Why are all tanks Paladins?

[Aldoran]

i am retpally main spec, but doing randoms as prot, cause of 2 reasons:
1) no waiting time as tank
2) gettint a retarded tank from lfg is worse than getting bad dpser

[Lightfist]

I'm surprised I haven't seen any "PALADINS ARE FACEROLL LULZ" yet. Good job, MMO-Champion.

[Vestig3]

Oh im in the wrong thread.

[psdew1813]

I've been encountering a lot more warrior tanks lately. But the reason behind the high paladin tank population was the AoE tanking craptacular that was WotLK. Paladins were just better at AoE tanking so more people rolled them.

warriors have thunderclap, shockwave, demoralizing shout, and if glyphed cleave. i always thought warriors were tops with paladins and then DKs and druids on bottom in terms of AOE

[Deleted]

<- Warrior :P

I think most death knights stray from tanking because if they are just learning they'll just get thrown into "failknights" when they make a simple mistake. People just don't have the patience anymore. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from doing a bit of scanning druids are a little under-par at the moment compared to other tanks? (No offense intended if this is not the case)

I rerolled paladin tank when I realised blood was the way forward

My experience is somewhat limited: I played a warrior tank up to ZG back in the day but obviously a lot has changed, I played a DK up to ICC then rerolled.

Out of the three classes I found Paladin to have the nicest flow to it and you have decent tools for positioning mobs and getting snap aggro. However the downside is a lot of the abilities are AOE which is not always ideal with CC about

Especially if you mainly see one class in a particular role it is easy to have your opinion of the others tarnished when you do come across them. On my hunter I grouped with a couple of terrible prot warriors today but I am sure there are lots of good ones about too, just like any class really.

[Deleted]

Paladin Tank here, but I also have a Bear Tank.

I chose to Roll a Paladin Tank back when ulduar was released live to the realms. Levelled has Retri and switched to Tanking at 70. When I reached 80, I instantly prefered Pallies to Bears so therefore made my pally my main. I currently play Prot as main spec and Retri as off spec, I can see why some people that play Paladins have switched from Retri to Prot. Mastery for retri is currently pants imo, Hand of Light is just to sporadic, I'm glad blizz will be changing it as its put me off doing heroics with guildies as retri. I could do the first boss in HoO heroic 1 day and do shit dps, the next day do great dps, Its fustrating.

My guild currently has the following available tanks:-

2 Paladin's
3 Warrior's
1 Death Knight
3 Druid's

[Larivas]

How are druids boring? We have a decent range of abilities for aggro, a few damage reduction abilities to juggle (including pulverize), and get the fun of when tanking finding the spots where the boss is doing a mechanic so we can innervate the healer of rebirth someone. And if you think that last request is unreasonable..... please tell everyone I group with it is. No one believes me lol.

I enjoy tanking, my first 80 was my prot pally. Shortly after I leveled a bear and then a prot warr. After playing the prot warr I couldn't bring myself to play my druid anymore. It just feels like a nerfed warrior without the mobility or usefulness. Both my pally and warr are tanks at 85, while I haven't touched the druid in months. It might have gotten better with the 4.0 patch but I've been scarred. lol

[aikouka]

I've pretty much played each type but a Druid tank... I've wanted to try it, but I never really had good enough gear (in my opinion). But anyway, in Wrath, I preferred my Warrior tank the most. A lot of people would say, "Oh, Paladins have the best AoE tanking." Well, they were certainly good at grabbing a few mobs at once, but honestly.. a decent warrior could hold just as many as HotR allowed the Paladin to do.

I sort of saw two flaws in my Paladin tank. While he was as geared as the DPS in the raids, he always had threat problems on single targets. I could perform the ol' 96 as well as I possibly could and I would still have DPS hitting the threat wall. Another problem that I saw was mostly on Valithria... while people would promote Paladins as the best at AoE tanking, they were god awful at tanking the worms that spawned from the abominations. Hammer of the Righteous could only hit 4 (glyphed) and Consecration simply wasn't fast enough. A warrior on the other hand? They would have no problem handling the worms.

