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Tanking Styles
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Post by
105269
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Post by
207044
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Post by
146010
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Post by
DaCyclops
I think he is more asking how the tanking of one class compares to the other.
I cant exactly provide a full statement from all sides of view, but I can at least provide my chosen view. Warrior!
A Warrior Tank is the classic image. Strong man, covered in plate armor, taking every blow with his shield and returning the pain. We have
Shield Block
that doubles our shield's usefulness. Some skills like
Shield Slam
allow us to use our defensive as an attack against the enemy, while something like
Spell Reflection
allows us to bounce a spell back at an enemy - if timed right. We have
Damage Shield
for returning a small bit of the pain, and
Revenge
which lets us punish the opponent for being tanked by us. We have
Devastate
which lets us destroy the opponents defence. We have
Heroic Strike
for adding power to our normal swings, and
Cleave
for letting the swing hit multiple enemies. We can use a well-timed
Shield Bash
to keep the casters in line. We have
Heroic Throw
for generating threat on enemies at range and (
when talented
) for pulling that annoying caster 12ft away happily casting at you.
Vigilance
lets us watch over another member of the raid. We have
Thunder Clap
and
Shockwave
for AoE attacks with good utility (slowing attacks and stunning, respectively).
Challenging Shout
lets a warrior taunt every enemy around them - useful when stuff gets out of hand. We have
Last Stand
and
Shield Wall
that if well timed can let us save a group from a wipe.
I couldnt see doing it any other way. But thats because I like the image.
Post by
Thror
Tanks can be compared from a lot of different points of view.
Like:
Single target DPS / TPS:
Druids definitely do the most, with paladins being a close second, warriors being third, and blood DKs last.
AoE TPS:
Paladins beat everyone, are closely followed by Frost Death knights, then there are the extremely decent Druids who excel at picking up new targets, then there are warriors who have decent AoE, but their strong AoEs have cooldowns, which makes them kinda worse for picking new targets. Then we have Blood DKs who pretty much do not AoE tank at all.
Cooldowns:
Death Knights are very close first in this, they have the most CDs with the biggest variety and power-per-CD. Then there are Warriors and Druids who are pretty much equal. The last ones are prot pallies, who are very lacking in tanking cooldowns.
Resource:
Paladins have the advantage of being able to do max threat right from the start. They have full mana at the beginning of the fight, so nothing limits them. Their only "i need to be hit to do threat" ability is Holy Shield, which is not their main threat gen ability, so they are pretty good for opening boss fights. DKs also have a resource that is at 100% at the beginning of the fight, however, their main threat generator (rune strike) works on the "i need to be hit to do threat" basis, so they are worse then pallies for opening, but better than the last two. Warriors and Druids work with Rage, which IS an "i need to be hit to do threat" resource by itself. They can have trouble with resource starvation at the beginning of the fight, and might have trouble starting pulls.
The resource however is not a large issue overall, and a skilled player does not have problems keeping aggro right from the start, whatever his class is.
Run speed:
In a heroic, some tanks generally move faster than others. Paladins, if they are unfortunate or do something wrong, sometimes have to drink up between pulls. Does not happen to good paladins though, so pally tank runs are usually pretty fluent. A death knight often has to wait a little while between pulls (for his Death and Decay to cool down), especially if the group has some leet DPS and the trash groups are close to each other. So they can be slower, probably the slowest of all tanks, since no others are limited like this. Warriors and Druids are rage based, which means they lose they resource when they do NOT fight. Which means that a warrior and a druid wants to pull the next group as soon as the first one is dead, or heck, even chain pull everything. They also both have Charge, which they can use to make the run even faster. Druids and Warriors are unbeatably the fastest tanks.
Raid buffs and utility:
Paladins bring auras, a healing buff, blessings, divine sacrifice, and also a bunch of other utility abilities like a bubble or hand of salvation.
Druids bring a crit aura, a healing aura (improved leader of the pack), a bleed damage increase on the boss, an armor debuff, plus additional utility like Innervate and combat rez.
Death Knights bring their horn... um. And they can spec for a +10% melee damage aura.
Warriors can shout, debuff armor, have a lot of abilities that can somehow "disable" the target (stun/silence/disarm/interrupt)... which do not work on bosses very often though.
