Tank Guide

[devilzealous]

I have no experience on Tank. I had never played as a tank before. So , now I am willing to play as a tank and I request knowledges for a tank player from experience players (that you).

Please help me by commenting my question with useful facts. Any suggestions would be really appreciated. Be enjoy for training a noob.

So , I have some questions these I would like to know . They are as follow...

1 . Which tank class is the best ever (I think this question is too broad .... ) ?
2 . For a noob , which class is easy to start as a Tank ?
3 . Can you support me pros and cons of each Tank class?
4 . Please assume healer as yourself , which Tank class is fun for you (For instance : I am holly priest and I love druid tanks because of they has blah blah ... ) ?
5 . What items lvl must have for specific raid as a tank ? (example : .... you must have atleast 380 ilvl to tank in baradin hold raid)
6 . Which professions were most preferable for a Tank ?
7 . Has another additional informations , suggestions , the things I should always remember ,the things I should avoid , useful tips ?

Anyway , Thanks for reading my question and I appologize for my poor English.
By the way please don't be tell me as "try in Google" ! I did it but I would like to get informations for this server. It just a really Disucssion.

[Nevinafreaklol]

Blood DK, blood DK, Blood Dk, Blood Dk and hmmm let me think... BLOOOOOOOOOOD DK 3 BUTTONS BABE

[Denim]

The most easiest class as Nervina says is Blood Death Knight. You get huge amounts of absorbs and a lot of defense.

Prot Warriors are good too, but once they run out of cooldowns they become a bit sketchy.

As a healer, you might want to know that the tank you are healing is capable of helping you as well not taking huge amounts of damage througout the encounters and cast a defensive cooldown every now and then.

Tanking gear can be obtained from the Dungeon Finder and raid trash.
For starters Baradin Hold is a perfect way to begin properly gearing as a tank.

As for suggestions and profession viability, try reading from the Guides zone here tips and tricks and if you have further misunderstandings don't be afraid and ask around the Class-related discussion zone .


Retired

[Frostfang]

Lets start, i have been successful in tanking with all 4 classes in dragon soul, and now im looking forward to meet brewmaster monks. Lets answer your questions.

1 . As the guys before me said blood death knight is probably the best tank in dragon soul, its easy to play, and it has nice set od cds. Next in row would be prot paladin for me. People think protadins are too boring class cause everything they do is around crusader strike, well thats partialy true but potential of prot paladin is just amazing. Rotation is very simple, only thing i found troubling is too many cds. You will find yourself often thinking what cd should i use now. If you manage to use them wisely, you will be pretty good as tank. Next is druid. Ive been playing one since tbc and its one of my favorite tanking classes. Rotation is easy, nice set of cds, and that t13 4set bonus is just amazing. Overall druid is a great tank but it kinda lacks ''fun'' while playing, even tho you can always switch to kitty while you dont have dmg income. Last unfortunately is warrior, my favorite class in the game. Warriors are capable of tanking anything in dragon soul. You will just need, as someone once told me, ''ballz of steel''. They lack magic ressistance. Personaly i even tanked Yor Sahj 10hc with 2 healers and valor gear back when it was just released, which many dont believe, but it is true. You will have much fun playing warrior tank, but as i said, you will often be in difficult situations cause of lack of magic ressistance. You will harder get raids cuz people will think you are just another noob warrior trying to tank but once you proove your worthy, world will be yours.

2. As a begginer tank probably best class to start is a dk or a paladin, considering their level of expertise needed.

3. i already did that under 1

4. if i were a healer in 5m dungeons druid or dk, in raids paladin druid

5. i dont know this for sure, but 1 thing i do know, for shielded tanks you will need much higher ilvl than with other 2 tanks. Blizz changed how block works in cataclysm and i think noone liked that. You will need more gear but i think its worth it.

6. In my personal expirience blacksmithing and jwlc are the best professions for tanks, even tho bs/enchanting, bs/insciption, bs/leatherworking can work just aswell. Alchemy is good on the first patches of the expansion, but after it looses its value in my opinion.

