The better I get at Prot Warrior the less I like it. BrM and DK were way more satisfying to improve with. Haven't and probably will never play a bear so I have no opinion there. Protadin, well, it just gets boring being god all the time frankly.
I have four tanks at 90, all the classes except Warrior. For me, Paladin is the hardest due to the complex damage rotation and micromanagement of ShotR and SS. Monk is next, especially if you don't have enough Haste to make the rotation effortless. The Druid has an easy rotation at all levels of gear, but we're not as good at soaking spike which adds a layer of difficulty. If played properly, you have a high level of control over your health bar and good burst self-healing to counter spike. If not, then you're one of the worst mana burners due to a lack of passive avoidance. Then there's the DK, which doesn't need to worry as much about what type of damage they're taking as when they need to have that big Blood Shield built up. The problem is that's all you really got as your cooldowns are not very powerful.
I'm guessing you are the tank that always ends up with the "sucky" healers, cause they have such a hard time keeping you alive.
Regarding suvivibility, initially it was only DKs (for the most part) where the good and bad DKs really stood out as to how much healing they required and how much damage they took. Now all tanks have more active mitigation and believe it or not, it's not that you have bad healers all the time, it's that you aren't actively mitigating as you focus on all your pew pew abilities bemoaning how threat generation is boring.
Death Knights then Paladins imo.
DKs with their rune management & runic power, Pallies with Holy Power and mana bs. Just too complicated and annoying.
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That's part of the difference between playing them and mastering them though. Shuffle isn't the monk's primary active mitigation unless they just flat out mastery stack and be lazy. True AM management for a Monk is with EB and their self heals. To compare it to a paladin, Shuffle is like a paladin's Sacred Shield, it should always be active. SotR would be more analogous to managing EB, Expel Harm, healing spheres, Guard, L30 Talents. You want to make sure EB lines up properly to where you need it to break up the most dangerous attack chains while you use your self heals to watch for when you have a bad streak with EB.
I can't say that one is more difficult than the other. Bears and Warriors have lower representation in cutting edge guilds so does that make them more difficult? Personally DK's are the hardest for me to play. My personal preference for ease of play from Hard to easy is DK=MONK>Warrior=paladin>bear, but I tank on a bear more than the others and for longer than the others so it is hard for me to be objective. I think they are all difficult to master.
Ironically what I find complex about Paladins right now is that there isn't a filler, and sometimes I tend to just forget about things like Holy Wrath or Consecration without CLCProt putting it next in the queue. The timing is tricky as well but pretty much all bosses have it on set timers so you know "Triple Puncture in 3s, I need 3+ HP", although I dislike the idea of delaying using Shield of the Righteous because you know you'll need to save it.
In the Beta I was trying a BrM and they seemed pretty fun but had too many buttons IMHO that were situational, and a little too much to keep track of, but concept-wise they were great and if I wasn't so lazy as to not want to level from scratch I would have rolled one for the start of Mists
To me it depends largely on what you want to do with your tank. A rotation is hardly ever hard to master, it's more about the tools you have.
I play a warrior, monk and paladin as possible tanks. Our challenge mode tank is another warrior, and it's ridiculous how hard some things are for those guys.
Where Monks and DKs have a ridiculously easy time holding AoE aggro and they dish out craptons of damage, Warriors have Thunderclap on a cooldown and do very poor damage.
Looking at how their active mitigation works and general playstyle, I would say warriors are some of the harder tanks. Not only do I feel that many of their spells aren't as easy to use or as effective as those of other classes, but they are more complex and less forgiving to use as well.
I would say Paladins have the best system for tanking, which largely contributes to their effectiveness as tanks. Resource generators generate threat, resource spenders generate survivability. It's very simple and super effective. You could say they are easy to play because of a simplistic system (even though, as said before, it's rather difficult to master the near inifite amount of 'solutions' paladins can bring to various problems, how often have you seen Salvation used on players who pulled aggro?) that is super effective.
Monks to me are by far easiest to play of the 3 tanks I have firsthand experience with. The reason for this is the ease of use of their spells compared to the effectiveness of those spells (mobility + ranged aggro tool that slows). In raids, however, I find that Paladins and Warriors have a superior set of cooldowns and utility. If they're good, they can be super effective in unexpected situations.
Edit: I disagree with the paladin filler part of the above poster; you do not need to use those fillers for anything other than extra damage, the aggro increase to me is marginal compared to where most of your aggro comes from (although there are exceptions, I can't tank Horridon's adds without using fillers obviously). Arguably the different filler spells on conflicting cooldowns are annoying, but it doesn't really matter which you use as long as you use any.
