Which Tank Spec highest Defence?

Hello guys,
wanna change playstyle and try some tank specs. I prefer defence over damage output. So which spec have got highest defence? And i mean defence most of the time, not long CD based.

This is not a good way to distinguish between tanks. Every spec can opt to trade defense for damage and vice versa. Some may be better at one or the other (or both), but that can change with a patch.

It might be better to consider if you want to be more about mitigating damage or healing it afterwards. From the sound of your post I think you want to mitigate, so you could try a warrior.

They do mitigate a lot with ignore pain (50% under ideal circumstances), plus various passive and active blocks on top.

Other tanks mitigate in various ways; DKs eat the damage then heal it, paladins are full of self healing as well. Monks spread the damage over time and wash some of it off before it takes effect. Druids dodge and soak and heal a bit then incarn and lol at the idea of ever taking damage.

Idk what demon hunters do… flap flap zoom zoom, either metamorphosis is up or they die. Maybe the OP wants to avoid that particular class :joy_cat:

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It depends. For now gdru is suck at all type of content since he have no magic resistances at all. If we gonna talk about physical damage - he would shine with crazy armor amount after stacking million ironfur stacks, but it have nothing to deal with consistent magic damage.
Considering that, gdru is the easiest tank so far and you probably wouldn’t have any problems in mid-level content such as keys up to 16-17, hc raid, some pvp from time to time. Yes, he have some DR cds, but it is a long cds which mostly is not usable from pull to pull.
The best tank atm is protwar, he have a tons of cds to rescue himself in any situation and keeping defensives all the time give you almost immortality in all types of content.
Most fun for me atm would be monk with his stagger mechanic, it’s not so great that can beat the protwar, definitely not, but i’m like it.
Protpally just a very versatile option(same as dru) so you could change your role at any time.
Can’t say anything about DH or DK atm coz didn’t have much runs with them, but should be ok too if want to try something new :slight_smile:

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I hate healing DKs though, I was doing a HoV, not sure what happened, he self-healed a lot , but stayed at about 50% health, also my heals didn’t really improve that.

I’m sure they’re good tanks, but I prefer healing anything but a DK :slight_smile: .

I really like monks, druids, warriors (in that order).

It kind of depends on whether they are a) good, and b) geared enough for the content.

An undergeared rookie blood DK will spike around horribly and occasionally just squish for absolutely no fault of the healer. A good one only needs an occasional HoT to keep them topped off.

Naturally no blood DK has ever admitted that they received a heal even when you’ve been desperately spamming them all dungeon :joy_cat:

It does help to make sure you can see their runic power; if they’re below 50% hp and have no resources, chuck them a heal. If they’re full of power, their fate is in their own hands and they will probably fix themselves before your cast ends :smile_cat:

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I believe he was overgeared for the HoV+10 we did :wink:

It’s just hard to heal a DK, I know, we can track CDs, but I can’t read their mind. Other DK runs, either my heals come before or after his, and they’re really not needed.

I would say they’re good for when you’re on voice, so he can shout out stuff, I just feel I either waste a lot of heals, or I don’t heal when he does need it :wink: !

Then you may suspect that he was a new/poor tank if he was both overgeared and squishy.

To be fair, all tanks have to be relied on to use their own cooldowns and mitigation, it’s just that DKs’ is particularly visible. Warriors hitting ignore pain is easier to… ignore.

But if your DK has 50% runic power or more, then I’d honestly not worry about him. If he dies, he dies - and it wasn’t your fault.

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Agree with all of the above. I’ll probably try out brewmaster myself, I like that playstyle.

They still have that passive where they get a chance for 65% heal ?

You have to track their RP more than their CDs. Their RP works like a second heal bar.

If you want a reactive tank then Blood is the spec.

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I honestly don’t know, I main mistweaver with all the D-F tier implications that has :joy_cat:

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True, I guess I meant to refer to Rune Power mostly, I see that also as a sort of CD :slight_smile: .

It’s just that in pugs I need a special kind of mind reading next to my addons.

In the heat of battle, I don’;t always have time to look at them, that is also what I like about healing, I’m not a robot, I need to improvise a lot.

there is only 1 tank and that is prot warrior.

Just checked, seems they still got “Celestial Fortune” :slight_smile:

I also main resto shaman, tough start, but atm I feel fine with it.

I prefer a challenge over the fotm specs!

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Like my quote said, for healers might be hard to learn how to heal Bloods; doesn’t help that there’s a ton of players that are pretty bad at it.

Realistically a healer can’t heal a Blood Death Knight that doesn’t even know how, for example, bone shield works and it might be hard to heal a player that’s wasting their DS for damage instead of healing especially in some pulls.

As a Blood main the best thing I’ve experienced is having a healer that leaves you alone and throws a defensive time to time (like sack or wings), though it was with comps and I had good synergy with that healer (was priest).

Personally I always had a hard time with shamans probably because the only thing I know about them is that they need the group to be stack but they don’t have things like sack, LoH, wings proc (iirc wings had a minute CD if not proc’ed which was amazing, don’t know if priest has it anymore), pain sup or anything like that.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about this, you live and you learn.

They also take the damage and heal themselves, like DK… only that they only have Demon Spikes as additional mitigation (and Meta on a very long cd), which is indeed not enough (rather broing) in DF.

Thanks for so many answers. Glad to see so many tanky guys :wink:
So i stucked between Guardian and Warrior.
Which one mitigate better over time?

Which Tank Spec highest defence?

A: The one you play best.

for me that is brewmaster monk…

i just play it better than other tanks.

warrior and guardian might be better overall on paper…

but i can outplay people on a brewmaster… that is what matters…

not paper.

Agree, esp. this tank is, you’re either good, or really bad at it.

Don’t take me wrong, I love the spec, just sharing this from a pug healer’s perspective.

But there’s more specs out there, some people pick a meta / s tier and think, that’s enough. Owww no, we also need to learn how to play them :smiley:

Everybody saying that Prot warr is OP so maybe that one is for you if you want :smiley:
but from my experience i feel like prot warrior is the most boring tank of them all

From a fun perspective
most fun i have on my VDH i don’t know why but it feels good to play it
and same goes for guardian/paladin/dk

Warrior is boring and monk is akward after that button bloat