Warrior vs paladin tanking

[OCDFreaK]

I know MoP is almost over but I still want to try to play some more

I've talked with a few tanks on my server and they say any tank is fine if you are using your active mitigation. I'm having more success on my warrior though. Probably because he is more geared, but I feel like shield block and shield barrier are just the best. With paladin you have shield of the righteous but it seems that it's not meant to be used in a defensive manner at all. It's about stacking haste and cycling through holy power as fast as possible. I really don't see the fun in that.

However what I do like is that the dps spec of paladin can be used with protection paladin gear. Just switching weapons and trinkets. With warrior it kinda sucks since your gear will be having dodge and parry so then you will want to make another set just for that.

But the main thing I am interested in here is the tanking. But right now the problem I'm facing is while warrior more fun, it's a bit more complicated too with so many buttons to press and sometimes I just lose track of raid mechanics. Like for instance I was tanking a Flex dark shamans fight and was finding it difficult keeping track of everything at once while doing my active mitigation priority and using CDs.

Well with paladin it's boring and quite simple with the active mitigation priority rotation it gives me thinking room to watch for raid mechanics.

I would like to hear about what you guys think on this whole matter and thanks for your time!

[Kethmil]

Well, we cannot tell you what to like. You like what you like.

You like your warrior more, I like my paladin more. May be because my paladin is more geared . If you say paladin tanking requires no skill, then you're not a very good paladin tank. It is one the tanks with the biggest skill level cap and raid tools.

With a warrior you just have to dump rage into barrier or block, depending on the encounter. With a paladin, due to sotr buff only lasting 3 seconds, you really have to time it to fully take advantage of it.

With a warrior you have almost no raid tool. With a paladin you have a shit ton of tools to help raid, like hands, and on top of that you can really save others lifes dropping some EF's or LoH on the raiders.

With a warrior, if you dont have a healer you just die. With a paladin you're much more auto sustainable.

But well, play whatever you like to play.

[Nobleshield]

I've played both in Mists. Warrior tanking felt more visceral, it felt like attacking. However, I didn't care much for Active Mitigation as a concept (still don't) and found that while Shield Barrier was amazing, Shield Block didn't seem as good as in Cata. Also the number of buttons got annoying as I was the kind of tank who would keep things on a keybind just in case I ever needed it (things like Disarm or Hamstring) because I believe that's the mark of a good tank.

The paladin is definitely simpler and overall feels less hectic. It also feels a lot weaker though, for whatever reason.

Overall I stuck with Paladin because I absolutely hated Fury and Arms' playstyle, while I enjoyed Retribution, so in the event that I stopped tanking or took a break (I was getting burned out, in part from Active Mitigation) I wanted to have something I enjoyed as a fallback.

While none of us can tell you want you should do (and such a thing is offtopic anyways), it boils down to which you have more fun playing. Especially as a tank you have to enjoy your class.

[Deja Thoris]

I think your mind is made up.

[ultramini]

Overall,warrior is one of the easiest tank out there.Because their survivability hugely depend on healers,they don't require a high level of preparation (planning many step ahead) and reactivity,compare to other tank like brewmaster or DK.They can't survive without external heal but the playstyle is very calm and smooth and offer a pretty decent margin of error.

Yes they have many spells but most of them aren't part of the usual rotation,are situationnal and usually don't require any bind,because they aren't critical and don't require a fast reaction time.If you keep only the basic rotation,def CD and active mitigation,they don't have more spell than other tanks.The others spell can be literally click for pve tanking.Keep the essential.

[Deleted]

I find it hard to listen to someone who says clicking is ok.

So its ok to click all raid cooldown, spell reflect, disarm, leap, intervene, interupts, charge etc.

Yeh, i'll stop here and just say ignore everything ultra said, its not true lol.
Our survivability hugely depends on healers ? Sure lol.

[pkm]

However what I do like is that the dps spec of paladin can be used with protection paladin gear. Just switching weapons and trinkets.

If im not mistaken ret uses crit and/or mastery, so that would still be somewhat the same as having dodge and parry gear.

[Illana]

If im not mistaken ret uses crit and/or mastery, so that would still be somewhat the same as having dodge and parry gear.

Well it's mainly haste and the second stat doesn't matter that much for prot so using ret priority is fine. I would say paladins are harder to kill while warriors do more damage

[ultramini]

I find it hard to listen to someone who says clicking is ok.

So its ok to click all raid cooldown, spell reflect, disarm, leap, intervene, interupts, charge etc.

Yeh, i'll stop here and just say ignore everything ultra said, its not true lol.
Our survivability hugely depends on healers ? Sure lol.

You only need to bind spell that require a fast reaction time in PVE,that's simple logic.You are free to bind every spell but in PVE,it's as useful as binding flask,food or mass rez...

Interrup is critical and require a fast reaction time and can cause to a wipe while crit banner isn't,is always use at the same time and being delay by 0.5s won't cause a wipe,see the difference ?

Oh and unlike PVP,you don't do crazy 360 panorama all the time while tanking a boss,so most of the time,your mouse is free to use for clicking on thing.Crazy isn't ?

And yes,as long as you are good at tanking and you make good use of CD and active mitigation (like all other tanks) warrior life depend more on external healing since it's one of the tanking class that have the least self-healing capabilities.

[TheTaurenOrc]

However what I do like is that the dps spec of paladin can be used with protection paladin gear.

Actually its more protection using ret gear, than ret using protection gear fyi.

[aziras]

Oh and unlike PVP,you don't do crazy 360 panorama all the time while tanking a boss,so most of the time,your mouse is free to use for clicking on thing.Crazy isn't ?

I have tanked at many different levels through the years, but I have never once seen the claim that tanking is the more "clicker friendly" role...

Or maybe it is just the way I tank. I am 98% focused on the boss and mechanics I need to deal with, then 1% focused on my health bar as it's state can determine what to do next in some situations, and the last 1% on running my muscle memorized skill pressing.

Moving around your mouse to click abilities that could have been keybound to a key (which will always be in exactly the same spot) will take a lot more focus away from what you are supposed to be doing. Many of a tank's abilities are situational, but VERY rarely are they random like in PvP. You know more or less what could happen during a given encounter. And can prepare mental rules for exactly what triggers a specific response.

Or maybe it is because my brain is wired weird. I am fairly sure that if Blizzard allowed conditionals and automatic skill triggers in scripts I could script tanking all bosses to the point where I could keyboard-turn my way through them.

On topic: I gave up on pally tanking, but I have been exploring warrior, DK, and guardian tanking in MoP. Given the proposed changes for both DKs and guardians in WoD, I am leaning towards just scrapping them as tanks and going for the warrior. Since vanilla the warrior has been the only "always fun, never completely sucky" tank. All the others had their ups and downs. With some ups being way past exploit-like. Pallies have great utility, but they just don't work for me in terms of feel.
Blizzard want more tanks (to feed their LFR/LFD gameplay), but they do not seem fully invested in actually balancing the classes that can tank. So they will most likely continue to gift one of the less popular tanks with some gamebreaking gimmick in WoD, just to drive the FotM tank flux. Then nerf it once everyone start to only roll that class as tanks. Like they did with pallies in TBC and DKs and WotLK.