In your opinion, what is the most useful s nd rewarding tank spec?
In your opinion, what is the most useful s nd rewarding tank spec?
Useful for what?
E: Ah, utility then? Probably going to be a Prot Pally for utility alone, but it honestly depends on what your raid needs. Raid full of Druids, Locks, and DPS DKs? Don't need a DK tank for ress and then there's not much else they're that special for. It depends if you want to count a Tank's DPS and how much healing focus they need into being useful. They each have their benefits depending on what the raid needs.
Rewarding, personally, Blood DK simply for the personal survival and lack of having to depend on healers so much. Monk would be close but they don't have as much constant on-demand healing, and strafing to heal (GotO), coming from someone who plays melee so I don't want to hurt their DPS, feels bad to do when bosses this expansion have had a tendency to be a twat and keep moving around (First boss MSV nightmares mostly...)
Last edited by Soisoisoi; 2014-03-30 at 05:30 PM.
All tanks brings something useful to the raid. The rewarding part is purely personal opinion, i enjoy playing bear but i have been playing one since WotLK so kinda biased.
different tanks bring different stuff honestly:
feral: strong damage
Prot Warr:banners
prot paladin: Strong raidheal (on our malkorok kill, our prot paladin was first in healing, doing sth like 200k+ hps, solo-soaking blood rage)
monk: a bit of everything above and a bit of cheese
dk: nothing (outside of combat rez)
Runey, there are some pretty strong features of Blood DKs you are ignoring. Their self-healing can be almost as high as Prot Paladins - our Prot Pal maintank can pull 200k+, but our Blood DK is often 180k+ when he is the primary H-Malkorok tank too - it's less - but hardly so.
On high magic damage fights, nothing beats a blood DK - the combination of a high-stamina build, anti-magic shell, and glyph of regenerative magic verges on overpowered. On exceptionally hard hitting bosses blood dks do quite well too (usually with a more mastery-focused build) - due to the enormous mastery shields they can spam (300-500k) every couple seconds.
Prot Pally + Blood DK is the best main tank combo IMO - they are very good at the opposite sort of mechanics - so one of the two is always 'the best' for any given fight IMO. If you need a third tank, Brewmaster I'd say is the third best option (then Bear, then Warrior).
This is a really broad question... and it depends on what you want from the tank.
BrM allows the most cheesing of mechanics due to the way stagger interacts with damage. Having the smoothest damage intake of any tank just for hitting BoK every 6 seconds is stupidly strong. The only fight they're not amazing on is garrosh if you're solo tanking (the higher amount of stacks from despair weapon will wreck you on heroic as a monk)....
Which is why you have a prot paladin as your other tank.
Prot warrior is the next best option to fill the BrM slot. I personally don't think Blood dk (scales the worst with high damage in take due to blood shield eventually hitting a hard cap of their health) and bears are that great except in specific situations.
Literally each tank spec has a fight where they're the "best" tank (except blood dk maybe), the most common being either a paladin or a monk. Least probably being a dk. The problem with a dk is anything they can do, a paladin does the exact same... but better.
If you want to go by raid utility...
Paladins: Holy Prism passive healing, Devo aura, EF on raid members, Hand spells
Warriors: Banner and rallying cry
Monks: Avert harm (lol), and raid guards (REALLY strong on some fights, never useless)
Druids: Tranq (that takes you out of tank form...) HoTW rejuvs, nature's vigil.
DK: Blood worm? (really bad on anything that's not malk) mass grip (might as well bring a dps dk for this if you need it).
Warrior pally and monk are all arguably equally strong with raid utitliy, really depends on a fight to fight basis, and on raid size. Monk's raid guards are weaker in 25m (the way it scales you should throw out about the same amount of shields even with higher vengeance, so a smaller % of the raid get them than you do in 10m), paladin and warrior's CDs are stronger in 25m due to being raid wide.
EDIT: For most content, you'll probably be best served with either paladin/monk or warrior/monk as your tank setup. Druids are a good replacement for monks if you don't have them. I personally don't see a reason to ever bring a DK over another tank spec as they don't bring anything that another tank spec can't bring (except grip which is brought with DPS dks anyway).
GotO orbs never spawn far enough away that a boss will turn from you moving for them. If melee end up getting parried from you getting GoTO orbs it means either you're way over moving, or dps are standing on the side of the boss.Monk would be close but they don't have as much constant on-demand healing, and strafing to heal (GotO), coming from someone who plays melee so I don't want to hurt their DPS,
Depending on the specific fight and what you mean by "high magic damage" (which we haven't had since lei shi really) a warrior is just as strong with SBarr. The part that they take smoother dmg than a DK is just icing on the cake. Esp with a riposte build allowing a warrior to revenge as much as they do SBarr will quickly out scale AMS as AMS is capped at 50% of a DKs health.On high magic damage fights, nothing beats a blood DK - the combination of a high-stamina build, anti-magic shell, and glyph of regenerative magic verges on overpowered.
