TBH, Warriors are kinda lucky that they aren't good at anything else when they spec prot.

If that weren't the case and they were able to put out somewhat decent dps with devastate, I would have easily replaced the majority of our Prots as the first or second tank on virtually every encounter that doesn't have some stupid resist gear requirement.

But as it stands, we have 4 prot specced warrior (i don't even know why as all but one basically hate the spec) so I, and our other feral, for the most part DPS on encounters even when we are clearly a better choice to be MT or OT. Kinda a downer to have to waste extra time on stuff to cater to the massive amount of wasted raid slots on Prots though.

In all honesty? Not really. This is pretty much rehashing what just about everybody already knows: Protection Warriors are the undisputed kings of progression tanking and not much else, Feral Druids are great right now but plateau too early, and Protection Paladins are that guy who tries to make a Starship Enterprise with his hands when you're playing Rock Paper Scissors (also, trivial content). And, as always, there are some folks that are paranoid about losing their deeply entrenched raid role, no matter how implausible it might be given the current mechanics.

The only real redeeming discussion point I can think of is the promise of crushing blows being changed in some fashion, in the indeterminate near or far future (possibly when they implement player housing and Hero classes?). But even that's just wild speculation.

Blizzard has made some effort to enforce protection warrior tanks as the top dog, going about fixing things when they are off balance.

And this probably won't go anywhere useful BEEF, sorry about this all.

No, I really don't. When I was in beta I thought this type of discussion was pseudo-constructive. 8 months and 6 raid instances later... I don't think anything more can be said on the issue.

That's the sort of opinion that is really amazingly unhelpful, and the sort of thought a thread like this should be good at poppting.

Fact: Right now, Paladins have serious issues with tanking anything significant past 5mans and Karazhan (and even some of Karazhan).

So you conclude that tanking 5mans and some of Karazhan is all Paladin tanks are meant for...

Which doesn't make sense, since distinctively "pallytank" items and item recipes have dropped in the Black Temple, of all places.

More classes able to fill the MT role is good because

a) Some druids and pallies want to MT raid content (and for some reason telling them "If you wanted to main tank you should have rolled a warrior" irritates them)
b) Some guilds do not have access to competent warriors (but may have competent druids or pallies)
c) It makes things more interesting

(Blizzard has also said, at various times, that they want druids and paladins to be viable tanking choices. They've also said that they want warriors to be the primary tanking choice. Blizzard communication at its crystal clear finest.)

The problem with the MT role is that there's only one. There is no progression healing class nor any progression DPS class but of course these roles have multiple people doing them and benefit from a whole mess of synergies. For tanking, well, there's just one tank (even when there's multiple tanks in an encounter each one tanks alone - they don't work together to control and mitigate incoming damage, they just each tank their own mob).

True balance may be impossible, but making each class marginally superior at a certain kind of encounter (fast-hitter versus pure physical versus everything else, for example) such that while one class can tank everything at progression level, each class would be preferred for certain encounters does not seem beyond the realm of possibility.

Mostly I agree with Lord Beef though.

If the tanking classes are equal and the resto druid has a decent tanking set, then you can fairly quickly re-progress through the content with a tank who knows the encounters (and your strats) even if he's not familiar with the tanking role and your most exceptionally geared tank. The division of item classes between Warriors and Druids, and the division of desireable stats between Warriors and Paladins, for that matter, makes it at least somewhat possible to gear up multiple tanks to fill the main tank role simultaenously where it would not be possible with only Warriors as your tanking choices.

Besides that, it very simply gives you a larger player pool to work with. There are a lot of Warriors out there, but there are definitely more Warriors and Feral Druids/Protection Paladins than Warriors alone. This limits your recruitment pool.

The first problem is that it is a huge deterrent to even allowing other tanking classes. Sure, they might get the job done - they may even have advantages in some areas - but why have a Protection Paladin in your raid when you can have a Protection Warrior fill the role? I usually play Holy, but I've been Protection due to a greater need for tanks than for healers in our recent Karazhan runs - the AOE pulls have never gone smoother, Moroes lands nary a crush, etc. Is it worth having a Protection Paladin specifically for Moroes and the AOE pulls? Obviously not. Is it worth having the Protection Paladin to help with those pulls if he's pulling his weight as a MT/OT? Yes.

