A Tank comparison for a melee retribution team

I'll state up front that this isn't an OVERALL comparison on tanks, but my perspective based on the team makeup that I am trying out and my constructive criticism.

Many people have been doing the five paladin melee route, or the Ret paladin plus DK route for a few more buffs/debuffs. I decided to try it out and figured I would post up my thoughts and concerns over the team makeup that I chose to go with and why.

Why a protection warrior instead of a protection paladin:
<Things I liked about the prot warrior>

• I already had a protection paladin and wanted to level up another tank
• Sunder armor was a noticable increase in damage
• good tanking cooldowns (last stand, shield wall etc)
• commanding shout was a nice health bonus
• crowd control with fear and stuns along with intervene and intercept along with a usable charge during combat
• ability to break fear

The warrior was great for a few things such as a rage based spell mechanic and he did so much damage that rage was never an issue. The warrior's avoidance was also great and he had some self heals which meant I rarely ever had to "spot heal" him. I played with this team composition until my guys were about level 66 and decided to swap out the protection warrior with a druid tank instead.

<Things I didn't like about the warrior>

• very limited buffs

Honestly, that was the only thing I didn't like. The warrior was great for breaking fear, fearing mobs, cooldowns and dps. I may switch back to the warrior once I test the druid's usefulness at 80.

My reasoning for bringing in a feral druid tank was:
<Things I like about the Druid>

• Improved leader of the pack... getting 4% health back every 6 or 7 seconds from a crit was appealing since I lost some healing by swapping one ret pali to a death knight
• mark of the wild: some spell resist for nature/arcane etc along with the stat increase and armor
• Leader of the pack: the 5% crit was noticable right away
• Easy aoe damage through swipe.
• faerie fire. the armor decrease must help a little but isn't that noticable (at least compared to sunder armor)
• A res on my main character, plus in combat res.
• tranquility... it's useful since these melee teams take aoe damage.
• curse removal
• Feral charge

<Things I don't like about the Druid>

• I'm rage starved.. My spammable macro is swipe + Maul. This may be corrected over time or with gear.
• Lack of tanking cooldowns. I have survival instincts and it helps along with frenzied rejuv, but it doesn't seem nearly as good as a warrior. (this may be an unfair comparison between a level 71 druid and lvl 75 warrior)
• the taunt cooldown is rough at this point in time because my guys pull aggro. this may be because of my low dps or my bad macro. i'm working on this...

At this point in time I am leaning toward the druid. The improved leader of the pack heal and the 5% crit is VERY noticable. The extra buffs are also nice and so far I have enjoyed the use of a a resurrection and in combat res on my tank.

If you have any feedback or thoughts on this, or have a druid tanking macro you use please reply. Any other thoughts etc are welcomed.

No DK tank?

Tons of tanking cooldowns
Increased attack speed
ability to heal himself pretty well
best for when you go out pvping...

druids are sexy though.

The best thing about druids IMO is that you can add taunt to your paladin's rotations... 4 taunts = a global worth of 15kish damage or so... so it's not bad for filling gaps when waiting for cooldowns to come up. You can either taunt back the mob or AOE taunt back to you. Paladin tanks are decent for this too.

Isn't sunder armor comparable to FF? Anyways rets are mostly magic damage so it's really a moot point.

What I don't like about prot. warrior:
1. No effortless self heal (DK Deathstrike)
2. What's the point of a small health buff when everything is faceroll at this point in expansion?
3. AoE sucks with a melee team. You have to make sure all the mobs you just charged are lined up for Shockwave in addition to getting your melee position set. Then add to the fact you have to tab target around to make sure everything sticks to you. Ugh.

What I like about Prot Warriors:
1. Lots of CDs
2. Shockwave is neat
3. Charge/intercept/Intervene is way awesome

I find warriors the coolest single player experience, because the difference between a badass warrior and a good warrior is very very noticeable. A badass paladin and a merely good paladin? They remember to rebuff after wipes?

Caveat: This will all change come Cata as they way it stands now, no tank will be an easy 6969 macro. So play what you like.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shodokan

No DK tank?

Tons of tanking cooldowns
Increased attack speed
ability to heal himself pretty well
best for when you go out pvping...

