Top 3 Tanks & Why?

[Bloodydemize]

Brewmasters Druids and Paladins I feel are best tuned for NH fights. Brewmasters can make some mechanics like the bonds on Gul'dan significantly easier, Druids also have crazy survivability and I feel of the 4 remaining classes that paladins are the best for both damage and survivability

[Marrilaife]

Btw you remember that time druids said their weakness is aoe aggro?

Then 7.2 happened.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1849
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1871
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1862

Every boss where you can mass aoe = druid top.

[squee666]

I mean, if you don't have the belt I won't speak. But I can solo soak every single scythe on Mythic Gul'dan as a blood DK without a single external CD. You can solo tank Etraeus as a blood DK quite easily as well. Krosus is a joke for blood DKs as well. You can solo soak annihilates regardless of class by having somebody simply taunt a quarter of a second before you taunt back.

Phase 3 is a different story and bears are far better than we are at that phase, but blood DKs can easily do Mythic Gul'dan without externals.

That's not to say bears aren't the strongest, because they certainly are. The removal of MoU and proposed blood DK changes soon might tip the scales though, along with the changes to BrM. I get that people are mad right now about tank balance, but it's not as bleak as people are saying. I've played blood DK throughout the entire expansion and it still felt workable.

Yeah Spellblade even with the 2X debuff DKs can solo tank it with VB up and 3 Death strikes pooled (0 external healing needed) which is better than bears
Botanist yeah sure you can do last phase from 100% to 0% but thats really more because of the healers pumping full externals in a set rotation

Most bosses are a joke with blood as long as you know what you are doing yeah you can be spiky which is unfavourable but the self healing makes up for that

Also star augur is solo tankable with blood

- - - Updated - - -

Btw you remember that time druids said their weakness is aoe aggro?

Then 7.2 happened.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1849
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1871
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...anks&boss=1862

Every boss where you can mass aoe = druid top.

AOE dmg and AOE aggro are 2 different things.

also you cant really compare when 2 of those bosses are pure pad

Did you see the rank 1 guardian on tichrondrus mythic they ran 3 tanks and padded the entire time

[Spiffums]

The one you play the best. Druid could be the best but if your guild doesn't have a bear tank then it doesn't matter if it is the best. And as soon as you start recuiting for positions it starts to kill your guild because the "lootslingers" are just there for loot.

[Volardelis]

There are only two tank spots in a raid, and tanking is often binary - either a class can live through a mechanic or it can't. With 6 classes you're creating too many opportunities for a couple to be way ahead of others. With dps there are 14 spots. If you're a bit underpowered on a certain fight, who cares, make it up on the next one. Tanks can't say, "Yeah I die a lot here but wait until you see how awesome I am on the next boss."

Kind of like spellblade and star Augur for prot warriors.

One fight we are beasts at due to crit blocking annihilates. The other, we get rekted cause of our shit magic mitigation.

[Deleted]

Imho Brewmaster Monk is the top dog atm, cause they are so versatile and can cheese pretty much anything with stagger (can even go high tolerance and stagger even more insane, if dmg output isn't an issue), plus having insane aoe/burst threat and mobility. That said, BrM is only good in the hands of a player who knows what he is doing with it. Most BrM's i encoutnered have no idea what they are doing.

The goto tanks are druid and paladin. Especially druid since basically a baboon could play one and do well.

[Nanaboostme]

Reinhardt
Zarya
Roadhog

[Meiffert]

What is best depends on the metric. We can't know what you will enjoy OP.
As for which tanks are strongest (in a raiding context): Monk = Druid > Paladin = Warrior > DK = DH

Monks and Druids simply don't have any weaknesses. They are strong against physical damage, against magical damage, against burst damage of either kind as well. They are mobile (insane personal mobility on monk and raid cooldown on druid). They can also tank for extended periods of time without any drawbacks (100 % uptime on stagger and ISB, no charges type of limitation on Ironfur).

