Burning Crusade - what tank class will generate the most threat?

[INVASMANIXOXOXO]

Jesus; It's pick who didn't actually raid BC day.

Best Initial threat = Paladins
Best Threat Scaling = Druids
Best Overall = Warriors

No Druids and Paladins will not be able to main tank Illidan because of Shear; Shear will reduce their max HP by 60% unless it is blocked, the only class that can guarantee a block is Warriors with Imp. Shield Block.

DPS will not be pulling 2 - 2.5k dps at T4 - T5 gear levels and even if they could, they can't because they will threat cap on a similarly geared tank. Threat does still matter in BC and will be the main limiting factor for raid DPS most of the time. Warlocks will hate their life if they don't time their Soulshatter at the appropriate moment.

Are you sure about prot paladins on illidan not being able to tank the shear? I remember it being a problem for druids but I feel like decked out pallies it was ok. That being said if you've got the appropriate gear all the tanks can do well in like 95% of content and they shine in certain niches.

I wasn't in a cutting edge style guild back then we did clear BT, but not sunwell before prepatch, but I don't remember us thinking of ferals are super well scaling tanks. Just like you said warriors were best overall. Paladins were the aoe gods, and ferals were the best offtank/offthreat god and deliver by far the best dps out of the tanks. Ferals despite never being uncrushable seemed to have their own strenght in being able to generate a lot of threat without a lot of incoming damage. Thats why a lot of pallies/warriors had to result to stuff like /sit macros like other posters have referenced.

Like I've been telling my retail guild the best setup imo is to have one of each, which is good design imo. Warrior as main main tank, and the feral or pally being the secondary tank depending on the situation (The druid might be doing kitty more than they like if they are big about tanking). And yes it is a little oof that warrior is still the best, but even warriors had their weaknesses. I remember in bear runs they were not the best tank to bring. The ideal tank duo was a pally/feral.

And to the person that referenced warlocks hating their life... so true lol. I remember whenever me and the lock boys (I switched off lock mid t6) got the paladin blessing AND the shaman totem it was . It seemed like threat was kind of the limiting factor for warlock dps in too many situations back then especially if you outgeared the content.

[stevenho]

Jesus; It's pick who didn't actually raid BC day.

DPS will not be pulling 2 - 2.5k dps at T4 - T5 gear levels

Clearly you haven't raided TBC in the past 13 years.
They will be and they have been doing it for years now.
You wont have 16 of those classes in the raid most likely though.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I was a warrior MT in BC and threat WAS a problem even though my threat was absolutely there in the top 5-10% percentile when compared with top TPS parses. I knew exactly how to tank.

AOE tanking was a problem, this does not need much explanation.
Tanking stuff you overgear (for example ZA timed runs in T5-T6 gear) was a problem. And so on. I was at the point of using /sit macros.
Sure, most 25 man raidbosses were OK, but generally warrior threat scales exremely poorly in BC. Most of the threat is baked in, most of the threat increase comes from hit/exp which is capped and then there's BV which grows too slowly and strength that is missing from most tank gear.

100% true.

[Afrospinach]

Are you sure about prot paladins on illidan not being able to tank the shear?

A pally will have to rely on getting redoubt if memory serves, this is a thing that can not happen because of RNG.

[Bigbazz]

he drops threat when he switches which is why its imperative that only the tank hits the boss, while everyone else deals with the adds. but again you should have a hunter and they can assist the tank with MD and building threat each time he swaps. a paladin as a 3rd tank in a mix of frost and nature could even be useful specifically to tank the adds but. I don't think the tank really matters there so long as they have enough resists. i'm probably going to be tanking again so ill have to make one of those sets at some point.

You don't even need to kill the adds on Hydross, they can be slowed etc so you can just have the Pala tank kite them around while the dps focus boss, have MD for each phase change of course. Maybe not as fun for your logs but speeds up the boss kill and reduces overall dps requirements.

I mean if ppl pull aggro from me they can tank it, that is the way ill always play the game. its really simple if ppl want to die, pull aggro from me and your wish will be granted.

