[TBC Classic] Protection Warrior - convince me

[Facefive]

Greetings everyone!

I am in a personal dilemma and need your help! I remember playing TBC back in 2007 as a restoration druid. I loved every single bit of the expansion. Nothing ever compared after TBC (maybe WOTLK). I enjoyed being that tree of life stacking hots and keeping my tanks alive with lifebloom. Letting it pop off if needed or simply keep it rolling during the encounter. I always play crucial roles (raidlead, tank, healer), however I never maintanked in TBC. I remember looking at our protection warrior tanking Illidan in BT carrying his all time great Bulwark of Azzinoth along with his full T6 and ever since I always wanted this for myself. NOW! TBCC is on the way and I have the chance to be THAT tank I always wanted to be. However.....

Warriors are not that great anymore (with todays knowledge and possibly 2.4.3. patch). They may look pretty and protectious yet scale extremely bad and fall off against druids and pallys after T4.

Here is my dilemma. I wanna maintank. I wanna be that guy the guild counts on when things get down to the wire, but warriors are actually really bad Should I go with my druid again? I want to tank, no matter what, but my heart and mind are in a fight over warrior or druid.

Please guys, give me reasons to go with the warrior!

But please dont tell me "play what you enjoy" because I specifially ask for reasons to pick the warrior over the druid gameplaywise. I dont wanna end up being benched because I am not a druid in sunwell (or anything past T4).

Thanks

[schwank05]

Greetings everyone!

I am in a personal dilemma and need your help! I remember playing TBC back in 2007 as a restoration druid. I loved every single bit of the expansion. Nothing ever compared after TBC (maybe WOTLK). I enjoyed being that tree of life stacking hots and keeping my tanks alive with lifebloom. Letting it pop off if needed or simply keep it rolling during the encounter. I always play crucial roles (raidlead, tank, healer), however I never maintanked in TBC. I remember looking at our protection warrior tanking Illidan in BT carrying his all time great Bulwark of Azzinoth along with his full T6 and ever since I always wanted this for myself. NOW! TBCC is on the way and I have the chance to be THAT tank I always wanted to be. However.....

Warriors are not that great anymore (with todays knowledge and possibly 2.4.3. patch). They may look pretty and protectious yet scale extremely bad and fall off against druids and pallys after T4.

Here is my dilemma. I wanna maintank. I wanna be that guy the guild counts on when things get down to the wire, but warriors are actually really bad Should I go with my druid again? I want to tank, no matter what, but my heart and mind are in a fight over warrior or druid.

Please guys, give me reasons to go with the warrior!

But please dont tell me "play what you enjoy" because I specifially as for reasons to pick the warrior over the druid gameplaywise. I dont wanna end up being benched because I am not a druid in sunwell (or anything past T4).

Thanks

I remember very specifically some Boss encounters basically requiring Spell Reflect so that is I guess one point.

[Katchii]

Greetings everyone!

I am in a personal dilemma and need your help! I remember playing TBC back in 2007 as a restoration druid. I loved every single bit of the expansion. Nothing ever compared after TBC (maybe WOTLK). I enjoyed being that tree of life stacking hots and keeping my tanks alive with lifebloom. Letting it pop off if needed or simply keep it rolling during the encounter. I always play crucial roles (raidlead, tank, healer), however I never maintanked in TBC. I remember looking at our protection warrior tanking Illidan in BT carrying his all time great Bulwark of Azzinoth along with his full T6 and ever since I always wanted this for myself. NOW! TBCC is on the way and I have the chance to be THAT tank I always wanted to be. However.....

Warriors are not that great anymore (with todays knowledge and possibly 2.4.3. patch). They may look pretty and protectious yet scale extremely bad and fall off against druids and pallys after T4.

Here is my dilemma. I wanna maintank. I wanna be that guy the guild counts on when things get down to the wire, but warriors are actually really bad Should I go with my druid again? I want to tank, no matter what, but my heart and mind are in a fight over warrior or druid.

Please guys, give me reasons to go with the warrior!

But please dont tell me "play what you enjoy" because I specifially ask for reasons to pick the warrior over the druid gameplaywise. I dont wanna end up being benched because I am not a druid in sunwell (or anything past T4).

Thanks

Warrior is still king tank in most raids for various reasons. Druid can function in dungeons and on many raid boss fights, as can Paladin, but there are some Raid fights that flat out require Warriors because of spell reflect but their armor and shield block rating are what really makes them main tank because they're the only tank that can reliably avoid crushing blows. Druid flat out can't, and Paladins can but only from a random proc that can't be relied upon.

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Crushing_blow

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Uncrushability

[Ryzeth]

Not sure where you got the idea that "Warriors are really bad" from. They're fine at every tier; tank meta shifts which one is best (prot pal is suboptimal without a lot of gear, for instance), but none of them are ever bad. A 10 second Reddit search would find you all the information you need to know.

Every single TBC server I've played on, each guild has had at least one warrior tank (and almost always they had 1 of each tank for different purposes). I'm willing to bet you're not going to be in a top100 guild, either, so you can literally play whichever tank you want and be good.

