What to Tank with

[Razman]

I currently have a 5 shaman set up with RAF. My problem is coming soon where I have to decide the set up Im going to use. Im planning on being pure PvE--Instance running.

So the question is for anyone who has run 70 pve groups nis :

Should I keep 5 shamans
Should I swap in a pally at 59 and RAF it to 59 and continue with 4 shaman and 1 pally.
Should I swap in a 70 warrior, geared for heroics (one of my single box chars)

Now Ive only played a pally to 45 so am clueless to their tanking mechanics. Ive played the warrior exclusively pve as an instance tank so know it pretty well. Know it well enough to think I may need all my concentration for multi mob pulls so a pally may be best?

The 5 shammy set up seems ok as Ive seen vids of 5 shammys completing Mgt Terrace heroic.However Im a bit stuck so any advice be great.

[Ken]

I was playing 4 shamans until I added a tank recently through RAF. My tank is a protection warrior and I like playing him. I had to group some more macros together(CL+LB, the different shocks and some buffs) into 1 macro with modifiers to get buttons free'd up for the tank, but now it works quite nicely. The tank is now level 65 and can keep aggro from my level 70 shamans pretty well. I really like it that I can now fear people.
Another benefit of having a tank is that in PvP people will usually attack the main character of the multibox group, because some multiboxers can't switch well between characters. It always takes a few seconds on my computer to switch the main, so having a tank running up front is just awesome.

I understood that the main benefits of the palladins are:
- better for 5 man instances
- easier to keep aggro with AoE
- useful buffs

The protection warrior benefits seem to be:
- better for heroics/raids
- crowd management (fear, stun, disarm)
- not mana-based

My plans were to only use the tank for PvE and use the 4 shaman team for PvP, but now I will also use the tank for Alterac Valley because he will be handy to tank the alliance at dun baldar and it will be a nice 'diversion' away from my other characters.
Because RAF I didn't actually tank up till level 60-62 or so, but it only takes an instance run or 5 to get the hang of it. I can't tell you what to chose, as you have to know what you want to do in WoW first and decide accordingly.

[Piros]

I understood that the main benefits of the palladins are:
- better for 5 man instances
- easier to keep aggro with AoE
- useful buffs

The protection warrior benefits seem to be:
- better for heroics/raids
- crowd management (fear, stun, disarm)
- not mana-based
The reason Paladin tanks are considered better is the AE tanking. Hit one button and forget about it. Warrior tanks are easier to gear since the way paladin tanks. Paladin tanks need spell dmg, some mana, LOTS of block. All and all its really just a person preference, Warriors are ganna take a bit more mircomanagement to keep agro on some of the larger pulls but paladins will be a bit harder to gear. Im going with the paladin for buffs (water shield + BoW), AE tanking, and paladins lore wise are better then warriors =P

On a side note when I said paladins need spell dmg you only need about 300 to tank kara so you can get most of that with s2 mace + 40 spell dmg.

[Naysayer]

Don't discount the ability to AOE as a protection warrior in WotLK. Plan ahead.

[Piros]

Don't discount the ability to AOE as a protection warrior in WotLK. Plan ahead.I looked at it and im not impressed. 20 second CD on Shockwave vs the 8 seconds for Consecration. Maybe I have just played a pally too long on my single box, but it just doesnt seem to compare.

With Warth paladins will get a few more tools to help them.

ATM we have :
Consecration
Holy Shield
Avenger's Shield
Ret Aura

We will get:
Hammer of the Righteous

And for single target threat paladins will get:
Shield of Righteousness
Judgements of the Just

And with the changes to seals and judgements we will be less dependent on mana

[Schwarz]

My vote is tank with lightning. 5 Shaman are alot of fun to play. My only concern is that earth ele will be nerfed somehow in Wotlk.

I can attest to the fact that almost any instance can be ran by 5 shaman. Generally I can clear regular level 70 instances in ~20 mins. My daily heroics that I run are Slave Pens and Mana Tombs (each takes ~50 mins) and sometimes the first 2 bosses in Ramparts.

[Naysayer]

Well, this is just a level 71 warrior without a healer just demonstrating early potential and how awesome shockwave is.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tankspot-news/39437-protection-warrior-aoe-grinding-video.html

[moji]

After playing all 3 kinds of tanks, I can safely assure you that any tank can be multiboxed.

