Only warrior can tank?

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Warrior was the preferred tank without a doubt.

Does it mean others were totally useless? No. But certain things people don't think about a whole lot today mattered than. Like a prot pally? Out of mana in like a minute. Required things like spell power to generate worthwhile threat for that minute. To get spell power gear you don't get defense/dodge/parry which makes you get chucked. So a catch 22 in a lot of cases.

Could you tank 5 mans and such with it. Yeah. Just a lot of drinking for that mana. It just isn't optimal.

[Halicia]

Could you tank 5 mans and such with it. Yeah. Just a lot of drinking for that mana. It just isn't optimal.

You can tank 5mans with rogues and such if you're really desperate. The problems with class balance was at the raid level, where the goal was for one spec to be raid viable.

[Nikkaszal]

Remember that Shattered Halls was impossible w/o pala tank.

Not even remotely true.

Source: I tanked as a Warrior through Vanilla and TBC. Warriors could 100% AoE tank anything, Shattered Halls included, so long as you were adept at the Tclap stance dance and knew how to tab target to spread your threat around as needed.

[Nikkaszal]

Believe you use a seal, its up for 30seconds.

Judgment's effect is based on the seal... I forgot if judgment consumes the seal or not though.

Judgement would consume the seal when cast

So you'd either:

(A) Use judgement every 8 sec and refresh your seal afterwards
(B) Keep the seal up and autoattack

Option A would, incidently, OoM you in about 30seconds.

[MMKing]

No, not even remotely viable. You could shoehorn a druid tank into some specific bosses, but Paladin tanks were quite literally useless.

In TBC, Druids were your go to tank for super high hit points and Paladins for AOE tanking. Generally, the warrior would be the main tank with a druid and paladin kept geared in reserve to pick up where Warriors suffered. In WOTLK, i remember Druids being pretty damn close to mandatory to take on that Dragon boss with 3 drakes up, as neither warriors nor paladins could acquire nearly enough hit points.

[Bearshield]

Been some time since I thought about it, so my memory might be hazy, but Paladins lacked the ability to hold aggro and Druids lacked the tools to not immediately die.

Sure, Druids had a lot of armor in Dire Bear form, but their only defensive cooldown was frenzied regen, which would drain all their rage for sub-par healing.

Tanks also didn't rely on cooldowns anywhere near as often as we do today.

As to OP's question, following patch 1.8 (the Druid class review) Druids were capable of tanking almost everything in the game. It was frowned upon, because to do so required you to take gear that was typically reserved for Rogues and Warriors and our tier was tailored exclusively for healing. Warriors had a better overall toolkit to do the job and could achieve uncrushable/uncrittable through defense and shield block but Druids, when played and geared properly were most definitely viable. Can't speak for Paladins as I played Horde.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

We MT'd everything till BT with a Tankadin/Bear duo. Halfway through BT we switched, only because we knew we needed two warrior tanks for Illidan due to Shear and gearing 4 tanks would have been a mess. Bear went resto, Tankadin stayed as offtank

In vanilla though at best I could have though of using a bear but even then it would have felt like wasted gear back in a time when gearing people was hell.

All right, I over stepped when I said that Pallies didn't MT...the point was they were not the most desired tanking class...which your anecdote supports.

[Felrane]

I tanked every 5 man. 10 man and 20 man on my druid back in vanilla. Gearing correctly was the biggest problem and you couldn't ever push Crits and crushing off the table. I did tank half of MC but as the off tank. I never felt like it was hard or a burden. The healers loved my bear though I had alot of RL healer friends back in Vanilla.
Bear tanking is not Ideal but it can be done. The spec requires alot of personal work and crafted gear lots and lots of 5 man farming. It will always be easier to just play a warrior if you want to tank. Pretty much just show up and get loot and be amazing.

[david0925]

(Experience was KJ kill pre 3.0 nerf)

Bears were only mana sponges in TBC if you stacked stamina. If you stacked agility, which fueled you both offensively and defensively, you actually didn't soak much mana outside of extreme RNG. Bear scaled extremely well with agility because of very low agility>dodge conversion. Sunwell Radiance of -20% dodge was put in there to avoid bears hitting avoidance cap (rogues can also do this, although I doubt they can hold aggro).

When you hit armor cap (warriors can't), crushing blow done to you is basically as much as normal damage. You can stack enough defense to become crit immune although I personally didn't find it necessary, as bear's high armor and hp pool soaked those very rare crit hits very well anyway. The only fight bears can't tank was Illidan due to Shear

Paladin tanks were extremely viable and had a huge niche in >3 target tanking but aren't as effective tanking ST target since a huge amount of their damage and threat came from blocking, but all 3 tanks were viable in their own niche while still able to tank outside of their niche, albeit not as effective as others.