Warriors and Paladins are somewhat hit or miss. They both deal very high damage and are strong in specific situations, but very vulnerable in others.
Warriors can tank for extended duration (almost full uptime on Shield Block, the small windows of downtime can be covered with Neltharion's Fury; getting continuously hit also gives you enough rage to keep spamming Revenge/Ignore Pain) and they are very mobile, but they can't handle continuous magical damage (spell reflect has a cooldown only allowing ~ 20 % uptime), which makes them useless at fights like Krosus or Star Augur.
Paladins are the ideal offtank, offering great dps, utility with hands spells like Spellwarding and Sacrifice and healing and decent survivability through varying cooldowns. Their weakness is continuous tanking, because Shield of the Righteous is limited by charges only allowing 50 - 70 % uptime (depending on stats and talents) and you don't have enough cooldowns to cover all the downtime.

DHs and DKs are currently a bit too weak compared to the other tanks.
On some fights they do OK, but never great (you would never want to swap out a monk or a druid for a DK/DH) and on others they do badly.
Their utility is also not very useful (mass grip is awesome on Il'gynoth, but we are in Nighthold now and it just doesn't have a good use there).

Bear>unskilled bear>monk>Pala>warrior/dh/dk>unskilled monk

Bear is the easiest tank by far yet it is the best of them all, monk is good but requires good resource managing, pala is the best "DPS" tank while still offering insane utility and good dmg reductions, rest are just shit. Trust me, i play blood right now and it is still shit after the "survivability buff" (the broken new golden trait, which is not enough at all) and will still be shit after 7.2.5 "buffs".

I think you overestimate the importance of "skill" on a monk.
After all, stagger is passive and ISB can be stacked indefinitely.
Maybe the rotation is more complex then druids, but on the other hand they are somewhat impervious to mistakes (you can get distracted and forget to double Ironfur or Ursol; you can't forget Stagger).
I would certainly prefer an "unskilled" (relatively) monk over an unskilled player on most other classes.
Maybe a more reasonable caveat is that Druids, Warriors and DHs have the added benefit of being somewhat easier to play compared to their counterparts on the "same" level.

I have to say I feel for you tanking on a DK. Our main tank who rerolled a druid mid-Nighthold tried to go back to his old main DK on farm stating he had "9 million reasons" (referring to the new traits giving extra hp).
The death log looked something like this:
-1 second: Spellblade Alluriels Annihilate hit you for 3 million
-0.5 seconds: Spellblade Alluriels Annihilate hit you for 3 million
-0 seconds: Spellblade Alluriels Annihilate hit you for 3 million

Alluriel -> solosoak annihilate
Tich -> MoU+barkskin is enough to soak seekers
Etraeus -> Solotanked by bears
Botanist -> You can 100-0 the solarist as a bear, no other class can

A monk can do all these things, but of course I agree with the sentiment that druids are easy to play, yet extremely powerful.

[Marrilaife]

Paladins are the ideal offtank, offering great dps,

Paladin's "great dps" is more a sentiment of an old time than current situation, atm Warriors can do better, and apparently Monks are doing well in that department too. Only DK and DH are lagging behind on basically every type of fight, on top of their mitigation being worse.

People can dismiss logs that it's "padding" but it shows capabilities of the class, and I'm not talking about "world top allstars" which is mostly cheesing, but I checked 75 percentile on mythic and let's see:

Chrono: Monk & Warrior very close. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...65&class=Tanks
Trillax: Monk then Warrior top. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...67&class=Tanks
Spellblade (mass aoe on adds remember): Druid then Warrior then Monk. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...71&class=Tanks
Krosus: Monk then Warrior, Paladin dead last. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...42&class=Tanks
Botanist: Warrior then Monk. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...86&class=Tanks
Star Augur: Warrior then Paladin then Monk. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...63&class=Tanks

We can skip Skorp & Tich because of padding, but I linked them earlier, apparently Druids are masters of padding atm, Monks are close too.
We can also skip 2 last ones due to fewer parses on them. (Paladin & Druid are top on Elisande and DH is top on Gul'dan but there aren't that many logs from these fights overall)

So atm you really can't go wrong with monk it seems, they're consistently in top 3 dps tanks and they're top 2 mitigation wise. Paladins are lagging behind in both departments, while DKs and DHs are lagging miles behind. Druids have good mitigation and aoe, a bit less single target. Warriors have great dps (consistently top or second top tank on dps) but weaker mitigation especially against magic / non blockables.

[Socialhealer]

Bear & monk, and who cares? those 2 are so much better than everything else - Fact, if you said differently thats an uninformed opinion not a fact, you're welcome to that but you should inform yourself.

