My voyage to 60 and lessons learned

[nodoze]

To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit torn about that. I'm not a big fan of my warlock - primarily because I cannot count the amount of wipes I've had due to the imp fireballing some random target. On the other hand, he does provide some much needed utility in the ability to summon, soulstone, stamina buff and thorns buff.

Overall I think I might replace him with a mage if I had had a druid as tank. Downside being that with druid/paladin you won't have any stamina buffs. From a stat-perspective, I think he earns his place, but I could go either way since I just find him and his imp annoying to manage.

Can you just have the imp give the stam and "thorns" buff and otherwise fade?

I am considering having at least 1 Warlock on my group for utility and especially for summoning at cap. I suspect I will be regularly be leaving my other 4 grinding team for raiding and/or grouping with guild mates & this will likely only be exacerbated once the battlegrounds are released.

I don't think fiery shield stacks with thorns(?) and warriors are much better tanks than druids.

Only thing I'd change about your comp if I were to make a trinity comp for PvE is swapping the priest for a paladin.

I love Druids (& Paladins) but my thoughts were/are similar to yours. If you were to drop the Warlock for a 3rd Mage (thus losing redundant thorns) and were committed to standard crawling of regular size pulls then I can see Druid being possibly slightly better for grinding regular packs but with less "oh-shit" options. Similarly I think Paladin Tank has some pros with some better salability due to block and better AoE Threat on unlimited numbers of mobs (with better "oh-shit" options than druid) but a Warrior Tank (with a Paladin Healer) likely gives the best overall scale-ability for the largest pulls.

That being said I hope to have all 3 Tanks at cap and do some personal contrast/compare in Classic... I think Paladin Tank gives the best balance allowing good enough scale-ability with lots of utility and likely will be my normal route. I may end up with Paladin Tank & Paladin Healer just for easy mode for my regular grinding (with the Paladin Healer giving Greater Blessing of Salvation (GBoSalvation) to Mages & the Tank Paladin spamming a GBoKings "shouts" on the Mages if threat is ever an issue).

[Fuzzyboy]

I don't think fiery shield stacks with thorns(?) and warriors are much better tanks than druids.

You are correct about fiery shield and thorns, in the first iteration of my initial post, I had changed the warlock for a mage in my ideal setup, which is probably the explanation for the wording.

Not sure what you mean about warriors being much better tanks though? When we're talking 5-man instances, I don't really see much of an advantage?

Can you just have the imp give the stam and "thorns" buff and otherwise fade?

Yes, I could. I've considered that often, but he does account for a good deal of the DPS of the warlock though :-/

[Apatheist]

Not sure what you mean about warriors being much better tanks though? When we're talking 5-man instances, I don't really see much of an advantage?

I think you're underestimating how much damage reduction warriors receive from defensive stance, block and parry. Druids have a higher health pool and more armor but they take significantly more damage than warriors. On dungeon bosses warriors and druids will perform roughly equivalently but on those big pulls while you're level grinding or farming warriors will survive where a druid would have died. Not to mention the bears have no tanking cooldowns and you can't use consumables in form. No healthstones, no armor potions or engineering gadgets, etc.

Your AE threat as a warrior also ends up being better than a druids since there are a bunch of items like shield spikes, razor gauntlets, etc. If you can get your hands on a couple of https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=22...-reactive-disk they are incredible for AE threat. Or an item like https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13243/argent-defender. 50% Block for 10 seconds on big pulls would put you up to like 75-80% chance to block, each block reducing the incoming hit by 70-100ish damage multiplied by 10-15 mobs? It really adds up.

[Apatheist]

Those shields are great but I ended up having 4 of them on my tank as they broke so damn much.

True but the threat it provdes is amazing. You can swap between shields for different proc effects or on bosses where you don't really need the AE TPS. Warriors just have way more tricks than druids and are better itemized for tanking throughout classic.

One thing I want to test is how much threat piercing howl causes. I don't have a trinity group but if piercing howl causes similar threat to battle shout, which it should because it's just a standard debuff, being able to cause decent AE TPS while kiting and taking no damage is pretty OP.

[nodoze]

You are correct about fiery shield and thorns, in the first iteration of my initial post, I had changed the warlock for a mage in my ideal setup, which is probably the explanation for the wording.

Not sure what you mean about warriors being much better tanks though? When we're talking 5-man instances, I don't really see much of an advantage?

Yes, I could. I've considered that often, but he does account for a good deal of the DPS of the warlock though :-/

Thanks for doing this thread and the lessons learned. I fleshed out my above post while you were responding as to why I agree with Apathiest that Warrior may be better than either Druid & Paladin Tanks for some teams depending on the goals.

If you are committed to regular crawling through dungeons (which is fine for many people) Druid may indeed be optimal for some people. Higher health (especially Tauren), higher innate base mitigation regardless of facing, and less buttons to press/time make a lot of sense for a boxer who already has enough to deal with... That being said other tanks, especially Warriors, can open up larger pull options with better party gear.

I think you're underestimating how much damage reduction warriors receive from defensive stance, block and parry. Druids have a higher health pool and more armor but they take significantly more damage than warriors. On dungeon bosses warriors and druids will perform roughly equivalently but on those big pulls while you're level grinding or farming warriors will survive where a druid would have died. Not to mention the bears have no tanking cooldowns and you can't use consumables in form. No healthstones, no armor potions or engineering gadgets, etc.

Your AE threat as a warrior also ends up being better than a druids since there are a bunch of items like shield spikes, razor gauntlets, etc. If you can get your hands on a couple of https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=22...-reactive-disk they are incredible for AE threat.

Those shields are great but I ended up having 4 of them on my tank as they broke so damn much.