Now that Paladins also have decent uncapped (target-wise) straight damage AoE moves, such situations are far easier to handle and threat... well, we all know threat is pretty much a joke .

The point of this bit of a rant is pretty much that you may see more simply because they were a bit more common in Wrath, but I also think they've gotten significantly better in Cataclysm. I actually don't like playing my Warrior as much anymore... I guess I somehow enjoyed spamming Heroic Strike or Cleave . I never really got into DK tanking... I just felt so darned squishy compared to shield-bearing classes, which is something I would've gotten over if I had better gear.

[Ahms]

You're seeing all the former Rets trying to salvage their Paladin with another spec

[MeowthThatsRight]

Sorry, too little information for me to give a meaningful response.

- what level are you and when you did these tallies?
- what level were the tanks?
- for what level should the poll apply?

I understand that the number is small, I mighty continue the tally over a long period of time. About half of that is from 80-85 leveling, the other half from 85 regs. Both the DKs were low levels (81 and I think 82) the warriors all 85s. I might continue getting data for a week or so, throw in some heroics, see if it levels out a bit.

[Wafflemonster]

I am a Prot warrior so i have to say "???"

[Alex86el]

yes, but i like it, cause i find them the easiest to heal for some reason =P

[chorx]

Guild wanted a good tank to go into cata with, and I thought I could do the job. That's why I dusted off the pally, and went prot.

[kortin]

Why are there so many druid healers? I have done the same because i noticed a majority with them in my runs. The samples we both have (me being 10, you being 19) are much much much too small to get an accurate answer. In order to get an accurate answer on what tank is majority you'll have to do samplings by the thousands.

[Deleted]

I have seen a lot of pally tanks in LFG...thinking back at least 3 out of 4 tanks have been pallies. I was surpried myself and glad other people noticed and it wasn't just me :-)

Got a couple of tanks myself, 1 DK, 1 pally and currently levelling a feral also. Main tanking char in Wrath for me was the pally, not because of better AE tanking but because of superior damage mitigation...unhittable is something that I like! Did have a lot of arguments in pugs when tanking though. Usually went something like this:
Player X: Hey tank! Your HP is low.
Me: Yeah I know, but I have a lot of avoidance.
Player X: Dude, you can't tank with that low HP. Tanks should have more health.
Me: I don't get hit a lot, no need for large healthpools.
Player Y (healer): Not sure I can keep you alive with that healthpool.
Player Z: I have a tank myself and have a lot more health than you. You must suck!
Me: 2 options, 1 is let me tank, no. 2 is go back to LFG.
Some tanking later:
Player Y (healer): Nice tanking mate, hardly had to heal you the entire dungeon. I actually had time to dps.
Me: I know. Thanks for the run.


Sorry about the whole conversation thingy...just needed to vent a bit.

[thearchangel]

Im a pally tank. I mostly healed during BC and wrath and only tanked when i had good gear. In LK it was pretty easy to play any role, it was just a matter of preference. However after patch 4.0, some of the changes were not welcomed. I personally do not like that whole holy point thing as it is more irritating than fun. That is what ruined ret for me as it became so dependent on that it stopped being fun. Prot was also changed but enough of it stayed that was still comfortable. I havent tried healing yet only because I dont want to relearn how to do it now, and tanking has always been my most fun spec.

[underdogba]

I can't talk about Ret, but healing on a pally is by no means hard.

The point of the observation "healing is harder now" has nothing to do with whether it really is or not, or how allegedly good you are at it.

It has to do with the perceptions of the majority of the community, which could be a factor in the demographic trend the OP is anecdotally reporting.

[martyisokay]

In Wrath I was a holy/shadow priest and wanted to reroll for Cata to break the monotony. I chose a paladin so that I can still heal but tank on the side. Yes, healing is a "bit" harder than it was in Wrath but with alot of research on paladin healing from reading forums and what not, I am getting better. (I still avoid Heroic Grim Batol, though, till my gear gets better) Prot is alot of fun but I am finding people are impatient when it comes to learning the fights - one wipe, they leave.