Except DKs are the weakest tanks at high vengeance as any time you take a hit hard enough to cause you to get a BS larger than your health pool, a DK instantly stops scaling with the damage intake. Every other tank will continue to scale with it through absorbs and heals (SBarr, Guard, EF, Frenzied Regen will all never get to the point of healing more than your healthbar).On exceptionally hard hitting bosses blood dks do quite well too (usually with a more mastery-focused build) - due to the enormous mastery shields they can spam (300-500k) every couple seconds.
It'll be different in WoD when Rune Tap gives an absorb based off vengeance, but for the time being DKs scale really poorly with vengeance defensively compared to other tanks just due to the mechanics of the class.
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Forced to rank?
BrM = Warrior = Paladin >>> Druid > DK
Top 3 are so close that it really comes down to a player's experience with the class, and the fights specific mechanics.
Last edited by britishbubba; 2014-03-31 at 12:57 AM.
Warriors are by far the strongest tanks atm for 25man - they bring amazing raid CD's (both damage and defensive), the best personal damage of any tank and are extremely versatile. They do fine on pure magic fights as shield barrier is spammable, they do great on pure melee fights due to 50%+ avoidance + constant coverage of either Sblock or Sbarr and they do even better on a fight with a mix.
They have fantastic mobility and snap threat, as well as doing an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage sub 20% with execute spam when needed. Garrosh P3 push is so much easier with a warrior than a paladin it's hilarious.
Great replies so far, I like the fact that all tanks have their place. Seems like BrMs have an active playstyle. Personally i main a druid and blizzard did state they are going to be changing up tanking to be more active for bears so i have hope :-)
No, I know. It's just the thought of having to strafe side to side as a healing mechanic is bleh. Didn't help I tanked early MSV on my Monk before switching back to my DK, the first boss took the piss with how they moved without you even moving, strafing really didn't help that situation and it's just annoyed me since.
If you strafe, the boss will try to predict where you will be moving to, and change position immediately. If you move forwards or backwards the boss will stay still until you move out of his hitbox (which can be considerably more than your own hit range).
Or do you have to strafe for the orbs to appear?
The orbs appear when you do damage on the sides of your character. They're close enough that almost any boss will not move if you strafe the very little amount of distance required to pick them up. The only bosses I can think of off the top of my head that actually turn when you do this is stone guards, pretty much every other boss is perfectly fine as they spawn REALLY close to you.
Warriors imo right now at the best for the reasons Frozendekay already wrote. Monks are very fun, and if Blizzard goes through with their proposal to scale back tank independence (can't remember where I read this) I will probably main swap to monk from my paladin. I like the GotO orbs, too, though I didn't at first. I am a constant strafer (minimal, literally back and forth) which is a habit I have from playing FPS where standing still is a no no. It's neat that you get bankable 'on-demand' healing without having to add another keybind.
What's stupid is that the way Blizzard handed riposte to DKs. I say it's stupid because although DKs did need a damage buff, it doesn't make sense to give warriors that buff AS WELL AS a survivability gain and to give nothing for DK survivability. I don't understand Blizzard's approach to DKs. It is not only in my opinion but that of many players the worst of all the tank specs right now and nothing is done for them. In SoO, warriors were given steroids and even Guardians were buffed respectably. At the very least, the DK spec should be 'updated' because it feels stuck in the dark ages: DnD costs an UH rune and has a long CD. Should be one or the other. Consecration as a paladin doesn't use HP and it has hardly any CD with good haste. Blood Shield caps at the player's health which cripples its scaling in massive-vengeance scenarios. If I logged onto my DK and refreshed my memory on the class mechanics I could come up with some other problems it's got that other tanks clearly don't.
DKs actually have MORE dependency on their healers then any other tanking spec sans warriors. DK's, while they have strong cooldowns, do NOT have the same amount of sudden healing that monks, druids, and paladins do. Sure, if a DK outgears content, they are the first to solo any encounter, but in current-content raids DKs require the most input from healers, whereas druids can pump out huge heals with FR+HT, monks have emergency orbs+expel harm sub-35%, and Paladins have LoH, WoG, ect.
A lot of feral cats inc! lategame?
Warrior is currently the flavor of the month class thanks to mad avoidance and vengeace scaling and banners. Personally DK feels most rewarding to play.
Blood DK is definitely the most rewarding to play. The difference between playing poorly and playing well is so evident, and nothing is really more satisfying than nailing a 700k heal Death Strike.
Last edited by Aughyssul; 2014-04-06 at 09:04 PM.
It probably is Prot Pally. Maybe Prot warrior, but I would say Prot paladin in general Prot Warrior in my heart.