What is the "best" tank for multiboxing.

[puppychow]

In patch 3.09 (current wow) DKs have 2-3k more base HP, quite a bit more armor (up to 3-4k), and higher avoidance (via blade barrier, which is up a LOT and provides 10% extra parry) than prot pallys and warriors. Its not a theory, its a fact from EJ, tankspot, etc that DKs consistently parse lowest damage taken on fights like Patchwerk or 3 drake Sartharion. They have much shorter cooldowns on 4 core abilities - Icebound Fortitude (20-40% damage reduction buff based on defense, 1 min c/d and up for 12 secs), AMZ (16k "anti magic" bubble, 2 min c/d), AMS (100% magic damage shield for 5 secs, 45 sec c/d), and Bone Shield (20% damage reduction, 1 min c/d). These are significantly, significantly better than Paladin 50% dmg reduction shield wall on (3, 5?) min cooldown and Holy Shield, or warrior Shield Wall.

Now of course patch 3.1 coming out soon changes a lot - the tank abilities of DKs are changed a bit, feral druids have had their HP reduced a bit, warriors got some new stuff, prot paladins had some stuff worked around. So far top guild parses for hard mode bosses suggest still DKs are the best tanks as far as survivability is concerned but the differences are smaller now, and its unlikely tank changes are going to happen before patch 3.2 now (six+ months away).

The biggest issue is that shield block is not a very good tank ability right now. Its great when you pull 50 low level mobs and watch in glee as they kill themselves attacking you, but it doesn't do much when you are fighting Hodir and he melees for 18k a swing followed by 40k magic damage - woot, I blocked 1800 out of a 18k swing, but damn that 40k breath killed me. Thats where DKs with a big arsenal of anti-magic damage tools really shine. The Blizzard designers have acknowledged that there are significant flaws with shield block, and I wouldn't be suprised to see it reworked in patch 3.2. But again, thats a long, long, long ways off.

The original question is whats the best tank for multiboxing, and unless you love paladins for some reason the answer still stands that 99% of the time Death Knights are the best tanks currently in 3.09 and most likely in patch 3.1, barring any last minute changes in the next few weeks.

This is from someone btw who has a 4/5 t7.5 prot pally who was my main for 2 years and MT'd every raid instance except Sunwell, I rerolled a DK 2 months ago and it is really a lot better tank. Just for example with my prot pally Utgarde Keep - Skadi is hit and miss, the adds can do significant damage in the first few seconds of the fight to my pally, whereas I can go a good 40 seconds without a heal on my DK (this is the farm 5 harpoons and do it all at once strat).

[X-Ifist]

The DK tanks ability arent getting changed they are getting nerfed:P

[Niley]

Aside from that, the argument that "planning for such and such is bad if something ever changes" can be made for pretty much anything in the world, ever.

Tell me which scenario is more likely to happen:

1) The removal of the ability to tank heroics / raids from the Protection Tree. (Paladin)

2) The removal of the ability to tank heroics / raids from the Unholy Tree. (Death Knight)

the answer here is neither, blizzard will not remove tanking from unholy/frost or blood, and I'm willing to bet all my 80k gold on that.
Problem with pally tanking is that most utility that it gives to boxing is not really needed, wisdom? kings? don't really give much when boss in heroic dies in 20s? (which are what most of boxing population is doing now).
Even after the nerf DK+4 ele shamans, will provide highest dps boxing team for pve content. Pally only gives longevity buffs, which are nice for starting team, but not for someone who is already decently geared.

There was a thread about DK tanking on Ej, and few people run some tests on patchwerk, even created a simulator just for that one fight, DK was avoiding 70% of the damage, while other tanks were eating hits, They scale to good, the nerf is justified. I raid with both my Dk and my pally, my dk can tank one of the horseman with zero heals, damage coming in is minmal, and i have millions of thing to pop, on very short cooldowns, on my pally on the other hand, I can well pop loh, and bubble...that's it, I'm still taking constant damage. Also its funny how my Dk fully buffed in stam set has as much hp as druid tank, show me pally tank with 46.6k hp(btw my shaman is still my main).
This is just one of the examples why DK right now is superior to any tank, they made them too good for a reason, now that everyone tried one, and has one, they will nerf them down to keep them in line with other tanks, I completely understand it.

[Hachoo]

the answer here is neither, blizzard will not remove tanking from unholy/frost or blood, and I'm willing to bet all my 80k gold on that.

