Are all tanks bad now?

[Mackeyser]

So, I'm stuck in limbo because my comp hit its WoW playing EOL (Mac Pro 1,1 that for RL reasons I may not be able to upgrade to latest OS).

That's given me time to reflect as to what I'd like to play once I get my sitch worked out. I've decided I wanted to get back into tanking as I enjoy that role the most.

I've played and enjoy the Pally which I've tanked on since BC, the DK and the BrM. I'm not so interested in continuing on the BrM, but I am interested in trying the Guardian as I enjoyed Feral and I have friends who've been trying to convince me to try Guardian for awhile...

So, I come here to read the various forums and... it seems every tank isn't just off...but BADLY broken.

Troxism articulates in his lengthy google doc how the Blood DK has serious issues.

Several long time Prot Pallies have articulated how the spec is in a terrible place and the more strident the Prot Pally, it seems, the more they hate the changes and desire to abandon the class.

Guardian druids seem to be in a reasonable place except for threat which seems crazy. Even those who've played at 110 have said that threat is a problem, especially AoE threat. Considering DPS haven't had to watch threat since BC really, I can't imagine anyone, but the tank being blamed for threat issues...

I've been reading about issues with Brewmasters and Warriors as well, specifically with the big nerf to Brewmaster's mitigation (it's possible I misread that or that the complaints are misplaced).

I'm leaning toward sticking with my DK and alting my druid after maybe trying out the Vengeance DH, but does anyone have any input on the state of tanks?

Is the state of tanks overblown or have tanks which were all pretty much in a really good spot all taken a pretty solid hit?

And if so, as someone coming back to tanking, any suggestions?

[Blur4stuff]

all tanks are more dependent on the healer now

the brewmaster at least has been horribly redesigned and is clearly inferior by quite a bit

[Taeldorian]

prot pally isnt in a bad place in terms of encounters and such. They have what it takes to tank and survive, they have some self healing and some decent tank CDs, they are just flat out boring. I mean I find it somewhat fun but only because of the flashiness, the mechanics of the spec are simple.

Ive heard Guardian druids and prot pallies are the two tanks you want in a raid, but I may be wrong. Ive heard good things about both in terms of raiding.

As for vengeance DHs, they are really spiky in terms of taking damage. One second they are full hp and then there at half, you heal them up to full and back down again. It feels a bit weird, but they are one of the more fun tanks Ive seen.

In terms of healing, though, since I main an Hpal, I find the easiest tanks to heal are prot paladins, prot warriors and guardian druids so far. Blood Dks are pretty easy to heal as well.

[kail]

I mean...if all tanks are bad, then they are at least balanced? Are we talking raiding or soloing? I do wish solo tanking was more viable with prot pally but I've only barely achieved any efficiency if I do massive group aggro.

[Noobwarrior]

You are no longer a tank/healer/dps but rather a tank/dps. If you cant wrap your mind around that your no longer going to be in control of your own life as a tank , you should not play a tank in legion. We have some minor heals but nothing is how it was in the past and maybe this is not such a bad thing.

Before the patch i could solo doomlord kazzak on both my pala and dk. and im sure other tanks have aswell. It was really no problem when you did 60 to 70k dps with the same amount of healing and defensive cds to spare. So sure this is fun for the tank but you take away the fun for the healer.
What is the point of healing when the tank does not even take any damage.

I still enjoy my dk as blood and pala as prot. Do i miss the days of beeing a demigod that could solo tank anything that came in my way? Of course i do, it would be pretty silly not to miss beeing superman.

I will say dk have a lot more self heal then my paladin, but my paladin does a lot more damage.
So if you enjoy tanking ;you still have to time the use of the few cd you have to survive. You still need to use your spells right to do the most dmg. The only thing that changed is that you dont heal as much.

Trust in your healers!

[Mackeyser]

Well, I actually like the BC style of tanking where tanks needed healers and they weren't demigods, so that's actually good news to me.

Granted, I didn't tank too much recently, but I've always focused on mitigating when I could over healing except on my DK.

I guess after reading so much negativity from so many of the top people in their respective classes, I was concerned that tanks on the whole were gonna be in a bad spot.

