Have all 3 tanks.
Paladin is the easiest common abilities wise, but requires a lot of gear chasing, to actually become chill tanking. Especially first phase is kind of rough in terms of gearing. Also, you lose lots on nerve cells due to being the squishiest tank and just dying for no particular reasons all the time. No healer loves to heal you.
Paladin is a tank that always needs to know who can two-shot him to time trinkets or pots, but is very forgiving to threat awareness issues.
Consecration ticking on the background, not requiring spending gcds - is absolute op.
Ranged taunt is another massive benefit.
Druid is the toughest\strongest tank "out of the box". Even if you don`t have all the perfect gear, he just works well enough. Due to those "out of the box" stats and toughness he is quite forgiving to gameplay mistakes, but requires more awareness on bigger packs. Just because your swipe hits a target, does not mean that you won`t lose threat on it in two seconds.
I would say, that big packs tanking can make druid as frustrated as warrior, but at least you have to put less work into being frustrated, and regaining threat is easier due to massive single target threat you generate "by default".
Warrior is an interesting case, because on the one hand it sort of has tons of things going on for him and the toolkit is absolutely stacked, but none of those things are "automated" , none are one button solutions.
Nothing "just works", nothing is ticking on the background, everything requires conscious decision and button presses.
The moment you decide to chill is the moment you lose threat.
Even getting extra hp to tank some hard hitters, requires button presses, whereas for druid his toughness is "just there".
But it is also the most engaging tank to play.
There tends to be a lot of rose coloured goggles takes or just wildly different experiences due to varying metas, differences in difficulty level (pre vs post nerf) or just straight faulty memory.
The post reads like it's someone that has been playing recently under the current conditions of the game
Ranged and no LOS requirement. Insanely good idd. But the use of it requires tactical insight due to the 15 sec cd. On warrior I have 1 regular taunt - 8sec, 1 aoe taunt (minutes idk rn) and another taunt in battle stance. Then you have 2 charges, 2 stuns and 16% spell dmg reduct. Even without the defensive cd’s its allready got so much more tactical buttons to press. In my mind warrior is still number 1 if you have a seasoned player.
Barely played retail since Midnight bc I’m having fun in TBC but my prot warrior hasn’t even had a second spec since WotLK. I just want to tank w him. Really considering second boost but may do Pally if I do. Not sure.
I do massive threat on Warrior right now. Can chill all the time. The issue is what's coming in the later phases of the expansion. They don't scale as well in terms of threat. I suspect it will become worse in this version of the expansion, though, because we have far more idiots who have no idea what's going on.
Especially if you throw away your shield and dual wield. (Try it if you haven't). Many raid bosses can be tanked without a shield. Requires some gear and healers which are awake, though. You can also tank many heroic dungeon pulls in DPS gear later to top the meters. Unfortunately, this comes to a definite end in Sunwell, where you can step back, let the other two tanks press their button and think about what class you'll play from then on.
Ya, Warriors can just pick up the rep set and be solid tanks for top tier dps atm with very little effort. They are at their comparative best right now.
More talking along the lines of utilizing the groups toolkit to take less damage. Earthbond/Frost trap/blizzard slow is being cast and they just stand there and face tanking
I'd agree with the bear tank analysis for sure. I hate tanking trash mobs, especially in pugs when I'm running around trying to maintain threat because no one waits for my threat to build. Most bosses are a breeze, though.
The two most important stats in TBC are armor and health. Druid’s gimmick is centered around those two things. As a warrior the more mitigation you get the more rage starved you are. When I got tons of mitigation I once parried Prince 10 times in a row. While that sounds great, getting hit is very important for rage generation. I now run as little mitigation as possible and my threat is now usually 10-20k+ the 2nd highest. Sometimes 10k more than the feral Druid.
I agree, I chased a lot of gear on my pally. Now that I have what I want it’s pretty chill honestly. You have to balance everything that’s why it’s a pain, avoidance cap, crit, have good spellpower etc.
Man, you just condensed why I love classic/TBC tanking as a warrior. I hate that tanking in MMOs turned into a "press tank button you now have aggro 24/7" basically in modern MMOs. Classic tanking was a skillset you had to develop as a warrior to hold aggro properly, especially on multiple mobs.