We're in a situation right now where guilds like Death and Taxes bring four Protection spec'd Warriors to their raids. Why don't they replace one or two with Paladins or Feral Druids? They feel that it would be a waste of time (and gear) to do so. If their MT were hit by a truck, one of those Protection Warriors would be able to step up and MT - why should that only be true for Protection Warriors?

There is an abundance of useful Warriors abilities for tanking - fear immunity, disarm, shield wall, last stand, spell interruption, spell reflect, etc - there is no need for them to also have substantial mitigation/HP advantages over other tanks. I dread tanking Heroics in spite of having fairly good gear because I lack Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout. Now, I will freely say that these are situational. There are many fights where the tanks don't pop Shield Wall or Last Stand at all. Still, the only advantages that other classes have over Warrior tanks (apart from perhaps Feral Druid flexibility) are situational. More threat is always helpful, but not always a gamebreaker.


Paladins are reasonably good tanks, provided that there is no need for high mitigation. Against Moroes, Paladin tanks shine - completely uncrushable, they easily block the Gouge, and they put out nice threat numbers, unimportant as that is for that fight. Against Prince, Paladin tanks are comparable to Warriors primarily because Paladins are extremely unlikely to lose their uncrushable status to a Flurry. Against High King Maulgar, Paladin tanks are generally insufficient - it is trivial for a Warrior to exceed the hitpoint and armour pools of a Paladin with comparable gear, Defensive Stance gives more reduction than the talented Paladin equivalent, etc. They shine for AOE tanking, which works well in the post-BC world of five mobs or more in a pull, but they lag seriously behind both of the other tanking classes for mitigaiton, which makes them rather unsuitable for tanking the majority of high-end content.

Several Blizzard statements have described the Warrior as a DPS/tanking hybrid.

This is not about "Paladins/Druids must be better than Warriors in every way" This is about whether or not Paladins and Druids should be able to compete with Warriors as tanks for the majority of encounters. Blizzard has said that they should, but the current state of the game penalizes those who use non-Warrior tanks to such an extent that Warriors are generally considered the choice for MT. You don't think that it's silly to have only one class that can fulfill a role at all? For example, if Rogues dealt easily five times as much damage as every other class and did not generate threat - no one would say "Well, Rogues are a pure class..." The tanking difference is not nearly that large, but it doesn't need to be. The difference between a 10% increase in DPS and a 10% increase in tanking ability/utility (particularly mitigation)...well, it's the difference between flasking your tank and flasking the raid. Which of these is more commonly the dealbreaker?

Edit:
In all likelihood, this will degenerate into the same useless "Well, other people should be able to tank too" "No, Warriors should be the only tanks" flamebait thread that occurs over and over again at the official forums...and that's assuming that you don't think that it already has.

While I question the extent of your laundry list (I mean, come on - are shield bash, disarm, and spell reflect really the things that get warriors picked over paladins for tanking?), there are certainly some very clear warrior abilities that give them huge advantages in the tanking arena.

Shield Wall and Last Stand:

Part of the problem is that other consumables - potions, healthstones, etc - simply don't have enough oomph when it comes to tanking anymore. When you take a nasty shatter, healthstones and potions can put your HP up to where it would be after a normal shatter. When you take a nasty hit from Gruul, a healthstone and a potion (heck, you probably can't even potion, you're chugging stoneshields) cover what, maybe 1/2 of the damage of a single hit? Hardly even touching the 2-3 back-to-back hits/crushings that you're trying to respond to. And, of course, druids can't even potion at all.

