Which tank is the least reliant on cooldowns?

[Peacemoon]

Hey, of all the tank specs, which is the least reliant on juggling active cooldowns to stay alive?

My friend is a tank player of average skill and is currently playing guardian Druid and things are a bit rough (I play Guardian/Resto Druid myself so know the reasons why).

A long time ago Bears had the highest effective health, with the highest max hp and physical armour, and were the best at ‘default toughness’ - one of the reasons we went Guardian for him! However these days that doesn’t feel the case anymore, and if my friend forgets to have one of his cooldowns up, he gets completely squished. He’s mainly at the 17-19 area and aiming for Keystone Hero.

For season 2 I have been thinking whether another tank class would be more suitable. One which can survive a big tank hit even when not played 100% optimally.

I’m sort of discounting DK because of the reliance on self healing (took much micro managing of your own hp)
Prot Paladin is also very up and down on CDs I think?
Maybe Prot Warrior as the most straightforward?

Of course the meta does change a lot. So I’m half thinking just stick with Bear and hope for good times.

Appreciate people’s thoughts.

[erifwodahs]

If you are aiming at KSH - Any tank should be fairly strong without even using any CDs - not that they shouldn't use them, but all tanks should be tanky enough passively. Also, I get that "default" toughness is the aim of this post, but with all the new dungeons and tank busters in place, it's extremely important for tanks to know how and when to play their CDs - tank is spearheading the group and is the most impactful part of the team when it comes to timing keys. It's extremely frustrating as a healer to see that your tank is not using their CDs or as a DPS if you have all CDs and tank has all CDs but they don't pull big because they can't be asked to use them.

Least CD reliant would be DK because you can just deathstrike it - yes, there is a ton of buttons to press, but it's mostly about smart use your deathstrike.

Also, while paladin has insanely good CDs to use, at KSH levels it has enough passive tankiness, especially in AoE situations to keep himself up via free WoGs and shield from using evenger shield. You have two talents which gives you shield from the dmg done, one of which is not optimal in higher keys, but probably literally won't let your HP move at lower levels. You must maintain SotR uptime tho There is also one no brainer CD - bubble taunt where you are straight up immune for everything.

Warrior is good in that regard too, in lower keys it HP should not move either without using any CDs, but it can't heal up as good as paladin can.

VDH actually needs smart CD usage imo, haven't played much of that in a while, but it is quite easy to die if you are not aware of your defensives

Don't play monk so can't comment on it.

[Sialina]

Paladin is 100% cooldown based, if you don't like keeping buffs up and juggling, CDs, don't play paladin

Monk is also fairly advanced with a filled out rotation

DH is rotationally simple to play, but requires attention to positioning

Guardian druid is also easy to play, but currently not too durable

DK requires good dungeon knowledge and a good sense of when to pool resources, wouldn't touch that if you want simple

The answer is prot warrior, as long as you spec into all abilities that give you shield block uptime (shieldblock, shield charge +Champions Bulwark, Last stand + bolster) it's fairly easy to maintain shieldblock, and you don't have too many buttons you need to press to stay alive. Of course you will notice a big difference between a warrior not using rage on Ignore pain properly, having gaps in CDs and so on, but you will do at least ok on prot, with room to grow.

[Zendhal The Black]

this is kinda a question like what spec do the most damage without cooldowns.

The CDs are part of the kit and if you count shield block or stagger (dunno if it's still CD based on brews) then it would be DK but healers would hate you like noone.

If you think Shield block or stagger isn't CD then Warrior - shitload of armor, block and critblock is OP, warr also have quite a lot of HP on top all of it's other defences

[Jujudrood]

Prot warrior, Ignore Pain goes a loooong way.
Shield Block is hard to mess up and should have an easy enough time to maintain 80% uptime.
CDs like Shield Wall and Last Stand are super nice, and spec into Ravager and Demo Shout if you want extra rage/damage redux respectively.
A mediocre protwar can go a long way, and if he gets good at managing things, it will quickly shine.