Druid
- Can't be uncrushable, meaning they'll always take the most damage.
- Very gear dependant (but less than prot pals).
+ Highest effective hp, and good damage when not tanking because of cat.

Paladin
- No significant cooldowns.
- Extremely gear dependant
+ Probably the strongest scaling.
+ Best at AoE threat
+ Can be uncrushable at later gear stages because of holy shield charges.

Warrior
- Falls off slowly, whereas other tanks scale. (Doesn't mean Warr is worthless)
- Least gear-dependant of the tanks
+ Easiest tank to become uncrushable with thanks to shield block
+ Best cooldowns of every tank
+ Baseline tankiness is the highest
+ If you want to DPS later on (or pvp), warrior is significantly better than both Paladin and Druid (not counting resto).
?+ If fury tank is still a thing going into TBC, they're going to have the highest TPS by far of any tank.

tl;dr literally play whichever tank you want. You'll be able to raid just fine, I promise.

[SinR]

One Word: Shear

[Nosnogard]

Warrior is still king tank in most raids for various reasons. Druid can function in dungeons and on many raid boss fights, as can Paladin, but there are some Raid fights that flat out require Warriors because of spell reflect but their armor and shield block rating are what really makes them main tank because they're the only tank that can reliably avoid crushing blows. Druid flat out can't, and Paladins can but only from a random proc that can't be relied upon.

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Crushing_blow

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Uncrushability

Paladins can easily attain the crushing blow cap. Holy Shield is a thing and can be kept up better* on bosses that dual wield, such as Prince (And Moroes?)

*Better as in better than Warriors Shield Block

[Clawsout]

Warriors are fine we did up to brutallus back in the day with a warrior paladin combo spell reflect is great. dungeons are ok little harder then with a pally but its still fine. Warriors still the best ST almost all fights are still based around a warriors toolkit like reliquary of souls was much easier with spell reflect. As long as you stay current on your warrior you'll do fine

[Nite92]

Not sure where you got the idea that "Warriors are really bad" from. They're fine at every tier; tank meta shifts which one is best (prot pal is suboptimal without a lot of gear, for instance), but none of them are ever bad. A 10 second Reddit search would find you all the information you need to know.

Every single TBC server I've played on, each guild has had at least one warrior tank (and almost always they had 1 of each tank for different purposes). I'm willing to bet you're not going to be in a top100 guild, either, so you can literally play whichever tank you want and be good.

Druid
- Can't be uncrushable, meaning they'll always take the most damage.
- Very gear dependant (but less than prot pals).
+ Highest effective hp, and good damage when not tanking because of cat.

Paladin
- No significant cooldowns.
- Extremely gear dependant
+ Probably the strongest scaling.
+ Best at AoE threat
+ Can be uncrushable at later gear stages because of holy shield charges.

Warrior
- Falls off slowly, whereas other tanks scale. (Doesn't mean Warr is worthless)
- Least gear-dependant of the tanks
+ Easiest tank to become uncrushable with thanks to shield block
+ Best cooldowns of every tank
+ Baseline tankiness is the highest
+ If you want to DPS later on (or pvp), warrior is significantly better than both Paladin and Druid (not counting resto).
?+ If fury tank is still a thing going into TBC, they're going to have the highest TPS by far of any tank.

tl;dr literally play whichever tank you want. You'll be able to raid just fine, I promise.

Who told u prot pally can only become crush capped at later stages? And you leave out that warriors need shield block for their crush cap.

- - - Updated - - -

Warrior is still king tank in most raids for various reasons. Druid can function in dungeons and on many raid boss fights, as can Paladin, but there are some Raid fights that flat out require Warriors because of spell reflect but their armor and shield block rating are what really makes them main tank because they're the only tank that can reliably avoid crushing blows. Druid flat out can't, and Paladins can but only from a random proc that can't be relied upon.

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Crushing_blow

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Uncrushability

What proc exactly do Paladin need?
God, the misinformation here, yikes.

[Katchii]

Paladins can easily attain the crushing blow cap. Holy Shield is a thing and can be kept up better* on bosses that dual wield, such as Prince (And Moroes?)

*Better as in better than Warriors Shield Block

True, but it's significantly more work with very specific gear choices, because it only adds 30% block vs warriors 100% from Shield Block. So the gearing for Warriors is significantly easier to achieve in the beginning.

You're correct though, didn't mean to imply they couldn't tank, just that especially in the beginning before higher level raid gear is available, Warriors have a much easier time hitting that cap.

This was more to the point of Warrior vs Druid, and without a doubt, if tanking is what the OP wants to do, the choice is clearly Warrior.

- - - Updated - - -

What proc exactly do Paladin need?
God, the misinformation here, yikes.

I misquoted what the link said, my bad. Redoubt helped immensely with block chance and was a random proc. But it's not absolutely required to reach uncrushable status for Paladins.

[Aucald]

"Help Me Choose" type threads don't tend to produce much in the way of constructive discussion or debate. Please check online resources and/or the class-specific subforums if you have further questions. Closing this.