What is the easiest tank class?

[melodramocracy]

Druid is not only the easiest, but the best by a country mile.

This. I actually enjoy bear tanking, as straightforward as it is.

[Deleted]

They are all really easy to play but Monks and DHs can be somewhat more complex than the others depending on your talent choices.

[Niwes]

hi. my name is niwes. i am a professional fortune teller. i have a special glass sphere based on meteroid rock material. so i can see the future already today. and it shows me, that in this xpac, you will be surrounded by ... words ... wait... there is ... the word is.... BEAR. i dont know why, but i see massively the word BEAR in your future! so, beware!

glad i could help you. this costs 500 dollars. i dont take checks.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I agree Druid is #1, but my #2 might surprise you. I tank on all the tanks, Bear/DK/DH/Monk/Pally/Warrior. I find Brewmaster to be the 2nd easiest. Really it's all about keeping active mitigation rolling so you don't let everyone down by getting one-shot, and about not taking big hits that scare your healers. The difference between maintenance buffs that merely require remembering to mash a particular button ever so often in your rotation, versus limited defenses that have to be rationed and timed carefully. Bears and Monks both have 100% uptime on their active mitigation, making them chill and low stress both for the player tanking and the players counting on said tank.

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They are all really easy to play but Monks and DHs can be somewhat more complex than the others depending on your talent choices.

Demon Hunters yes, but why Monks? How hard is it to hit ISB every few seconds? Yes you can do so much more with your Monk, but that can be said of all the tanks. I don't think OP is asking about skill cap; the question is which is easiest to play well enough to get the job done. On my Brewmaster, I never have to worry about getting nailed because my active mitigation lapsed. Everything past that is pretty forgiving. I might make a mistake in my rotation that reduces my dps, or mistime a Purify and waste some healer mana, but those mistakes don't lead to wipes and largely go unnoticed.

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hi. my name is niwes. i am a professional fortune teller. i have a special glass sphere based on meteroid rock material. so i can see the future already today. and it shows me, that in this xpac, you will be surrounded by ... words ... wait... there is ... the word is.... BEAR. i dont know why, but i see massively the word BEAR in your future! so, beware!

glad i could help you. this costs 500 dollars. i dont take checks.

Bears are Blizz's chosen ones, the designated raid tanks.

[socialmaker]

not much of a tank guy but interms of how easy the rotation was Bear > Pala>rest... probably monk is the hardest.

[Deleted]

Druid is awesome, but I find it's all key-mashing (or that's what my dad does). I chose Blood DK, because it deals high DPS and Death Knights are my favourite.

You try to imply dk isn't button-smashing? Haha

[Deleted]

I've only ever tanked as a Paladin, so I can't really answer. I can say though that Paladin is pretty easy. Pretty much just mash all my buttons and keep one charge of SotR for emergencies, not much to it.

Then you're a shit tank.

[fathom81]

Blood dk cause dmg/mitigation all in one pack, you just smash keys and you cant get it wrong.

[Achilles55]

Paladin is one of the hardest to play optimally and the most punishing if you fuck up. Heroic KJ for example on a paladin you have to space out your cd's with sotr perfectly to survive fel claws...as a bear you just laugh and spam iron fur for everything. I haven't tanked on Monk or DK yet but of the 4 I've played I'd say Paladin hardest and Druid easiest.

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Also, to the people saying Paladin is easy because you just mash buttons. Please link me your parses.

[ReD-EyeD]

Then you're a shit tank.

That was rude, but I kinda agree.

I have good experience with all tanks with all tanks in Legion and I would say that Paladin is one of the hardest. Yes, playing paladin tank is easy, but playing paladin tank good is very hard. You can smash all your glowing buttons, but it would net you a shitton of damage received and less dps. Simplier base mechanics in paladin means that you're hugely punished if you you're not executing them perfectly.
I have seen a lot of paladins that were using Shield of Righteousness on cooldown and didn't care about actual damage spikes or they just left the pack with 7+ seconds of it making huge waste.

