Druid, Pally or Warrior MT?

Plankeye

Plankeye

New Member
I am sitting here bored out of my mind in my Friday evening class looking through the WoW class forums for something interesting to pass the time. The one thing I am noticing is that the Druid and Pally forums are largely populated with threads about how to be a better tank with the occasional troll saying the class should never be the MT because warriors are better. What I notice in the warrior forums is a large outcry about how the two other new tanking options need to be nerfed/removed or that they need a buff so they can be the default MT option. As with anything on the WoW public forums the truth is usually in the middle somewhere. I am really curious as to what our guild will do in regards to raids and how everyone else sees this playing out.

I am also curious as there are at least two other pallies ahead of me on the leveling curve that are also protection specced and looking to tank that I know of. So given the lack of protection warriors and feral druids do we roll with more protection paladins? Is there a balance? Is being heavy on protection pallies really bad as they can switch gear and still heal?
 
Personally, I think it's all about who's playing that class. Being a good tank isn't just about being able to press the taunt button so that the mob focuses back on you. Some things just aren't tauntable...like Ony for instance. I don't think that having a lot of protection pallies is bad, if tanking is what you want to do, I'd say go for it. Just might be hard when you're in healing gear, the MT goes down and you have to pick up the mob/boss in your healing gear. Meli is still protection spec and so is Fj. I don't think either of us are going to spec in anything else. Sometimes, when a druid/pally wanted to tank a mob or OT in MC or something, I would let them do it. I"ve heard that it's also a little hard to heal a pally/druid tank compared to healing a prot spec warrior. I'm not sure if this is true or not.

All in all, I say that if you want to a tank, be a tank. If you want to dps, dps. If you like to heal, then heal. We'll work with what you got.
 
Melinarlia said:
I"ve heard that it's also a little hard to heal a pally/druid tank compared to healing a prot spec warrior. I'm not sure if this is true or not.
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This can be true for a number of reasons. Druids don't have the blocking and parry abilities that the other tanking classes have, and most Paladins are not specced or geared for taking hits. This is attributed to low block, parry, and dodge ratings, low armor and resists, and also a lower health pool.

Depending on the boss and mob, a druid with high health, armor, and resists shouldn't have a problem being healed, and neither should a Paladin with the same stats (plus increased Defense ratings).

Regarding the MT on boss encounters in BC, I really hope that certain classes will be able to tank exclusively on certain bosses. I would love to see a "warrior-only" boss, that no other class has hope of tanking, and vice versa with Druids and Paladins.
 
I agree with Meli, its really all about the player behind the toon. Warrior, Druid, or Pally are all viable options but its gonna be the one who takes the time to learn how to tank, get geared up, and perfect his build that will stand out. Some people are naturally gifted behind the keyboard and it is our Head Raid Leader, Quantam's job to spot those and elevate them to the MT positions. I know he is flexible and open to Prot Warr/Prot Pally/Feral Druid tanks.

The end game is quite a bit different then the days of 40mans. For now it will be all about Kara for a long time. A 10 man instance with 12 bosses & 156 epics in it. I am sure that we will be running 2 full teams through there eventually. Then there are some 25man short encounters we can try out but it will be a LONG time before we are will get a shot at the 25man big-raids. Who knows who will still be around and tanking. We may look heavy on prot pallys right now (actually we don't, I think there is only like 3 out of 25 palliys or something) but that may change months from now.

My suggestion Sandric is the same I give to everyone who asks what the Guild needs in a class. We need someone who loves their class, loves their spec and loves to learn. That kind of person will always find a spot in Redeemed raids, no matter what the class.
 
I've done almost all of the BC 5-mans and done them with 4 types of tanks, fury warrior, prot warrior, prot pally and feral druid. Fury warrior was the worst of the lot for obvious reasons, aggro control being number 1. The other 3 each have their strengths and weaknesses. In a single instance you can have bosses where each encounter would work better with a different class tank, but most often you don't get the luxury of switching out tanks for that reason, you stick with what you've got. The rest of the group, healing and DPS then has to adapt and change their play style accordingly to compensate. That's what its all about really, just playing smart to overcome. In Karazhan we'll have some more leeway(sp??) in that we'll probably have both a warrior and pally, and sometimes a druid, available to tank so we can trade off boss fights where one is better suited than the other.

