Tank Choice?

[jaycee]

Been thinking about which classes I want to use to tank for my multibox pve combos, and was looking for any input into the options from a multibox pve viewpoint.

As an aside, I'm running / levelling:
3 ele 1 resto shaman / tank
balance / mage / ele sham / priest / tank
DK / Feral / Enh Sha / Ret pal / ?

Now I was planning on playing the shaman combo with a feral as my tank - feral has been my main through a lot of WoW.

The caster team is currently running w/ paladin as tank

The melee cleave team: I'm not sure. Am just starting to play around with it - control system seems to work ok, but not sure how long it will be viable in pve. Don't know if it will need a healer or if I can get away with a BM hunter as last spot (LotP, JoL, random instant heals))

Now:

Paladin: I understand the tanking, pretty easy to macro/control
Druid: Understand the tanking, not too hard to macro/control
Warrior: Hard to macro/control (lots of reactionary spells)
DK: ? Only just started playing with, doesn't look too bad though.

Was wondering if a DK would bring a significant caster damage buff to a 4xShaman group, to the extent that it would be higher damage out put than a druid?

Thoughts?

[ebony]

Paladin:

good things: i go for there hold a lot off aoe and very easy to box if your starting a low level this could help as well

probs: def cap, there to many

Druid:

con: well i go for this its you wonted to hit 80 and go into HC as you do not need to def cap

Probs: they not not have the block of a pally/warrior, they have loads off hp though but still needs loads more healing then a pally in T9


DK: i woudl nerver tank with one from what i seen

warrior if i was to reroll i would make one for the fact its somethink i nerver done not as many on them on servers and not many being box, as for macro etc who cares?? i would use mouse and click them by hand as you probey be playing this as your main char (not a clone)

[Ualaa]

As far as boxing goes, on an ease to use scale:
Paladin 10/10
Feral....07/10
Warrior 04/10
DK.......03/10

Any of them will work just fine, since most of us will "drive" with the tank class, which lets us manually click non-broadcast keys, for reactionary abilities or assorted runes which come off of cooldown at a pace different from any of our DPS toons.



As far as tanking goes, when you are starting. Quest level 80 gear, a mixture of blues and greens, with minimal or no gear from the auction house.

Feral > Paladin > Death Knight > Warrior.

They will all tank just fine, down the road with a lot of heroics under your belt and a combination of drops and badge bought gear. The feral and the death knight will put out a lot more damage, once they are all very geared toons.

The death knight (unholy spec), adds the 13% spell power boost to casters, which if its not already present on the team (Balance Druid, Any spec Warlock), is huge.

If you are going Balance Druid + 4x Shaman, that is equal shaman damage as Unholy DK + 4x Shaman; more group damage as Balance Druid pushes way more dps then a DK. But if the comparison is Feral Druid vs Unholy DK both as tanks, with 4x Shaman, the DK will be a far better choice.



For the PvE team, you have listed 3x Elemental, 1x Resto and 1x Tank. A lot of people go with this configuration, when starting heroics. However, 4x Elemental and 1x Tank is generally superior, as 4x Lesser Healing Wave, and Healing Totems plus the odd Chain Heal, is sufficient healing for any currently challenging content... and it puts out a lot more DPS for faster runs too.



For the melee team, there isn't a lot of heals there. If you were running 4x Ret Paladins, with a DK or Feral tank, you'd have a lot of healing from your DPS. This is not really the case, so I'd recommend a strong tank type - probably the Feral since they can basically be in one set of gear with one spec. And then to have a second toon who can melee or heal, possibly dual spec. I really like Druids and Shamans as healers for melee teams, because of the ranged AoE heal.



Given your three teams, and assuming you want three different tanks, I would personally go:

DK + 4x Elemental.
Paladin with the casters.
Feral with the melee, Shammy dual-spec'd for when you need heals, and Mutilate Rogue for last position.

If you're not sold on three different tank types, I'd ditch the DK tank on team 1, running the pally on two teams. Then team 1, would add either a Balance Druid or a Destruction Lock, in the place of one shaman, with the other three running Elemental for DPS/heals.

[jaycee]

Thanks for the thoughts, maybe i'll leave DK in melee lineup as dps (first time playing one and want to take it to 80 at least)

[Ualaa]

The one knock on the DK, is that they are hard to macro.
Click doesn't work too well, nor do straight cast sequences.

You pretty much have to "drive" with them, or run an all DK team.
So you can observe which runes are off of cooldown at any given time.

The system is unique, in that you have...
2 Frost Runes, 2 Blood Runes, and 2 Unholy Runes.
Abilities consume/use various amounts of these.
And they refresh or become available again, after so much time on cooldown.
In addition, you have Runic Power, which is very similar to warrior rage.

It's hard to create a click sequence/cast sequence, with so many variables, that is even close to the damage you can get manually playing them.

But they are a fun class.

You get a lot of disease type effects.
And then abilities to spread disease to other targets nearby.
And abilities which do additional damage based on the number of diseases on the target.
And each tree plays quite unique.

[TheMuffinMan]

Originally Posted by ebony

Paladin:

good things: i go for there hold a lot off aoe and very easy to box if your starting a low level this could help as well

probs: def cap, there to many

Personally, Paladin all the way...

What did you mean on the probs there ebony? I was curious.

[trowabartan]

Once I started using Divine Sac in instances like Shattered Halls(final boss's whirlwind) I can't see any reason not to choose a Paladin. Easy to macro, 2 ranged taunt, Multi-mob taunt on short CD, Plenty of AOE threat, ranged (multiple) silence, HoP/Salv/Sac, 'oh ****' abilities in Ardent Defender, DP, LoH, Freedom on snares(without any brief window of squish), ect...

It's also nice that you don't have to go squish to use abilities other than your threat gen abilities.

[ebony]

Originally Posted by TheMuffinMan

Personally, Paladin all the way...

What did you mean on the probs there ebony? I was curious.

the bad things about them it costs a lot to get def capped and there is to many pallys in the game :S

[Tim]

Big fan here of druid tanks even more. They have awesome oh crap buttons, super easy to tank with (1 button for complete tanking), and they can also respect as healer for extra fun.

[Ualaa]

Every tanking class other then druids, will need the same level of gear to reach crit immunity. So by that logic, Death Knights, Paladins and Warriors are in the same category. In Cataclysm, each will be crit capped from talents alone.

It doesn't matter if 1% of the server is your tanking class or if 80% of the server is your class. Part of the allure of boxing, is that you don't need others to play. You will likely have only one plate user on your team, and that is your tank.

I would personally recommend a Paladin as the tank of choice for boxing. Their default tanking macro is more simplified then any other tank. And they have fewer extra abilities that need to be clicked for emergency.

A druid will likely have Growl, AoE Growl, Survival Instincts, Berserk and Frenzied Regeneration as extra stuff which is not used in their standard tanking macro. The druid has to choose between Swipe, which is a poor choice against a single target but essential for groups, if they go with a single macro.

A paladin will have their Taunt, their Hand of Protection and possibly Divine Sacrifice as extra stuff, which is not included in their default tank macro. The same 96969 macro is the best AoE threat in the game (by a large margin) and as strong threat generation on a single target as any other class. Unlike every other tank, they begin fights at full mana, while others need to gain rage or runic power and start at zero.

Any tank you want to use will work. But the paladin has less things to manage, which makes them easier to use as the boxed tank. And they are amazing tanks, despite the fewer things to manage.