[Devilyaki]

I like my prot pally before, and still like it now, feel there is a few moves I miss but it still alright. I haven't played my Druid yet because she is mainly feral so I was relearning that, give it a try latter, always nice to be able to tank for fast ques if needed.

[Sharrel]

I tank on a warrior. but I wouldn't say it's broken. they fixed the active mitigation problem they had throughout Warlords. They've just sunk the agro to about wrath levels, which isn't really a problem honestly.
We've been running heroic Hellfire since the patch.. and tanking is just fine.

[Desma]

Some mechanics are a bit broken due to the active mitigation requirement, but otherwise tanks seem pretty fine tbh.

[Deleted]

Once you get the paladin artifact you become a god amongst tanks.

[Deleted]

When I am healing a Dungeon with my Resto Shamy, I mostly have Problems with Pallys and Warriors. Bosses are fine, but Trash Packs are awful. The Health Bar goes down almost instantly, and even with healing surge spam, it hardly goes up. Druids and DKs feel like a fortress, always love to heal them. Brewmasters are a mixed bag, some are incredibly tough.

[supertigerlamp]

I really really really wanted to like Brewmaster, and I'm still trying to stick a square peg into a round hole by forcing myself to like and play it, but the way they changed things to Ironskin Brew + Purifying Brew doesn't work for me. I don't like them sharing charges when it seems that both are crucial to doing the job well.

As it is, I don't really find any tank all that "fun" to play anymore. Even in the betas with the artifact abilities they just don't feel engaging. I think being able to go out and solo Kazzak is a bit much, but there should have been a more gradual ramping down of our capabilities than what we received. It feels like too much too soon.

Leaning more towards Paladin or potentially Demon Hunter in Legion as a result of these changes. And even then I feel like I'm going to be grudgingly playing either of those because they are (imo) effective without relying too much on overpriced abilities like Death Strike, or badly designed AM like Brewmaster.

I also think if you want to avoid feeling like a total waste of time tanking, don't go into the WotLK Timewalkers. It feels like the scaling is massively borked right now. I can tank HM Archimonde without issue but not the final boss on Gundrak? Yeah, that sounds legit.

[Bytch]

Tanks are fine on beta. SOme have been nerfed to what they are on live. Bears and Prot Wars are doing well from my time on beta. Bears are in my opinion, now one of the harder tanks to play as to what they used to be. In times past, any1 could pick up Bears and do pretty decent. Now, theres more to think about playing a Bear. But with that said, Bear will be a contender for top tank in Legion. I think Prot Wars are among the top tier of tanks on beta. But things can change between now and release. DK's got hit pretty good with nerfs, they are middle of the pack tanks, along with Prot Pallys- At least from what Im seeing on the beta and forums. Havent paid much mind to BrM's, I know some players are not liking it's new play style. Other than that, tanks are fine.

[Soul Hermit]

It might sound crazy, but you could use CC like old times..
Honestly, most players these days didn't play before wotlk, so they have no idea how painful tanking in vanilla and bc was
Maybe now, groups will start communicating when pulling with cc, and it won't be a giant faceroll-lolzergs-gimmieepics runs like before the patch..

[Bytch]

When I am healing a Dungeon with my Resto Shamy, I mostly have Problems with Pallys and Warriors. Bosses are fine, but Trash Packs are awful. The Health Bar goes down almost instantly, and even with healing surge spam, it hardly goes up. Druids and DKs feel like a fortress, always love to heal them. Brewmasters are a mixed bag, some are incredibly tough.

Im not having much issue playing my Prot War, but then again, as a Prot War, Ignore Pain has to be kept up at all times and not let drop off. But in reality sometimes it will drop off. But should be above 85% uptime and maxed out(Myself, Ive had 5m IP bubbles-800ilvl) as much as possible-depending on talents used. DK's can now do a lot of dmg, but their surviability has dropped. Druids will be one of the top tanks in Legion.

[Raugnaut]

You are no longer a tank/healer/dps but rather a tank/dps. If you cant wrap your mind around that your no longer going to be in control of your own life as a tank , you should not play a tank in legion. We have some minor heals but nothing is how it was in the past and maybe this is not such a bad thing.

