Tank in M+ in 8.2?

[Soep]

With coming nerfs to prot warriors and buffs to druids/demon hunters what do you think will be the FOTM tank for next patch?

One thing that strikes me as odd is that the prot war nerf seems only about thunderclap damage. Has this any correlation with survivability? It seems odd to me because prot warriors do not only deal the most dps but are also sturdiest.

The DH buffs to mitigation seem vastly underwhelming to me. Compared to warrior tanks we are a wet noodle, and 5% here and there is not going to do anything i believe. So this seems not the way to go.

Raider.io mainpage lists only warriors, with 1 paladin in between. Scrolling further in the pages a few more paladins pop up with a random monk/dk in between. Would it mean that paladin will be the go-to tank for the next round? Mainly asking people that have played 8.2 ptr and can make educated guesses.

[Julmara]

probably still warrior

[Tech614]

Short answer is stop trying to predict the future when the patch is no where close to being finalized.

Slightly shorter answer is unless you're doing 20+ keys it doesn't matter anyways.

[Tyrilion]

With coming nerfs to prot warriors and buffs to druids/demon hunters what do you think will be the FOTM tank for next patch?

One thing that strikes me as odd is that the prot war nerf seems only about thunderclap damage. Has this any correlation with survivability? It seems odd to me because prot warriors do not only deal the most dps but are also sturdiest.

The DH buffs to mitigation seem vastly underwhelming to me. Compared to warrior tanks we are a wet noodle, and 5% here and there is not going to do anything i believe. So this seems not the way to go.

Raider.io mainpage lists only warriors, with 1 paladin in between. Scrolling further in the pages a few more paladins pop up with a random monk/dk in between. Would it mean that paladin will be the go-to tank for the next round? Mainly asking people that have played 8.2 ptr and can make educated guesses.

From what i can figure the VDH buffs arent enough at the moment, they are still lacking in Mitigation and Large Cooldowns, The buff to bears help but it doesnt fix the glaring issue of how boring it is to play and how clunky it feels. Paladin, DK and Monk, all seem to be being left alone so, in MY personal Opinion the Tank Leaderboards will look something like this.

Mythic +

1) Warrior
2) Monk
3) BDK = Pala
4) VDH = Bear

Raiding
1) Monk
2) Warr = Bear
3) Pala = VDH
4) BDK

ive ranked these on how well ive found they played and performed in both setting ...

but once again completely my opinion and we are still in PTR so possibly more changes to Come

TLDR; Play what you enjoy

[Baleful]

It's impossible to say, we don't even know the seasonal affix yet, and much buffs and nerfs are still on its way.
Still, if you want a somewhat reliable tank for both M+ and raid i would go with monk, stagger is ridiculous in raid and even if they are not the best for m+, it will always be decent because of 5% physical, paralyze and ring of peace.

[Soep]

Short answer is stop trying to predict the future when the patch is no where close to being finalized.

Slightly shorter answer is unless you're doing 20+ keys it doesn't matter anyways.

It certainly does matter. I main havoc demon hunter and just switching to vengeance spec i barely notice a difference in tanking mitigation, just that i miss a fucking taunt. I can barely tank a fucking 11 or 12. My 380 geared prot pala takes LESS damage than my 414 VDH. Its that fucking bad.

My main goal with asking the question in OP is, should i start gearing my 330~ ilvl warrior or my 380~ paladin? Or just cross fingers and pray VDH actually gets to tank soon?

[Ealyssa]

Warriors and paladins will be on top. Just like now, but with less OP warriors.

[Tech614]

It certainly does matter. I main havoc demon hunter and just switching to vengeance spec i barely notice a difference in tanking mitigation, just that i miss a fucking taunt. I can barely tank a fucking 11 or 12. My 380 geared prot pala takes LESS damage than my 414 VDH. Its that fucking bad.

My main goal with asking the question in OP is, should i start gearing my 330~ ilvl warrior or my 380~ paladin? Or just cross fingers and pray VDH actually gets to tank soon?

I'm sorry but if you're claiming you feel as squishy in Veng as in Havoc then you have no idea how to play the spec. If you can't tank an 11 or 12 at 414 or claim your 380 ilvl paladin tanks better you flat out have ZERO clue how to play the spec.

Some self reflection is in order.

Literally look: https://raider.io/mythic-plus-charac...n-hunter/tank/ This right here shows the problem with the spec starts arising when you start nearing 20. If you can't even reach a 15 the problem is not your spec, it's you. There are literally over 1,000 VDH in the world that have managed 15 keys and higher in time. But you know, something something "IMPOSSIBREL".

[pay928]

I can barely tank a fucking 11 or 12. My 380 geared prot pala takes LESS damage than my 414 VDH. Its that fucking bad.

A 414 VDH should be able to tank 15+. Not being able to is not on the class. If you mean this week, it's not even fortified.

You should gear up both since gearing up means completing a 10+ and not playing the rest of the week since there're 2 months and M+ chest and warfront/emissaries will give good enough gear for staring 8.2. If you can only do 1, then right now warriors are looking to still be fine since mitigation is unchanged and nerf is only coming out to ~5-10% damage nerf. Which is better between a war and pally won't be known until final balancing/seasonal affix however.

[Zendhal The Black]

It all depends on the new 8.2 affix

Warrior will probably stay on top with pala comming behind
Monk/bdk in the middle and bear/vdh at the rear

vdh have 2 glaring issues with next to none really strong defensive cooldowns and gaps in mitigation are even worse than warrior pre 8.1 You get absolutely murdered when demon spikes falls off

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I expect bear and vengeance will be over buffed for sure, but whether all the top keys take them or not, I really couldn't care.
Its going to be dependent on the affix for sure either way. Warrior is in a good place, but people are valuing their damage WAYYY too much right now, thanks to reaping.