7. Before you enter any dungeon, try to fully understand what your spells do. Try looking out some youtube videos to see how best to hold agro and what to do in certain situations. Try to keep your head cold and dont panic on the first dmg spike. As a tank you will have more raid awareness than anyone else. You will need to know everything about the boss and follow complete fight in order to help your group. Tanking is not just holding agrro over some mob, its an art and you should treat it as such.

Good luck fellow tank, hope to see you ingame!

Ps: sorry about my grammer mistakes, im not an native english speaker but i tried to explain it best i could.

Guardian Druid Tanking Guide

[devilzealous]

Thanks to Nevinafreaklol and Denim for your fast replies. Especially thanks to Frostfang . If so , I will be going to play as DK tank and it is very fun for me because I already have DK character.

I would like to describe tank informations from my googling (copy and paste , not my experiences ).

1. Warrior Tank
Very good at single target tanking (can create a ton of threat on one target), has very good mitigation and damage reduction capabilities. However they struggle generally with AoE tanking (holding multiple trash mobs and adds etc) so a player of this class needs to work harder keeping aggro from multiple targets.

Pros:
Rage bar, purely physical damage, mobile, disarm, sunder armor, spell reflect, able to break fear, shield.
A lot of active mitigation
Great at taking large hits due to blocking/mastery
High mobility
High damage due to being able to stack Crit as your avoidance stat
Crit Banner is a welcome addition to any raid group

Cons:
Lowest health per stamina of all classes, only has two AoE tank abilities.
Arguably more difficult to play properly due to active mitigation
While they are better at taking large hits, they are not as good at taking many smaller hits.
Most of their mitigation is for physical damage, so they are a bit weaker to magical damage. (This doesn't mean they are crippled by magic damage, however)
Rather weak AoE threat compared to other tank specs. All of their AoE is in a radius around them (making it more difficult to pull agro on ranged targets) and have positional requirements (such as trying to make sure you are facing the right way for your Cleave to hit all targets possible)

2. Paladin Tank
Very good at AoE tanking and has some very good damage mitigation abilities and self-heals. Not as good however at single-target tanking compared to other classes so a player of this class will need to know their rotation well on single targets.

Pros:
Holy damage, shield, buffs, hardly goes out of mana with proper talents, likely strongest AoE tank, Ardent Defender, can fill different roles with offspec.
High utility
Great off-heals
Very high AoE threat
Arguably one of the easiest tank specs to play
Able to cheese certain mechanics (such as Blood Rage on Malkorok or Triple Puncture on Horridon; this is more of a note than a Pro, since this isn't always the case in every raid)

Cons:
Mana, weak to silences, mana drain and fears, has no charge or similar ability.
Low damage compared to other tank specs

3. DK Tanks
All the specs generally are also very good at AoE tanking as well as good at single target tanking but do not have as much mitigation (no shield, etc) as the other classes. Players of this class will need to be more aware of their own health pool in an encounter more than other classes.

Pros:
Tanking is based more on gear than talents which makes him very versatile in what talents/abilities one wishes to use, can do respectable DPS by changing to Blood Presence, Runes and Runic Power.
Very high self-sustainability
Arguably one of the best solo specs in the game
Great AoE threat

Cons:
Very weak to silences, rotation is rather 'set' without much variation, can lack in AoE threat if not specced for.
Fairly low mobility (One talent to increase movement speed, but DKs also have Death Grip and Gorefiend's Grasp to help make up for it)
If played improperly, DKs can have lower survivability than other tanks.

4. Druid tanks
Similar to DK tanks in that they can hold aggro pretty well on AoE and single target tanking and have around the same shortcomings when it comes to mitigation.