After this patch 2.010 comes out we'll have to run instances to see how warriors and druids have been changed with regards to tanking. But all 3 are certainly very viable and none can be discounted.
 
re: Druids tanking -

The main strengths of druid tanking are the incredible Armor Class and Hit Points that are achievable. It's very possible to hit 20k+ armor, 16k+ hp and have 35%+ dodge once you get into some of the end game BC tanking gear. The main weaknesses are most druids focus less on +def since we get less out of it pt for pt vs stam/AC/dodge. This makes it so most druids do not push crits off their table, although the crits themselves hit for less and also in relation to the hp, do less damage, but they are there nonetheless. For crushing blows, I'm not sure if Blizz fixed blocking such that you can't push crushing blows off the table - I kind of remember reading something about that. Either way, druids obviously have no way to mitigate that aside from just pure armor and hp. Lastly, maintaining aggro on multiple targets requires a very skilled player spamming swipe and cycling their main aggro abilities (maul and lacerate) on multiple mobs.

The general concensus is that focusing on armor+hp is more valuable than focusing on dodge for mitigation. It is however possible to get bear dodge up around 50%. This provides no mitigation for spells and also leads to spikier damage.

One other nice thing about feral druids is that for the most part if they aren't needed to tank, they can still do amazing dps in cat form. This is generally not true of prot warriors or prot pallies.

Gearing out a druid tank: focus on Stam, Armor, Agility (dodge + crit), AP, +hit, Defense. (Not the exact order of importance, but that's the general idea)
 
Well iam an hunter and i think that we hunter's at lvl 70? or before then will get a new ability to focus aggro on our next 3 attacks on a party member, so i will need to know who will be able to handle some extra aggro, iam thinking pally's just because i figure the warrior who is usually mt has enough to handle and i think a pally who can fight and heal himself would be able to the extra attacks at least for a little bit until i get the aggro back.So i guess is that when we start doing guild raids again we will have to be deciding what roles each member is doing and if there is anyone who can handle a little extra aggro if necessary.P.S. Iam halfway to 67 right now on my hunter so iam thinking i will be lvl 70 probably by middle of march if not a little sooner, and my mage mortimor is a 64 and lacks about 200,000 xp to lvl 65 and so after i get augustious to 70 i will get mortimor the mage to 70 so both of my characters should be 70 by easter i am thinking.
 
Protection Specced for FTW

Yeah Augustious, Tanks went on strike in response to Blizzard nerfing their role, this has happened accross the realms. But what has become apparent is that there is still a need for them. Samj cannot log without getting spammed to tank for pug groups. The biggest bonus for a protection tank right now is damage mitigation in my opinion and the mana he or she saves their healer because of their spec and gear. 1 or 2 extra heals a healer can have can be huge sometimes. Once a tank hits 70, he or she will not be so nerfed. To be a good tank you learn to adjust. With regards to pallys and feral druids, I would prefer to see them as offtanks and not main. Why? Because tanks can't heal unless they use bandages. If I could heal, I would be happy to play the role of the healer, but since I cant and I have left melee DPS to the rogue as they do that best over a protection specced tank.

Also I am seeing other classess appear to forgotten the basics at times, I am guilty on my mage, crowd control is often key. Let the tank (whatever that class may be) do their job to establish aggro before you open up with that uber DPS...I have sticky note on monitor to remind me when I play Puffster. So hunters, shadow priests, mages....tanks hate running around to restablish aggro..I believe Meli would agree to this statement....much easier for us to let you die and wait for it to eventually come back, but that is not good for the team. The BC heroic instances will test each class to be at their best and not just overpower our way through. I also believe the next patch is going to give something to tanks to help them, or so I have read Samj steps off soap box....my 2 cents

Samj is 62.5 eta to 70 by end of March.
Powderpuff is 67.5 eta to 70 by next week.
 
I also believe the next patch is going to give something to tanks to help them
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Yes and no. The next patch nerfs druids almost out of a MT role. It is brutal what is being done to them. The next patch gives Warriors a good 4-5 buffs that they really needed. The next patch nerfs a TON of plate gear removing massive amts of STA. This hurts both Pally and Warr tanks (more so Pallys since they naturally have less HP then warrs)

In the end it will come down to the talent of the player and the gear more so then the class. Those who work hard to gear up their toon will do more damage mitigation regardless of class. Pallys have their work cut out for them to be a MT but it has been proven across the Realms that a well geared pally makes a solid MT. With excellent gear and mad skillz to twist their spells correctly, they can easily shine in the MT role.

