A Tank comparison for a melee retribution team

[outdrsyguy1]

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

[DLoweinc]

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

[alcattle]

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

[crowdx]

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.

[Multibocks]

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.

[DLoweinc]

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)

[Coltimar]

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.

[Multibocks]

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.

[Redbeard]

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.

[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.