Quoted just for documentation.

We'll see how things pan out in the future.

And I would put my entire pot of gold on the exact same thing Niley says. It's pretty silly to think after the dozens and dozens of blue posts and news articles and "hype" leading up to the death knight being able to tank or dps out of any tree, that they would suddenly say "oh, nevermind we don't want DKs to tank out of the unholy tree". Besides the fact that it goes the exact opposite of everything Blizzard has ever said, it just makes absolutely no sense. If that was possible, they'd be just as likely to take tanking out of the Frost or Blood tree, or for that matter convert the protection tree for a paladin into a "survival" tree that has nothing to do with tanking but is more like the hunter survival tree. (All 4 of those options sound equally absurd).

Bottom line is they "could" change anything in the game - they could remove mages from the game if they wanted - will they? No.

Aside from that, people change classes on this forum twice daily half the time anyway - people are asking what is the best now, not in 5 years - the bottom line is for a 4 shaman team the DK is (for min-maxing) the best tank, overall. I also find it to be the funnest as do most everyone that has tried one (as an MB tank). If that changes to something else in a year or two, I'm sure a boatload of boxers will roll a new tank at that point (I wouldn't - people told me on this forum for a long time that it would be nearly impossible to do half the content I did without a resto shaman but I didn't even find most of it difficult, much less impossible).

I'm just annoyed at the "A DK tank might not be the best tank in the future, so you might want to roll a Pally instead" talk. This is what is absurd - as I said it could be said for anything. The future is never certain.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

As a multiboxer, the easiest tank to gear up is a paladin by far. Even playing solo at the moment (argh...GIMP) I managed to hit 538 defense not 5 hours after hitting 80. My druid with a lot more instance runs and time has nowhere near the tankability that he does. And every DK I'm seeing tank instances lately is overgeared by a fairly wide margin. I mean, voidwalkers can MT raid bosses with enough gear. Question is how far do you want to be able to progress the quickest. I'd say start with a paladin and go easy mode until your group settles down, then figure out the DK thing once your DPS/healies get more gear. It'll help make gearing the DK a lot easier.

And I'm with fur on where things are likely to go. I doubt they'll nerf any tanking on any of the 4 (DK, druid, pally, war) but I thought that about druids and it appears they're nerfing them to hell and back in 3.1 if the numerical data is backed up when it goes live.

[algol]

Don't remember the Hunter Spirit Wolf pet ninja nerf do you, after a blue confirmation post stating that it would never happen?

Repeat after me: "We don’t make promises. And when we do, we are being dumb."

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...&pageNo=23#447

Watch what they do, not what they say.

[Niley]

Promises about small aspects of the class are a bit different from changing whole class, ie implementing tank tree, pvp tree and pve dps tree. Not gonna happen. There was NEVER a change like that in this game, and they're not dumb enough to do it.

[Stealthy]

And I would put my entire pot of gold on the exact same thing Niley says. It's pretty silly to think after the dozens and dozens of blue posts and news articles and "hype" leading up to the death knight being able to tank or dps out of any tree, that they would suddenly say "oh, nevermind we don't want DKs to tank out of the unholy tree".

*cough*

Don't remember the Hunter Spirit Wolf pet ninja nerf do you, after a blue confirmation post stating that it would never happen?

Or how about the camoflauge drama in beta? (here, gone, here, gone, here, gone...etc...)

"The left hand does not talk to the right hand"

Not sure if you can really compare the removal of a pet, or an ability that never made it past beta to the wholesale change of a class tree. In addition, Blizz has been much more forthcoming about the changes they are making, and more importantly the reasoning behind the changes. That's not to say undocumented changes won't slip through, but that a major change would be communicated to the player base before it happened.

Now, lets talk about how BoW won't be stacking with mana totems in 3.1. :P

Ok, seriously though - both Pally's and DK's make good tanks for multiboxed groups:
- Pally's give you ezmode one button tanking and some nice buffs and "oh shit" options, a solid choice for a beginning boxer.
- DK's require a bit more interaction, are a bit harder to gear, but can ultimately provide more dps for you group - good option for experienced boxers, or if you want to dive right into the deep end.

Cheers,
S.

[algol]

Given the "rolling in money" status of WoW, I'm going to come down on the side of "they probably did okay with the whole beta thing" instead.

[Seldum]

Druid tanks FTW!

DK's are gay - only because everyone have one.... the classic characters rule - period!