[Marrilaife]

AOE dmg and AOE aggro are 2 different things.

They're mostly the same with exception of abilities that state in the tooltip "this ability generates high amount of threat" which are very few left in the game, if any, since tanking stances are removed as well tanks have just passive modifier to generate extra aggro with their normal abilities.

[tinyrick]

tanks are sweet. under appreciated.

[hawk5656]

You asked - didn't provide any own material to the discussion. You clearly just wanted answers.
Sounded pretty much like all the hundreds of "hey guys choose my FOTM class for me" threads that get posted here all the time.

So - since this is a discussion board - let's discuss. Can you give us your thoughts for the top 3 tanks and their pros and cons?
You know - give us something to talk about, instead of just ask us to list "the best tanks" for you.

How about it?

Paladin's are way ahead of any tank in term of DPS. I regularly do m+ with one that does 800+k DPS in ST with OWP. I'd say bears and monks are the most desired for raiding cus of their uptime on mitigation. But for M+ paladins are kings.

[Jazzhands]

Not in world of warcraft no, you may talk about the wrong game.

No AOE stun, no aoe snare and a really weak version of mass grip you shouldn't talent in. VDH are 100% dependent on assist of the group to do any real pack control. The "sigil of disorient" you speak about break on damage, 100% useless to mitigate a pack of mobs. Only realy use is to emergency interupt a pack if they can be feared (which shouldn't be the case in a proper MM+ run).

Not every run is a proper run. For you, maybe, but there are thousands of pugs that happen every day, and to say an ability is useless because it doesn't apply to a "proper" run is really grasping at straws. And things can go wrong even in a proper run. Quite frankly your views of CC and situations they apply to seem limited. Crowd Control is anything that lets you control a mob, in pretty much any way. You could even argue interrupts are a form of CC, as they allow you to control caster mobs by forcing them to move. Depending on group comp, like ranged heavy ones, interrupts can be limited, and essentially having 4 interrupts, 3 being AoE, is nice. I know Chains/Misery aren't true interrupts, but I've had some clutch saves with them, you can't simply write off this utility by pretending improper runs don't happen.

Sigil of Misery is great for any pug where someone has bad situational awareness. And if you pug often, i'm sure you see it quite a bit. A ranged DPS is standing in a bad place, and a pack of wandering mobs gets close. Any other tank would have to rush in, grab them, and potentially wipe due to too much damage or affixs. As a DH you can buy your group some time time by simply removing those mobs from the equation for 30 seconds. I've saved plenty of runs with this tactic that otherwise may have gone bad. I've also used it to hold wandering packs in place when the current pack is low (depending on affix) so that they don't wander to other mobs and cause the group to waste time if they can't be pulled together. May not seem like much, but I'm sure everyone's had that run they missed by a few seconds, every little bit counts sometimes. No other tank can really do these things.

Sigil of Chains is... not amazing. But not useless, especially not "never talent into" useless. The range is larger than the targeting area it shows. It's amazing for sanguine in some dungeons, and amazing for Necrotic week, because it AoE snares, something you didn't seem to be aware of. Chains+Leap is probably the best way for DHs to drop stacks, especially since you won't have an AoE snare in every group. It also has a shorter CD than DKs mass grip, and can be placed anywhere, not just on a target. They're both 30 yard range, DK grip pulls in 20 yards around the target, Chains doesn't mention, but it's probably at least 15 yards. I'd say they're about even, except mass grip is baseline, but Chains doesn't have much to compete with. It's also really nice for carry groups, when you're mowing through low keys and pulling multiple packs that don't group up quickly, the other talents in that row are pretty much useless in this type of group. Oh, and mass grip doesn't snare.

The problem most people have with sigils is they require situational awareness and it's difficult to time them right to interrupt with the two second warm up. Most people would probably say they feel "clunky", but that doesn't change their potential.

[topmaymay]

Raiding progression:

Guardian and Brewmaster are equal, imo. Third best is most likely Paladin due to their utility and decent dmg output.

M+:
They're all good, imo.

[Polarthief]

Until Bears lose Mark of Ursol (currently slated for 7.2.5) and have no control over Magic damage outside of cooldowns. Having literally no active magical mitigation is going to hurt Bears a fuckload on any fight where physical damage isn't an issue, potentially putting them on the bottom for Magic-heavy fights/zones.

