Tank Comparisons...again

[fafhrd]

Also, pallies can be both female Dreanie AND female belf, neither of which bears can be >=(

[bldavis]

Also, pallies can be both female Dreanie AND female belf, neither of which bears can be >=(

yes but bears can be female nelfs which pallies cant

the ORIGINAL hot race!

[fafhrd]

Bored of nelf druids though :X

[Treck]

DS is exploitable on every tauntable boss for ~5 seconds of melee immunity. Making bosses tauntable made it more exploitable than ever.

While this is true, its on a 5min CD, and its not like its without any form of risk, and will make you unable to recieve LoH.
Its usable, but really not many people use it.

[Dane]

Bored of nelf druids though :X

Go Worgen, if you're into yiffing.

In all seriousness though, I appreciate all the feedback. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I started the topic.

[Lieris]

I don't have an agenda, but, the above points to why I'm always skeptical anytime changes are made and the 'sky is falling' posts come out. 2nd expansion in a row, pallies are the OP tank again, after much 'they ruined us' unhappiness in the beginning. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy or anything. They just haven't figured out where to take the design yet, imo. When they figure out how to make pallies not scale wrong as to become OP in the 2nd tier, then, we'll see how much screaming we hear.

You either have a very short memory or don't have a paladin tank. DKs had an extended honeymoon period and bears picked up from where they left off in Sunwell. We were a very distant 4th best for Sarth 3D and Ulduar and behind bears on heroic Lich King.

We've been top of the pile for TOGC and now Firelands, that's it and each time we haven't been as far ahead as we've been behind during our darkest days so I am going to enjoy this whilst it lasts.

[bldavis]

so basically what i am reading is that the 2 best tanks currently are pally and bear

*looks at guilds armory* huh...the 2 best geared toons in the raid team are the bear and the pally tank

>.> weird how that worked out
that and i think it puts the guild in a pretty good place come this sun when i drag them kicking and screaming into FL

[theckhd]

Mel has much stronger and more detailed opinions on this than I do though.

Rant rant rant rant rant rant.

Mission Accomplished!

I do agree with pretty much everything Mel is putting forth though. I think that in the hands of a really talented player who makes the most of our array of abilities (including HS and WoG especially), a paladin has a little too much of an advantage over the other classes.

And the root problem is mastery and block-capping. My prediction for 4.3 is that we'll see a pretty sweeping change to mastery that rebalances us and brings us back down to the level of other tanks. Oh, and of course the forums will explode with QQ about it. That's pretty much a given for any patch though.

[Sabindeus]

Mel has much stronger and more detailed opinions on this than I do though.

Rant rant rant rant rant rant.

Mission Accomplished!

this made me giggle, especially if you imagine the Starfox 64 level ending screen+music like I did.

[Meloree]

Mel has much stronger and more detailed opinions on this than I do though.

Rant rant rant rant rant rant.

Mission Accomplished!

this made me giggle, especially if you imagine the Starfox 64 level ending screen+music like I did.

Theck, you're very very good at this baiting thing.

[Meloree]

DS is exploitable on every tauntable boss for ~5 seconds of melee immunity. Making bosses tauntable made it more exploitable than ever.

While this is true, its on a 5min CD, and its not like its without any form of risk, and will make you unable to recieve LoH.
Its usable, but really not many people use it.

Choosing not to use the tool when it's appropriate does not prevent it from being a useful tool. Having a long cooldown also doesn't prevent it from being a useful tool. I've certainly run into times in progression where things are going wrong and everything is on cooldown and I just want to keep the pull going for a little bit longer for some reason and DS makes it happen. I've also turned wipes into kills with it. Ascendant Council on our first kill, for sure.

Bubble is a pretty awesome tanking tool, for more than just being the universal debuff remover. It might be highly situational, but it's still awesome.

[Vrimmel]

Paladin is the MacGyver of tanking.

[sahiel]

so basically what i am reading is that the 2 best tanks currently are pally and bear

*looks at guilds armory* huh...the 2 best geared toons in the raid team are the bear and the pally tank

>.> weird how that worked out
that and i think it puts the guild in a pretty good place come this sun when i drag them kicking and screaming into FL

We're also running Bear and me in FL and yeah it seems to work out pretty well as a tanking team, you should do well

[bldavis]

the other funny thing is both of our tanks are posters on here.....

[superworm]

I have been playing a DK tank since WotLK, and my thoughts on the topic:

1) The first problem with DK tanks is the scaling of mastery. Paladin mastery scales with boss damage, while DK mastery scales with their HP (it actually scales with the incoming damage when it is large enough, but that boils down to the HP level of the tank). During progression in which the gear level is expected to be lower than the encounter, DK mastery scaling always suffers. On the other hand, DK mastery shines for outgeared encounters. For example, when playing my DK tank, I can usually finish 5H dungeon bosses with the pug healer being dead from the beginning.

2) Another problem with DK tanks (and bears) is AoE tanking. DKs take much more damage than the block tanks for AoE tanking. It's true that this can be somewhat lessened by careful planning of DS uses, but it's still a holy pain when mobs hit hard enough. During 4.1 due to the absence of some tanks in my guild, I had to tank the skeletons in 25H Nef, which was a very dark memory for me.

3) The third problem is the larger requirement of skills and experience for a DK tank. Blizzard claims that DK is a hero class and thus they only expect skilled players to play DKs. Be it fair or not, it's true that DK tanks need much more effort to plan their DS and cooldowns to stay in the same line as other tanks. This obviously distracts them from raid attention. DK tanks use cooldowns just to reduce the damage to a level similar with tankadins without cooldowns, so it's very important to distribute or combine these CDs for the large damage period, which many people fail to do. And they have to remember keeping the diseases up ( though now it's better with 2T12).

4) For 10 man raiding, DK provide too little raid benefit, and is not good to use for optimization.

Since 4.2, I leveled a paladin alt and played with her for some heroic instances/raids. I must say that she is much more comfortable to use. You just cast CS/HotR every other skill and fill something inside. The survival skills are mostly seperate from your rotation (except for WoG), and can be cast with no GCD. As a tankadin you don't need to worry about your GCDs and resources: the GCD generally only affects your threat which is not a big issue in raid, and mana is mostly not a problem. For DKs, DS is their damage output AND survival skill, and it requires GCD and runes to cast, so first you need to plan your GCDs, and you need to plan your rune usuage, as they only refill every 16s for a full set. That's why it's very exhausting to play a DK tank. And I hate to reapply the diseases evey 30s.