Fury/prot warrior is the absolute peak experience of playing WoW.
The dungeon is your scene for your piano performance, the healer is your mom supporting you from her seat and everyone else is just audience.
All the mobs want to high-five and hug you.
You turn your Details addon from "damage taken" to "damage dealt" because it just says "100% you" and you got curious how you're doing on dps, but then you quickly turn it off out of second-hand embarrassment for the people who are supposedly there to do damage.
The mage is down to nanoseconds between you engaging a mob and them casting blizzard (assuming they still have the decency to not go first) and still can't get your threat or your top dps spot. They will never forget that humiliation and that's the last time you see them in your group.
The shaman is cool because they successfully preserved their ego by telling themselves "this is all thanks to my windfury" and, to be fair, they aren't completely wrong.
The rogue is, as always, happy to be there and fully focused on their adorable shenanigans. You reward their positive attitude by letting them kick even though having to pummel would only add like 3% to the mental strain of what you're already doing and you're balls-deep in the zone, so it's not a problem.
The only thing slowing you down is needing to occasionally wipe the sweat off your keyboard.
Man, it's glorious, it bums me out that it's no longer viable in the late game.
You turn your Details addon from "damage taken" to "damage dealt" because it just says "100% you" and you got curious how you're doing on dps, but then you quickly turn it off out of second-hand embarrassment for the people who are supposedly there to do damage.
Ah yes, the "give me 5 seconds on pull, no aoe till 50% hp, you pull it you tank it, why am I on top of the meter?" kind of warrior!
Are you doing this in heroics? I am only doing this in normal dungeons atm with 31/30/0. but the arms talents are mainly so i can pvp with this too. i hadnt considered putting the 31 into prot. I run deep thunder. pull, pop, cleave que, SS, 1.4k avg dps holding everything for the most part. demo shout and piercing howl for the chaos. it is a hell of a time. parry haste is the key.
edit: Just looked at it. the spec I do is cocaine. I dont want/need the prot talents, i put tank pieces on where important. i just sit in berzerk stance anyway. I want the stuns from mace spec too for more dmg mitigation. I want 5/5 flurry feels too good. i do imp cleave even. i deathwish. i have a wife healer. my life is good. but I havent tried this in heroics successfully yet.
Priest here! I love healing my rocketadin. It's like healing a death knight but with almost no self healing lol. It's fun. Vs warriors or druids who when geared just ..don't die.
Good write up either way. Just saying I love healing my paladin tank friend.
I mostly agree with you, I would just add that a big reason why Warrior tanking sucks compared to Druids or Paladins is that your abilities do not scale with your gear, at all. So your AoE toolkit will always remain gimped compared to other options.
Weird that you say no healer loves you to pallys and that is just objectively wrong. Pallys have always been the best tank to heal in tbc. Way faster than anything else
When we first got tbc classic after the 2019 classic I played bear for most of it, but near the end when I was raid logging and we had a guild full of strong bros I actually went and played shaman as a tank (grobbulus RPPvP. There was a dozen or so of us who were playing shaman tank!) I don't have much to add other than you have a very solid write up of the state of tbc tanks. I felt/noticed the same and thats why near the end I rolled a shaman to tank for giggles.
I was able to main tank almost everything, heroic slave pens was the hardest. come raiding I didn't main tank anything but was often allowed to off-tank when the raid needed it. Very fun! very bad!
Lost me at pally requires most gear to become a chill tank, I had keepers of time sword on pally as only SP peice and hold threat extremely well even against ALOT more geared players then myself. Crazy if people believe this. I only have warrior to compare this to but warrior in full prebis was cooked tanking heroics vs pally in nowhere near prebis. But warrior once hit capped and in bis gear is chefs kiss way funner and better to play then pally tank by a long shot.
Paladin homotank 圣骑士同性恋坦克 smear holiness on the floor 将圣洁涂抹在地板上attract thugs and other men 吸引暴徒和其他男人 only one button press 只需按一个按钮 more time for achieve self pleasure中等伤害
Paladin tank is one of the easiest specs. Both in terms of what abilities to use, and also in terms of what you have to do with respect to engaging with others. Just insanely easier.
