Most difficult tank to play as of now

[LeperHerring]

None of them are difficulty anymore, since none of them have to build or hold threat.

It's so sad that they dumbed down the game to that degree. Threat served a very important purpose, which was to tie the group members' performance together. Tank generates threat on main target to allow DPS on it and aoe threat on the rest to keep them off the healer, the DPS damage the mob as much as they can while staying under the threat ceiling, healers keep everyone alive without generating too much threat to get everything on them. It was a beautifully balanced system, and meant everyone had to actually care about what others in the group were doing instead of mindlessly spamming their own rotations. But of course it's too hard for the current generation of gamers, who cannot master such complexities as "DPS the tank's main target and don't over nuke".

[Terridon]

Death Knights then Paladins imo.

DKs with their rune management & runic power, Pallies with Holy Power and mana bs. Just too complicated and annoying.

A paladin never runs out of mana in tankspec. At least that never happened to me. Holy power is the only resource to keep an eye on.
Would say DKs, because of the 4 different rune-kinds to keep an eye on+ runic power. If you buttonmasn, or get in a situation where you have to burn it all you can end up being a sitting duck who is softer than an afk hastespec paladin for 8 seconds. It hurts.
As some says BrM doesn't feel too hard to me,, since it's overall rather forgiving with shuffle. Of course there's more to it.
Druid is plain easy/boring/dependent.
Warrior seems fun, but played it very little, so not sure how much it require. Is active at least, so better than druid for sure.

[Shiny212]

Because the ONLY thing that could be any difficult to do as a tank is holding threat, right?

To the OP, I would say Brewmaster monks have the most things to keep track of for personal survivability.

Yes, that was and is the only thing difficult about tanking. Healers, must heal you, that is what primarily keeps you alive, you spending a defensive cooldown when boss goes all shiny isn't hard to do. Dps do damage, not tanks, the silly vengeance attribute designed to make you feel good about the numbers on your screen serve no purpose other than just that, and certainly doesn't add a dimension of skill or sense of mastery.

It's so sad that they dumbed down the game to that degree. Threat served a very important purpose, which was to tie the group members' performance together. Tank generates threat on main target to allow DPS on it and aoe threat on the rest to keep them off the healer, the DPS damage the mob as much as they can while staying under the threat ceiling, healers keep everyone alive without generating too much threat to get everything on them. It was a beautifully balanced system, and meant everyone had to actually care about what others in the group were doing instead of mindlessly spamming their own rotations. But of course it's too hard for the current generation of gamers, who cannot master such complexities as "DPS the tank's main target and don't over nuke".

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Deleted]

Bears and Warriors are the most simplictic; they are very basic and their mechanics aren't too deep. While there certainly *is* a difference between a very good ProtWar/Bear and a bad one, I don't think it's as much of a problem as if you have a very bad Pal/Monk/DK.

I'd put Paladin and DK on par, with Monk very close behind. Not that I find any of them especially *difficult*, just in terms of stuff you have to watch and be aware of.

So: Paladin = DK ~ Monk > Warrior > Druid

[Tekkommo]

A lot of Monk tanks complain they are squishy when it's just a l2play issue, so I guess Monk tanks.

[Deleted]

BrMs are easy if you don't care about selfhealing. Otherwise they have the most diverse and most active healing toolkit of all tanks.

GotOx alone takes a dump on the skill required for all other tanks just because it's such an odd thing that no other tank has to pay attention to.

[Deleted]

Because the ONLY thing that could be any difficult to do as a tank is holding threat, right?

To the OP, I would say Brewmaster monks have the most things to keep track of for personal survivability.

Because setting up WeakAuras is hard?

[RickJamesLich]

From what I've been told Blood DK's are the trickiest, I have a brewmaster, while it's a little wacky getting used to at first (leveling up to 90, LFR, and 5 mans have nothing in common with tanking raids lol), I really didn't think brewmasters were too hard. Just keep up shuffle (which is a normal part of your rotation), and from there it's just about using CD's at the right time. At very high gear levels elusive brew will almost always be up, so you can just spam it, from there it's just remembering to lay down the statue and properly using guard and other survival cd's at the right time. Not saying it's easy by any means, but I don't think it's overly complicated.