Pros:
Rage bar, highest health per stamina of all tanks, naturally uncritable trough talents, buffs, able to do respectable DPS in cat form, can fill different roles with offspec.
Good active mitigation
Good damage
Good self-healing
Good utility
Good mobility

Cons:
Tanking is obtained trough talents, glyphs, form and gems as they use leather "DPS" items, AoE tanking very monotone.
Arguably more difficult to play properly due to active mitigation
Bit more reliant on Vengeance for damage numbers

[Frostfang]

All those things you googled, are MoP related, kinda not important, and still if it was cata related stuff, this is a private server, no matter how much blizz like it is, it aint same as on retail. Second thing, if you could google all those things, why did you ask here ?

Guardian Druid Tanking Guide

[tyslaj]

Should be noted that prot paladins (and possibly all tanks, only tested on palas) are worse then they should. Even if you reach CTC cap you will still get normal hits "alot"

[Frostfang]

tyslaj wrote:

Should be noted that prot paladins (and possibly all tanks, only tested on palas) are worse then they should. Even if you reach CTC cap you will still get normal hits "alot"

from my testing, block works as intended, reduced 30% of incoming physical dmg

Guardian Druid Tanking Guide

[tudor1297]

I think the best tank is the druid, followed by the dk. I don't recommend you playing pala/warrior, they are harder to play, they take a hole lot of dmg and you need high ilvl to properly tank ds.

For bh u don't need much gear, something like 370 should be enough.

The stuff written above are not entirely true, i'll tell you some stuff about each tankin class, based on my experience on freakz.

1. DK blood

Probably the most easy to play tanking class.
It's the best single target tanking class.
Sucks at aoe tanking(I mean like 5 or more mobs, for 2-3 mobs it's ok). Not because of keeping aggro, but because u'll take a lot of damage and the blood shield(mastery) can't keep up.
Good for spell damage as well, Anti magic shell is op.

U don't need to much gear to tank, I think a 380 ilvl is enough to tank ds 10n (although no one will take you with 380 ilvl, you would need at least 395 to have a raid spot).
Probably that's the best class for you.


2. Feral druid

Feral druid it's more fun to play, you can tank in dps gear(except trinkets, you should use tank trinkets until u have like 400 ilvl).
The feral druid can deal a lot of dps while not taking too much damage.

It's pretty good on single target tanking.
It's pretty good on aoe tanking, not only for aggro(spam trash/maul/swipe) but it doesn't take too much damage(u dodge most of the attacks).

Also u can use a hybrid spec for dps-ing and tanking. So you can play dps, and if the tank is stupid and he dies, you can quickly move into bear form and tank the boss(at least till the tank gets ressed or something).

This is the best tanking class imo.
390 ilvl it's quite allright for ds 10n.

3. Warrior
It's ok on single target tanking(might have some aggro issues)
Takes a hole lot of spell damage - that's its weakness.
Really good on aoe tanking, maybe the best. That's because of the CTC(combat table cap), every attack you get from the mobs is mitigated. A blood dk can't mitigate attacks, and his blood shield won't keep up with the dmg if there are a lot of mobs(for example the oozes from Spine of Deathwing).


U need high ilvl to be able to tank ds.(like 400)
So I don't recommend you rolling for this class. U may play dps and get some gear for off-tanking.


4. Paladins
Paladins are kind of the same as warriors.
This class I didn't play as much as the others, only tanked as an off-tank for morchok and ultraxion.
It takes too much damage, similar to the warrior. U need like 400 ilvl to tank ds. I don't recommend it.



[RO]Warrior Fury PvE Guide 5.4.8

[EN]Warrior Fury PvE Guide 5.4.8

[tyslaj]

Frostfang wrote:

from my testing, block works as intended, reduced 30% of incoming physical dmg

I didnt write anything about block

[ryangg]

From all 4 classes that can play tank spec druid and dk are the most easiest to do so...at low gear druid tank surpasses dk tank
I play dk tank especially because of its huge self heals ,u dont need so much heal like the other classes ,you have absorb ,magic absorb ,and omg...nobody will ever take your targets from you, aoe or single

[Macedo931]

^ Everything that Tudor1297 said is true.
I only have one addition to that - Blood DKs can, with moderate-good healers, tank 6/8 (maybe 7/8) DS 10h with DPS gear and one tanking trinket (preferably the Soulshifter Vortex).
Not only that it can do ~45k DPS on Zon'ozz, and almost 35-40k DPS on Ultraxion, it can also do pretty good AoE DPS on Yor'sahj. Obviously, it will take a bit (read a lot) more physical damage, but it can almost replace that one shitty dps you always have in the raid.