With regards to pallys and feral druids, I would prefer to see them as offtanks and not main.
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What I would rather see is the MT be someone who only plays 1 character and does it to the best of their ability, getting the best gear avail to them and knowing that class inside and out, weather Warr/Pally/Druid. I firmly believe that people who play more then one toon have a serious disadvantage to overcome vs one who is dedicated to one role and only that role. They can be the off-tanks
 
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ewoksrule said:
What I would rather see is the MT be someone who only plays 1 character and does it to the best of their ability, getting the best gear avail to them and knowing that class inside and out, weather Warr/Pally/Druid. I firmly believe that people who play more then one toon have a serious disadvantage to overcome vs one who is dedicated to one role and only that role. They can be the off-tanks
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Ouch think SamJ needs some Burn cream:)
 
Yeah, I guess it looks like a jab at SamJ but honestly I didn't mean it as a burn. I was thinking of many players in my mind at the time not specifically SamJ when I said it. I have noticed time and time again how a player stands out as top of his/her class, only later to see a major drop in performance in raids directly after this person has switched classes for a while. It is just a fact of playing this game and the mad skills that are needed to participate as a "main" anything on an end-game raiding team.

It is obviously something we will have to deal with as no one could ever demand you not play alts to be part of a raiding team. Maybe on A-Team but not in Redeemed. I do think that when it comes down to selecting the "main" players for a specific end-game raid, that one of the factors along with class selection needs to be commitment to that class. One class may look better on paper and in theory, but a quality player behind the toon can overcome the class differences time and time again. This was shown in TE often as the different classes rose to the top in dps and healing. Now in BC tanking will see that as well. It is no longer a 1-class job.
 
ewoksrule said:
What I would rather see is the MT be someone who only plays 1 character and does it to the best of their ability, getting the best gear avail to them and knowing that class inside and out, weather Warr/Pally/Druid. I firmly believe that people who play more then one toon have a serious disadvantage to overcome vs one who is dedicated to one role and only that role. They can be the off-tanks
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I say I would have to disagree with that. Having more than one character does'nt make you a bad player. If anything it helps you to know the mechanics of other classes and their jobs in a raid.

Anyway... since all three classes can tank, and two of those classes can heal, I think the Druids and Paladins can tank if their gear is up to the job. However, warriors cant heal, they are made to tank.

Paladins and Druids should be willing to heal at anytime in any raid, period, no matter how well they can tank.

Edit!: I didnt see Mirakle's responce on the 2nd page >_<.
 
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I don't think that having alts makes you a bad player. I definitely do not look down on people who play multiple classes. It is great to have multiple options to add to a group. I also agree that knowing other classes has huge advantages in PVP and even some in PvE.

I do think it gives you a disadvantage that has to be dealt with. Its not like the game is so incredibly complex that someone cant handle multiple classes but there is inevitable difficulties with mixing up spells, forgetting class roles, timing differences in combo-ing skills and whatnot that gets "rusty" as you constantly switch classes. I think that someone who only focuses on one class will not have that "rustyness" per se' and will have an edge over the "switcher" Again this does not necessiarily make a bad player, but I have seen many occasions in TE where a person made bad mistakes and even wipes due to this very issue.

Prot Warrior= Tank/DPS - all they can do when their add is down is DPS the others
Prot Pally= Tank/Healer - all they can do when their add is down is heal (tho not much as they have around 4-5k mana in tanking gear
Feral Druid= Tank/DPS/Healer - they can do incredible dmg in tanking gear to the other mobs as well as drop heals. They have true flexibility as hybrids.

All 3 specs are "made to tank" and all 3 have differences on what to do when their focus target is down.

Tank does not = Warr
Tank in BC = Feral druid/Prot Pally/Prot Warr

ps.. unfortunately druids are getting tanking nerfed hardcore
thank God that blizz removed all the pally PvP nerfs that became tanking nerfs from this next patch, other then the Plate -sta adjustments and the lame changes to our tier4
 
Blizzard needs to seriously rethink tanking in WoW. They made it so that pallies and teddies were viable so that you didn't require a warrior to be successful in an instance. Yet, they swung the pendulum so much in their favor, nearly every warrior has gone DPS because their tanking ability has, well, Tanked.
 
Gods_Peon said:
Blizzard needs to seriously rethink tanking in WoW. They made it so that pallies and teddies were viable so that you didn't require a warrior to be successful in an instance. Yet, they swung the pendulum so much in their favor, nearly every warrior has gone DPS because their tanking ability has, well, Tanked.
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I'm not so sure. I remember doing MC with about 6 Protection Warriors at one time. Not to mention that tanks are more needed now than they were before.