[Tarazet]

BrMs are easy if you don't care about selfhealing. Otherwise they have the most diverse and most active healing toolkit of all tanks.

GotOx alone takes a dump on the skill required for all other tanks just because it's such an odd thing that no other tank has to pay attention to.

Bind strafe to A and D and shuffle your heart out.

[Grogo]

None of them are difficulty anymore, since none of them have to build or hold threat.

Blizz really took out an aspect of tanking that was important imo. It does require less tank skill, that aspect sure added to skill level.

- - - Updated - - -

I tanked for seven years straight, all the way up to MOP (where I quit and remain quit today) I used a warrior tank for the first 5 years, used all tank classes the last 2. I have found that the tank classes (all of them) have really merged to feel and play all the same thing, that was disappointing.

[Museigen]

...

I ranked DK as hardest mainly because how to mitigation by death strike works. I think it far more important for DK to know exactly how much damage he will be taking and when. Also if you time Death Strikes badly you are basically that one fury warrior which overaggroed at the pull. DK's are in kinda bad spot with Guardian druids at the moment and that is also why I ranked them the hardest but unlike guardian which is pretty much destined to die to huge special attack, good DK can survive.

This is pretty much the nail on the head imho, though I play a Blood main so I'm probably a little biased. I just know that I feel way more in control of my own living/dying than other tanks. It's also quite apparent on my healer when two bloods of similar gear are tanking and one only needs lifebloom/rejuv to keep him steady while I'm bombing the other tank and his health is still spikey. Moreso than other tanks I've noticed, though BrMs who have a low uptime on shuffle are really hard to heal but they're just bad if they can't blackout kick every 6 seconds compared to timing death strikes based on incoming damage.

[Inthislzon]

Because setting up WeakAuras is hard?

Mind linking that aura that tells you when to purify so you don't run out of shuffle?

Or do you simply ignore purifying brew?

I'd LOVE if all those people saying "brewmaster is only keeping 1 buff up" got their tanks replaced by monks that "only keep shuffle up" and don't know what purifying brew/guard/GotO orbs/Statue/elusive do.

Surely that'd teach them a thing or two.

Shuffle is what makes a monk get on par with an AFK plate/bear, not a magic button that makes us immune to damage.

[Promdates]

The hardest tank to play is obvious Dr. Mundo.

[Kozaky]

I played Brewmaster since release, and enjoy all the tanking classes (except guardian, I could never get into the playstyle).

Brewmaster is a slightly deeper than it looks in the beginning, but once you look at the tools it's fairly easy.
DKs I'd have to give a bit more credit due to DS timing (Heroic Sha, anyone? Anyone?)
Prot Warrior felt like your plain tanking spec with little flavor to it, just enough utility to keep them popular regardless of their admittedly dull "rotation".
Prot Paladins have immense utility as well as a bit of management to your CDs/HP Gens/spenders and so on. It keeps you more or less engaged while using your utility at the same time.

I guess if I had to list:
Difficulty TO GET INTO the spec, Hardest to Easiest
Monk=DK>Paladin>Warrior

Difficulty TO MASTER the spec, Hardest to Easiest
DK>Monk=Paladin>Warrior

Again, no commenting on Guardian because I haven't played it much, nor do I really enjoy the playstyle I've seen of it.

[xinjun]

Fury warrior. They just never seem to stand up very long after taking over tanking.

I'd agree that a Fury warrior is a pretty awful tank

[Tarazet]

Mind linking that aura that tells you when to purify so you don't run out of shuffle?

Or do you simply ignore purifying brew?

I'd LOVE if all those people saying "brewmaster is only keeping 1 buff up" got their tanks replaced by monks that "only keep shuffle up" and don't know what purifying brew/guard/GotO orbs/Statue/elusive do.

Surely that'd teach them a thing or two.