For solo play, I prefer tanking with a warrior. No mana, very manuverable, high mitigation making gearing up easy, way more control than any other tank, and my favorite tanking ability in game - spell reflect. Tanking with a warrior is challenging, probably the most stressful thing to do in game, and if you thrive on it, it's AWESOME. For boxing though, warrior is the poorest choice. He's just got too many abilities to use to build up aggro. There's the SS>dev>dev>revenge rotation, which I spose you could macro down to one button, but for true multi-mob tanking, you need cleave, TC, heroic strike, cuncussion blow, shield bash, spell reflect, taunt, stance dance macros, intercept/intervene and probably much more I'm forgeting off the top of my head. If you have a group of mages or something, warrior will do better than fine if you can chain cc adds and concentrate on tanking only one target at a time. In the xpac, warriors get a few more tools to do some insane aoe tanking, but they won't get any easier to play.

Paladins are kindof the retarded stepbrother to the warrior who's been dipped in superglue. Solo play, paladins are boring as hell. The only fun I have with mine is seeing how many mobs I can tank at once. Toss the shield, holy shield>consecrate, and you've got add control covered. For single target threat, it's as hard as judging righteousness every cooldown, that's pretty much all there is to it. It's no wonder pallies are the prefered tank for mb, because they can be effective with as little as 3 buttons. And as long as you have salv on the group, you will not lose aggro. I've held aggro with a measly 200 spell damage on ele shaman who put out over 1600 dps on a boss. It's much harder to gear a paladin, you'll always be lacking mana or will be too squishy till you've got a bunch of badge gear, but once you got one settled, it's all gravy.

Bears are the inbetween tank, don't quite have the AOE capability, but don't have an overabundance of buttons. Thier survival is through the roof though and by far the easiest to gear up.

[Naysayer]

but then again, everything changes as soon as they release the 51 point talent content patch, so plan ahead rather than what is now since what is now will only last until the content patch. Will it be today? Next week? Surely no longer than 3 weeks from today. I'd expect it next week to coincide with warhammer.

[Piros]

Well, this is just a level 71 warrior without a healer just demonstrating early potential and how awesome shockwave is.

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/tankspot-news/39437-protection-warrior-aoe-grinding-video.htmltried the video but doesnt seem to be working atm

[Piros]

Well as i said earlier its just a person preference as to which tank you take. Im ganna stay paladin. When Wrath comes out Im ganna level up a DK just to see how they compare and such but I like the "knight" aspect and always have even in games like everquest.

[Naysayer]

Well as i said earlier its just a person preference as to which tank you take. Im ganna stay paladin. When Wrath comes out Im ganna level up a DK just to see how they compare and such but I like the "knight" aspect and always have even in games like everquest.You said earlier that a warrior doesn't compare to a pally. I'm saying that pally won't be the only ezmode tank come wotlk and warriors will aoe tank just as well with shockwave, damaging shield, ect. The OP already has a 70 warrior, so it's my suggestion that he doesn't drop his 5th shaman for a pally tank. Level the 5 shaman, watch and see what they do with warrior tanks, so far they are looking amazing and getting lots of aoe buffs.

Paladin's excellent aoe tanking and multiboxing ezmode tanking will still be there, so you can't go wrong with a pally if you do decide to drop a shaman. So no harm no foul either way.

Things are going to change very soon, so all the old comparisons are out the window come patch day.

[Piros]

I said in my 1st post that all and all its a personal preference and my personal preference is paladins and i said why. Paladins are getting some more single target threat utilities and warriors are getting some AE utilities and druids still get fleas

[shaeman]

When I was weighing up having a tank as a multiboxer I chose the paladin.

1). Warrior tanking seemed to require a fair bit of micromanagement. That's time I have to split with trying to interweave my shaman's dps.

2.) It takes a while to load up the aggro on a warrior. The paladin has enough front loaded threat generation to allow dps to start earlier.

3.) Buffs. Not only can you load up your threat with a pally, but you can actively reduce the threat of everyone else. Alternatively you can buff mana regen, improve armour etc.

4.) Probably one of the most important reason for me - Great, great, great class to boost with (this is with or without RAF). GIving me the ability to quick level other classes.

5.) My son has a 67 warrior that could be an alternative tank if i really wished.

That was the reasoning as things stand now. I will not factor in WoTLK changes until it happens.

Who knows - it could certainly turn out that 4/5 shaman teams might not be so capable in dungeons after the WotLK changes - but at least I've got fairly highish levels of most classes should that happen.

[Lorune]

Dont forget the power of glyphs

There is one that applies 2 sunders to a single target, and addional one that makes u hit 2 targets with devastate (or the other way aroud 1 deva gives 2 sunder, nad that hits 2 targets)

Anyways besides that TC has been majorly buffed. It really seems warrior is going to be very viable as multibox tank

[Naysayer]

Dont forget the power of glyphs

There is one that applies 2 sunders to a single target, and addional one that makes u hit 2 targets with devastate (or the other way aroud 1 deva gives 2 sunder, nad that hits 2 targets)

Anyways besides that TC has been majorly buffed. It really seems warrior is going to be very viable as multibox tankYah, Thunderclap is hitting for 1k at level 71 in that video. Expect a nerf or expect some serious TC aoe damage come WotLK.

edit: Looks like the video is fubar'ed now. Hopefully he reloads it.