On my server - Rexxar - and battlegroup - Vengeance, I am finding there is an equal balance of the tank classes when I queue for heroics.

[Vespian]

Back in Vanilla, we (Warriors) had no AOE Tanking. I can't recall whether Paladins did, or Druids, but Thunderclap had no threat modifier, hit only 4 targets and the Vanilla dungeon design often didn't allow for Thunderclapping and CCing in one go. Having a DPS pull(CC or otherwise) was lethal for your group, because you hardly had any abilities to get all thee mobs back. The CDs that you did have, had a 10min CD or greater and were literally "Last Stands". Some core abilities today required Stance Dancing back then. A term most WotLK player probably never even heard of.

I've played this Tank in Vanilla (from ~2 months after launch, my first was a Rogue) and tBC (leveled 1-70 in Prot). I quit in Wotlk because Blizzard killed the challenge entirely by adding so much threat to so many aoe tanking abilities. As we all know, WOTLK, with few exceptions, was absolute faceroll and I prefer my game to be a challenge. That way it's far more rewarding.

I can tell you from the bat off, that 95% of the Warrior population in both Vanilla and tBC, absolutely sucked at tanking more than 2 mobs. I've literally had a T6 tank, that didn't even look behind him, because he was used to tanking single target trash/bosses in raid instances. Apparently he had never learned how to tank in heroic instances. Needless to say, we kicked him. This example also shows the difference between the skill levels required for 5man dungeons, versus raids. 5 man dungeons, in those days, could be far more taxing than Raids and Warriors that were somehow able to acquire (full)T6 gear had apparently never bothered learning how to play. Decay, was already showing.

More than once, have I had to relog my own Warrior to finish an instance where others failed and the huge amount of QQ on the official forums made Blizzard eventually succumb to the complaints and with the end patch (3.2? cant recall) of tBC, All people could tank. You didn't need brains, you didn't need skill(s), all you needed was 3 iwin buttons and mobs were glued to you like like ants to honey.

The reduction of non-Paladin tanks didn't start with Wotlk, it started with tBC. tBC required good Warrior and Druid tanks, but only required average Paladin tanks to be able to do the harder Heroics. A little before the end of tBC, entering Heroic Shattered Halls as a Warrior tank was a rare exception. In contrary to most people, I loved pugging, I still do, but people expected to have Paladins come and tank that place for them, because "they had aoe tanking". Hell, I've never in my life even used Cleave to tank, but I could glue 7-9 mobs to me in Heroic Shattered Halls. It was another question whether the healer could keep me up, but damn, I could tank half that instance in one go if I'd want to (exaggerating to make a point). Thís is why Blizzard decided to make it easy for all classes. Wotlk is only the prolonged effect of the changes that occurred during tBC. Paladins were hot as tanks in tBC, they were still great in WoTLK, no reason to change. From WotLK on, it's actually Warriors, Druids, Paladins and DK's alike, that all share a great ability to AoE tank.

Cataclysm is a difficulty level between tBC and WotLK. It's not as unforgiving as it was in tBC, but it's still a lot harder than WotLK ever was. However, we now have the abilities that we didn't have in start-tBC, so I'm betting that the population, from this point on, is not going to change much, on average. Yes I do think that Druid tanks will stay in their all-time Low (personally not so sad about that) and I think the Warrior tank population will somewhat decrease, because WotLK didn't make them have skills, but simply didn't require them to have any and now they're facing the brick wall that is called; "required IQ > 80". Obviously, some will never get past this wall and inevitably quit.

Yes. I do experience that the tank population is currently very Paladin-centric, but I have no doubt that Raids will still have their regular diversity and the demand in raids, will eventually also lead to a positive change in the population of DK's, Warriors and Druids. Although some might get the short straw, since there's only room for a select few tanks in each guild.

[Deleted]

The reason is simple, answer is in my next 3 questions:

1. How many people play for loot?
2. What is the only class that can roll on everything?
3. What spec do you need to get fast queues?