Shuffle is what makes a monk get on par with an AFK plate/bear, not a magic button that makes us immune to damage.

It doesn't even do that, because a high-level bear has 70%+ damage reduction from armor. Monks are closer to 25%. Shuffle does give you 20% more parry, which is a large chunk of avoidance, and 20% more Stagger which significantly reduces spike. So it's important, yes, but it still doesn't come remotely close to closing the gap to the other tanks if that's all you're doing. Guard and Purifying Brew are the things that really save your life and allow you to outperform an AFK bear tank.

[rated]

None of them are really hard. It all depends on how good or bad the player playing said tank is.

[Inthislzon]

It doesn't even do that, because a high-level bear has 70%+ damage reduction from armor. Monks are closer to 25%. Shuffle does give you 20% more parry, which is a large chunk of avoidance, and 20% more Stagger which significantly reduces spike. So it's important, yes, but it still doesn't come remotely close to closing the gap to the other tanks if that's all you're doing. Guard and Purifying Brew are the things that really save your life and allow you to outperform an AFK bear tank.

That's exactly what i'm trying to say.

Without even arguing about what tank is most difficult to play, it's pretty clear that the worst paladin/warr/druid, and to a lesser extent DK can be healed. Sure, it will be hard to keep them alive, but CAN be done.

The worst BrM WILL die to ANYTHING outside LFR.

If any tank can go to 100 on "tankiness" (for the lack of a better word), paladins, warrs and druids start on 0, DKs start on -20 and monks start on -50.

That's what "high skill cap" means. When comparing any other tank and a BrM, considering equal skill level and gear, BrM is the worst. Simply due to that.

But that comes with a reward. With perfect play there is nothing that can come close to a BrM, not even prot paladins

[Nobleshield]

Man now I want to give Brewmaster another try again, just because they seem like they're pretty fun, and Paladins are a dime a dozen :P

[kaiadam]

It doesn't even do that, because a high-level bear has 70%+ damage reduction from armor. Monks are closer to 25%. Shuffle does give you 20% more parry, which is a large chunk of avoidance, and 20% more Stagger which significantly reduces spike. So it's important, yes, but it still doesn't come remotely close to closing the gap to the other tanks if that's all you're doing. Guard and Purifying Brew are the things that really save your life and allow you to outperform an AFK bear tank.

Checked values on my paladin (544), bear (546) & monk (550), too lazy to work out dr against boss level mobs so level 90 ones will do.

Paladin:
15% physical mitigation (prot passive)
59% armor dr (65616 armor)
1 million damage = 349k damage
- along with 46% chance to block 30% of it (5k mastery)
There's other factors too but lets just say that paladins have a pretty bad worse case scenario.

Bear:
12% physical mitigation (bear form)
72% armor dr (117266 armor, 32% = 5k mastery)
1 million damage = 246k damage

Monk:
25% physical mitigation (ox stance)
31% armor dr (20914 armor)
52% damage staggered (7k mastery rating)
1 million damage attack = 248k damage

It's at least comparable (Monk actually takes less against a level 93 opponent since going from 31% -> 29% armor is better than 72 -> 65 or whatever conversion). Now, if you were to actually gear for mitigation (say, 17k worth of mastery, for example):

Bear:
12% physical mitigation
75% armor dr (capped)
1 million damage = 220k damage

Monk:
25% physical mitigation
31% armor dr
62% damage staggered
1 million damage = 197k damage

I'd be in a very precarious situation indeed if guard and pb saves my life - I think I used guard 4 or 5 times in my last full 13/13 clear on my monk.

Just for fun, lets take a monk who doesn't keep shuffle up and keeps mastery low (~5k):
1 mil damage - 25% ox - 30% armor -30% stagger = 367k damage taken per hit, just slightly more than a plate tank. It's not that awful - I mean, it's bad for sure, but somewhat equivalent to a paladin forgetting to put up sacred shield.

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Anyway, not sure about hardest to play but guardian is by far the easiest, which aligns with most of the posters here I guess.