[Piros]

I've done it with 230 unbuffed.

you can do it with less but with 300+ spell dmg ... you can watch TV and spam 3 buttons and never have to worry about it

[Piros]

Unless your multiboxing it. ;)

Id be to scared to atm lol where i could 6 box EQ Im having to relearn not to alt tab and click a skill lol

[moji]

....and somebody said Warriors are better for heroics? lolwut?single box with a warrior that knows how to play... I rip through heroics very fast, next to no cc, no drinking, chain pulls the entire time. I get mages telling me they need an mp5 gear set to keep up. It's also much more fun than afk pally tanking.

[Drizzit]

It's also much more fun than afk pally tanking.

Hey pallies don't afk, they hit 3 buttons :P

[Drizzit]

i don't know maybe 4 locks and a priest will be able to do heroics no problem. Demon form is now 600% of your armor lasting 45 seconds with a 5 minute cd. Depending on your pulls and how long they last they can chain demon form and we all know locks have no down time. But if each pull takes about 1 minutes (20 seconds to get to the mob/setup/pull/loot) and 45 seconds to kill the group that is 65 seconds. With 4 of them that is 260 seconds (about 4.33 minutes) so after 4 pulls you only have to rest 30 seconds which you can use to lifetap/heal and have healer drink if need be. Boss fighting might be a pain though, you might want to wait the 5 minutes after the last pull so all 4 can do demon on boss.

[Catamer]

I worked up a 5x shaman team and I loved them ( still do )
the stoneclaws with only LB ( not chain) for crowds and most bosses go down easy with 5x dps and elementals for tanks.
however, I have finally got a protection pally up to 70 and put at least the spell mace from pvp on him and he rocks.

crowds are so much easier with the pally that it usually doesn't bother me that the boss takes a little longer to drop.
For some reason I have found it easier to micro manage the pally than to micro manage my stoneclaws.

I love to watch crowds beat on him with some healing from the shaman.
nothing like running your pally around in a circle on his horse to round up huge crowds, works great in BM and when I do the sun furry attack plans.
you can't do that with 5x shaman because if they kill using thier totems only it doesn't give you credit for it, but a sinlge concecrate from the pally and 4x exploding totems give you credit every time.

just a warning though, I find my pally is a mana whore, he needs huge amounts of either mana biscuits or other such item to refill him before each fight.

[TheBigBB]

Warriors will be slightly better technical tanks come the xpac from a couple of new AOE abilities, but paladins provide more group utility. Unless you have another paladin as your healer or something, running with a pally tank giving out kings and auras to your group will make you a lot stronger than a warrior would overall. Also, the paladin's pulls are SO easy with just tossing out a chaining shield and an AOE consecration that stays put so that even if you miss with it inititally, mobs who step onto it still get hit.

But if you got a pally healer, go for the warrior if it's a raiding main. Just run the warrior in and build aggro for a little bit before DPS.

[roddo]

i don't know maybe 4 locks and a priest will be able to do heroics no problem. Demon form is now 600% of your armor lasting 45 seconds with a 5 minute cd. Depending on your pulls and how long they last they can chain demon form and we all know locks have no down time. But if each pull takes about 1 minutes (20 seconds to get to the mob/setup/pull/loot) and 45 seconds to kill the group that is 65 seconds. With 4 of them that is 260 seconds (about 4.33 minutes) so after 4 pulls you only have to rest 30 seconds which you can use to lifetap/heal and have healer drink if need be. Boss fighting might be a pain though, you might want to wait the 5 minutes after the last pull so all 4 can do demon on boss.I doubt this would work. You'd need some serious armor on your warlock even with the 600%, and they'd still have no parry, block or mitigation compared to a true tank. I'd imagine bosses would totally destroy a lock, and multi mob pulls would also. While It would be nice, I think this will end up being a pipe dream. Its the same reason thier pets can't tank heroics now.

[moji]

Me Tankadin:
Chain pulling? Check.
"next to no CC"? I use no CC at all. I win.
No drinking? Pretty close to that. I usually only drink on Bosses.

So..... the only difference is the "next to no CC" vs "no cc". Paladin wins.Honestly, I give the mage a sheep to give him something to do if he likes opening up with pyroblast.

and what about fun? challenge?

MY TANK R BETTAR!!1!! RAR!!!1!11!1one!!