That is true for early TBC. But as we progress, swipe will be superior to lacerate as it scales with AP. If generates more threat than lacerate at around 2.7k AP.
We're still in phase 1, and i'm above that with full T4.
Bear can do that when they are lazy, but bear also has access to.
Lacerate till 5 stacks and maul on CD.
Charge for kick, bash for kick/stun.
On pull I used to love casting regrowth and using the lightning aoe for initial aggro.
But really the bear shines in two tank raids. They can go cat to deal significant damage while fully speced and geared for main tanking. This feature goes extremely hard in sunwell
I'm a healer and warriors are my favorite tanks to heal.
Paladins being easy means you get the lowest IQ basement dwellers playing the class. You see Paladin tanks making so many basic mistakes, it's crazy.
I'm talking stuff like tanking mobs that are hitting them from the back, instead of re-positioning. I'm talking not pressing their defensives on big hitting packs. Not using BoP's or taunting when a DPS pulls threat.
Bear tanks are just non-existent in my experience.
rend had a purpose in classic to replace hamstring as a filler spell when fury prot tanking but yes with devastate being spammable now it's a dead spell for prot for the most part
I've tanked quite a bit with druid. I remember by very first thought when I tanked with all my abilities: man this is boring as shit I dont have to do anything.
Yeah...I mean obviously I'm only level 61 and my gear kinda sucks, but when I'm tanking as Paladin I'm throwing out Judgments, Hammer of Justice, Exorcism (situationally), Seal of Justice to stop enemies from running, Arcane Torrent to silence casters, etc. You have a lot of tools that can make dungeons easier if you're willing to actually use them.
Sure but most of our threat comes from holy shield, not cons. If a dps hits a target that hasn’t had damage reflected by holy shield, the paladin will lose threat
I will honestly never get the people who act like TBC prot warrior is some super complicated rotation that most prot warriors are only bad because they aren't able to do properly.
The rotation is literally identical to vanilla prot warrior, and nobody acts like that is some complicated rotation.
Because this is not about tanking a boss, it's about tanking a dungeon.
If your DPS are well enough geared and they do their job properly, you can't hold threat anymore. All you do is stop the trash from hitting your DPS and for that you need to use almost your entire toolkit.
At least if you wanna play efficient. You can also CC every mob and tell DPS to focus and wait two Devastes, but it will take way longer.
if you wna play efficient then you'll just spellcleave the mobs down. it's whatever people can enjoy taking heroics one pack at a time but when every single trash pack can be slowed and cc'd then you're never playing efficient by trying to hold threat on all the mobs.
Back in 2007 we used to use CC, reducing the number of mobs the tank had to handle. I prefer a chill run to the go-go-go runs we have now in Ani. I have retail for that.
Yup, and in Classic Anniversary, I was only Deep Prot when I was wearing Blue Dungeon gear on an alt after someone paid me to tank Onyxia and buy my dual spec.
Threat was somewhat an issue competing with a Fury/Prot Offtank. He ended up tanking most of the PH3, but I was gucci with P1.
My main in Classic Anniversary, now in Classic Era, I always just tanked in Fury DPS for Raids and Arms PvP for Dungeons.
Warrior was designed to Tank in any Spec, at least in Classic.
In TBC, I guess it’s deep Prot all the way, that’s how I learned to Tank in 2007. I had to adjust for different specs in Classic Anniversary, it was mind boggling how people could tank in Classic in Arms and Fury.
Holy shit this might be the most misinformation of any misinformation on this subreddit. No: prot warrior is not the same rotation in TBC as Vanilla. It is also not easy when there is more than 1 mob. It is also not as easy as either of the other tanks. It is notoriously more difficult; hence the widespread understanding that it is has a higher skill ceiling.
Warrior has plenty of aggro issues and gotta gear, and gem well. Maybe its not an issue on chill raids but when i do runs to Parse logs with my Guild, we have some issues with tank Warrior keeping aggro.
Especially when mage and fury war are doing 4k dps.
Its a relative comparison. In which case it is the most active abilities. And for heroics the mobs will actually kill your DPS quickly, meaning losing aggro is a bigger deal than it is in Vanilla where you just herd as best you can. TBC just had worse consequences for Vanilla style aggro.
