easiest tank to play currently?

[Segus1992]

seems that everyone has a different opinion....i like warrior

Most people are saying what their favorite tank is, or what they think the strongest is - not many are answering the actual question: what tank is the easiest?

Answer: the absolute easiest tank to pick up and play assuming you have no experience whatsoever is most likely Prot Warrior, as with the right talents all you do is hit Charge, Shield Slam, Thunderclap, Shield Block and Ignore Pain, with the occasional Revenge if you feel like it. Very simple and straight forward if that's what you're looking for.

[ShaanuJaanu]

easiest tank to play is a Guardian Druid, no questions asked.

Literally everything you do AOEs around you, you only spend your resource on one defensive ability or one offensive ability (not really used much outside single target), so there is not much choice there. Your active mitigation is up 100% of the time (kinda struggle on pull if you don't have CDs but once u have it running, you are golden).

You bring battle ress in case someone dies.

Literally a tank without much thought behind it.

Obviously its not the STRONGEST tank, but if you are doing keys upto 17/18 or doing heroic raids (most mythic bosses too), then its simply the easiest tank to play.

[Ichology]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

We likely have different definitions of parsing well, and that is okay.

But sure, get 2x unguents and TD3+, run Gluttony and do very respectable damage/have better survivability.

[Mowgli]

I find my blood dk very easy, But that's probably since i have very high gear and the highest i've tanked is a +6.

pretty sure that applies to all tank specs, all tank specs are easy if u literally dont have to do anything but spam aoe for aggro and still complete the content

[Marrilaife]

You need to use kegsmash and tiger palm to lower the recharge of your brews, otherwise the recharge is longer then the duration of your 4 brews. And the point is Stagger and ISB only delay the damage, it is not acutally mitigated, so unless you purify you will eventually take the damage and it needs to be healed through. Ans sure it is less spiky so it is easier to heal than most tanks.

You'll keg smash anytime it's off cd because it's your main dps button especially in m+ where it's also your main aoe ability.
You can also stack crit and all the healing done to you is nearly doubled, basically for free. As long as the healer isn't afk / dead, monk's "self healing" is through the roof just because of celestial fortune. Even though it's not truly "self healing" because it requires outside input, but on meters it counts as your own healing.

Answer: the absolute easiest tank to pick up and play assuming you have no experience whatsoever is most likely Prot Warrior, as with the right talents all you do is hit Charge, Shield Slam, Thunderclap, Shield Block and Ignore Pain, with the occasional Revenge if you feel like it. Very simple and straight forward if that's what you're looking for.

Dunno man, I'm actually a moderately experienced tank and I feel warrior is too apm heavy for me. It doesn't leave me room to pay attention to the mobs. And also I feel like avatar, demo shout and last stand are basically part of your "rotation" it's that often you use them, so the rotation actually has more buttons than other tanks who have very infrequent cds both offensive and defensive. Also with warrior it feels more complicated to keep your mitigation because first you need to ensure shield block is up and only then spam excess rage into ignore pain.

If I'd count how many buttons I need to press the "easiest rotation" tank would be something along the lines of monk / druid, then demon hunter if you play with no spirit bomb (gluttony spec).

The fact fiery brand is on gcd while other tanking cooldowns aren't means you can get screwed by gcd lock on a dh, so have to plan where to use it beforehand.

[Segus1992]

Dunno man, I'm actually a moderately experienced tank and I feel warrior is too apm heavy for me. It doesn't leave me room to pay attention to the mobs. And also I feel like avatar, demo shout and last stand are basically part of your "rotation" it's that often you use them, so the rotation actually has more buttons than other tanks who have very infrequent cds both offensive and defensive. Also with warrior it feels more complicated to keep your mitigation because first you need to ensure shield block is up and only then spam excess rage into ignore pain.

If I'd count how many buttons I need to press the "easiest rotation" tank would be something along the lines of monk / druid, then demon hunter if you play with no spirit bomb (gluttony spec).

The fact fiery brand is on gcd while other tanking cooldowns aren't means you can get screwed by gcd lock on a dh, so have to plan where to use it beforehand.

I agree Warrior with the "wrong" build is intense, but it isn't with the simplest build. Druid isn't hard either, for sure.

[Sámsa]

I agree Warrior with the "wrong" build is intense, but it isn't with the simplest build. Druid isn't hard either, for sure.

What is the wrong and was is the simple build?

All warrior spec the same for m+ and the same for raids

[Sevryn]

Role warrior and be alpha. And also take a nap if you wish

[judgementofantonidas]

easiest. dk hands down. functionally two buttons

[Saltysquidoon]

The easiest tank is DH. You keep up demon spikes and do a dps rotation, that is it (even your main defensive is just a reskinned dps CD). Bear follows closely after this.
The thread is about finding the floor, not the ceiling, DH might also be the hardest tank to play at the top end (because you have to kite) but that doesn't bar it from being the easiest.

Don't get me wrong, I think BrM is strong and very well suited for raiding. However I think the difference between the different tank-classes is smaller than people think and often it is the grass is greener on the other side effect. People tend to focus on the strength of other classes but tend to forget the weaknesses.

And regarding world first progress, Limit used a BloodDK in all their firstkills.

And for easiest tank I would not recommend either BDK nor BrM but Druid. Big healthpool, strong mitigation and few buttons to push.

They also used a monk.
You're massively underselling why monks are op on prog (keyword here is prog). When you are doing prog the only reason a tank will die (other than a fuckup/wipe) is spike damage, because at that level you aren't going to die to lack of heals. Stagger effectively eliminates spike damage which means under normal circumstances a BrM will never die to nonfuck up damage. That is why BrM will always be strong explicitly on prog.

