easiest tank?

[jshidaka]

depends the situation.

Single target DK self heling, bubble, parry = Bear bubble, dodge, self healing> Pally = War
AoE Pally > DK > War > Bear; Bear would be #1 if u have berserk and spam mangle..

[Prez-]

Paladin, and I've played all the other tank classes.

[Djuntas]

Paladin is over all the easiest for anything. Can pick up a prot paladin you havent played in months and still be just as good, nothing hard about it.

[Nexdominus]

this was brought up in a previous thread i think even 2-3 of them. However to answer your question Pally is easiest followed by warrior then bear then DK.

[MonsieuRoberts]

DKs can constantly aid themselves.
Paladins have a lot of protective utility for the raid.
Warriors have a lot of enemy-based utility and great mobility.
Bare haf mani armorz.

[Deleted]

Ranking classes eh? And claiming the easiest class is the one you don't have at level 85? talk about trying to be a crowd pleaser.

---------- Post added 2011-05-26 at 06:01 PM ----------



giggle, *warrior is the easiest by quite a margin - the grass is always greener on the other side.

Loled at ir comment i was bored at playin pally i tanked all raids in Wotlk so i know where im talkin about.Gues ur Mr Popular urself -.-

[Autofollow]

I think a lot of people claim DK because they watch all of the vids of DK soloing ridiculous content that no other tank could. However, that doesn't mean they are the easiest for true raid tanking or even instance tanking.

As some people have pointed out, the rune system makes it more difficult and imo people running in heroics want you to pull and move quickly. That's going to be harder with a DK and the runes.

Again, playing a Pally, DK, and Burr. I stick with Pally.

[Richmond]

I've played all 4 tanking classes at 60 or above and Paladin is by far the easiest and possibly the most fun. I do raid full time as a Druid though and i wouldn't advise a druid if you want "Ease of use"

[MagusUnion]

Paladins: If you want it easy...
Death Knights: If you want to keep threat, but not fall asleep at the wheel...
Druids: If you like being spontaneous with your forms...
Warriors: If you like to be verbally abused for losing threat, despite surviving all forms of damage...

[armone]

In regard to the Death Knight discussion, the difficulty level of Blood tanking depends upon what you are doing.

On the subject of threat generation, if you are merely running 5 man dungeons, you can spec into Crimson Scourge, Virulence, Epidemic, and Morbidity. You could also glyph Death and Decay. This makes AoE threat generation very easy and allows you to use your runes more for survivability than threat generation. You do not need a Lichborne spec for 5 man dungeons at all, so the above talents are available to you.

However, if you are tanking for raids, you are going to be talented for survivability, not AoE threat, and your hit and expertise will have have been sacrificed entirely for mastery and avoidance, whereas in dungeons, you can afford to have hit and expertise remain on your gear for additional threat. If you tank a dungeon in raid mode, it is going to be a lot more difficult. The pull is the hardest part. You will miss quite a bit, and you will need to be on the ball with tab targetting and watching Omen. AoE situations in raids are helped with Tricks of the Trade and Misdirects.

As far as survivability goes, you have to be active to survive. You can't sit there and block things passively. Watch your runes; death strike at the appropriate times for your particular situation; watch Blade Barrier and Bone Shield; make sure Scarlet Fever is up; and stagger your myriad of CDs. You are most vulnerable when you are doing nothing. A good example is Omnitron. When the shield goes up, we are most vulnerable and take a lot of damage, so it's wise to have a CD ready for that moment.

I have played every tank class, and in response to the original poster, I would honestly suggest playing a Paladin or Bear first. I think starting out with a DK or Warrior might be difficult until you learn the basics of tanking. Both Warriors and DKs are keybind heavy, and it might be overwhelming. With the other classes, you can focus more on how to pull mobs, positioning, and other basic tank moves, IMO.

[Dyzon]

What's wrong with using skills to stay alive?
granted it's not the best for starter tanks, but DK tanks got alot of utility and smart use of CDs and abilities.

I said skill, not skills. Again this is talk about a starter tank, DKs are NOT a starter tank for people new to tanking. A starter tank is more likely to be confused by all the things a DK tank has got to consider when compared to all three other classes.

Also I'm not sure who's having threat issues on AOE as a DK but I can only assume you're doing something wrong or your DPS is. Threat really shouldn't be an issue for any of the classes anymore.

As far as bears go, they're easy to play, but Blizz doesn't seem to give them any love ever. I personally can't stand their mastery because it feels way to RNG for me.

Also get TidyPlates/ThreatPlates addon if you're tanking.