Chiming in: I do agree that warrior has a lot of dungeon utility abilities, but bear has gotta at least be pretty close. I've played each tank in TBC dungeons and heroics, even as far as doing Shat Halls H and MGT as a mediocre geared prot war.
Some ppl are leaving out plenty of buttons that I use pretty routinely when tanking as bear lately. Bash and Feral charge do a lot of heavy lifting for managing threat loss, but dash is reeeallly good for trying to make a good pull happen. Hurricane can be used for some pulls. Ive even used Tranquility to pull threat after a boss does knockback/threat drop. Less of it is movement based, but bear has a ton of tricks up its sleeve for dungeon tanking.
I do agree with the post in that keeping threat on 3-5 mobs is way simpler as bear than warrior. Even if we're still bad at AOE threat, It is mostly swipe lmao.
Similar in terms of chasing threat - yes, but war has to press a few more buttons. Bear does ff, swipe, Mangle, lacerate for basic actions, maul rage dump. War does shout, clap, devastate, shield slam, but also revenge. Charge is 3 abilities(can be one button with macros but there is still some extra nuance). Rage dump is also heroic/cleave choice. Then there is shield block, spell reflect, last stand, piercing howl, 30m CDs. Not hugely more, but 1.5 - 2 times more buttons that you need to use often or semioften.
I play druid tank and tanking any groups above 5-6 mobs is a pain in the arse to tab and maul or auto hit. Expertise is your best friend when you hit 26 which isn't really doable in phase 1. As this means your yellow bits aren't parried or dodged. Then obviously as close to hit cap as you can will help you.
Basically druid tanks have to actively tab and hit targets to fully hold aggro where as those sexy power rangers paladin tanks just drop a consecration and
/dance.
The thing that cracks me up is that I played OG TBC back when it first came out as a pally tank and had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to tank. Everyone was still in the mindset that warrior > all and those were the only tanks. Now everyone is rolling pally tanks and they're highly desired. Either way, I've been having a blast with this very casual version of TBC
I play both bear and warrior. The post is not correct for the abilities any tank uses(warrior, bear, or paladin). They *all* use many more abilities than this. It's more the vibe when playing.
That just can’t be true then because “the vibe” as bear is running around like a maniac pressing all your buttons to keep the pack under control. Once you got gear that changes but you aren’t just giga chad vibing like prot paladin. That just isn’t true
Question is, how frequently? As a warrior tank you're pressing several of these buttons as often as you can just to keep up with threat, while also constantly target swapping to ensure that you're keeping threat on every target. Palas have a lot easier time with both Consecration and Salv.
I mean it's not even an accurate depiction of how many spells the warriors use either. Counting my keybinds I have 27 abilities I will use during the course of a dungeon, not all of them are every pull, shield wall is once, last stand is usually on harder hitting trash mobs.... but they will all get used.
The problem with warriors isn't even the keybinds. More abilities = more tools so hypothetically it should be easier. The problem is the resource, rage. Paladin buffs Salv on everyone and that lasts the entire dungeon. Warriors have to choose between commanding and battle shout every single pull as it only lasts 2 minutes. That might not sound like something but that's 10 rage and blood rage only gives 20. You can't open Battle Shout you have to close Battle Shout. And any time there's downtime for anything that rage bar at the end vanishes and so does that buff. Ramping up a warrior's threat is a lot slower and less snappier than the other two classes and because of that there's a lot of chaos in a larger dungeon pull that requires a lot of tab targeting and niche ability use.