I still feel like Blood DK is and always will be a top tier if not #1 over all pick, as the self healing they do combined with the best utility kit for all tanks allows them to always stand out.

But I'll wait to see what the affix does before commenting further.

[Orochimaruu]

i tanked +3 as dps demon hunter 400 item level and its easy had the opulance trinket thought and dh gives alot of haste to the trinket that means more sheields

[Zendhal The Black]

also another thing to consider is the new neck spec specific essence abilities

Warr gets Avatar chance to proc and reduction (together with Anger Management it will make up for the 50% nerf to a talent)
Paladin gets Avenging Wrath - same as warrior, strongest offensive CD
DK gets Vampiric blood - good for defence, nothing for dps output
Druid and Monk gets Survival instincts and Stoneskin brew - really underwhelming
VDH gets meta proc - this one is actually not half bad, but doesn't fix the core problems enough

[pay928]

i tanked +3 as dps demon hunter 400 item level and its easy had the opulance trinket thought and dh gives alot of haste to the trinket that means more sheields

+10s are tankable at 380. A +3 is easy at like 350 ilvl for any tank.....

[DazManianDevil]

It certainly does matter. I main havoc demon hunter and just switching to vengeance spec i barely notice a difference in tanking mitigation, just that i miss a fucking taunt. I can barely tank a fucking 11 or 12. My 380 geared prot pala takes LESS damage than my 414 VDH. Its that fucking bad.

My main goal with asking the question in OP is, should i start gearing my 330~ ilvl warrior or my 380~ paladin? Or just cross fingers and pray VDH actually gets to tank soon?

As of the Current PTR changes, I would put my money on Paladin. Warrior is still going to be strong, but the TC nerf makes them less of an auto include since they're mainly abused for cheesy dps.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I stopped playing my 402 warrior in favor of a BDK strictly because it's half the keybinds and I don't feel like I have to be a piano main to play it.
If I were in your shoes specifically, I'd go Warrior because Paladin feels too squishy when you hit that dead zone between Shield of the Righteous charges, Guardian etc. Given that, pick which you know you can play at a high level. If you're like me and accidentally use Revenge instead of IP, play a Paladin. If you tend to overlap Shield of the Righteous and get screwed later, play Warrior.

[Tojara]

I expect bear and vengeance will be over buffed for sure, but whether all the top keys take them or not, I really couldn't care.
Its going to be dependent on the affix for sure either way. Warrior is in a good place, but people are valuing their damage WAYYY too much right now, thanks to reaping.

I still feel like Blood DK is and always will be a top tier if not #1 over all pick, as the self healing they do combined with the best utility kit for all tanks allows them to always stand out.

But I'll wait to see what the affix does before commenting further.

Why do people always comment on warriors like it's solely damage that makes them good?

Back when they made changes to them, they did more than just remove ignore pain off the GCD. It irks me that people think that the only nice thing about protection warriors is the damage they bring. It's often people who play warriors who are trying to downplay how strong they are, or people who think that blood DKs are still untouchable gods from Legion (we aren't).

Warriors are still going to do more damage than other tanks, even in 8.2. Even if protection paladins usurp them on typical damage meters, most damage meters don't include spell reflect. Spell reflect is absolutely amazing on half a dozen bosses, and even when used haphazardly will add more damage than any other tank can hope to realize in a dungeon. It's not just the first boss in Underrot that it's good at either.

If you go through dungeons, even the heavy magic damage dungeons, the majority of the damage taken profile is physical. Which warriors do way better than most tanks on. Self-healing while nice is only as good as it's tuned, and I'd much rather take the warriors damage mitigation model than my DKs at the moment.

People don't push keys or do MDI with warriors exclusively for damage, they do them with warriors because they do damage and are capable of living through extreme pulls at the same time. If warrior was completely glass canon (which they aren't), that would absolutely show when they do monster pulls in MDI, or push keys to extreme levels on live server.

The fact is blood DK isn't what it was in early Uldir, or through most of Legion. Legion blood DK was never a top DPS pick, but was top tier because of dungeon design, absurd self-healing and a group wide on demand leech aura. Blood DK doesn't have the self-healing it did in Legion and group wide leech aura is a relic of the past as well. The big reason you saw a flood of blood DKs at the start of BFA wasn't because we were completely overpowered, but because people expected it to carry over from Legion.

I'm not going to dismiss that blood was strong at the start of Uldir, but they were toned down in three different ways while other tanks were buffed upwardly at the same time. Bonestorm has a target cap (which is fine), WoTN was nerfed, and our armor was nerfed so we take more passive damage. Shortly after double azerite rings were released which is an indirect nerf to blood as we arguably have the worst class specific azerite traits of any spec in the game, or at the very least every tank.

[Khain]

For top players paladin will probably surpass warrior, It has great utility and can deal crazy damage with the right racial and talents. But it's a very high skill cap tank in contrast with warriors.

[Haligy]

I wanna switch my Blood DK for warrior or resto druid and still cant decide . Never play resto or prot Warr.

Blood for me is boring

[dirtybrew]

War will be on top unless spell reflect gets toned down or their durability gets toned down

Paladin will most likely be right after

BDK and Monk will be mid tier

Guardian so far is getting decent changes but i don't know if it's enough to make them solid

VDH will never be good against anything that hits hard in it's current design. the changes aroun't enough it needs an overhaul

[Gatto]

As dirtybrew said, probably war if they aren't going to solve his godlike status.

As for guardian, it will still need some changes, even if the cost reduction of ironfur and +2 rage on mangle are definitely a good thing.
However I would fix in a different way

- Rage generation from mangle to thash.
- Guardian of Elune as a default passive ( again ).
- Balance affinity from 3yd to 5yd.