[Aresk]

As a fellow Guardian Druid player (also in the 18-19 range, trying to get the last of my 20s done before end of season), I think it may be premature to drop the class at this point. As the seasons go on and secondary stats continue to scale higher with better ilvls, I think we'll close the gap with other tanks, and the new set bonus is really strong. I'm not convinced that we should give up on the spec yet, especially if your friend is an average player and not familiar with other tank classes. Honestly, watching good guardian streams and getting better Weak Auras helped me a lot, though without knowing your friend, I'm not sure how effective that will be for him.

If you do decide to encourage him to swap, I'd personally lean more toward DH. Prot Warrior, from my limited understanding of the class, has a lot to recall with respect to knowing which things can be spell reflected vs not.

[Loveliest]

Prot pala is the best tank for pugging. But only if you actually use the class - interrupts, dispel, sacrifice, bop, freedom, stun, heal, bubble etc. Otherwise might as well pick something else. As somebody else here says, they are indeed 100% CD based.

DH is probably easiest to play since they don't have that many buttons. Warr has way more buttons than DH, wouldn't reccommend. But I might misinterpret your post. A lot of warrs have no clue what they're doing and use nothing. Very annoying.

But no tank is high on survival in all situations without using CDs. Unless healer and dpses are carrying you or you are overgearing the key lvl. Tank should know what they're doing.
To give you an example, any tank will die at tyrannical 20 hyrja in hov if they don't use a defensive for every single light beam. Unless your healer used smthing on you and you lucked out. If the tank can't manage this much, they should probably work on that.

[Tech614]

Every tank has gaps in mitigation depending on situation. Even say a brewmaster that has relatively steady mitigation will get blasted by magic damage without properly timing diffuse, dampen or zen med.

If you want to play a class not reliant on CDs to survive I'm not sure tank is the role to be playing. Anyways unless you are playing at an extremely high level you're always going to be better off playing what you're comfortable with so if that's guardian then you really shouldn't be meta chasing.

Definitely do not have them swap to VDH as some of the other comments have said, it has an easy ass rotation but people that hot swap to the class just end up infernal striking into packs and getting globalled cause they aren't used to the ramp or resource pooling the class needs. When it was meta in Shadowlands season 1 god that was an awful experience healing these rerolls. Prot War isn't quite as punishing for all those FOTM rerollers this season but they're also still pretty bad as a prot war who doesn't spell reflect properly is basically just a scuffed prot paladin without all the extra utility. It's the single thing that makes them competitive in M+ and so many rerollers can't even grasp when or how to use it.

TLDR: At a 17-18 level just play what you're comfortable with.

[Ragnarohk]

Monk is also fairly advanced with a filled out rotation

I'm in the process of switching main from resto druid to Brewmaster. Honestly, that's an understatement. The amount of keybinds you need as BrM is ridiculous. I feel that whatever the other tanks do semi-effortlessly, we have to do some weird gymnastics to get there. My hand actually hurts after a while.

[Tech614]

I'm in the process of switching main from resto druid to Brewmaster. Honestly, that's an understatement. The amount of keybinds you need as BrM is ridiculous. I feel that whatever the other tanks do semi-effortlessly, we have to do some weird gymnastics to get there. My hand actually hurts after a while.

It would be nice if they gave viable alternatives to talenting every fucking CD known to man on brewmaster. But as it stands you are basically forced into all defensive CDs and all the offensive CDs. Especially with blizzard devs making bullshit claims about wanting to remove the cognitive overload on players, if that's the case then like special delivery being made a viable alternative to RJW they need to add some passive options viable instead of having 1 million CDs.

[Artemol]

From what i can read, everyone who's telling you VDH Is an easy tank spec, they do not play VDH.

For ANY content sub +20 keys any tank class will be sufficient, as long as you use their active mitigations, in that regard all tank classes are the same.

Now, for when you start pushing up in keys, the hardest to play in a competitative setting would be VDH, you have to pay attention to every single motherfcking abilitiy, you have to know exactly when and what mobs are casting/standing, you need to have perfect uptime on Demon Spikes and it's talented buff.

You need to pool resources for any downtime in DAMAGE ON YOU, for FD to be cast.

You need to know how to counter when your group chain cc's mobs, otherwise you will die flat out.

DH requires a constant stable dmg intake to survive packs of mobs.

at 25 keys and higher, you need to counter every single mob ability, you need to know when to kite and if it's safe to stop kiting / how to engage a pack that havn't dmged you for 5+ seconds without everything slapping ur face in sub 0.5 seconds.