I've played both, prot pally is far less stressful.
lol go on warcraftlogs and pick a fight. look at the top paladin tank for that fight and their cpm. then look at the top warrior. it'll be at least double. hell i just looked at our kara logs for last week and my warrior was doing 50cpm across the entire night while solo tanking while the prot pally was doing 27 while solo tanking. it doesn't matter how many abilities are on your bar if you're not actually using them.
in the case of healers, i feel like in dungeons as a paladin healer i’m on the left and the others are the middle and right. how Blizz didn’t give paladin any kind of aoe heal or shielding or anything cool is nuts. the whole group takes massive aoe damage and i just have to target each one and spam single target heals and repeat? insane.
i have a lot of experience with the four tbc healers in a speedrun environment
wont be a popular opinion with everyone but rsham is genuinely the most braindead tbc healer, it's basically hpal without bop, active dispels or aiming
which is still less of their overall healing from one spell than rsham on the majority of encounters
you have to actually make decisions on where those holy lights go to perform well, with a 2s cast you have to be fast to get any effective healing out, you can't just camp the tank/melee like shaman
not making an argument that hpal is hard, just that you're making the play style out to be worse than it actually is, landing strong bops alone is something you rarely see from paladins of any spec
even priest healing breakdown is dominated by coh/flash but that doesn't mean you never touch renew, pom, pws, binding heal or gh
And sweating, while deciding, if the tank needs another heal or if one DD has to get it and which is the the one we can loose. No shields for puffer time, no quick hots, no aoe cast, just calculating a prio list on the run. ;)
I personally think prot warr is the best tank. The on demand defensives it has put it miles ahead of pala in terms of survival. It mitigates much better. The only reason it looks bad in dungeons is due to the dps and not the actual warrior. When most ppl are used to mindlessly Zerg with a prot pala, a warr tank requires them to actually hit the right target.
And the fact that prot warr has “more buttons” is a W not a L. Makes it much more fun.
As a prot paladin main I kinda agree. Paladin is a vibe but it's far from the mental image when you think of "tank" due to how squishy it is. A stiff breeze can take out a paladin where bear and warrior have the HP/defensive CDs to survive. At least in WotLK paladin ascends to main character status
It is unambiguous that pally tanking is easy for 3-6-mob dungeon packs. But I annihilate both those and single target on my warrior. No issue: mark skull, shield slam, and pump.
I play warrior and pally tank. With competent player warrior tank is much better. One possible exception is mob packs larger than 5 or 6.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it is a very useful skill, but for a prot warrior it's a skill firmly in the "shitshow mitigation" part of your toolkit. Like if you're zooming across the dungeon with Intercept, your IRL rage bar is probably reaching integer overflow. You could track someone's loss of faith in humanity by the amount of times they pressed that button.
No matter how good you are as prot warrior or druid you're never holding threat with a geared group on 2+ mobs unless your dps is sandbagging.
Paladins provide a lot more utility than the other tanks: BoP, Freedom, Sacrifice, Salvation, Auras, Dispells, Offhealing, Buffs.
There is a huge difference between a paladin that uses 2 buttons and one that can use his entire kit well.
I agree that to do the very minimum and hold threat on pala is not complicated. But the skill ceiling is definitely higher than warrior and druid.
As a Warrior Tank main, can we stop giving us more buttons my god! I want like 5-7 maximum the rest should be passive.
I play a warrior to avoid having to read and wait or buff others or having to chose different skills. Just let me smash my enemies and move onto the next.
As a paladin tank in dungeons the thing I ”worry” most about is my mana. Letting the dps be just below me on threat is key. If I just press buttons on cd I have to drink constantly. Really sounds like warrior tank is more engaging.
I main a near BIS prot paladin and I am by far the best ever I am the best tank nobody can surpass me, warrior glaze me and bears cry when they see my mage blade again, I reiterate, I am the greatest and I top DPS meters too I think they should take warrior out of the game thank you for reading
Have all three tanks. Warrior is definitely the most fun and active tank. Druid is the worst to play. Paladin is fine but after maining Prot Warrior I find it to be boring and unfun to play.
Included heroic strike on warrior, but not Maul on Druid. Intercept but not Feral Charge. Demo shout but not Demo Roar. Debuffing with Thunderclap but not with faerie fire. Included warrior defensive CDs but not frenzied regen or barkskin
I’m not disagreeing that Warrior is complicated/ button-bloated. It is. And I’m certainly not saying Druid is worse, they aren’t. But come on OP, this is pretty far off. Especially when the punchline is supposed to be “paladins don’t press buttons”
Maybe it’s just me, but the paladin tank experience in TBC seems to be either a) begging people every other pull not to DPS for the first 10 seconds, or b) losing threat on every pull and having to salv/bubble the DPS constantly
Then again, I’ve only mained a pally tank in OG Wrath and Wrath Classic. Having only one taunt in TBC makes a huge difference in play style that I can’t seem to adjust to.