Also, I miss Prot paladins from 4.0.6 :C

[Needlegunxz]

warrior tanks are the worst ones in cata(on freakz).At some point they just couldnt be healed.if u wanna play a warriior roll arms and top meters. pala,druid and dk are pretty equal.thing is that its not the physical damage which is killing the tanks,but the inability to resist magic damage and a need to use major cds to survive some hard phases (like yellow+purple +black on yorsajh 25h). dk haz very short and powerful cds which enable him to survive any phase usualy by using only one cd,2 if neccessary.

for tank theres 1 general advice:watch ur defensive cds and use them wisely.if a shaman is poping spirit link then u should probably save cd for another occasion. etc etc.

[Vans]

1 . Which tank class is the best ever (I think this question is too broad .... ) ?
At the time speaking Blood DK because its easy to learn, no shield(mechanics work in its favor for now) absorbs on melee dmg(very nice if you go for mastery which u should) and some usefull cds(AMS/Vamp Blood@4p helps the raid and Icebound when things go south). This is only my opinion and yes I own a dk but its main unholy though.
2 . For a noob , which class is easy to start as a Tank ?
DK for sure the reasons are at point 1 and even in post before me.
3 . Can you support me pros and cons of each Tank class?
Druid(second best in my opinion) Pros: Not so hard to learn, good for aoe fights, most armor ingame from lack of parry.
Cons: I think maybe a bit of a problem at spyke dmg(i've seen some large dmg taken but it may not be the case in general)
Warr - Pros: Same as druid with aoe fights,decent dmg and good cds.
Cons: I've seen problem with agro holding at single target(from when I played blood dk with prot warr) and the all knowing low self heal. And now the big con-this class need skill(for example at spine@bloods prot warr perform better then druid if the player knows what he's doing if not the druid go in first).
Paladin: Here i don't know(only 3 raids with pala tank and that one was pretty geared but i've seen some nice cds from him(from what i've read the paladin its all about cd-a lot of them and you need to know when to use them).
DK - Pros: Good for single target agro, absorb of melee dmg, nice cds, 2 hand weapon(battle with plater dps but you don;t need to w8 for 2 items to drop(same as druids), runeforging(no need of enchanter),easy to play, self heal.
Cons: Aoe problems if you don't need to dmg the aoe group(we have death n decay and blood boil). Only ams for magic dmg(don't get me wrong its very good but we get overpowered if the magic dmg its constant and our ds don't keep up with it).
4 . Please assume healer as yourself , which Tank class is fun for you (For instance : I am holly priest and I love druid tanks because of they has blah blah ... ) ?
I play druid heal and from what I know DK are pretty nice from a healer perspective...that absorb works well for them and death strike helps.
5 . What items lvl must have for specific raid as a tank ? (example : .... you must have atleast 380 ilvl to tank in baradin hold raid)
I've seen 370 tanking all bh so its more the raid composition and skill but let say an 385 for a ds 10n.
6 . Which professions were most preferable for a Tank ?
For me its BS+LW for simple reason: BS means 2 more sokets and with epic ones you go over the other professions.
LW - 195 stamina(best compared to other proff) or 130 Agil for druid(if you chose agil).
7 . Has another additional informations , suggestions , the things I should always remember ,the things I should avoid , useful tips ?
The most important thing it is DO NOT DIE, use your cd but don't abuse of them because it can be the case of you needing them and they are on cooldown. Always watch the enviroment and don't stand in fire:)). Hoped i helped, have a nice day.

“Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the *** you were gonna do anyway.”