---

/agree
The attack speed would be way more beneficial to rets than sunder, especially when shit dies so fast.

I have a DK tank that's lvl 80, but I haven't swapped him in yet. I'll update this when i try him out.

I do enjoy shockwave for the warrior, it's pretty awesome.

My main motivation for swapping in the druid was the additional healing that improved leader of the pack provided and the crit bonus. I tend to make my teams so they get as many buffs as they can.

There are some benefits of the DK tank that I can see, such as deathstrike, life tap, ghoul sac etc for extra health.

Multibocks: I agree that the difference between a good and great warrior is very easily noticable.

Paladins definitely have a lot of utilty too with divine protection and divine sacrifice plus some wipe protection. Blessing of salvation is a good decrease in damage and scales really well compared to others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Multibocks

/agree
The attack speed would be way more beneficial to rets than sunder, especially when shit dies so fast.

---

I thought I'd read on here that the hybrid blood/frost tanking spec didn't do that great at high end?

One thing that I do like about the druid is that it gives some usefulness to leather drops instead of everyone needing plate.

Does 5% crit not matter at the high end? it seems like it would make a difference. the 4% heal every 6-7 seconds is pretty noticable. Although when doing the math on that with a 20k health pool that only comes out to a heal for 800, seems almost insignificant

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Multibocks

Isn't sunder armor comparable to FF? Anyways rets are mostly magic damage so it's really a moot point.

---

Faerie fire is considered a minor armor debuff where sunder armor is considered a major armor debuff.

Re: druid tank. Remember to use FF and Demo Roar. Both have significant TPS value.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DLoweinc

I thought I'd read on here that the hybrid blood/frost tanking spec didn't do that great at high end?

One thing that I do like about the druid is that it gives some usefulness to leather drops instead of everyone needing plate.

Does 5% crit not matter at the high end? it seems like it would make a difference. the 4% heal every 6-7 seconds is pretty noticable. Although when doing the math on that with a 20k health pool that only comes out to a heal for 800, seems almost insignificant

---

Attack speed buff > 5% crit.

High end in instances your diving storm heals your tank to full anyway. That with a basic macro set you do great AOE threat and single target you are fine too.

I'm not denying that and in fact I'm looking forward to it, but wouldn't an additional 5% crit help as well?

For the short term I plan on getting all of them to 80 anyways and then I'll have my choice of tank (DK, Paladin, Warrior or Druid).

My guys just dinged lvl 70 last night so I still have a two or three weeks of leveling to hit 80 and see what this is like. I think I'll just have to post an update at that time once I can make a more informed opinion.

Thanks for the reply Shodokan. What you mentioned is the type of thing that I wouldn't find out on my own until later on. I appreciate it.

Quick question Shodokan.. What kind of DPS is your DK tank putting out at badge gear level or around there?

I regretted gearing my DK tank, terrible tank, takes damage like crazy and takes a lot of attention. Even for packs of mobs, aoe'ing them to get threat was a pain in the butt. Once i went to palidin tank, the sun shone and the birds chirped and all was good with the world again. I eventually tried druid and it was decent, but still second to pally's and definitely better than dk's.

With multiboxing the limiting factor is your attention and how fast you can respond on each character, why would you take a tank that needs constant attention and has all sorts of cooldowns your gonna have to use to keep him up.

For instance, when learning argent tournament champions, I found that if i took attention off my tank to move others out of aoe or do anything at all for more than 3 or 4 seconds the tank would get to near death or die. Once you play with a paladin, you'll be astounded at how much less damage they take and consequently how much less healing they need.

Pally - easy aoe tanking, easy cast sequence.
DK - terrible aoe tanking IMO, try putting that spell you have to click the ground in the right spot every 30 seconds into a cast sequence...

If you don't like pally, go druid or warrior, I regretted going dk for a while.

my 2 cents

Thanks outdrsyguy1, I appreciate the reply. The reason I'm trying out other tanks besides my paladin is that I'm trying to get just a little bit more dps or some extra buffs (or debuffs) out of my tank. The druid provides some good stuff so I was trying it. The DK provides some as well, but I feel like you do that the DK "seems" squishy to me compared to the paladin.

