any tier sets/etc revolving around sham tanking.
Threat gen on sham stuff was nerfed/removed for Wrath too so dont expect it to be very useful or viable now. ( it wasnt really “viable” before outside of a guild group/friend messing around )
So not really, but some people made it work for some content with help from the rest of the group.
Wrong. So many people spouting bull 
in this thread qhen they obviously have zero idea WTF they are spewing.
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.
Can shaman’s tank WotLK? Let’s ask one who actually knows the aanswer and actually posted the answer here.
Duid could tank 5-mans, I remember doing that alot back then. You could do that throughout the leveling experience but it wasn’t viable for end-game content.