This is all tbc and not vanilla though, neither classes had even their niche to tank over warriors.

[Ahovv]

It's going to be absolutely hilarious when it dawns on everyone how horrible the balance will be, the specs you're forced into etc.

If you think balance is bad in Legion (it is), it'll be even worse in an unmodified Classic experience.

[Dergiab]

Not even remotely true.

Source: I tanked as a Warrior through Vanilla and TBC. Warriors could 100% AoE tank anything, Shattered Halls included, so long as you were adept at the Tclap stance dance and knew how to tab target to spread your threat around as needed.

Bring lots of Mages as well.

What you are describing isn't just something you can expect from a PUG, whether it be the warrior skill or the rest of the group adapting to the warrior.

[Torrasque]

If you are Horde, Warrior is the only viable tank. Druids innately take crushing damage since they cannot stack Defense. For Alliance only paladins, they don't have enough mitigation and can be one-shot by many bosses because of it.

[Discopew]

Paladins weren't really even all that great tanks in BC. In general, they were 3rd out of 3 possible tanks.

Vanilla had a lot of specs that just weren't viable in end game.

faceroll heroics
Entıre Karazhan
Hyjal waves
ZA timed chain pulls
M'uru

Protection paladins made the game easier where it came to the aoe tanking which was what made them unique and desired in TBC.

[Gaidax]

It's going to be absolutely hilarious when it dawns on everyone how horrible the balance will be, the specs you're forced into etc.

If you think balance is bad in Legion (it is), it'll be even worse in an unmodified Classic experience.

Yeah, but then it's pretty simple choice compared to when I started in Vanilla. Now we know exactly who does what.

Vanilla who does what guide:

Want a tank - roll warrior.
Want a DPS - roll pure, preferably Rogue or Mage.
Everything else is a healer.


Back when I started I had no idea so I rolled Paladin (Holy power warrior of light hype!) and ended up healing my ass off in raids. PvP was vindication though, but raiding was heal or die.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

faceroll heroics
Entıre Karazhan
Hyjal waves
ZA timed chain pulls
M'uru

Pretty short list compared to:

Black Temple
The Rest of Hyjal
The Rest of Sunwell
etc.

I'm not saying Paladins weren't a lot more viable than in Vanilla...just that they were rarely the top pick for tank when it came to the 25mans. Could they do it? Mostly yes. Were they particularly effect in some fights? Sure. But, generally speaking, Warriors still dominated the MT role in 25 man raids and Druids were often the second choice.

[potis]

Adorable posting, went from Vanilla to TBC tanking.

Bears couldnt tank in Vanilla cause of threat, they didnt generate any, they didnt have any extra multipliers as Warrior did which was the main reason.

Any half-serious guild wouldnt consider one cause you couldnt "sit and wait" for them to have agroo, the noob mentality of "Wait for agroo" only existed the first few months in MC days cause no one knew better, especially the noob ass tanks not using their rage properly.

Of course it carried over forever in the majority of the game, and still exists in 2017

Defense was another thing, a geared dudu had decent armor/HP to not give a fuck about criticals.

But they were good Patcwerk soakers , we used one or two depending if the warriors showed up a lot.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

True, they weren't great main tanks.

And that's the crux of my position.

[Jagd]

Bring the pocket dwarf priest!

haha yeah dwarf priest or shaman tremor totems

[Vaelorian]

You guys really have a wonky memory or played with some sub par players.... fuck me.

1. paladins were awesome tanks in dungeons and Karazhan + SSC + Mount Hyjal + Sunwell, they were mostly great as AoE tanks/trash tanks. Yes they lacked certain things but you could cope.
2. paladins had the single most greatest agro generating abilities in the game during vanilla. So aggro was never the issue. The issue was to create aggro... you required a lot of mana. Because a paladin in warrior gear lacked intellect, you had a minimal amount. Chugging mana pots like crazy could work. Of course you lacked a taunt and some decent survivability. Paladins were never really tanks during Vanilla. Even though I tanked Onyxia. It was just to do something "different" of an otherwise boring fight.

As a paladin you had seal and judgement of fury(?) using holy damage (Consecration or seal of righteousness) you had insane amounts of aggro.
Most paladins did not even know how this worked... it was very clunky. You used your seal of fury to judge the target... this created some aggro. But then you put on seal of righteousness and casted consecration. Now your aggro became insane. The catch was... the judgement lasted only 20 seconds... (irrc) so you had to reseal fury... - judge that... then reseal to righteousness... etc etc etc

This meant that AoE tanking was insanely clunky. But once you had aggro... mobs would stick to you like glue.

[vsb]

I thought that Taunt in vanilla worked differently: it didn't transfer agro from current target but just fixated boss for a few seconds. If it' true, Taunt doesn't look very valuable tool.