[Marrilaife]

No AOE stun,

You do realize this isn't "a DH weakness" because only 2 tanks bring aoe stun, namely warrior with shockwave and monk with leg sweep?

Thing is DH provide imprison that after it was expanded to be usable on humanoids / beasts and not only demons is a wonderful tool for skipping some specific mob if you lack a sap (many other cc don't allow this, mage sheep, shaman hex and monk paralysis will still put you in combat when you walk by cced mob).

Until Bears lose Mark of Ursol (currently slated for 7.2.5) and have no control over Magic damage outside of cooldowns. Having literally no active magical mitigation is going to hurt Bears a fuckload on any fight where physical damage isn't an issue, potentially putting them on the bottom for Magic-heavy fights/zones.

They will still have adaptive fur, thick skin passive, high health pool, great mastery helping healers to heal them up, frenzied regen scaling with damage taken and buffed with new set bonuses (also leggie boots if you use them), amazing artifact ability that provides both damage reduction and leech, random passive damage reductions like rend & tear or pulverize and the new artifact trait that reduces damage taken from moonfired mobs, and 2 tanking cds barkskin & surv instincts, the latter having 2 charges (3 with legendary) which no other tank has the luxury to have (multiple charges on shield wall for example? hell nope).

Generally a lot of small things that add up to a spec that seems a bit overbloated to me, I'd rather see mark of ursol stay and maybe get reworked to a cd, but cut half of these "you take 4% less damage here 6% there and 2% on top and maybe something else", this creates boring and passive gameplay where stuff happens because you do your normal rotation like moonfire & thrash or just passively like adaptive fur.

Btw on a side note, not only druids will lose stuff in 7.2.5. from tank specs, for example active mitigation stacking nerf will mostly hit monks and paladins, cheat death nerf applies to paladins and dhs (if they used the talent), warriors get their anger management nerfed (lololol first they buffed the leggie belt now they're nerfing the talent even for those who didn't have the belt), which was the key for frequent demo shouts helping on magic fights like Krosus & Augur, Monks are getting base stagger nerfed... Well DHs and DKs are already bottom of the pile so they should get buffs if anything.

There are also damage nerfs to tanks for example warrior revenge, also paladin cc talents like repentance and blinding light will no longer deal damage (way less impactful than revenge nerf ofc).

[Ealyssa]

You do realize this isn't "a DH weakness" because only 2 tanks bring aoe stun, namely warrior with shockwave and monk with leg sweep?

Doesn't change the fact that every single tank outside DH bring either a masse stun, mass snare or both ? But keeping cuting sentences in half, makes sense...

[LightClaw]

Doesn't change the fact that every single tank outside DH bring either a masse stun, mass snare or both ? But keeping cuting sentences in half, makes sense...

Why are you ignoring DH sigils? They have a mass disorient and a mass pull with snare if talented like some of the other tank cc are... I mean plus the wall he typed explaining the other forms of cc DH have, but ignoring that part it still doesnt make sense haha.

[Marrilaife]

Doesn't change the fact that every single tank outside DH bring either a masse stun, mass snare or both ? But keeping cuting sentences in half, makes sense...

Cut in half cuz rest is irrelevant. Disorients that break on damage count for as much as sigil or silence / misery, i.e. one extra interrupt. It's not "cc" because it gets insta broken. Only cc you use is 1) stuns which in aoe form only 2 tanks have and in single target form DH can talent into if they really wish 2) cc that allows you to skip annoying pats which is mostly brought by DH, rogue and paladin talented into repentance.

And if you mean slows, DH can provide that too, in form of sigil of chains and razor spikes if you want to talent into it. Slows are generally not needed anyway unless you run m+ with a group low on aoe stuns and it's necrotic week or something. On affixes like sanguine you don't want to slow the mobs anyway.

How does DH have less cc than a paladin who has single target stun and then either disorient or repentance (not both)? Or a druid that has incap roar and then either single target stun or typhoon? DH has sigil of malice & imprison neither of them cost a talent, then they can talent in single target stun and the chains sigil, if extra cc is needed. Most tanks have to trade off for their cc for example monk has to trade statue for the stun, paladin has to choose aoe disorient or repentance or shorter cd on single target stun, etc.