Conversely the warrior seemed pretty good and the utility may be worth it... I'll just have to try them all out at 80

At like gear levels, DK tanks take more damage.
1. No Shield
2 less Defensive cool downs

Bear make up for no shield with more armor and dodge from agility

I am currently leveling a warrior tank solo. I already have Pally, DK and Druid. I think the simple statement is that dungeons are such a faceroll atm that it is hard to get a good feel for the differences. On most pulls the warrior is decent at holding aggro, no pally but can hold his own. I find I do a lot more damage on the warrior than a lot of the other tanks, he is lvl 77 atm whereas the other tanks are all 80, so no apples to apples yet.
I do like the warrior solo questing in protection spec though, he takes down a lot of mobs pretty fast, so that is nice while leveling.
My gear at present is either the Tempered BS set or dungeon drops, he has 516 defense at lvl 77 (no enchants) and last night cleared HoS in a LFD group, he REALLY suffered in the Bran event with rage issues for AoE pulls but we still cleared it, group was all 77 or lower.

Actually at high gear levels DKs are fantastic tanks because they self heal and have a shit-ton of dodge/parry with very high armor. If I wipe my rets accidentally, say on Anub with pound, my DK can almost solo the rest of the fight (depends on which burrow phase my rets died.)

Just a word of warning: All tanks are changing in Cata. Don't expect your paladin to easymode heroics because he can block. It's no longer a static value (i.e. block 2k off a hit) but a percent. So you will be more like DKs and Druids. Also DKs are getting an absorb shield that procs so they are more like druids. I think this will make them fantastic tanks, but then we won't know until Cata ships.

Thx for the replies. I'm finishing up the leveling on my druid and warrior so I'll have my choice of tanks for each team when cata hits..

The beta keeps changing so much that we really don't have an idea of how things are going to play out yet, even if we are in the beta (i'm in)

This vexes me :/ I have a semi geared DK that I used as my second in my 10 man team but I dropped him and am gearing a 2nd paladin tank because the DK worries me . . . The sudden drop in HP when he doesn't block or parry for a while. We'll just wait and see, I guess.

@crowdx I can't get Donniee to load :/ I was admiring your toons but the top armory link is busted.

Ya but come Cata they have a physical absorb shield so you are more like paladins/warriors/druids. It the homogenization of tanking in general.

Just wanted to throw out that last I read about druids theyre party-wide ILOTP and its going to an 8% self only heal. So better for the tank, but your team gets no love.

Swipe also is getting a 6 second cooldown.

You know how beta goes though that could change.

Humm. I find my paladin does crazy dps as a tank. In random heroics it is not uncommon for him to be top dps as the tank around 3-5k dps depending on how AOE heavy the instance is. In raids I have never been beaten by other tanks and on occasions even beat out the slacker dps on boss fights. Trash pulls and my paladin owns. With the icc buff in place I have hit over 16k dps on trash in ICC as a tank.

Starbuck Jones, you are doing something right! I do backflips if I get 2500 dps from my pally.

I like my bear tank now that he's geared out but... he sometimes takes big damage hits that my pally or warrior don't. it just seems there is less chance of spike damage from plate wearers. I find my warrior rage starved just as much as the druid is.

I guess it boils down to how may rez you have on the team. if you only have one it might be nice to have a backup. if you have plenty then go for the warrior. I like my pally as easiest to play, bear is probably second easiest to play . I've done a warrior to 79 and i like him but I haven't tried him out in any heroics yet.

in response to the tank and a res issue, I've noticed that (usually through my errors) everyone but the tank dies on some boss fights and it's always nice to be able to res them instead of running back, so only impacts convenience really.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Starbuck_Jones

Humm. I find my paladin does crazy dps as a tank. In random heroics it is not uncommon for him to be top dps as the tank around 3-5k dps depending on how AOE heavy the instance is. In raids I have never been beaten by other tanks and on occasions even beat out the slacker dps on boss fights. Trash pulls and my paladin owns. With the icc buff in place I have hit over 16k dps on trash in ICC as a tank.

---

Seal of Command + Holy Wrath is ridiculous in ICC =D

Seal of Command is your best friend. So is Crusade, The one that double dips the damage bonus on undead/demons/humans. Combine with the double tap power of reckoning and you push into the ranks of battle action Jesus!

Limit one per customer.