Warrior tank is kinda similar. Playing warrior tank is not hard, but there are so much stuff to min-max it's insane. Try doing perfect rotation with Vengeance while juggling white auto-attack swings with Devastator and you will know what I mean.

Brewmaster is the opposite of them. It's hard to learn, easy to master spec. Bad brewmaster is a damn huge pain in the ass for healers, but still alive tank while some other specs would be just dead. Entry skill level is much more steep tho.

Bear is brainless as possible. Defensive? Spam Iron hide. Offensive? Spend rage for Maul.

Bear is the easiest tank by a mile kilometer.

[Hunterwep]

In PvP a Healing Priest.
You hold aggro on every oponent without pressing a single button,
because they know you can't run anywhere and just have to stand there and take it.


But on a serious note: Druid

[Deleted]

Played all tank classes this xpac, doing m+10 each week on all of them except Blood DK.
Monk seems to be the easiest by far, you have no relevant defensive cooldowns besides your "oh shit" button and managing your brews is very easy. Most tankiness comes from your passive stagger, the rest you can spend on Damage GCDs. If you have the right legendaries you also do a shit ton of AoE damage.
I am not flaming that class, in fact it is my favorite class to tank besides Demon Hunter (which feels way more complex because you have so many tools you COULD work with). It is incredible fun, but compared to the others classes it is very easy.

[ReD-EyeD]

Played all tank classes this xpac, doing m+10 each week on all of them except Blood DK.
Monk seems to be the easiest by far, you have no relevant defensive cooldowns besides your "oh shit" button and managing your brews is very easy. Most tankiness comes from your passive stagger, the rest you can spend on Damage GCDs. If you have the right legendaries you also do a shit ton of AoE damage.
I am not flaming that class, in fact it is my favorite class to tank besides Demon Hunter (which feels way more complex because you have so many tools you COULD work with). It is incredible fun, but compared to the others classes it is very easy.

You're saying this only because you don't feel the burden on your healers. DK and Bear does pretty much exactly the same while receiving less damage, having insane sustain and a so much more utility like grip, savage roar, battle res etc. while BrM only has aoe stun.
Well, burden is a strong word as m+10 is a joke right now for any tank, but for anything slightly harder it is.

[Deleted]

You're saying this only because you don't feel the burden on your healers. DK and Bear does pretty much exactly the same while receiving less damage, having insane sustain and a so much more utility like grip, savage roar, battle res etc. while BrM only has aoe stun.
Well, burden is a strong word as m+10 is a joke right now for any tank, but for anything slightly harder it is.

The question was not "which class is the best tank class?", the question was "which tank class is the easiest to play?"
I never said Monk is the best class. I never said it has the most utility. On the contrary, it has nothing of that and that is one of the reasons why it is the easiest to play.

Also just to clarify: I also did +10 3 months ago with all of them (again, except Blood DK). I am saying this because I want to brag or some bullshit, but tbh +10 is the highest the average player is going to do and I think it is a pretty good measurement for tanks. Because even if it is pretty easy right now, you can not be completely brain afk.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

not much of a tank guy but interms of how easy the rotation was Bear > Pala>rest... probably monk is the hardest.

For faceroll content, maybe. Any raid tank will tell you ToS is way easier on monk than pally.

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Paladin is one of the hardest to play optimally and the most punishing if you fuck up. Heroic KJ for example on a paladin you have to space out your cd's with sotr perfectly to survive fel claws...as a bear you just laugh and spam iron fur for everything. I haven't tanked on Monk or DK yet but of the 4 I've played I'd say Paladin hardest and Druid easiest.

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Also, to the people saying Paladin is easy because you just mash buttons. Please link me your parses.

Yep. Lots of people must have only tanked H dungeons when they talk about paladins. KJ says hello!

[Deleted]

For faceroll content, maybe. Any raid tank will tell you ToS is way easier on monk than pally.

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Yep. Lots of people must have only tanked H dungeons when they talk about paladins. KJ says hello!