[apustus]

Druid is 45% Thrash, 20% swipe, 15% mangle, 20% moonfire/regen/utility with ironfur thrown off GCD whenever. And every 2,5mins it's 30sec+ of only thrash and ironfur when your incarn is up.

[Ealyssa]

I love how every tank has been said "is the best"

Yup when OP asked for the easiest to play. Which is very clearly druid, with monk as second.

100% uptime AM is where easy is, period. People saying "DH or DK because few buttons in rotation" for exemple are just retards who are clueless about what tanking is.

[Marrilaife]

dk hands down. functionally two buttons

?
You at least need death strike, blood boil, heart strike and d&d. And occasional marrowrend. And that's not counting cds, pretty sure you want at least bonestorm for dungeons.

[judgementofantonidas]

?
You at least need death strike, blood boil, heart strike and d&d. And occasional marrowrend. And that's not counting cds, pretty sure you want at least bonestorm for dungeons.

nope. try again. you can easily tank raid bosses with only death and heart strike.

[Bodakane]

I've always struggled with this question.

Back in WotLK, everyone always said Bear was the easiest tank and Warrior was the hardest. They said that because bear had less buttons and abilities (they didn't even have a silence so dealing with casters was awful) and warrior had an ability for literally every potential reason.

In my mind, that made bear harder and warrior easier.

I think people tend to think about their class/role in terms of what can I accomplish in perfect situations. That's why parses and the like are always what people talk about and point to.

I think the opposite. I think what can my class do when shit hits the fan. I've never had a (level/gear appropriate) perfect run. Shit always goes wrong. Someone misses an interrupt, healer forgets to mana up, dps got feared into other mobs, etc.

What tools does my class have to get us through a fuck up and keep from wiping? For me, the more tools I have, the easier I rank the tank.

[exochaft]

Yup when OP asked for the easiest to play. Which is very clearly druid, with monk as second.

100% uptime AM is where easy is, period. People saying "DH or DK because few buttons in rotation" for exemple are just retards who are clueless about what tanking is.

You're missing out that less buttons to push to achieve 80-90% efficacy is huge when learning a class, especially when your gear may not be great. This matters even more when your offensive rotation basically is your defense without the need for extra button-pressing.

DH tanks not only have very few abilities in their standard rotation, it's pretty well balanced for all scenarios since there's a lot of self-healing going on (similar to DK). Moreover, the standard offensive 'rotation' for DH automatically has a lot of survival baked in, even if you don't play it efficiently. If you just spam Fracture/Shear and Soul Cleave when you have enough resource, you're an effective enough DH tank offensively and defensively (not optimal by any means). Eventually you can just add in the extra defensive layers and utilities, but you can honestly get away with not using them in a +15 key and be perfectly fine and comfortable... and yes, I tried doing that on live, and it's kind of silly how much just using Fracture and Soul Cleave are in a Gluttony/Visions build w/o using AM and cooldowns. Demon Spikes is helpful, but due to the amount of self-healing a DH has you can get away with not using it even if it's not optimal.

I tried that with a bear... yeah, it's not happening, you feel like a paper bear. The reason DH is easy to play and pick up for a newer tank is not only because they have few buttons to press, but also those few buttons are effective both offensively and defensively. Best you can do passively as a bear by just executing an offensive rotation would be if you spec into Earthwarden, which helps a lot, but you will get wrecked, especially against magic damage since self-healing as a bear is extremely limited (and not baked into the offensive rotation, unlike DH). This gets worse the less gear a bear has, as you'll be struggling for resources, especially if you don't execute the offensive rotation correctly. It has a similar mantra to DH of "go into a pull with some sort of AM/DR", but DH ramps up much faster and on-demand than bear.

This is why DK is likely brought up in a similar vein as DH, as the self-healing tanking model is really powerful in most scenarios and why you see tanks with moderate to high self-healing tanks solo-tanking even current content that wasn't designed to be done as such. Now, I still put DH above DK in terms of ease as there's much more layers to DK in order to achieve a similar effect as a DH. One can debate the nuances at the high end of tanks with skilled playing between DK and DH, but that's not the point of this thread.

Monks are pretty tanky innately, but adding in the offensive rotation (ignoring AM and CD's) is more complex than DH and bears. Plus, the self-healing is pretty limited in comparison to DH and DK. Also, executing the offensive rotation heavily ties into the defensive abilities, making it more complex to execute in comparison to DH. If we rank based upon how easy it is to survive a screwup, monk probably handles mistakes the best... but maybe not the recovery part and being able to control it yourself (this is where self-healing comes in).

Now, don't get me wrong: all tanks have nuance to them. It's not a slight at any tank if it's easier to pick up and start learning the spec, as people skilled at the specs will always shine more than those that are new and/or terrible at it. Bears (ignoring all the hybrid/CC stuff and sticking to pure bear tanking) probably have the least nuance going for them, but I'd still put DH above them in terms of ease for beginners to tanking or the spec due to how effective DH tanks can be with just two buttons compared to all the other tanks requiring more abilities/actions/thought to achieve the same effectiveness.

[Marrilaife]

you can easily tank raid bosses with only death and heart strike.

In that case DH wins, you can tank a raid boss just by spamming shear.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=9
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...done&source=21
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...one&source=214

[czarek]

My favourite was pala and druid. DK blood was great as dps tonk on WOTLK dunno how it works now. Warrior was alwats good but need more binds as i remember than others. Never played as monk over 30lvl bu heard its good. Now im slacking as dps or healer havent tanked BfA.

[szandos]

DH, it's basically playing a dps spec with a simple rotation. Followed by bear, which has an even easier rotation, but you need to think a little bit more about when to use defensives.

[Nnyco]

nope. try again. you can easily tank raid bosses with only death and heart strike.

Imagine not even using bone shield. Atleast you can easily spot the lfr raiders in this thread.