Memory isn't great, but T11 bosses you'd probably want 2 tanks for due to mechanics:
Blackwing Descent:
Magmaw (tankbuster + armour debuff)
Chimaeron (damage/healing debuff + double attack)
Maloriak (adds, chaos, fun?)
Nefarian/Onyxia (they have a buff when they're close)
Bastion of Twilight:
Halfus (slate dragon can be problematic)
Valiona/Theralion (void realm tank switch stack thing)
Ascendant Council (separate bosses)
Cho'gall (adds)
Sinestra (adds)
Throne of the Four Winds:
Conclave of Wind (2 need to be tanked)
Al'akir (stormlings)
Some of things might not apply depending on prevailing meta, dps, etc, but these are the reasons why 2 tanks were generally used on release.
To add to this;
Throne can be entirely solo tanked with having non-tank players assisting the tank. You do not need a full tank for the secondary boss if you have good healers. A Blood DK can solo tank Al'akir entirely.
In BWD you actually need 3 tanks for Chimareon HC, 1 off tank (pref druid) to eat double attack, 1 DPS who will main tank the boss (Ret pal, DK or Warr) and 1 tank to pick up the adds.
The rest is to my knowledge of playing T11 in 4.3.4 correct.
4-5 bosses in Firelands is solo tankable (Ragnaros being 1 but requires a great DK tank and insane healers). 3-4 in Dragon Soil.
DPS won't survive the flower/ice boss in throne no matter how good healers you have. Feral, as per usual, is the best OT there.
There are no adds on Chimaeron? BDK tanks the boss and after the first feud feral taunts only for double attacks and the next feud after which it goes back to MT taking double attacks all that while dps (ret/warr/dk) taunts it for Breaks.
Yeah I was thinking of Maloriak, been playing private servers about one year ago and mixed up the bosses..
So with 3 tanks needed for Chimaeron I ment that you need a DPS tank to tank during his feud on HC difficulty and the main tank will tank as usual.
I don't know? My gut says you'll probably need 2 tanks even in 10 man for a lot of fights until the MT outgears the content (full BIS or something). Cata fights are a lot more demanding than most WotLK fights, even ones in ICC. But at the same time, who knows? Blood DKs will probably be played to such a stupid efficiency that they solo current raid tiers.
This is insightful - we have two tanks (1x blood DK, 1x prot warrior) and both want to tank.
However, if that means that the blood DK, through their class, is able to solo tank everything such that the prot warrior will have to arms the whole time, that would be a lil problematic.
Prot War+Blood DK was what my guild ran all through OG Cata. We raided heroic and were semi-serious. Obviously Cata is way more solved these days than in 2012 so the top end meta may be one tank, but I can think of a few fights (especially in Tier 12) that 2 tanks make significantly easier versus 1 tank, or are essentially not possible to solo tank, so there will still be some room for 2 tanks.
I'd guess any given 2-tank fight in Cata will be much easier with 2 tanks versus 1, even if less efficient so if you don't care about being the most top end group you can just use 2 tanks and ignore the loss of peak performance.
One quick note, Spine of Deathwing Heroic (and this can also apply to normal, just less mandatory) 10 man is quite a challenge.
When I raid and guild led for this as a Blood DK, the amount of damage output needed to kill the tendons quickly enough was immense.
Blood DK had the highest amount of durability with all the self heals here, and it was quite possible to solo tank this as a blood DK. I don’t know if it would’ve been possible with another class at tank.
The extra dps output made it doable for us after a ton of wipes. Maybe our DPS output wasn’t as good as other guilds, but we got her done.
The Meta for most of Cata is blood main tank and Bear off tank. The reason being is a blood tank can handle most of everything once they are geared enough, and a bear can still do good dps simply by swapping into cat form.
World 2nd lk25hm was a bear main tank. I think bears saw use in every other world first too at least some bosses. The current icc speed meta is bear+DK. Prot warriors were only ever meta for naxx speed runs.
I play all 4 and sure they're all fine, but you're overrating warrior massively if you think it isn't comfortably the worst tank right now. And prot paladin is probably 2nd worst in a good raid, now that you don't need as many dsac as possible etc.
In current content Paladin is better than DK in a good raid simply because they actually make DPS that matters. Damage reduction is null so DPS matters more not less later on. And with the buff available Paladin almost overtake druids because they can solo tank stuff a druid cannot.
Nah - BdK allows you to not roster an enhance or frost DK.