[ghunor]

Which tank is the easiest to play well enough to raid?
I would say paladin and druid are easy.
dk and warriors take more finesse.

druids have a steeper cost of entry than a paladin, but they are easier mastered.
Paladins are easy to be a decent tank, but they have a large arsenal at their disposal to master. (Using all your hands, cleanse, etc when appropriate)
DKs sometimes feel like a dps class. You can time cooldowns that have good synergy. It's less intuative to time your death strikes correctly and know when to save runes and when to dump runes.
Warriors have lots of buttons. I still havn't mastered this one.

All of them can be used as tanks fairly easily, but you'll be a decent tank out of the gate with a pally/druid.

[zabraba]

Anyone who puts DK tanks as one of the easiest hasn't played their DK tank in a raid setting enough. Your healers are going to hate you if you don't know what you're doing. DK tanking requires experience and active use of many abilities in order to tank effectively. There are more judgment calls to make because of the rune system and how fights evolve. That said, if you're doing easy content, DK tanks are pretty faceroll as long as your healer doesn't care that you're getting trucked.

[Ibramgaunt]

I play pally, DK and warrior tank and I can tell you, pally is really good in a lot of situation, but initial threat, DK are just amazing 2 deathstrike to open and you will never lose aggro

[tyggyr]

[inc: wall of text!]

I actively play all 4 tanking classes and have for quite some time.

My rankings follow for level 85.


Ease of handling AoE situations

• Bear - currently has the best pick-up AoE between an AoE taunt and being able to use an un-targetted AoE ability 3 out of 4 GCDs (swipe thrash swipe) - you don't have to have a target in melee range to use it, but it'll hit everything around you; bear AoE threat is outstanding since 4.1, and the damage taken I've found to be no worse than shield tanks and probably better (lesser) in general.
• Paladin - Hammer of the Righteous is a very powerful AoE move, though you have to have a target in melee range to use it (and in chaotic situations where you don't have AoE control it could cause issues). Holy wrath (15s c/d) is very nice when targets are undead or elementals (glyphed), and decent on any mob. I don't consider consecration to be a very effective part of the paladin's arsenal any more. Avenger's shield is great on trash casters and for more AoE threat (hits 3 targets), and the 3-mob "taunt" (Hand of Reckoning) is nice for when you see that something's attacking your healer and you don't want to figure out what, you just say "hey whoever's hitting this guy c'mere!"
• Warrior - Arguably a better AoE tank than the paladin between Blood & Thunder (rend and then Thunder Clap every 6s c/d for outstanding AoE threat) and Shockwave (20s c/d, 17s glyphed) is outstanding on trash. AoE taunt for the really messy times; tab-cleave spamming with the nearly endless rage a warrior has in AoE situations. In the right hands the warrior is superior to the paladin in AoE tanking... as long as you start out in control (charge in and they're yours, basically). If you don't, and your AoE taunt is on cooldown, you probably won't get control easily. That said, if you have AoE control, you won't lose it, even if a DPS is focusing on something that's not your main target.
• DK - The DK has to plan AoE ahead. I don't consider DK AoE aggro to be stable; it's generally good enough, but a focused DPS on the wrong target will start offtanking it.

Single target:

• Boss pull: DKs probably have the best threat on-pull, followed by the paladin (divine plea for 3hp + wings + avenger's shield + shield of the righteous = glue), then the warrior (I don't consider recklessness to be a good idea on a boss pull, personally; retaliation can help but a little) and the bear - rage potions can help both of these guys on the pull.
• Mid-fight: Warrior makes the best OT for adds control and movement and can place vigilance on the MT (or "other tank") so that he's got some vengeance up when he taunts off on tank-swap fights
• Mid-fight threat: All tanks are roughly equal at dishing out the threat on a boss. That is to say, similarly geared DPS aren't going to come near them.
• Hard boss survivability: Since the WoG nerf on the paladin, their self-heals aren't a huge factor any more. Ranking: Bear, War, Paladin (all close enough not to matter). DK is a wild card; a well-played DK can have a net hp loss less than any other tank (damage taken minus self heals and blood shields) but this takes more skill.