So you get 2 parries in a row and a dps pulls agro and not only do you blame it on them but you're also willing to risk wiping over it. Sounds like you have an ego issue. Do you let the healer die in dungeons when they pull agro with chain heal too?

[Heathy]

no the ego problem is from you my dude you seem to know it all so you tell me.

if ppl can't wait for me to hit the boss and they pull aggro and die, thats on them. its really fucking simple, allow me to get on the threat table and you won't die.

I played a priest through BC primarily not a warrior, for me I didn't have much issue since priests have fade so you heal and if you pull aggro you fade its not that hard, shamans have earthbind totem, most ppl i play with aren't complete plebs.

on our naxx speed clear we had a rogue run in and hit patchwerk before any of us took hateful, he got melted, this is what i'm talking about if ppl don't wait for at least a few moments you risk pulling aggro and dying. but this is really the only time you can pull aggro, before the tank has even hit the boss or mob. the vast majority of the time once you've got a threat lead you keep that lead. the entire difficulty of classic essentially boiled down to, don't aggro the boss on the pull.

for heroic dungeons I'm just going to go at the pace of the healers mana, I'm not too worried since I have all my t3, looking at tbc wowhead it looks like a lot of the gear gets buffed in armour value. I think ill have a decent amount of mitigation at 70, I should be one of the easiest tanks to heal (can't see many healers struggling that much keeping me up and then pulling aggro because of that), I don't even mind doing runs with CC. i never really cared for speed running classic dungeons and I can't see me caring much for doing that in BC either. I tend to just do normal runs, just regular dungeon runs. no speed runs, no mage aoe. just pulling one pack of mobs at a time until its clear. thats always worked out pretty well for me and I've never seen anyone else complain about dungeons being ran this way. in classic you can ofc, dual wield tank 5 mans in t2.5/3 and hold aggro in zerker stance, but in tbc I think that will not be possible in heroics. the pace is going to be slower by default just to prevent aggroing too many mobs and causing a wipe.

[Nitros14]

and reduces overall dps requirements.

We're not playing on some massively buffed private server. Hydross has 3,700,000 HP and a ten minute enrage timer.

If three tanks and seven healers that's like 411 dps per dps ignoring the tanks' damage.

Even back in the day when we were all terrible we managed a lot more than that



Mind you this was 2.0 when itemization sucked and talents were a lot worse than 2.4.3.

[stevenho]

Yeah the boss HP is going to feel quite funny to people who did not play classic.
For example Brutallus in SWP was buffed to 15 mil from original 10 to present any sort of challenge on pservers.
Illidan and Archi are about 15 mil as well which is 300% buff...

[Dazu]

A pally will have to rely on getting redoubt if memory serves, this is a thing that can not happen because of RNG.

Redoubt shouldnt be taken after t4. Its a completely pointless prot talent as if you need the block chance from it, then you are reliant on a proc to not be crushing blowed, and 102.4% total avoidance/block is relatively easy to hit by late t4. You can break 102.4% before raiding and after Kara (where only Prince and Nightbane are really a tank threat) theres no reason to ever not be except when massively overgearing the content as the crushing blow is relatively weak and provides more mana to produce more damage as opposed too using your 'sit' key to force critical hits for mana in low content - I personally just switched to max dps gear which usually meant I lost more 10%+ attack table clearance to do Kara when in t5-t6 gear as in normal tanking gear I would run out of mana in now time and need to switch to seal of wisdom/judgement and/or spam the sit key which cost me alot of damage possibility. Warriors and bears were the same for this too - they rage starved badly in low content and needed to move away from tank gear into dps gear/trinkets to manage better.

The reason paladins cant reliably tank fast hitting bosses which also need guaranteed mitigation to an attack is because holy shield has charges, a CD and a duration that matches that CD meaning it always will drop for a split second no matter how good of a player you are, and if Shear happens between Holy Shield fading the you recasting it = wipe (most likely), and if the charges are used up you have a chance for the attack to get past also.

[A Blue Smurf]

Clearly you haven't raided TBC in the past 13 years.
They will be and they have been doing it for years now.
You wont have 16 of those classes in the raid most likely though.

- - - Updated - - -



100% true.

