So I am thinking about trying the tank role for the first time, but I’m not exactly the most experienced player yet.
So my playstyle honestly can vary at times so going purely on my style isn’t gonna work out. I guess I’m asking what is the best/easiest tank for new players to the role.
p.s. I have tried the monk and it is so much fun, but not sure I’ll be good enough in raids and dungeons.
All tanks are viable except at the very top levels of the game (and the guys who play there level all tanks, to be ready to switch for specific boss mechanics or nerfs and buffs). So long-term, while you might hear that “X is the best/worst tank now”, that shouldn’t be a consideration for you.
Simplest? I’d say Paladin or Druid.
But frankly, there are four parts to learning a tank, and “simplest” is probably easiest and the least important. In order, these are:
Learning to play the class/spec. This is what you’re asking about, but it is by far the easiest of the four, and you have lots of great support on Icy Veins, Discords and guides, and YouTube, explaining how to optimise everything.
Learning the dungeons and mobs. Simply knowing where to go next is a HUGE part of tanking levelling dungeons. When you get to end-game M+ dungeons, add knowing the skips, and the boss abilities, and especially the trash abilities, and which trash mobs absolutely have to be interrupted and focused down before they wreck your party.
Learning to position yourself and use your CDs depending on what has happened. How do you pull those casters that are shredding you from 30 yards away into the deathball that you created for your DPS to go ham on?
Learning how to read and control your group. Does your healer have Mana? Are you in Line of Sight? Has a DPS got lost back in the tunnels? Do you have an overgeared hero who thinks you’re not pulling fast enough for his exalted deeps, and is “helpfully pulling for you”, causing havoc? Do you have someone awkward bodypulling mobs you hoped you had skilfully skipped?
You can “book-learn” the first two to some extent, and read accounts of 3 and 4, but those become more important as you get to higher level and content.
So while I think Paladin and Bear are the most straightforward tanks in their playstyle, that’s only maybe 10% of learning to tank, so I wouldn’t rule out anything. As with so many things, the best answer is to pick what you like. If you enjoy the Monk playstyle, you will do it more, become better at it, and eventually master it more easily than the others!
Seconding what Gráinne said, it is much more about learning how to do what. Sadly PUGs tend to lump all the responsibility on the Tank and Healer and due to this you have a lot to live up to.
Being able to familiarize yourself with the tank class you are playing is only one step on the ladder and from that sense I’d also put Monk up there as an approachable Tank to play, you got less defensive to manage cause stagger always works, ox statue is good to grab AOE aggro if needed.
People just don’t realize how much work is being done to ensure a smooth run (contributed by all roles), things like LoS (Line of Sight) Caster mobs to bunch them up together is one, knowing what your healer is capable of is also important. In general people could do well knowing a bit about the classes they play with together (Shaman will only really be effective in Dungeon in M+ if people are stacked together, this is really annoying to deal with on Grievous and Bursting weeks if people just spread out).
I started with a Monk as my first tank and I really enjoyed it, but as a new player the best thing you could do is start tanking with Friends/Guildies who are more lenient with Mistakes and can teach you.
Druid is the easiest one mechanically, but all the tanks have the same responsibilities, you just carry them out differently. Tanking is a poor role for new players since you kind of have to already know the routes in order to properly do it (not necessary, but random players might just kick you if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing).
If you don’t care about that, go ahead, have fun and don’t give up even if someone gets mad at you. Just remember that tanks have the most responsibilities in most content, but once you learn those mechanics and things you need to do, it’s the easiest role there is. So it’s hard to learn but easy to master so to say.
Paladin is best for new players.
Warrior kinda most op tank during lvling - ignore pain is just way op. But slightly harder then pala.
Avoid monk at all cost - they are too squishy. Stagger mechanic sucks for lvling. In raids and end game raid monks have different story though.
Gráinne made a very good point at the start of that reply All tanks are viable except at the very top levels of the game.
When you look at the logs of the very top M+ groups for example, you’ll notice the whole group composition is mostly consistent, not just the tank and/or healer. So it’s impossible to choose by looking at those logs as even if you pick the FoTM tank, you’re still relying on everyone else in the group being the correct class ![:grin:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/grin.png?v=6" ":grin:")
I’ll just add - from a healer perspective (someone who mostly plays M+ with a small group of friends) - the main person who plays tank is a Warrior, which is currently seen as one of, if not the worst. However it’s fine as he follows the steps that Gráinne pointed out. Knows the abilities available, the requirements of the dungeon and most importantly to me (with affixes) - when to bail out and get away to clear debuff stacks/avoid mechanics etc. As a Disc priest there are other tanks that are easier to heal (DH being one) but the inherent spells and abilities of the tank are nothing compared to abilities of the player. You don’t need to be elite, you just need to appreciate what’s going on around you. If we wipe the first thing I do is ask the tank what he/she saw to find out if we’re on the same page.