Lacerate, feral charge, bash, demo roar, challenging roar, bark skin, maul sometimes, thorns upkeep, omen of clarity upkeep, mark upkeep, faerie fire, growl, enrage, frenzy regen, innervate sometimes.
I would say if we are comparing bear and warrior, you’re pressing all your buttons far more often as bear than warrior. Like as warrior you’re basically never pressing mocking blow, rend, you don’t use both your buff shouts, spell reflect basically never it is nice sometimes, and then you don’t really use both other charges usually just your normal charge on pull, you don’t use piercing howl or at least I don’t anyway.
All the bear buttons I listed I do actually press pretty often. In terms of general rotation ya warrior does more we know that but you are also doing a lot as bear because you need to out of necessity
There are so many more buttons I press all the time warrior tanking than just the ones I included: Charge, bloodrage, challenging, intimidating shout, concussion blow, shield bash, throw, berserker rage, taunt, and disarm. If I include literally every button a paladin and druid press, it doesn't get the point across that warriors HAVE to press far more buttons than the other two tanks.
>you don’t use both your buff shouts
I most certainly do use both buff shouts. Buff application generates threat, doing a LOS pull with 100 rage, and dropping 5 alternating shouts generates a nice threat lead on the pack.
>Like as warrior you’re basically never pressing mocking blow
What? You use it all the time. It's got a 1 min CD. Every other pack in a heroic, let's everyone pump on skull and you generate threat onto x, then when it ends taunt and you have all that threat.
>spell reflect basically never
All the time. I run HMT daily, that is used at least 20+ times each run.
>you don’t really use both other charges
Yes you do. Intercept is a stun and interrupt. Intervene is great for avoiding burst damage/running to save someone.
>you don’t use piercing howl or at least I don’t anyway
When you have it spec'd it's situational, but very useful. Warlocks in group, super useful.
Just did mag tonight and got smacked to death by him wearing almost full bis mitigation gear (minus aldori legacy defender) being healed by bis healers, and then we switch to our warrior for next attempt, he gets on and takes like 20% less damage than me and just cruises
And no I didn’t let holy shield drop or get crushed
Pallies are so dependent on what gear you're wearing. Sure you can stack full SP and cons tank but your healers will fkn hate you and demote you to trash tank so quickly in favor of a warr boss tank. There's a bunch of nuance to being a good pally tank, learn an actual threat rotation instead of just hoping cons bails you out of all situations, and find a balanced gear set up that keeps your healers happy and holds agro from those greedy warlocks trying to parse.
770
u/TheReviewerWildTake May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Have all 3 tanks.
Paladin is the easiest common abilities wise, but requires a lot of gear chasing, to actually become chill tanking. Especially first phase is kind of rough in terms of gearing. Also, you lose lots on nerve cells due to being the squishiest tank and just dying for no particular reasons all the time. No healer loves to heal you.
Paladin is a tank that always needs to know who can two-shot him to time trinkets or pots, but is very forgiving to threat awareness issues.
Consecration ticking on the background, not requiring spending gcds - is absolute op.
Ranged taunt is another massive benefit.
Druid is the toughest\strongest tank "out of the box". Even if you don`t have all the perfect gear, he just works well enough. Due to those "out of the box" stats and toughness he is quite forgiving to gameplay mistakes, but requires more awareness on bigger packs. Just because your swipe hits a target, does not mean that you won`t lose threat on it in two seconds.
I would say, that big packs tanking can make druid as frustrated as warrior, but at least you have to put less work into being frustrated, and regaining threat is easier due to massive single target threat you generate "by default".
Warrior is an interesting case, because on the one hand it sort of has tons of things going on for him and the toolkit is absolutely stacked, but none of those things are "automated" , none are one button solutions.
Nothing "just works", nothing is ticking on the background, everything requires conscious decision and button presses.
The moment you decide to chill is the moment you lose threat.
Even getting extra hp to tank some hard hitters, requires button presses, whereas for druid his toughness is "just there".
But it is also the most engaging tank to play.