Last Stand and Shield Wall wouldn't be nearly as impressive if they weren't essentially the only emergency buttons left in the tanking game. I think it was Gurgthock who posted in another thread that Stoneshields should be changed to mini-Shield Walls anyway, since chain-chugging them is stupid...that's a great idea, and assuming it makes an effective choice for extending your survivability vs. physical damage (i.e. quite a bit better than a super healing potion), would go a ways towards helping paladins.

This is certainly part of the problem as well - everything has a need for high mitigation nowadays. Even looking back at Karazhan, most of the fights in there, when geared appropriately, are pretty strict tank checks - Moroes hits like a truck, Maiden has a rather long Repentance which disables at least some of your healers, etc. Curator's about the only fight I tanked for the first time where I definitely felt like 'hey, the rest of the raid's being checked for a change.' Aran too, I guess. And of course, the introductory 25-man encounters are definitely tank gear checks.

On the other hand, though, you have to question what to do about this. No one really wants to tank non-stressful, low-mitigation-requirements ALL the time. Just bump up paladin mitigation, and throw them Paladin Stand and Holy Wall? What's the difference between the two classes, then?

Yeah, this strikes me as a rather obvious imbalance that paladins need some help with - give Seal of Justice an attack speed reduction component, or maybe tweak Avenger's Shield into something else. Won't really help their raid tanking game any - since presumably you could have other debuffers there - but it's holding them back a lot in small group content.


Anyway, without going into more details, I agree with a lot of what you have to say.

Like I said in my original post: I don't think the status quo is really desirable for anyone. Druids and Paladins deserve a shot at tanking raid bosses as well, and Prot specced warriors who aren't tanking shouldn't be automatically swapped out until the next fight that requires 4 tanks comes up.

Lol. Hopefully people have had some time at this point to put it into perspective. Of course, scrolling up, you may be right.

Yeah. What I was trying to communicate with the laundry list there is that Warriors have a wide variety of abilities that neutralize/minimize boss abilities - a Warrior is a much better tank for Mag channelers, a Warrior is a much better tank on Julianne, a Warrior is a much better tank on Attumen, etc. It's not as pronounced as the all-too-common dragon-style "Fear Ward, Warrior, or GTFO," but it is a serious irritant that is rarely seen in reverse. Apart from differing aspects of mitigation, there are very few encounters where you would explicitly benefit from having a Paladin/Druid tanking a mob. There are a few mobs with charges that Druids are better at, there are a few mobs with touchy threat, etc, but there honestly is not a lot that just screams "Throw the Paladin at it so the boss doesn't manage to get off his 8k heal or start hitting the tank for an extra 2k per swing." Even if they're only useful for 5% of encounters, that's 5% of encounters that become far, far more difficult with a non-Warrior tanking.

I completely agree with this - and, moreover, healing potions in this game have gotten ridiculously underpowered. The HP pool of most classes has doubled, so the effectiveness of a potion has gone up by less than 50%? Outside of a five-man or soloing, I rarely bother to use a healing potion - an instant heal for 2.5+ is always nice, but it's really not that significant when you have more than 14k hitpoints buffed and you're getting hit for at least 4k.

The biggest problem with Last Stand and Shield Wall is that they're "oh shit" buttons that scale far, far beyond the point that any other oh shit button has. A 30% increase in HP might have given you ~2400 HP pre-BC in fairly good gear, but it can easily give you upwards of 5k now. Last Stand has gone from comparable but usually somewhat better than potions to almost invariably superior. Should the potions really be hitting me for 20% or less or my HP in entry-level raid gear?

That's the problem that they've run into with three tanking classes, I think...trying to balance the three. Unfortunately, in my view, they seem to have opted for "Warriors tank most stuff, Druids can tank stuff that hits absurdly hard and they're great offtanks, Paladins tank the little guys that come a thousand at a time" over a more elegant approach. Obviously, the first two are fairly easy to balance - Druids and Warriors generally aren't too far from each other in terms of mitigation...but how do you add the third one without giving the middle finger to anyone without a Protection Paladin?