Two afterthoughts. I’ve described this before, but it was on the old forums.
When I decided I wanted to learn how to tank in groups, it was after I already had two characters at max level. Tanking on your first character is not impossible, but it puts a pretty heavy burden on you as a new player. You are already learning the game and the classes; tanking on an “extra class” for a tanking role at the same time is probably not good for most people. Of course, if you have played similar MMORPGs before, you are not a “new player” in the same sense.
When I did decide to tank, what I did was choose a character from level 1.
I then stopped my XP at level 19, I think, which was a level where I could access Ragefire, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, and Shadowfang.
I then ran the same dungeons again and again as tank until I had them down cold and had seen a lot of what groups can be like. (Not all of what groups can be like. Even today, some weirdnesses surprise me!)
Then I released my XP and went on to the next batch of dungeons. And so on.
I think I got up to about 50 with Zul’farrak and Stratholme by the time I realised two things: a) I could tank and b) I didn’t much want to tank for random groups - there was rarely any fun in it, and sometimes I got gripers in the group.
At that stage, I of course didn’t know the current top-level dungeons of the time from a tank’s point of view, but learning those was just a matter of running them; I knew I could do the job well enough for LFD, and I had kind of lost interest.
I don’t know whether this method will be helpful for other people wanting to learn, but I offer it for what it’s worth. Classes always change. New Dungeons always appear. But understanding positioning and group cohesion is something you can learn just as well at level 20 as ar level 120, and they apply to all levels.
I can only suggest for you to try couple tanks out and choose what you like the most. My preferences are blood death knight and brewmaster with vengeance dh coming in as 3rd. Note: all the tanks are pretty straight forward to play.
I love to be able to heal myself so thats why i enjoy my blood dk.
Same for veng dh to a degree, i feel like they lack some extra cooldown or mitigation. Didnt heal or play one since legion though.
Then i like brewmaster because they are really good at mitigating damage and to heal aswell from a healer perspective, also simple to play and its just fun to use keg smash lets be honest here.
Keeping up ironskin brew 100% of the time when actively tanking is the important thing
Pallies are also nice, i think they are a bit more “complicated” to play to their full potential. They have a lot of cooldowns to use. I really like their avengers shield spell its really fun.
Druids are very simple and a bit plain for me. They are fine to do anything with though. Im healing 2 guardian druids every week in my guild raids and one through all my weekly keys i do.
I personally dont like warriors, just the class as a whole so i didnt actually try warrior tank, or not much.
I prefer mobile tanks, and in case of blood dk, just gripping everything to me. If you like brewmaster, i would just go with it.
They lack selfhealing so some things you might find harder overall but you can help some on that picking different talents for soloing. And in groups, they are really strong(atleast at max level. Here and there i hear complaints about them being bad while leveling in dungeons, but the bm tanks i met i healed just as easy on my HM tauren shaman.)
Just want to make a little addendum to what Hinamori said, it clashes perfectly with what I meant with people not knowing what other classes are capable of.
Often the complaint about Monk/Warrior/Druid comes from low level or the tanks themselves overestimating what they can do.
From the top of my head Bear gets frenzied regen at level 32, which is an essential tool in the way they tank, soak damage and heal it back. Up till that point they need serious healer attention and careful pulls. Something that often are not happening during leveling (gotta go fast yo).
Monks and Warrior get their mitigation tool at around level 40 (stagger removal and Ignore pain), which will make them feeling extremely squishy up till that point. Pair it up with people generally pulling bigger groups and barely stopping will make it a nightmare for certain healers.
A Restoration Shaman (who is really powerful low level mind you) has no problem keeping the tank alive with spot healing, once you get Riptide it will become a stable way due to Crits once in a while with healing surge.
Healers like Druids and Holy Priests will suffer, druids because of the nature of their spells, mana starvation. Holy Priests because they are primarily raid healers who can dabble into spot healing, flash of light spamming the tank will not only eat away their mana but also do not heal for a great amount (because they got all the heal increase spells later on).
That is where in my opinion the complaint about BM/Druid/Warrior stems from, they just need extra attention and they need to be aware that they need to pull less than other tanks.
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