Strongest Tank

[Tibeus]

So I was wondering what the MMO-Champ Community thinks the strongest tanks for 25 man progression are. I currently have all the tank classes at 90 and 485+ raiding actively on all of them. Currently the Monk is my main but im having second thoughts if it will be best for 25 man. I am in a 10 man guild that is going 25 and the other tank is a DK, now I was tempted to play a DK but dual-DK's wouldnt go over well :P So just in the opinion of MMO-Champ what do you feel the strongest tanks are in 25 man this tier?

[Marxman]

My opinion:

Overall Toolkit:
Warrior
Paladin
Death Knight
Monk
Druid

Overall Survivability:
Death Knight
Warrior
Paladin
Druid
Monk

Monk is my favorite tank just based on playstyle (and absurd DPS for a tank spec), but there's no denying that I feel MUCH, MUCH squishier than my lesser-geared Death Knight. Especially on pulls before you get Shuffle up, you get absolutely wrecked for 2 GCDs (Keg Smash -> BOK).

[Tibeus]

Yea it has been really rough on the Monk but the gameplay is a ton of fun Id love to play a Blood DK but I dont know if 2 Blood DK's would be viable

[cFortyfive]

I doubt that anyone serious would put anything but paladin on first rank. After that there is potential for discussions.

[Akylios]

Right now it seems like Paladins are tuned much more strongly than other tanks. If you want an 'easy time', pick a Paladin. (as with all tanks though, just picking a certain class won't change the fact that you actually need to know your stuff to play them effectively)

That being said, all tanks are viable, so there's really no reason to drop your monk unless you really want to.


[edit]
While all tanks are viable, if you plan on going 25m heroics, I would advise against picking a druid tank, unless you're looking for a real challenge. The druid dodge mechanic seems to lend itself much better to 10m raids than their 25m counterparts. (general tank dmg is much, much higher on 25m than 10m, so if you get bad rng on dodges on 25m hc, you're going to have a bad time)

[britishbubba]

Hands down paladin. Plethora of CDs, SoTR, ability to bubble off most tank debuffs rendering a lot of tank swaps irrelevant. add in that they have the highest single target dps of any tank thanks to the ability to haste stack? Don't know how anyone could seriously say anything else is stronger.

[Tibeus]

Appreciate the input may give another look at switching to my pally

[ColbaneX]

Hands down paladin. Plethora of CDs, SoTR, ability to bubble off most tank debuffs rendering a lot of tank swaps irrelevant. add in that they have the highest single target dps of any tank thanks to the ability to haste stack? Don't know how anyone could seriously say anything else is stronger.

Uh, Blood DKs have higher survivability and just as many CD's. Not to mention the best mastery in the game.

[britishbubba]

Uh, Blood DKs have higher survivability and just as many CD's. Not to mention the best mastery in the game.

DK's having higher survivability is incredibly arguable. Especially when you throw add tanking into the mix, and things like Durumu's "Hard Stare". SoTR > Death Strike/Blood shield for mechanics like that, which you know, almost every boss has lately. Lets not forget the part that a 3pt WoG with 5 Bastion of glory stacks heals for more than death strike ever will and is off the GCD...

DK's mastery is also useless when it comes to magic damage, paladin's isn't.

Paladin's also have more versatile CDs, and one of theirs isn't a boost to avoidance which is not exactly the best thing (DRW is incredibly meh for a defensive).

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Each tank has it's strong point but pala and warrior tanks are the best imo, simply because of block. Monk and druid tanks feel squishy but they got decent dps. DK tanks can survive a ton of damage because of their borderline op mastery but overall they feel balanced.
All tank specs need some form of skill to be viable now so a shit pala tank can be outplayed by an average monk tank. If you're good at monk tanking you'll find a few fights really appealing, others not so much.

[Tojara]

Prot Paladins don't do that much damage themselves.

The reason they might do a lot of damage is because they are because they are INCREDIBLY strong and can solo tank a lot of bosses (because of bubble and their mastery) while gaining an incredible amount of vengeance. This vengeance makes their passive healing from auto attacking pretty massive, their sacred shield really big and in turn actually makes them do a lot of damage.

SoTR is just incredibly good, especially when you stack haste and can effectively have it up for any large burst.