I probably forgot a lot of things in this paragraph. I did not include the "general tanking debuff" anywhere btw, cause all the tanks have it.
Difficulty:
Warriors probably require the most skill, since they have by far the largest array of abilities. Death Knights are pretty difficult, because their resource system needs some skill to adapt to, especially for tanking. Paladins are pretty easy, using the same rotation for everything. Druids are the easiest of them all, a simple rotation for single target, and a single button for multi target.
Post by
Drefanator
I have an 80 Druid tank and a warrior tank.
Warrior tanking is definitely a lot easier, both with single target and AoE. My druid is better geared (barely) but is alot harder to tank with than warriors.
Gear has alot to do with that as Druid tanking gear doesn't always scream "HEY YOU I"M TANKING GEAR" compared to other classes, mainly because they share the same/similar gear to the cats and the rogues.
It could all come down to preference and that I've always enjoyed tanking with my warrior, as I find it engaging instead of a Druids -Macro'd Maul to Swipe and constant tabbing- Of course this is with Heroics, And i've only tanked ToC with both, having similar issues. The main thing I can't stand about druids is the lack of silence/interrupt like Heroic Throw or Avengers Shield, or that plethora of DK abilities. That one thing makes instances such as FoS very very annoying, and relying on some CC from your party, which isn't necessarily bad, it's just not how heroics are done nowadays ("What do you mean by Sheep moon?").
Anyways, although people say that Druid's are the easiest tank, and warriors are the hardest, or require the most skill. It's not necessarily true, Warrior's wide range of abilities makes tanking very easy, even on aoe pulls. Except in things like the HoS event with Brann. Of course, rage classes just suck for that, especially compared to DK's and Pally's "set and forget" threat abilities.
Anyways, My 2 cents. I've never played a DK, but from what I've seen in my dpsing days, DK tanks are either amazing, or horribad, there are very few good or alright dk tanks. I've found that Pally tanking is the most forgivable with both aoe and single target, as it doesn't take a lot of effort in comparison, and well I've talked enough about warrior's and druids.
Post by
146010
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Post by
Kelborn
I don't know where you're getting that Blood DKs are lowest on single target threat... last I checked, and when I last raided, I was pretty up there. Only reason the Warrior pulled ahead of me in TPS was cuz the rogues were tossing him ToT all the time. Not sure why cuz I was MT for the raid, but w/e. Yeah Rune Strike is a reactive ability, but when I'm the main tank... I'm getting hit. As an
off-tank
our threat is terrible, but with IT spam we can pull ahead more than we used to. I do not advocate IT spamming in a main rotation, as the threat increase was meant to aid at the start of a fight, and unless your DPS severely outgear you it's not very useful.
Post by
lonewarrior
Playing a prot warrior..I think we have a certain aoe disadvantage because we don't a DOT. The same way a pally tank can drop
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=26573
. This doesn't always come in to play..but like in HOR.. where adds are not together and coming at different speeds it makes a big difference in grabbing aggro. .especially if you happen to be rage starved at a critical moment.
Post by
Maulee
Paladin and DK tanking at endgame is rotation-based. Neither have any reactive abilities to pay any attention to (DKs tend to macro rune strike into every ability so that doesn't count). Once you get your rotation down, boss threat becomes simple enough. Paladins keep the same rotation for everything more or less, DKs use a different one for trash but the style is the same. (Exception to frost DKs, as they have a more priority based rotation, but the generally accepted raid tank is a blood specced one. Not that frost can't do it.)
Prot warrior is a priority based rotation. You shield slam whenever you can, revenge whenever you can, and spam devastate when you can't. Throwing in heroic strikes too, if you have too much rage (which you will do when you're being hit). Obviously, thunderclap and shockwave on aoe pulls as well.
Bears have a mix between priority and rotation. Hit maul every GCD, keep lacerate stacks at 5, hit faerie fire every time it's off cooldown, hit mangle every time it's off cooldown, spam swipe in between said cooldowns.
This may or may not be a 100% accurate little list, but it should be reasonably close.
When running heroics you'll be forced to run as fast as you can to keep your ADD dps from running ahead and pulling for you. In raids you should set a pace that everyone else can keep up with. Unless you're not the MT, in which case you let them set the pace.
I use different rotation for different situations. Shield of Righteousness is our highest TPS move, but it doesn't work very well as an opener on trash.
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