Shadowlands 9.2 Tank Raid Tier List for Sepulcher of the First Ones - Dratnos and Tettles Predictions

Posted 2022/02/28 at 4:40 AM by tettles

predictionsDisclaimers About This Tier ListIf you want to make an argument that your spec should be in a higher tier, you are saying that you do not believe it deserves a buff!Patch 9.2 Shadowlands Tank Tier List for Sepulcher of the First OnesTank Tier List Definitions

S: An exceptional choice that we expect will be a fantastic inclusion as one or even two copies in raid compositions.

A: A great choice, tanks in this tier will be very common to see in top raid compositions.

B: A solid spec that can handle all the content, but relative to the above tiers falls slightly behind in damage, survivability, or utility.

C: A spec with weaknesses that make it a noticeably harder choice to use effectively.

D (NO TANKS IN THIS TIER): A spec with serious survivability issues that requires an exceptionally high degree of pilot skill and/or tactical sacrifices to kill bosses.

F (NO TANKS IN THIS TIER): A spec with horrifying weaknesses that is in immediate need of developer attention and we’d be surprised to see played in many raid compositions at all.

VideoPatch 9.2 Shadowlands Tank Ranking and ExplanationsS Tier Specs for Sepulcher Raid

Venthyr Protection Paladins deal tremendous amounts of damage that carry the spec into the S Tier. Their set bonuses of Glorious Purpose & Glorious Purpose are strong and the inclusion of the covenant legendary is a nice buff to the already powerful Ashen Hallow. Solving survivability issues on Protection Paladin can be a challenge, but the spec’s vast toolkit of proactive and reactive options means a skilled pilot can keep themselves alive through even the more lethal moments of most Mythic raid encounters. Double Protection Paladin comps are not out of the question for some encounters, though many of the teams that field this will also have access to alts in order to use other comps when needed.

A Tier Specs for Sepulcher Raid

Blood Death Knight cracks into the A Tier after slowly ramping all expansion! Their damage remains substantially lower than Brewmasters and Paladins, but they bring a huge amount of value to the table in other ways, most notably with Death Grip and Gorefiend's Grasp, supplemented by their Necrolord Abomination Limb in fights where it’s useful. Whether those fights include the last 3 crucial boss fights remains to be seen, but it certainly looks like it’ll be the case that one or even maybe two Blood DKs will be a huge credit to their teams on Anduin Wrynn. Blood can also be extremely durable when piloted well, and can require next to no healing with even substantial incoming damage at this point in the expansion, and can deploy hefty Anti-Magic Zone that are stronger than the DPS Death Knight specs, as they scale with health and versatility. They can also amplify the damage of Demonology Warlocks in their group by using the Vampiric Aura legendary, which can be a noticeable extra amount of damage for compositions that stack Warlocks.

Brewmasters deal sizable amounts of damage, especially to a single target, and their ability to smooth incoming large physical damage hits into easily manageable Stagger is extremely valuable. They have a fantastic set of tools for mobility and they provide one of the best ways to access the Mystic Touch debuff, something that every raid is looking for. Brewmasters work well in a variety of tanking compositions, and though it’s unlikely that they’ll be stacked, it certainly wouldn’t be a bad option to do so.

B Tier Specs for Sepulcher Raid

Vengeance Demon Hunter is in our B Tier due to slightly lower damage and a utility suite that, while fantastic, doesn’t appear to bring quite as much value to the raid as the Death Knight Grips. The sigils that Vengeance has access to can be incredibly useful, and they are extremely durable against magic damage and against swarms of enemies with their new set bonuses Burning Hunger & Rapacious Hunger, but early testing suggests the most difficult problems for tanks this tier will come in the form of hard hitting physical damage from boss auto-attacks, something that Vengeance has struggled with ever since the nerfs midway through 9.0. Chaos Brand is another incredibly valuable reason to bring a Demon Hunter if you don’t already have one, though Havoc looks likely to be a strong choice that would reduce the need for a Vengeance Demon Hunter.

Guardian is in our B Tier but it’s worth noting that it’s likely to be one of the safest choices for survivability and can become extremely tanky if optimized for that. Unfortunately, the process of maximizing tankiness also reduces Guardian Druid damage to levels that will strain your scroll wheel finger as you search for them on the damage meters. Still, for many guilds, the most important characteristic of a tank player is not that they contribute to damage or bring any specific utility, but that they do not die and wipe the raid, and Guardian is a fantastic choice for those guilds. Guardian can also put out substantial amounts of damage with investment into offensive talents, legendaries, and use of a shapeshifting playstyle, but doing this safely during progression is difficult and usually requires a lot of support from the other tank.

C Tier Specs for Sepulcher Raid

Warrior is the only tank in our C Tier, which means we expect guilds to use Prot Warriors because they have a good Prot Warrior, but we don’t expect them to be sought after as a spec. Even against physical damage, their strength, they can struggle with sustaining themselves, and damage over time or magic damage effects can be downright brutal (unless they’re Spell Reflectionable, in which case Warriors are phenomenal!). The Protection Warrior tier set (Outburst & Outburst) is also not particularly exciting, though some of the covenant legendaries they’ll have access to are, and they can therefore contribute sizable amounts of burst AoE damage.