Blood DKs are excellent but can't mitigate prolonged periods of insane burst like a Prot Paladin can, nor does a blood DKs survivability scale with increases to vengeance like a Prot Paladin does, which is one of the big reasons why they are so strong. When a DK solo tanks through CDs and get 200-300k vengeance they don't suddenly heal more or shield more with death strike. When a Prot Paladin does this their battle healer starts healing for an insane amount, their heals start healing for an insane amount and their sacred shield starts absorbing for an insane amount too (warriors get a similar effect with shield barrier and monks start throwing up guard more quickly while their self healing gets amplified).

Prot paladin is by far the best. They can help bring healer requirements down by one, can solo tank a lot, have high survivability and can help the raid in multiple ways (devotion aura, purity, BoP, sacrifice, freedom, salvation).

Doesn't mean they are the best on every encounter but they overall are probably the strongest tank. For what it's worth a Blood DK is pretty strong on Jin'rokh (both heroic and normal) as they can AMS the static burst, not get a debuff and effectively tank inside the pool for 40% damage.

As much as a lot of people don't want to admit it they need to buff blood DKs to make them a bit better. We offer very little raid utility and are one of two tanks (guardian druids I believe) that gain zero survivability as our vengeance increases. Allowing us to track and control when blood worms explode would be pretty great.

[britishbubba]

As much as a lot of people don't want to admit it they need to buff blood DKs to make them a bit better. We offer very little raid utility and are one of two tanks (guardian druids I believe) that gain zero survivability as our vengeance increases. Allowing us to track and control when blood worms explode would be pretty great.

Druids get more healing off their frenzied regen with more vengeance. Granted, you'll usually use Savage Defense over FR in most situations.

DKs *sorta* get more survivability from increased vengeance, in that when they have higher vengeance, they're taking more damage, and thus healing more from death strike. I know, not the same thing, and I agree that all tanks should have SOMETHING scale off of vengeance though. I think DKs could just stand to receive something that allows them to better handle "thrash" mechanics other than taking Blood Tap and Death striking before hand for a blood shield then using Blood Tap to get a DS out to heal up the damage.

Maybe Rune Tap should scale off vengeance instead of just being a flat 10% of your health.

[Deja Thoris]

Blood DKs are excellent but can't mitigate prolonged periods of insane burst like a Prot Paladin can,

Aren't prolonged periods of burst called "sustained damage"?

[Akylios]

We offer very little raid utility and are one of two tanks (guardian druids I believe) that gain zero survivability as our vengeance increases.

Frenzied Regeneration and Tooth & Claw both scale with vengeance.

170k Vengeance can give you around 40k HPS (off the GCD) in self heals as a druid. (purely via frenzied regeneration)
170k Vengeance will reduce a druid's or his co-tank's incoming damage by around 150k per stack of T&C.

(feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

You can debate just how useful FR is in a 25m WF race setting (seeing as it is only useful after the tank has taken actual damage), but some of your survivability talents certainly scale with vengeance.

[Daniwa]

I would say the strongest tank was the german panther in WWII, but thats just me

[Drikkink]

Warrior and Paladin are pretty much the top. DK, druid and monk all have uses, but all have more weaknesses than war and paladin.

[Zoibert the Bear]

I play a druid, and this may sound biased, but we are incredibly strong in fights where Physical damage is predominant (HC Will and Tortos comes to mind), the passive magic damage mitigation is a nice perk, but we are still subpar compared to DKs or Paladins.

[Pippo89]

I would say the strongest tank was the german panther in WWII, but thats just me

Good one, Sir! Refreshing :-D

[Nikkaszal]

You haven't seen true majesty until you've witnessed a Brewmaster ROFL'ing his way to victory with smart usage of Elusive Brew on Sha.

Thrash? Hah. Thrash happens to other people.

Anything where debuffs stack up with each melee hit - eg, Council - is sneered at with Elusive Brew.

[Viradiance]

You haven't seen true majesty until you've witnessed a Brewmaster ROFL'ing his way to victory with smart usage of Elusive Brew on Sha.

Thrash? Hah. Thrash happens to other people.

Anything where debuffs stack up with each melee hit - eg, Council - is sneered at with Elusive Brew.

Can confirm this. I couldn't imagine Sha's Thrashes with anyone but a Brewmaster. Having 80% avoidance for those three hits is laughable. Looking forward to tanking Frost King in council too.