I'm a little surprised that so many warriors are respeccing. As far as them being the only tank, I say "move over and share the fun!"
 
Bowser said:
I'm not so sure. I remember doing MC with about 6 Protection Warriors at one time.
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Pre-BC

Bowser said:
Not to mention that tanks are more needed now than they were before.
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Agreed. But I did notice you said tanks as opposed to any class. Warriors specced as tanks are not needed as much as before, to the point that they could actually be a liability in your group.

Bowser said:
I'm a little surprised that so many warriors are respeccing. As far as them being the only tank, I say "move over and share the fun!"
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I'm not suprised at all. When pallies and teddies do the job so much better, warriors switching to DPS is natural. There are plenty of warriors and priests on stonemaul, yet every group seems to be looking for healer and tank combo's. Which suggests to me that warriors and priests doing what they were designed to do are an ever decreasing population.

Its not so much as "Move over and share the fun!" as it is warriors being pushed out of the picture all-together. Having a pally or druid tank an instance for you should be doable, but a bit more work on the other 4 people (such as managing their hate for dps, and throwing out more heals by the healers) and having a warrior tank should be ideal. Sadly, if you have a warrior tank, you have to manage your hate a lot more then with a pally\druid tank. The roles have become reversed.
 
Well said Aves, I agree with you on all the thoughts presented...for 5man instances and the first half of Karazhan.

After the 2nd half of Kara, the heroics, and the 25mans it is back to warrior tanks pretty much. Pallys have many itemization struggles in end game gear and we suffer for it. Very few but the most elite paladins are reporting sucess as MT beyond Kara.

The problem is that Blizzard gave shield block to warriors and it was so powerful that they had to design instances around it. They know that with slow hitting (3sec swing) boss warrior will keep crushing blows off the table via shield block spam. This is a given and so they designed content around it. pallys do not have this luxury and only with very specific and rare gear do they get a shot at pushing CB off the table. With a fast hitting boss we are both on the same page, actually Pallys have the advantage. But with slow ones Pallys eat the CBs and risk wiping the raid as our ardent defender is leapfrogged.

Anyways there is much more technical talk to be said on the issue but the fact remains that Warriors still have a place as the cream of the crop MT but it exists only in the deep end game, not in the regular 5mans.

I am not sure if this was Blizzards "working as intended" but it sure seems like with multiple classes being healers, multiple being DPSers we should see multiple being Tanks and all brining their own individual utility to the group, not one seeming so gimped over the other. I think that is one reason Warriors got their sweet HP group buff at 70. I think they deserve more utility like this, so they remain popular in groups.
 
I agree with multiple classes being able to do the same things, healing, dps or tanking. As I said ealier, I think blizzard really needs to rethink, rebalance it. If prot warriors are a liability in regular 5 mans and only usefull in deep end game, I find it hard to believe this is working as intended. The stam buff of warriors is really nothing awe inspiring when you can get kings from Palladins, GoTW from Druids, Fort from Priests and imp stam buff from warlocks. While it is nice to have, its not needed to tank and rogues want battle shout anyway.

As I said earlier, any group should be wise enough as to what strengths and weaknesses each tank brings to the group and adjust accordingly. A well geared Prot spec tank isn't taking enough damage to keep their rage bar where it should be, they are infact, rage starving themselves. So, in order to be more effective, they have to take gear off to take more damage to maintain rage, thereby putting strain on healers. The reality is, while SamuraiJ likes warriors for damage mitigation and making it easier on healers lifes, its not really helping the group to be rage starved and not be able to do those moves warriors need to do to keep hate on them and not on the group.

While a palladin starts off at 100% rage and that rage is returned to them by healers healing them. So they rarely ever "rage starve" themselves, and they can put up a BoW, to help as well. The more they are hit, the more they are healed, the more effective they become. Its backwards to me.
 
Gods_Peon said:
A well geared Prot spec tank isn't taking enough damage to keep their rage bar where it should be, they are infact, rage starving themselves.
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I think the rage Warriors recieve is calculated before their damage mitigation is calculated. That doesnt make much sense to me if it isnt. Also, you have to think what Blizzard cant do with Warriors. They have no mana pool, so the buffs that they give people are rather limited. But the shouts could stack, and they could last longer than 2 minutes... and of course they shouldnt need rage. But thats not where Blizzard took the warrior.
 
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