Class Guides

Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK

Devourer DHHavoc DHVengeance DH

Balance DruidFeral DruidGuardian DruidRestoration Druid

Aug EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker

BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter

Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage

Brewmaster MonkMistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk

Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin

Discipline PriestHoly PriestShadow Priest
Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue

Elemental ShamanEnhance ShamanRestoration Shaman

Affliction WarlockDemo WarlockDestro Warlock

Arms WarriorFury WarriorProtection Warrior

Comment by mokunaThat's just a bad take for Protection paladins, first of all they don't necesarly do more damage than other tanks, especially in a progression setup ie no seraphim, no PI,no crit gear, (even at the high end you can check the logs, they're barely ahead of other tanks often using 10+ external buffs when other tanks don't)

Secondly, prot paladins are incredibly squishy at the start of a tier, while you can mitigate that with good play(and a lot of early gear for world first guilds) they'll always die more than other tanks(you can easily check that on warcraftlogs, even at the highest end they die twice more than blood dks and brewmasters), and sanctum world first progression showed it.

Protection paladins are used by top guilds as cheesy offtanks, you bring them for their spot healing especially on the "main" tank , their unusual kit of cds for a tank (bop, bubble,ashen,sac...), certainly not for their tanking ability, and a tier-list like this is just a bait for lower-end guilds that will greatly suffer by having a protection paladin tanking over a solid tank like brewmaster, blood dk or guardian.Comment by reboundJSYK, the h3 tag for the C-Tier is missing an open quote.

But also I'm a bit more surprised at BDK at A-Tier, since IIRC "reactive" tanks (i.e. get hit and heal it back) are less attractive for progression raiding than "proactive" tanks (i.e. DR the tankbusters/smooth the damage).Comment by TerninThis post is a joke with 0 research done.
Please at least converse with the class discords best theory crafters instead of chad streamers.
Tbh this websites becomes more and more useless.Comment by SergendaThe people above me have no idea what they are talking about kekw

Wholeheartedly agree with the list although I did not expect them to rank monk so high. And this is coming from a Druid main :D

I guess we will see how accurate the list is in a few weeks ^_^
Have a good race everyoneComment by FrawtariusThe people above me have no idea what they are talking about kekw

Wholeheartedly agree with the list although I did not expect them to rank monk so high. And this is coming from a Druid main :D

I guess we will see how accurate the list is in a few weeks ^_^
Have a good race everyoneComment by LockEluneI think you should better consider their point of view. First of all, Dratnos is a tank player in a top guild since SL, he is also a good multiclasser, so his point of view is worth listening to at least, I think. Secondly, their rankings are pretty accurate, but it's important to consider these rankings for the top guilds as always. The game is overall well balanced, and for heroic raids you should always play the tank you are most confident with rather than "protection paladin because it is top tier kek", especially considering the fact that protection paladin can be squeeshie if not played perfectly, some other tanks are more open to small mistakes.

Finally, I think it might be offensive to say they didn't do any research for this post/video, please be kind <3Comment by daenerys37I'm confused as to why the tank tier list looks different here on wowhead compared to the youtube video linked?

The linked video has brewmaster S instead of A, Blood DK B instead of A, Druid A instead of B, and Warrior C instead of B. What's the point of a video explaining your decisions when you then change your positions after the video is done?Comment by hellzpawn123as much as i like dratnos and tettles, this tier lists only bring friction to the already dwindling community, imagine being a returning player wanting to play his protection warrior, and not get invited to any content because two min/maxin players said is "C tier" ? this imo should stop, and they must start doing other type of content, like in depth classes , boss guides, introduction to mechanics guides, etc. Just watch WoW basics with Preach, that is real content.Comment by CalphrichamYay for Blood Death Knights!Comment by Krob189as much as i like dratnos and tettles, this tier lists only bring friction to the already dwindling community, imagine being a returning player wanting to play his protection warrior, and not get invited to any content because two min/maxin players said is "C tier" ? this imo should stop, and they must start doing other type of content, like in depth classes , boss guides, introduction to mechanics guides, etc. Just watch WoW basics with Preach, that is real content.Comment by holywhiskersGreat write up as usual you 2. The barely aotc players showing us their lack of fingers and brains in these comments section is refreshing as always too.

I am free from tank prison though and have joined Tettles on the Chicken Line this tier, wish me luck.Comment by ApollomantisThat's just a bad take for Protection paladins, first of all they don't necesarly do more damage than other tanks, especially in a progression setup ie no seraphim, no PI,no crit gear, (even at the high end you can check the logs, they're barely ahead of other tanks often using 10+ external buffs when other tanks don't)

Secondly, prot paladins are incredibly squishy at the start of a tier, while you can mitigate that with good play(and a lot of early gear for world first guilds) they'll always die more than other tanks(you can easily check that on warcraftlogs, even at the highest end they die twice more than blood dks and brewmasters), and sanctum world first progression showed it.

Protection paladins are used by top guilds as cheesy offtanks, you bring them for their spot healing especially on the "main" tank , their unusual kit of cds for a tank (bop, bubble,ashen,sac...), certainly not for their tanking ability, and a tier-list like this is just a bait for lower-end guilds that will greatly suffer by having a protection paladin tanking over a solid tank like brewmaster, blood dk or guardian.Comment by SammerailPost about raid, not keys. There's no much multitarget for shield. And post didnt talk about kyrian in raid. So it's -active light compare vs kyrian.
Prot pally in low gear on progress have 1 huge "hole" in their survaving - too low hp. 1 hit from hight melee-swing can barely burrow him because didnt blocked. You talk about tanking keys and with gear. Post tells you raid progress w\o gear. Low hp tank with casino for damage mitigation in damage build? Is this a joke? Several guild in the world can do that only. This is a poor choice for the majority of guilds.

You can play prot pall with comfort, yes. In def, not in dmage build. But he in "S" only for damage. And in def ppal dont do any hight dps comparing vs other tanks. So it's can't be "S".

And i'm not talking about bear rank either.
The usefulness of this article, to put it mildly, is very low. That's the point.Comment by CyberiumWill Tigole and Furor cry about this? hehehe...