Tank meta in tbc

I searched on google but didnt find anything on that topic. The question is what the tanking meta will look like in the diffrent tbc phases.

I guess paladin>bear>warr

Paladin is the best for threat single target and aoe. Paladin’s threat scales with gear. He will require 1 fury warrior in raid for shouts and thunderclap.
Bear is the perfect off tank. Off tanking adds in bear and dealing damage on Boss in cat form.
Prot Warrior is the worst. Almost no threat scaling in chonk gear. Threat issues will become obvious with more gear on dps. Off tanking as prot is complete garbage. No rage, no damage. I believe fury prot will be a thing again. Probably mixing chonk gear with pvp plate gear and dual wielding bosses.

Thats only what i think right now. Maybe im wrong. What do you think?

4 Likes

Problem is a reliable taunt with paladin to be honest.

I would say it’s most likely warrior ST and paladin as OT and add controls. Not sure on Druids but i would never bring a druid to a dungeon/raid over a Warrior/Paladin

EDIT: I say “never” which is a lie, i’ll take whatever i can get for my dungeon groups haha they’re like gold dust

5 Likes

From my experience?
Warriors = Single target.
Druids = Tankiest
Paladins = AoE/Dungeon tanking.
Dungeons are easier with a paladin tanking.

2 Likes

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Paladin has huge Problems with single-target threat generation, as it is largely dependent on the mob hitting him. If the mob is a fasthitter (e.g. Bladefist in SH-hc) hes okay-ish. If the mob is a slowhitter (e.g. Gruul) he’s got a problem.

Combined with the fact that he completely lacks mitigation cooldowns and cannot function reliably as an offtank (how is he supposed to generate threat when the mob is hitting someone else?) the paladin is by far the worst single-target tank of the three.

As a warlock I am regularly threat-capped, and that’s in a PvE demo spec which is actually very forgiving in terms of threat, as my demon has its own threat table entry. With a paladin tank, I have to tone down my output or I will get smashed. I have no such problems with a bear or protwarrior.

Paladin is an excellent dungeon and AoE tank. He is a serviceable single target tank in a raid setting, but far from “the best”.

Imho, the ranking is as follows:

AoE Tanking (Threat & Survivability):
Pally > Druid > Warrior

Offtanking:
Druid > Warrior > Pally

Single Target (Thread Generation):
Druid > Warrior > Pally

Single Target (Survivability):
now: Druid > Warrior == Pally
later: Warrior > Druid > Pally

3 Likes

Warrior best boss tank
Druid can also do that and dps when needed
Paladin best aoe tank.Sucks at boss tanking

3 Likes

Currently top guilds are using nothing but Bears for their speed-runs. Not sure if that’s the meta you mean.

Thus far I’ve found all 3 tanks be fine. Private server players tried to make us think non-mage non-warrior DPS was unplayable bad in classic, and it was clearly not that case. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

3 Likes

Probably to little spell power on gear? That will change soon. Paladin’s threat scales with gear.

That’s not my point, read my post again.
Paladin Threat is dependent on hits he receives. If these hits come slowly, he generates threat slowly. Most raid bosses hit slow & hard rather than fast & low.

None of the other tanks have this problem. Their threat generation comes from their own attacks. Hits they receive just generate the resource they need, and it doesn’t matter whether they get hit slow&hard or fast, as rage generation depends on the amount of damage received.

So does Druid & Warrior threar. More Agi/Str == More AP == Harder Hits == More Threat.

Your point being?

1 Like

Yes that’s the interesting thing. Of course any class can tank a raid, meta is only relevant for speed runs.

My point is that paladin scales with gear better. I read something like 0.5-0.75 tps per spell power if taking all abilities they use during fight. Prot Warriors relly on shield slam, devestate etc. which have static threat. These abilities do scale with gear but very very poor. Strength/Ap gives almost nothing to damage done on prot warrior. The best stat is agility which increases tps from abilities that crit. But that’s mostly shield slam, other abilities have too low base damage so crits do not really matter.

Paladins outscale warriors in t6, bears outscale everything threat wise t4 and survivability wise t6.

Holy spells. We have a pala main tank and he has no problem with Gruul or alike. Being hit is not the only or the main option (but it helps). It’s also worth pointing out that most Paladins are new to tanking and TBC.

2 Likes

There might be an exception if the target is Undead/Demon - Excorsism gives really nice threat for those.

Please link the source of this info to me.

And paladin abilities scale poorly with spellpower, as all of them are instant-casts. Besides, paladins do not accumulate huge amounts of spellpower in any case. Full T6 is a whooping 269 Spellpower, and even for this paladins pay with defensive stats. Their primary source of SP is the weapon, and (good) guilds will hand these with priority to dps casters, as paladins are not primary tanks in any case.

We know from the private server scene and out own experiences in TBC Vanilla, that protpallys were rarely used as bosstanks, and the reason for that was, primarily, their sub-par threat generation.

Mind linking me a log or two so I can see what kind of dps-threat generation this paladin is up against? Because I know from my own experience that I almost always have threat issues when going up against a pallys TPS, and rarely ever have these issues when a Druid tank is holding the boss.

We have a Paladin Main Tanking our Gruul. He’s done it 3 times now and at no point have we had any threat issues, even with only 1 hunter misdirecting.

This was with some people pulling 1.4k DPS.

https://www.warcrafttavern.com/wow-classic/guides/tankadin-guide-playing-as-a-protection-paladin/
spell damage part
Also read it on fight club.

Page is making my point exactly:

  • Consecration: 33-35% of your spell damage
  • Holy Shield: 20% of your spell damage
  • Seal of Righteousness: 11% of your spell damage
  • Seal of Righteousness: 50% of your spell damage
  • Exorcism: 45% of your spell damage

That’s the primary problem with a protpallys threat generation: Almost his entire threat comes from spell-dmg, and all his active spells have really low scaling. Which is fine in an AoE situation, as the reflective damage is enough to keep up with AoE Abilities, but focused damage against a single target, the DPS have to either scale back their dps, or they pull aggro.

2 Likes

That link was bad since it was not even tbc, this one is better
https://de.tbc.wowhead.com/guides/paladin-tank-rotation-abilities-burning-crusade-classic#ability-spellpower-scaling

Almost same coefficients as in the above table, some actually lower.

My point stands.

1 Like

Gruuls and Magtheridons:

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/k1BRMJVTYpGmxdA8
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/vKtdj7DQbhpHAy6W
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tBmhYXvVbNrHF2K7

And tonight we have a raid with differet talent build (sanctity aura) on the main tank.

Bit of Karazan:
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/z2tayRHMNwk31pTd
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/RdCBp8GwW7QqnvyT

In TBC back then Warrior tanks ran with some gearpieces off so that they could generate rage (in Heroic dungeons) if they where raidgeared.