Before the patch i could solo doomlord kazzak on both my pala and dk. and im sure other tanks have aswell. It was really no problem when you did 60 to 70k dps with the same amount of healing and defensive cds to spare. So sure this is fun for the tank but you take away the fun for the healer.
What is the point of healing when the tank does not even take any damage.

I still enjoy my dk as blood and pala as prot. Do i miss the days of beeing a demigod that could solo tank anything that came in my way? Of course i do, it would be pretty silly not to miss beeing superman.

I will say dk have a lot more self heal then my paladin, but my paladin does a lot more damage.
So if you enjoy tanking ;you still have to time the use of the few cd you have to survive. You still need to use your spells right to do the most dmg. The only thing that changed is that you dont heal as much.

Trust in your healers!

There are 3-30 other ppl for healers to heal. Tanks are currently weaker then they EVER have been, even back when they were dependent on healers for 100% of their heals - At least at that time, their passive mitigation was extremely strong.

[Dristereau]

I wouldn't describe them as bad, just totally reliant on Healers now instead of needing them for support. Tanks are not able to survive by themselves anymore against attacks that they before could outlast, but that's just the way tanking is now.

I think my personal biggest issue with Tanking in Legion from what I've seen and read is how reduced a role AM has in the game, compared to WoD where it was required for boss mechanics and made tanking more fun and engaging. So I would say that they seem to be less engaging than they were in WoD and MoP, but they are not by all means bad.

I think you can see some of them crippled and 'bad' without their Artifacts. I decided to take my Prot Paladin into HFC. Felt extremely spiky in terms of damage, could just about survive bosses okay. Did however run at a trash pack and went splat almost instantly before I'd had the chance to really do anything or a healer to react. Made me laugh anyways.

[Manabomb]

You are no longer a tank/healer/dps but rather a tank/dps. If you cant wrap your mind around that your no longer going to be in control of your own life as a tank , you should not play a tank in legion. We have some minor heals but nothing is how it was in the past and maybe this is not such a bad thing.

Before the patch i could solo doomlord kazzak on both my pala and dk. and im sure other tanks have aswell. It was really no problem when you did 60 to 70k dps with the same amount of healing and defensive cds to spare. So sure this is fun for the tank but you take away the fun for the healer.
What is the point of healing when the tank does not even take any damage.

I still enjoy my dk as blood and pala as prot. Do i miss the days of beeing a demigod that could solo tank anything that came in my way? Of course i do, it would be pretty silly not to miss beeing superman.

I will say dk have a lot more self heal then my paladin, but my paladin does a lot more damage.
So if you enjoy tanking ;you still have to time the use of the few cd you have to survive. You still need to use your spells right to do the most dmg. The only thing that changed is that you dont heal as much.

Trust in your healers!

But doomlord kazzak is irrelevant content you outgear.

Tanks should only be "reliant" on healers when it comes to the most difficult of content. Crippling a tanks "fun" for a healers "fun" is a subjective mess of design choices that Blizzard had admittedly designed -away- from in the past. It's so cute that people like you will defend that decision like healing is only fun if you're able to heal the tanks.

Tank healing and interacting with tanks specifically as a healer does not make playing a healer fun, and if you honestly think that, then you're playing the wrong class/game.

Edit: Honestly, these design choices feel like a tanks idea as to what would make healing more "fun", which is not at all a good thing.

[Lochton]

No, all tanks aren't bad now.

Healers and tanks that hasn't read up on their class changes are bad now.

[Manabomb]

It might sound crazy, but you could use CC like old times..
Honestly, most players these days didn't play before wotlk, so they have no idea how painful tanking in vanilla and bc was
Maybe now, groups will start communicating when pulling with cc, and it won't be a giant faceroll-lolzergs-gimmieepics runs like before the patch..

I will be perfectly frank with you: from a game design perspective, forcing players into annoying, slow gimmicks that only serve to make the game more artificially grindy is exactly why the community rejected WoD. Your ideals are for a group of players that no longer play this game.