Skill factor - easiest to hardest:

• Bear - definitely the easiest to play since 4.1. Before 4.1 AoE took considerable work, though it did work, just. The abilities used are a modified priority but mostly a rotation; I consider it easy overall because of the low damage taken in all situations, the semi-ranged interrupt (makes a difference on moving fights), and the ease of holding aggro in any situation.
• Paladin - blizz tried to take out "rotation" from the paladin and failed miserably; there's hardly any variation in what you do while tanking. You do get to make the occasional choice about a cooldown or tossing a Hand of Protection on someone getting eaten alive by a cat or something but 90% of your time is repetitive.
• Warrior - a very active tank with an ability priority system... there's ALWAYS something to do and you have to watch carefully to see what the best thing is to do at any point. The excellent AoE aggro and low damage taken and the outstanding maneuverability makes this a very useful tank.
• DK - I believe that the DK is the toughest tank to play really well. You can faceroll the DK and do Ok but you'll take a lot of net damage (damage taken minus self-heals and shields). The DK tank player has a lot to keep an eye on, between blade barrier, getting bone shield up, keeping at least some diseases rolling, dancing rune weapon, and maximizing the use of Death Strike; and the fact that AoE kinda needs to be planned out (unless you pop empower rune weapon as a kind of aoe mass threat). The DK is not only responsible for putting out threat, but in a large part he's actively responsible for his own survival as well.

Will be taken to a PuG raid (most likely to least likely):

• Paladin - between the raid buffs and the fact that the paladin's an easy tank to play, doesn't take a lot of damage and generally holds threat well, the paladin's probably every PuG's first choice for a tank
• Warrior - warrior brings some buffs, but PuGs probably don't pay attention to that. They do know that warriors generally have good control and don't take a lot of damage.
• DK - Everyone's seen bad DKs, and they generally don't have a great reputation, though in the right hands they're really powerful.
• Bear - "Do bears still tank?" I used to see that asked a lot in random dungeons. People who know tanking, and especially people who know bears, know that they're the best (and cutest!) tanks, but they're so uncommon, probably because of lots of yo-yo action on Blizz's part from cata release till 4.1, and I know a lot of people shelved or respec'd their bears

Fun factor:

• This depends a lot on what makes a tank fun for you.
• Tanking has a lot which doesn't depend on what class you are; tanking is tanking, and most of it is knowing what's going on in the group and keeping control of the situation (which often means a lot more than just holding boss aggro).
• I call my war tank my "spazz-tank" because he's always zipping around with charge/intercept/intervene/heroic-leap, and the thunder claps and shockwave make him a really active tank. Probably the funnest tank all around if you always want to be doing something, and truthfully a warrior tank can just charge in and own the place.
• The DK is currently the most technical tank. He's a really cold calculating fellow (especially with a name like "Frosthuf") and really thinks through what he's doing and plans with meticulous detail just how he's going to desecrate his enemies. I find it "fun" because I like complicated and difficult things; if you can do this well, people know you're a good player... kinda like a chart-topping feral kitty in Ulduar.
• I'm quite biased towards the bear as I really enjoy the fact that as a bear you're just so different than everyone else in the group - there's this huge BEAR tanking the boss, ffs, and everyone else is standing around in armor waving their weapons around (other than kitties and boomkins, but they rock too). I feel different when tanking on my bear... you have to do it to understand. It's not that technical, and at this point probably has the fewest buttons to press overall, but the RAWR factor adds in a lot of fun.
• Paladin is at the tail of my list of fun... I see it as a lackadaisical tank, really; it's easy to predict what you're going to be doing pretty much all of the time. The paladin tank is an excellent choice if you as the tank are also a raid leader, as there's less effort in playing it, leaving you more time to attend to what's happening to user X at this moment. As I said before, though, I appreciate a difficult class, and the paladin isn't, which makes me downrate it.

either using DS for heals/shields or HS/BB on multiple packs for aoe threat

I'd like to note here that both HS and BB take a blood rune which doesn't interfere with your use of DS (which is an unholy plus a frost rune). This isn't to say that it's trivial to manage your DS during AoE fests though; the DK definitely has more on his plate to attend to in both putting out the threat and staying alive.
Edit: what you're probably referring to is what happen when you get a death rune and you have to balance using it for BB or keeping it for use in a DS.

[MonsieuRoberts]

^ It doesn't get any clearer than that.

[Deleted]

i want to throw in that if you end up dislike tanking in the end, you should at first look into paladin/druid.
so you can at least switch specs to go for something different

[Frozendekay]

DK is easy to tank at a low level with, hardest to master and perfect. Depends on what you want to do with the tank.

[tyggyr]

DK is easy to tank at a low level with, hardest to master and perfect. Depends on what you want to do with the tank.

I respectfully disagree..... DKs at low level are easy in a way because they tend to have good dps, but until they're level 65 they don't even have a taunt. Given that many other players are in full BoA gear, the DK no longer has much, if any, of a gear advantage, and the lack of experience with the runes I've found (as I level my resto shaman) causes some pretty iffy tanking in beginner DK tanks.

That said, the DK tank certainly isn't difficult to begin with, but I wouldn't advise it as the class to learn to tank on.

I'll agree with the "hardest to master and perfect", though.