To be fair, KJ is just one boss in one raid. Taking only him as a benchmark doesnt sound good.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I wonder if people rate Brewmaster hardest just because it is different? Or because they don't see as many?
I play all six tanks, and Brewmaster is chill and relaxing to tank on. We're so chill, we don't even bother with active mitigation; we just do damage procrastination.

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To be fair, KJ is just one boss in one raid. Taking only him as a benchmark doesnt sound good.

Not the only boss that challenges paladins more than other tanks. There's a reason pallies were considered worst tank for ToS. It all comes down to whether active mitigation is up 100% or whether it has to be rationed and has gaps.

EDIT: I should add that I mained my prot pally from EN -> NH and I still love my pally for M+. ToS exposed us. Yes we could tank it, but it required more skill/attention to detail to tank ToS on prot pally than most of the others. VDH had similar issues, but at least had top notch mobility and dps.

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Played all tank classes this xpac, doing m+10 each week on all of them except Blood DK.
Monk seems to be the easiest by far, you have no relevant defensive cooldowns besides your "oh shit" button and managing your brews is very easy. Most tankiness comes from your passive stagger, the rest you can spend on Damage GCDs. If you have the right legendaries you also do a shit ton of AoE damage.
I am not flaming that class, in fact it is my favorite class to tank besides Demon Hunter (which feels way more complex because you have so many tools you COULD work with). It is incredible fun, but compared to the others classes it is very easy.

Absolutely agree. People saying Brewmaster is hard must not have played much Brewmaster. But like you, I enjoy my monk very much.

[Marrilaife]

I'm probably not qualified anymore to say about monks because I shelved mine, in Legion last content I tanked on Monk was Nighthold in a pug, however Monk to me seems like a tank that was very forgiving to play sub optimally. My button mashing rotation was probably all wrong leading to lower than intended dps and all I did was chug ironskin brew, but I still felt I had more survivability than the other pug tank despite him having 20 ilvl over me (I reckon he was a warrior). Playing monk optimally with blackout combo usage, proper purify usage etc. is probably much more complicated, but you can get by without it.

Demon Hunter is a tank that can get by with button mashing in dungeons (assuming it's not super high m+) because spirit bomb heals for a shitton so it covers sub optimal play, you can also spec into cheat death which helps a tank to be more forgiving to mistakes, however in raids when you stop being carried by spirit bomb you might get tons of complains from healers that you take too much spiky damage and it's stressful to heal a DH tank. So all depends on content you do.

I don't think paladin is super hard to play but that's because I play it since wotlk and I have some feeling how it should go, however I've heard from several paladins who were ret / holy ms and tried prot that they had bad experiences with it like being squishy or healers complaining on them. If you use the shield slam for dps and just "spam" it, you can easily screw yourself over. For most other tanks, you can save your mitigation because it's not used for dps (except few talent choices like razor spikes for DH), so you never face a choice "do I use this ability for dps or mitigation".

Warrior can be tricky in raids as well because it's easy to get yourself rage starved by spamming too much revenge. In dungeons / aoe you get so many free revenge procs it's less of a deal.

Bears don't have this issue because you have really few globals free to waste on maul, so you'd use rage for mitigation anyway. I rarely see a global I couldn't use thrash / mangle / galactic guardian moonfire proc in. And I've heard with the new fotm legendary setup spamming moonfire is even more desirable than the old thrash spam. So you sit on rage anyway, and frenzied regen is so cheap you won't deplete rage with it (plus it has a cd), so naturally the only option to use it is non-gcd ironfur. There are some occasions you'd want to micro manage ironfur (like save rage for multiple stacks at once), but we're talking about how effective is a tank at the newbie level of play, not about the skill ceiling.

I think DKs are fairly easy in concept, but I heard for some people the whole rune / runic power system is confusing.

[Nihilan]

Thrash Thrash Thrash Thrash Thrash

Skill required -1

Effectiveness +9002

[Edit]
I actually had to retire my Guardian because it was just too boring to play. Effective yes, but so dull i literally could not bear to play it.

[FuxieDK]

Paladin 6-9-6-9-6