Last edited by mmoc08ec536ec8; 2013-08-14 at 06:01 PM.
Prot warrior in my opinion.
Paladins basically have to just mash buttons and have enough HoPo when a big physical attack goes off so they can pop SOTR.
DKs can basically just mash buttons and win. Big hit coming in? Pop runic empowerment and Death Strike right afterwards.
BrM is pretty easy once you get used to using your two brews, which is actually really simple.
Warrior needs to balance rage usage between keeping up Shield Block and using Shield Barrier against spells and unblockables.
I think the better question is which tank is most difficult to "learn". Many posts state BrM easy since shuffle is up all the time but you would be surprised how many people fail at that one task let alone the use of the other AM abilities.
A bad BrM will make a raid/group cry where a skilled one is one of the top tanks this tier.
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Not a question to which there's any reasonable answer imo.
The more you know about a class, the more you recognise its complexities and quirks.
My personal impression of DK tanking, after tanking a couple of gold CMs with my alt frost dk, is that it's trivially simple. But I also recognise that I'm missing a lot of depth in the class & wouldn't regard my own impression as accurate.
Likewise I regard paladins as complex, but I doubt most players are interested in even trivial things like rotation shifting between ST DPS, AOE DPS & survival priorities (i.e. shifting back and forwards based off ST/AOE long term damage, DPCT & HoPow generation). You could happily tank every fight in the game without worrying about that crap. The fact DS timing & SotR timing are not dissimilar probably contributes to my impression of DKs too btw.
Brewmaster complexity is definitely overrated would be the only thing I'd stand by. You can reel off all the secondary abilities of other classes the same as people try to with monks, it doesn't make any of them substantially more simple or difficult. They'll go squish real fast if you're too derpy to watch a buff timer, but is that really difficult? It's no different from keeping up slice'n'dice or inquisition really.
IMO tho all tanks can be very complex if you really want to finesse their potential, or absurdly simple if you're happy being a meatsack who holds threat.
Last edited by lakhesis; 2013-08-14 at 06:25 PM.
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The best way from a tank perspective I can think to answer this question is the following
None are hard to play as of now , but they are all pretty hard to master!
Mastering the spec is what makes a tank really shine but the basics are just about the same for all... get rotation down, get active mitigation down, time mitigation and cd's properly. However mastering all that to work perfectly on the fly per boss fight... that takes time on any tank!
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If I had to list tanks from easiest to hardest it would probably go: Monk --> Guardian --> Prot Warrior = Prot Paladin --> Death Knight.
Monk and Guardian rotations in my opinion are far more "easier" than what Warriors and paladins have for example. Not saying Warrior and Paladin rotations are hard, but there is more "timing know how" involved. Monk has basically 100% uptime on active mitigation and Druid can either heal or dodge. Most of the special attacks and such are not dodgeable anyway. I admit that Guardian has some surviving issues especially in 25man, but to be honest that doesnt mean its hard to play. It is more of an bad design issue.
In a way warriors and paladins work pretty much in the same way. Warriors can use rage to absorb or block and Paladins can use holy power to either heal or mitigate damage by SoTR. Personally I would rank paladin bit higher since Warriors utility is mainly about banners and rally, which are pretty much in a level of press the button receive the bacon. Good paladin can use all of the Hands ( Protection, sacrifice and salvation) well, time off heals well, SS co-tank when not tanking and snipe heal people that drops low with flash of light (if not tanking) and Lay on hands. Paladin can cheese out a lot of vengeance if played correctly and can solo tank almost everything in ToT with correct comp.
I ranked DK as hardest mainly because how to mitigation by death strike works. I think it far more important for DK to know exactly how much damage he will be taking and when. Also if you time Death Strikes badly you are basically that one fury warrior which overaggroed at the pull. DK's are in kinda bad spot with Guardian druids at the moment and that is also why I ranked them the hardest but unlike guardian which is pretty much destined to die to huge special attack, good DK can survive.
Last edited by mmoc8b013c39a0; 2013-08-15 at 04:20 AM.
If you have a good understanding and played for a while BrM is very smooth, though there is a lot to track. If you don't have a good understanding for BrM, then you will not do well and most likely cause wipes.
For me atleast, paladin feels pretty easy, just to prioritize the spells in your rotation, and use SotR, clcprot do that for you
I guess that when it comes to paladin proper cooldown management is the difference between a good and a bad one, but that's the same for all tanks.
Haven't played blood at max lvl this exp, but it seems like they are pretty advanced to play good I.E to use death strike at the right time.