In this post, I'll be talking about warlock tanks, not just magic damage fights like emps or leo, but all fights in general.

First, a tanks job is twofold. Stay alive and keep the mob attacking them. A warlock can spam Searing Pain and with Ruin (Felguard is worthless for a warlock tanking build) they would hold threat like crazy. Alternatively, they could spec Affliction and not get any -threat talents, load the mob up with dots and drain-tank.

Now for the interesting part, staying alive. We all know SL locks are beasts in PVP, but how can they fare in PVE? Time to look at some numbers.

Master Demonologist: 10% less damage (Voidwalker)

Fel Armor: 26% more healing (20% base, +30% effectiveness, assuming multiplicitive)

Demonic Embrace: 15% more stamina

Soul Link: 20% damage taken transferred (in reality, takes 20% off of the warlock and gives 17% to the pet because of Demonic Resiliance.



So, now that we've got everything that matters for tanking from talents/spells, how do we process it?

Well, 10% less damage is just straight up damage reduction. that's easy. 26% more healing is about 20% damage reduction in diguise, here's why. warlock A gets hit for 100, they have to be healed for 100, but they recieve more healing than normal, therefore, they REALLY only need to be healed for between 79 and 80 to be healed to full, therefore, they effectively only took 79-80 damage. 15% more stamina is just a spike-damage-buffer. Easy. Soul Link, an additional 3% damage reduction, but that's about it (other than spike protection) because it still needs to be healed.

Now, for the combination of it all.

all -damage taken mods are -10%, -20% -3%

so -33% total damage reduction.

-53% total damage NOT taken by the warlock.

Is there any way we can convert the damage to demon from soul-link into total damage reduction? Yes there is. Hello MR. Tier 5 2-set bonus. The demon is healed for 30% of all heals that hit the warlock. There it is, the demon never has to be healed (other than through the 2 piece bonus).

so a warlock takes -53% total damage, but can they become crit-immune? Easily. They have -3% crit through demonic resiliance and they can make the rest up with various PVP gear to get to the -5.6% requirement.

So warlocks have huge health (+15% sta, also with tons of warlock gear loaded with stamina), 55% damage reduction, and crit immunity, I think they could probobly tank anything in Karazhan other than Nightbane, unless you had a fear ward (damn Allies). Past kara, I think that a lock could soak the hurtfuls on gruul, and they could probobly tank the first add killed in mag's lair. They could probobly tank the hunter's pet in the fathom-lord fight, but that's about it. Raid bosses in SSC hit like freight trains (morogrim especially) and even with all these things, without actual damage avoidance, they could stay alive, but their healers would have a tough time of it.

Anyone see any flaws in my theory? I know it really isn't main-stream, but I think it could definately work if a warlock really set their mind to it.

+% healing is effectively -% damage taken (in the long run, not talking spikes here) because every time you take damage, you have to be healed, so really, total healing needed to keep you alive is a direct way to measure how much damage you're taking. if a warrior takes 100 damage, they need to be healed for 100 health. If a warlock takes 100 damage, they only need to be healed for 80, therefore, they effectively only got HIT for 80.

No it's not. The way tanking done in the real (WoW) world is not something you can theorycraft for "the long run" - you either survive each hit you take, or you die and it's game over. When a tank dies, most of the time it's because the heals didn't come fast enough, not because the heals weren't big enough. If you can't live to the point of getting the bigger heal, then that bonus to healing received did you absolutely no good. Sure, getting bigger heals (Blessing of Light, having a Tree of Life druid) is a nice bonus, but nobody in their right mind would trade for the extra healing with *real* damage mitigation - damage spikes is very real, and very very relevant to the overall ability to tank. And a warlock simply doesn't have it.

You're neglecting the mana cost of healing 100% damage vs. healing 80% damage, as well as healing throughput required.

tanks also die because healers run out of mana, that was the type of damage mitigation<->healing synergy I was referring to. Obviously +heal% dosen't help with spikes, and I specifically stated that in my post, so why is your post all about spikes when I specifically singled it out as a special case to which it did not apply?

Because spikes are important on any fight that matters. It's not a special case if it always applies.

Please re-read the responses, instead of automatically dismissing them because they don't comport to your preconceived notion. It's healing speed that matters, not healing size.

No, they really don't.

Give your warlock tank theory a try, and let us know how it goes. Tank all of Kara except Prince and Nightbane and I'll be impressed. Tank them too, and I'll be doubly impressed. Tank Maulgar, Gruul, Magtheridon or beyond and I'll call you a liar =)

because for the most part, tanks since tbc came out are dying to spike damage, not oom healers.

The second you get a HK or Mag crush + arcing smash/cleave, you will realize that straight up DR is only part of the tanking formula, crush/crit immunity and avoidance is the other. It doesn't matter how much mana it takes to heal the MT, if the healers run oom during a reasonable, properly tuned fight something is quite wrong with the raid's execution. If you'd recall Nefarian, most healers wind up regenerating all of their mana during phase 2, healing the MT is a breeze compared with spot healing random AoE/adds damage.

Tanks also have little problems with aggro generation, if the metagame was such that paladin/druid/warrior had absolutely horrid aggro generation as if they were only autoattacking, then perhaps some sort of nontraditional tanking class would be doable, but as of WoW 2.1 this is a pretty crappy idea and would only really apply to Illhoof and encounters you are ridiculously overgeared for.

Is this just a not-so-cleverly disguised "nerf warlocks" post?

I can't tell you what exactly kills our tanks on prince (for example), but I've seen them with 16k hp and 16K armor die with excessive speed. Whether that's due to healers sucking I can't say, but a warlock would certainly not fare as well by any stretch of the imagination. This is generally seen when the tank does die on prince, and I'm subsequently 1 rounded without much fanfare.

Ever seen a lock offtank on Leotheras? The amount of mana and spellpower you have to sacrifice for appropriate "tank" gear is quite significant and it is definitely unlikely that you'll have the mana pool to spam long enough even with chain mana pots. Aside from that extra incoming damage(which I think negates most of the healing increase anyway), you also have the problem of crushings.

Warriors can prevent the vast majority of crushing blows via avoidance stats.

Druids have ridiculous hp and mitigation, far more than Warlocks could ever hope for, even with a demonology build.

If a warlock gets double crushed by a boss, even an easy one in karazhan, they're going to explode. In addition, I'm pretty sure your damage reduction math is off. You can apply Soul link as 20% DR due to the 2pc T5, but it's mulitiplicative rather than additive with armor+Voidwalker DR. This means with an average lock's AC you're looking at something like 37% DR. No, you really can't look at increased healing received as mitigation, especially with such a low DR and no way to mitigate crushing blows. Even if you chugged stoneshields, you'd have less physical DR than a warrior in blues and almost no avoidance stats at all. You would get completely destroyed by anything other than maybe some weak adds.

Now if we want to talk about tanking something that does purely MAGIC damage, then we could talk about a warlock tanking something like Hydross with this setup(armor doesn't matter and he can't crush), but against a physical damage raid mob it's just not remotely feasible.