Best Tanks in Cata

[tibben]

I have a hard time deciding between Warrior and Paladin. I enjoy tanking on both and they both take much less spikey damage than Bears and DKs. If I had to choose one I would probably go with my Warrior. I tend to agree with other posters that they are able to take less damage if played well and I find tanking with my Warrior to be a little smoother overall experience. Also the mobility is great if you are doing any type of add duty.

[Rekx]

I raid as a pally tank and DK tank.

Pallies have far more utility. Raid wall, 3 dmg reduction cds, kings, bubble, HoP, just to name some. When I play my DK, I feel like I have way less utility and cds.

As for DKs being the worst (from what another poster said) I dont feel that way at all. Sure, they take more damage up front, but there are times where I go 20+ seconds without the healer having to heal me while tanking a boss. In heroics, there are bosses that I dont even need a healer. Even in full 359 and some 372 gear I need a healer on (most) fights on my pally.

All in all, I enjoy DK tanking more simply b/c it feels like Im dps'ing. But Pallies are *better* imo.

I cant say weather warriors or druids are better tanks, but from what I have seen my healers in guild say, I am the easiest to heal on my pally. That may be b/c of how I play rather then the class however.

It all comes down to personal choice. Seeing how easy it is to level, just play around with each until you see what you like. I'd give a brief description but this is becoming a long post.. so I'm gona cut this short.

[Soulrift]

The better person tanking, no matter the class, is the best tank for the job. That said, paladin tanks are the best.

[SilkforCalde]

The better person tanking, no matter the class, is the best tank for the job. That said, paladin tanks are the best.

No. Paladin tanks are like warrior tanks without the mobility. The mobility is very useful.

[Alvito]

That's not a valid reason. You don't solo raid bosses and the fact that DKs can self heal is not a positive in their favor in a raid because they HAVE to be able to do that since they take so much more damage than other tanks.

I'd say DKs are easily and far away the worst tanks in game atm. They have no purpose. They have no useful utility outside of brez and druid brez is infinitely superior.

HoW and a few different debuffs they can put on the boss disagrees with you.

[Asmodejjj]

After my ZA/ZG runs today, I must conclude that warriors are the best. I was Charging up and down to get aggro from the idiot pugs that run into them. They pulled 3 packs about 20 seconds apart from each other that were just tearing our healer's mana apart, until I Charge -> Shockwaved them..........what other class could do that?

[Ashareth]

As of 4.1 the answer to your question is :
- for instances/AoE fights, Paladins hands down, EVEN with the Word of Glory nerf (20s cd)
Just behind is probably the DK, once you have mastered the way it works (it takes some time getting used to it) but you are still a nightmare for healers because they never know if they need to heal you or you sitting at half life is "normal" and you'll get back up in a few gcd from abilities

Bears are still something to see, i can't really judge yet (didn't play enough with bear tanks nor did i play my druid since 4.1) but either they'll stay patheticly bad and retarded at aoe, become decent or be grossly overpowered, depending on the swipe damage buff and the trash bugfix.

- Raids : Wars are, once again, the best ones (yeah, they were "only" like 40% of the raiding tanks, and not even MT 80% of the time, it was unacceptable so they received a buff that anyone with a brain can only put under the "OMFG it's so OP, NO WAY it can go live" category.... (shield block with 20% magic DR component on a 40s cd i'm looking at you )
After that Bears and Pallies are probably close second.
Dks are lagging far behing because of their pathetic mitigation, the fact that their "block like" ability needs to be timed (on top of being nerfed to hell before 4.06 even knowing it scales like shit and is worse and worse with time and tanks stacking up avoidance from gear :/) - for example, in the same level of gear (350), my pally and war (with block) sits at the same avoidance than my tank (with the block/critical block passive on top), while having 50% more armor (a little more actually).
From memory my dk sits at 23k armor, my pally at nearly 35k armor, my war around that too (a little less, he lack the 2p t11 and epic shield compared to the pally).

[Herrenos]

Contrary to Hierax's clear warrior bias, all tanks are in a pretty good spot right now, except maybe bears.

Warriors have the best mobility and their mastery is out of control powerful at higher levels, but they are weak on cooldowns. Paladins have the best raid utility and have a good balance of cooldowns. Death Knights take more skill than any other tank but they are probably better both at threat and survivability than any other tank if they're played right. You have to be able to game Blood Shield and know how to use all 11 of your cooldowns well though - it's not a tanking class for noobs.

Bears are like warriors with no block; though their mastery may be good now it was kinda crummy pre 4.1. I like the changes now and I'm interested to see how they play out.

[Ashareth]

HoW and a few different debuffs they can put on the boss disagrees with you.

HoW is brought by a shitload of other classes you have in a raid (even in 10). Same with Abomination Might.
The only debuff they bring is the damage one from Blood Plague... and other classes (specially wars) bring it too, the only thing is (by opposition to pal/bears) they can spread it to multiple targets easily.

But saying that DKs are competitive, utility-wise, with Protadins is like saying that a blind can be competitive with someone with a perfect vision and vision-googles at spoting small things 1km away.... silly and so far from the reality it's not even realistic or fun.

(and i DO play the 4 tanks, and i DO like my dk the most, but it's so far behind Pal and DK on pretty much all aspects now it's not fun ).

[Gunslinger]

Who the best tank is may be a tough question to answer and it's very biased on personal experience from a large pool of players. People who've played 1-2 tank characters will obviously choose those that they like best regardless of the other 2-3 classes and others that have played 3-4 will more likely opt for a tie between 2 of them.