Prot Paladins do not require a stable dmg intake to be able to tank, they play around their active mitigation, holy power and other buffs.



I'd suggest your friend to play protpaladin - it's the class that depends the least on your team.

[jeezusisacasual]

I would recommend the Brewmaster above all else since that is the class i choose to tank on when i choose to tank for that season. The mobility and versatility of the spec allows you so many tools with ring of peace alone being fantastic not including or limited to leg sweep or clash or paralyze ( for the extra kick ). Also there is some real good time for spec diversity.

[Sialina]

From what i can read, everyone who's telling you VDH Is an easy tank spec, they do not play VDH.

For ANY content sub +20 keys any tank class will be sufficient, as long as you use their active mitigations, in that regard all tank classes are the same.

Now, for when you start pushing up in keys, the hardest to play in a competitative setting would be VDH, you have to pay attention to every single motherfcking abilitiy, you have to know exactly when and what mobs are casting/standing, you need to have perfect uptime on Demon Spikes and it's talented buff.

You need to pool resources for any downtime in DAMAGE ON YOU, for FD to be cast.

You need to know how to counter when your group chain cc's mobs, otherwise you will die flat out.

DH requires a constant stable dmg intake to survive packs of mobs.

at 25 keys and higher, you need to counter every single mob ability, you need to know when to kite and if it's safe to stop kiting / how to engage a pack that havn't dmged you for 5+ seconds without everything slapping ur face in sub 0.5 seconds.

Prot Paladins do not require a stable dmg intake to be able to tank, they play around their active mitigation, holy power and other buffs.



I'd suggest your friend to play protpaladin - it's the class that depends the least on your team.

At 25 keys you won't be buttonmashing on any tank, I play all tanks, and as I mentioned above, VDH is rotationally simple, but requires good positioning and resource management.

If you re-read OP, the problem their tank friend has, was that he was not great at pressing cooldowns, suggesting to play prot paladin when you are not good at juggling cooldowns is downright wrong, prot paladin dies straight away if you don't constantly have something up, imagine going into a pack without sotr up and not putting down a cons straight away, you die instantly even on lower keys.

The only tank that is somewhat durable outside of CDs is prot warrior honestly, yes, you need to keep shieldblock up, but as long as you got that one thing down, you can at least be healed. Sure, you won't be a great tank mitigating all the damage, but you'll at least be possible to keep alive, a badly played VDH, prot paladin DK or brew wlll just fall over instantly.

But if I was your friend I'd honestly stick with the bear, just make sure to pop rage of the sleeper every time you pull a new pack, that'll keep you somewhat safe.

[Malkiah]

Appreciate people’s thoughts.

how are you defining "cooldowns" here?
generally speaking asking that question without any other context, i figure most people are assuming you mean the flat damage reduction CDs that have a 1-3 minute cooldown on them, but the way you're talking in this post makes me wonder if you're meaning rotational abilities as well.

so for bears for example, is iron fur and frenzied regen and ursoc all "cooldowns" to you? or do you just mean barkskin and survival instincts?

as someone who plays every tank i can say that they're all reasonably shit if you're struggling with rotational defensive abilities, so if your question is 'which tank is best if you're just pushing random buttons' then the answer is that they all suck, with the way things are tuned at the 15+ level.

and on that note, in contrast to what many are saying in this thread thus far, i'd say steer well away from warrior - they have the highest amount of required micro-management of rotational defensives and the highest need for buff tracking and maintenance of any tank class currently.
(this is because you need to always be monitoring ignore pain and recasting it when it drops, and the duration of shield block is slightly less than its cooldown which means you can keep it up 100% since it has two charges, but you need to monitor the buff duration to not overlap it excessively or else you'll be stuck with it being on CD)

so it really depends on what you mean by "juggling active cooldowns", but brewmaster is probably the least bad option currently.
it basically only has 2 defensive buttons you need to push, and you don't need to push them constantly.

[Ealyssa]

Some player just shouldn't play tanks.

While it's not necessarily the hardest role to play, it is the role where you can't screw up. Why not just let him play DPS and learn how to be better at wow ratter than forcing him into tanking ?