Exactly. I want my guild's MT to stop being poor because every time he goes out farming, he has to make at least 100g to pay respecs to make up for the fact that he has DPS that makes mine look good...and not only would I like to tank - I'm pretty sure that my guild would like to know that they have four reasonably equally viable tanks - not a Warrior, two bears, and a Paladin who does fine as the offtank on trash and Moroes. This particularly worries me as we come closer to the point where we start our second Kara group - I don't know whether I can tank Kara if I were to go in as the MT for the second group, and I'm especially unsure about whether or not I could tank Kara without a Warrior serving as my TC + Demo Shout slave. Recruiting is hard enough without needing to limit it to "Class: Warrior; Spec: Protection"

The difference would be that they were equal on raid bosses and the pally continued to destroy a warrior when it came to aoe tanking, net result prot warriors would become obsolete.

At the end of the day, both pallys and druids offer a number of advantages and a lot more utility than a prot warrior so unless that imbalance was also addressed there is no call to address the minor imbalance in MT'ing ability that a prot warrior has over a druid tank. I won't comment on a pally tank as we don't have any in the guild, most of ours seem to like healing except one that is retri.

As far as the most advanced guilds still using prot warriors, maybe its simply the fact that those are their most experienced tanks who have been tanking stuff since wow came out and they haven't found a compelling reason that has forced them to change from their most experienced tanks just because other classes of tank are now viable?

Anyway, if you read the thread on the theorycrafting board, druids are already better at mitigating damage, so any changes should be to buff the poor suffering warriors.

That speaks of problems on both sides of the fence that need to be fixed. Honestly, though, I think that you're being irrational about this. A Warrior is flat-out superior (Horde-side at the least) on any boss that fears. He has a better interrupt for any boss that casts interruptible spells. He has Last Stand and Shield Wall - amazing "oh shit" buttons. In addition to abilities like that, right now, a naked Warrior gets over a thousand health more than a naked Paladin. (I apologize to the Druids, by the way - I use Paladins as examples because I know far less about Druids.) His itemization is far more flexible, particularly due to only needing 25% total avoidance/block in order to achieve uncrushable with Shield Block up. A Warrior can generally ignore Shield Block Rating - a Paladin needs extremely good gear to avoid that need. A Warrior can focus on stamina/armour over avoidance - a Paladin will lose his only mitigation advantage, Holy Shield's ability to absorb more attacks without crushing blows, if he does so. A Warrior has 10% damage reduction on all attacks compared to a Paladin's 6% - 16% spell reduction compared to a Paladin's 10%.

Why does this need to be double stacked? Why does the Warrior need the most versatile toolkit and mitigation that demolishes the Paladin's?


A Protection Paladin when not tanking can heal - they aren't good at it, and they absolutely cannot do it in the same gear as they tank in, but they have a limited capacity to do so. They aren't much better at this than Protection Warriors are at DPS. Buffs are comparable between the two - Challenging Shout and Battle Shout are buffs with a huge impact - you don't want anybody tanking without Challenging Shout if the mob hits hard, you don't want to forgo Battle Shout in your DPS group if you can get it.

The problem that you are raising is that Protection Warriors aren't sufficient in the DPS role. Why not fix this instead of incapacitating two other classes?

I could certainly see this argument being the reason that Death and Taxes would continue to use a Protection Warrior, at the least for their main tank. However, there are a few things to keep in mind...One is that they are using four Protection spec'd Warriors - ignoring the flexibility that you say Feral Druids or Protection Paladins bring to the raid. Why would they do this? They were certainly quick to pick up Shadow Priests, and to shift main healing roles primarily onto Paladins and Druids.

Besides that, there is a more fundamental problem with your proposal: This isn't just the old guard bleeding-edge guilds. How many guilds use Protection Paladins as main tanks in 25-man raids? How many guilds attacking high-end content use Protection Paladins or feral Druids extensively in the tanking roles at all? Even newly formed guilds are still generally going with Warrior main tanks for content past Karazhan, and I am literally unaware of a Protection Paladin tanking any content past Magtheridon. Does this seem like a situation where there are advantages and disadvantages that balance each other out?