Personally I've played all 4 tanking classes and I can't say for sure which is superior but I can say one thing: It ain't druids! This expansion took away their high health and rendered them as a rag-doll inside a washing machine with the SD. While I don't doubt it's uses I feel that shields are more reliable.

For the rest of the "group" paladins and warriors may feel similar but there are 2 major differences between them. The first one is mobility and the 2nd one is control. With warrior you can easily get around the terrain catching adds and positioning the boss well... "like a boss". However paladins have control over the battlefield, managing with a single click instant heals to others, BoPs, LoH and a multitude of savior-ish abilities designed to help the team through an encounter. While the warrior is more of a barbarian wreaking havoc and destruction the paladin controls the battlefield like a general.

Last but not least we have DKs. They are a special breed of tanks which, under the right hands, can manage some incredible feats (check out that DK who soloed 2 HEROIC CATACLYSM BOSSES ). Not having a shield and being based on micro-managing cooldowns makes this tank as reliable as the player behind it. Things that most classes have "by default" this one takes a hands-on approach which can either make your healer run up the wall or have him re-specc into DPS. A DK in combat is like a templar that, guided by his faith and confidence, overcomes his foes.

If I had to pick I'd go for DK because you can get better and better at it and accomplish seeming impossible things. But if you want to get a class that performs well from the get go and doesn't rely as much on the player I'd go for Paladin since they are easy to pick-up-and-play with a wide variety of tools both for himself and the raid.

[Derpdederp]

Any tank is good if you know how to play, but ove3rall, for the average player, dk.

[SilkforCalde]

HoW and a few different debuffs they can put on the boss disagrees with you.

HoW is provided by shamans and warriors in vastly superior forms.
Debuffs? Same as prot warrior except, again, prot warrior debuffs are typically the superior versions and overwrite the DK versions.

[Conno]

Well i've played all the tanks in this expansion, and i've also healed all the tanks, from a Holy Pally standpoint, i LOVE healing a good DK, agreed healing a bad one hurts my brain but did an HC DM last night with a very good DK, never chucked a single heal on him, just let beacon do the work, he took such minimal damage.

Play wise, I find my DK to be the easiest Tank of them all, though he is the best geared, I find the utility of the class works wonders, and I can't count the amount of times the healer has died while a boss is at 50% HP and I've kept myself up while he gets burned down.

Feral was the worst to play, by a very long way, i also find them the hardest to heal, but perhaps the changes in 4.1 have affected this.

[eleso]

With the recent changes to feral tanks, they are at a much better spot. With the savage defense rework along side with the buffed swipe, aoe tanking is much better.

[SilkforCalde]

Contrary to Hierax's clear warrior bias, all tanks are in a pretty good spot right now, except maybe bears.

Warriors have the best mobility and their mastery is out of control powerful at higher levels, but they are weak on cooldowns. Paladins have the best raid utility and have a good balance of cooldowns. Death Knights take more skill than any other tank but they are probably better both at threat and survivability than any other tank if they're played right. You have to be able to game Blood Shield and know how to use all 11 of your cooldowns well though - it's not a tanking class for noobs.

Bears are like warriors with no block; though their mastery may be good now it was kinda crummy pre 4.1. I like the changes now and I'm interested to see how they play out.

How do warriors have bad cooldowns? Shield Block is one of the top physical damage tank cooldowns out there and it's on a 30 second cooldown.

[Opblaaskaas]

WTB Poll for this one. I'd say Warrior like most of us, though. I love mine to death!

[Darsithis]

That's not a valid reason. You don't solo raid bosses and the fact that DKs can self heal is not a positive in their favor in a raid because they HAVE to be able to do that since they take so much more damage than other tanks.

I'd say DKs are easily and far away the worst tanks in game atm. They have no purpose. They have no useful utility outside of brez and druid brez is infinitely superior.

And that isn't a valid "reason", either. The fact that a Death Knight is a tank means we do have a purpose - and that is to tank, just like all of the other ones. We're just as good as the other tanks, and a great one, at that. We're excellent on add kiting on Nefarian because we can absorb the Electrocute. We offer, aside from a hunter, the only mass AoE slow. We can brez and our brez is identical to the druid - even shares the same cooldown. Our self healing means while we take more damage, we offset it as much as other tanks. We have fantastic magic mitigation and can double our damage with Army of the Dead.

OP - pick any tank you want. They're really all the same; just pick the tank that has the playstyle you enjoy. Do you like managing your mitigation and healing? Roll a DK. If you like tanking while protecting your raid/group, roll paladin. If you like charging in and AoE bleeding opponents, roll a warrior. If you like thrashing and smashing and roaring, roll a druid.

[Vantheus]

That's not a valid reason. You don't solo raid bosses and the fact that DKs can self heal is not a positive in their favor in a raid because they HAVE to be able to do that since they take so much more damage than other tanks.

I'd say DKs are easily and far away the worst tanks in game atm. They have no purpose. They have no useful utility outside of brez and druid brez is infinitely superior.

Spoken like someone who has absolutely zero idea what they're talking about, perhaps you just get confused by the game beyond heroics so we'll forgive this nonsense.

[Vexryn]

Tanks are reasonably balanced.

Play what you enjoy.

[xotrem]

Why would the druid be tanking? I never said that.

No, you never said that, but the topic is tanks and bears tank. To compare an action, the two things being compared have to be doing the same thing, in this case tanking. Otherwise it isn't a fair comparison.

But his question is valid, how is druid brez superior? Coming back to life isn't the same if one class does it over another? I am a paladin yet I try to use shockers to rez people. Is that less a rez then when I cast the rez spell?