Tanking Advanced Guide - Beyond the Basics

By faide Updated: 2019/01/18

This Is A User-Submitted Guide!

Wowhead only updates official guides, so information might not be up-to-date.

Introduction to TankingDreamgrove discordDreamgrove.ggTwitterChoosing a Class

Death Knight: Blood Death Knights are *the* self-sustain tanks. They can often rival healers in terms of raw healing capacity, when tanking harder content, and they are able to sustain their own health pool for prolonged periods of time without external healing due to Death Strike and their Mastery: Blood Shield. In addition, their crowd control utility (particularly Death Grip and Gorefiend's Grasp) make them ideal tanks for dungeons.

Demon Hunter: Vengeance Demon Hunters have high mobility with Infernal Strike, output large amounts of AoE damage through their rotational abilities, and have a variety of crowd control effects with their Sigils (in particular, Sigil of Silence, Sigil of Chains, and Sigil of Misery) which make them fantastic dungeon tanks as well.

Druid: Guardian Druids are a sturdy, versatile tank, with a large health pool, powerful defensive cooldowns and a stackable active mitigation spell Ironfur which makes them good candidates for raid tanking. Additionally they are able to perform hybrid roles, like shifting into Cat Form to deal more damage with bleeds, or healing the party with restoration abilities.

Monk: Brewmaster Monks are able to Stagger the damage they take, turning a large portion of any hit into a damage over time effect. This makes them extremely powerful raid tanks, as they are essentially immune to spike damage and have very smooth and predictable damage intake. Additionally, their Mastery: Elusive Brawler allows them to reliably avoid far more attacks than other tanks.

Paladin: Protection Paladins have arguably some of the strongest general utility available; Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection, Divine Shield, Blessing of Spellwarding, and Lay on Hands are all available or talentable for Paladins. Combine that with great active mitigation Shield of the Righteous and the ability to off-heal, and you’ve got a versatile tank for any situation.

Warrior: Warriors are able to block attacks reliably with Shield Block, an incredibly strong active mitigation (when it works). They are also able to absorb damage through Ignore Pain and deal tons of AoE damage with Thunder Clap.

Raid Tanking vs Dungeon TankingRaid TankingDungeon TankingInfestedPreperationReading LogsWarcraftlogs GuideFetid DevourerTerrible ThrashWatching Streams and VODsReading the Dungeon JournalThreatHeroic Throw

Causes them to fixate their attacks on you for 3 seconds;

Grants you an amount of threat that would put you equal to the person with the current highest threat;

Grants you aggro;

Causes you to generate 400% more threat for the duration of the fixate.

Hand of ReckoningGrowlAggramarTaeshalach Technique"Why am I struggling to keep threat?"

Run with a rogue/hunter and have them cast Tricks of the Trade/Misdirection on you as you pull.

Use taunt liberally to pull stray mobs back to you.

Be sure to hit as many mobs as possible with your strong single target attacks, as those generate the most threat.

Use stuns and crowd controls to keep stray mobs off your DPS while your taunt cools down, and so that you can catch up in threat.

TankinessDisclaimer: This section will get a bit theorycrafty. If you’re not into that, feel free to skip ahead.Ignore PainCooldownsGearingTrinketsVectis

Trinkets with passive or on-use effects are preferred to trinkets with random procs. This is because random procs are unreliable and out of your control. You don’t necessarily want to rely on random chance for your survivability.

For the same reason, flat stats are preferred to proc stats, since flat stats are guaranteed to always be effective. If you’re looking for a trinket with primary stat on it, one with flat primary and a secondary proc is preferred to one with flat secondary and a primary proc.

In Battle for Azeroth, the absorb and healing trinkets are severely undertuned, and as such you will generally want to prefer trinkets that grant stats instead.

StatsClass GuidesConclusion

Looking for more in-depth information? Check out our Tank Class Guides!
Blood Death Knight	Vengeance Demon Hunter	Guardian Druid
Brewmaster Monk	Protection Paladin	Protection Warrior

Tanking Advanced Guide - Beyond the Basics

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