You're right; I raided near the top of my server for current BC content at the time. I haven't played nor followed private servers so I can't comment on their accuracy or relevance, but I know that those sort of numbers weren't seen until mid-late BT/ZA and SWP during TBC's retail period.

Are you sure about prot paladins on illidan not being able to tank the shear? I remember it being a problem for druids but I feel like decked out pallies it was ok.

It's 100% do-able and there's nothing to stop you trying to, however you're entirely reliant on RNG as a Paladin to block Shear, and it must be blocked else the MT will die.

[Lailin]

It's 100% do-able and there's nothing to stop you trying to, however you're entirely reliant on RNG as a Paladin to block Shear, and it must be blocked else the MT will die.

That's exactly the opposite of how it works.

Paladins need to achieve 102.4% avoidance while Holy Shield is up to get immune to crush (and redoubt shouldn't be used to get there). That's already easy to achieve before entering Karazhan (without hc drops or crafted epics). But in pre-raid Pallies have to sacrifice sp to achieve that (if not decked out in hc drops, rep items and crafted stuff), so their threat isn't great when crushcapped. With T4 and better gear that's no longer an issue.

Shear can't miss, so a Pally needs 10% more avoidance (d/p/b) to block it, which is easy to achieve in T5.

Holy Shield has 8 charges, while Shield Block only has 2. Illidan is dualwielding with high attack speed, so a warrior has to time his Shield Block with Shear and then the 2 charges are getting eaten up before Shield Block is off cd again. Means a warrior can and will be crushed by Illidan.
A Pally has 8 charges and Illidan doesn't attack fast enough to eat those charges up --> a Pally can't be crushed by Illidan.

In the end can both tank Illidan, but Illidan beeing a demon (Pallies have higher threat because of Exorcism) and fast hitting will most likely make Pallies the better tank for him.

[stevenho]

You're right; I raided near the top of my server for current BC content at the time. I haven't played nor followed private servers so I can't comment on their accuracy or relevance, but I know that those sort of numbers weren't seen until mid-late BT/ZA and SWP during TBC's retail period.

It's true, I played it in 2007-8 as well.
But have you checked the difference in DPS between vanilla naxx and classic naxx? Classic TBC DPS will be much higher as well.

[Ange]

Paladins with stupid easy to get blue gear capped out in avoidance and made dungeons - SO STUPID EASY.

TBC paladins turned quite a few non-tank players into tanking and some of them stayed at that role for years after TBC.

As cruel as Vanilla was to hybrids like Shadowpriest or Protadin, TBC made them the the ultimate specs you wanted to make the content easier.

[CostinR]

Jesus; It's pick who didn't actually raid BC day.

Best Initial threat = Paladins
Best Threat Scaling = Druids
Best Overall = Warriors

More like realistically.

Best Initial Threat = Warriors - Shield Slam crits especially are worth a lot.
Best Threat Scaling = Paladins - All Paladin threat is based on spell damage. More you have more you generate. Greater Blessing Spam is the wildcard here though
Best Overall = Druids - They benefit especially by usually being thrown in a group with 3 BM hunters, each of those hunters giving 3% extra damage.

No Druids and Paladins will not be able to main tank Illidan because of Shear; Shear will reduce their max HP by 60% unless it is blocked, the only class that can guarantee a block is Warriors with Imp. Shield Block.

Simply wrong. Shear doesn't magically not hit warriors because of blocking chance of Shield Block. Shear can be avoided: Missed, dodged, parried and blocked. Paladins can get over 100% chance of avoidance + block for it not to hit. Druids can get ridiculous levels of dodge.

Also when Illidan is casting shear a warrior off-tank can intervene the MT to soak it.

DPS will not be pulling 2 - 2.5k dps at T4 - T5 gear levels and even if they could, they can't because they will threat cap on a similarly geared tank. Threat does still matter in BC and will be the main limiting factor for raid DPS most of the time. Warlocks will hate their life if they don't time their Soulshatter at the appropriate moment.

They will manage over 2k DPS in T5, heck even T4 depending on fight. Tanks can, and will, be put in a position to generate enough threat to match that.

[patticlark]

cool information