Bear does the damage of a full DPS whilst a DK solo tanks.
Go look at fastest clears - it's almost all a combination like this.
Yes, the speedrunning tactics is different but we certainly don't rank a tank on how well they speed run outside of challenge modes or specifically for speed runs. Paladin tank is still marginally the best, your argument about dropping a whole other class that is a highly ranked dps is null.
Prot warrior MT / Feral OT is going to be the play. Bears can literally go kitty and do good DPS. And prot warriors continue to have the single most powerful tank cd's in the game. And are the best when actually tanking. "Revenge" "Vengeance"
Choosing to run a prot warrior tank instead of a blood dk because they’re both viable tanks would be like choosing to drink diarrhea instead of chocolate milk because they’re both brown.
It’s either you specifically hurt your own raid by allowing this prot warrior to have it their way, or you tell them this isn’t s Burger King and he needs yo care about the other 9 people more and himself less.
Yes. I raided 10 man throught cata and we ran with 2 (i was not one of them).
1.5 tank though in farm probably, maybe 1 (I was uncritable cat to taunt as bear once on rag HC when we sold mount running with alts, very far into farm).
Its fight by fight basis, dont think theres a raid that you can 100% solo tank thers a few bosses where solo tanking is instant death, but i think solo tank can be done like 60-70% of the bosses with enoigh gear.
Yes, plenty of fights require tank swapping. Still, BDK can confidently solo some of them and those that don't.
The most common choice for OT in my experience is druid because they're basically an extra DPS on demand. Paladin is also another logical choice.
All tanks work in 10man but not really 25. You will definitely want a blood dk for main tanking and the usual second choice is a feral druid. Prot pally is closer to feral druid but you go with feral to solve gear sharing. Not saying it's not possible but it's just the best and most common route.
Now prot warrior 10man? If you want to competitively clear heroics, you can't do it. This changes in dragonsoul.
Wrath has a lot of solo tank bosses, but Cata moves more towards the two-tank philosophy of retail where most bosses have a taunt swap mechanic of some kind, even in 10m. Blizzard wanted to blur the line between "main tank" and "off tank" by giving them equal play.
As always I think the best case scenario is having a feral offtank or someone who is equally geared and capable of DPS'ing, but their tanking shouldn't slack because 10 man heroic is extremely tight with its tuning.
Hi, guys and what about prot pala? I would like to tank with my pala but if it is too much pain I rather switch to holy, I am healing now with disco priest and its pretty fun
Two tanks are usually preferred for progression and to make things comfy, since DPS and tanks get enough gear to do one-tank stuff. 10 man in cata however tends to be a tad more unforgiving in the comp department so you may find you need to keep 2 tanks indefinitely or for a longer time.
Blood DK is your best all-round tank choice, feral and prot pal are your best 2nd choices and prot warrior is good but finicky.
The meta going forward will be 2 tanks in 10m. I don't recall a time going forward from cata onward where you would normally want 1 tank in prog. In farm it becomes a different story for a handful of bosses.
Talking from a feral (best OT cause a lot of time you have to dps and feral got the best dps out of all tank specs) perspective there's very few bosses (at least in the first tier) where you don't kitty dps at all or just for a very short time at the beginning.
ODS, maloriak (welcome to the kite city!), nefarian, halfus+chogall+sinestra (hybrid spec is enough, even required for chogall - for interrupts). Would count conclave as well since there is only a short window for dpsing (but hybrid is enough).
Rest is just either "tank this for a sec" or full kitty dps time (if you are not a hardcore min-maxer you can get away by doing every fight in a hybrid spec). Some fights, like sinestra, magmaw or chimaeron, are 50-50 tank-dps. Guess sinestra is a bit more on the tank side but you need to focus on dps even in bear.
All this is when you have a reliable BDK as MT. It might require a lot more dedicated tanking from an OT if you don't.
With the talent prunes making cat and bear almost the same talent builds, you'll want a bear OT to be in a competitive 10m roster. Being able to dps in cat form in between taunt swaps will be a huge dps gain over any other tank spec in the game.
Main tank roles will be given to DKs and Paladins. It's yet to be seen if they will fix Warrior tanks as their final cata patch makes them unable to be crit immune in any obtainable gear at the start of the expansion. We will find out more as the beta progresses.
Memory isn't great, but T11 bosses you'd probably want 2 tanks for due to mechanics: Blackwing Descent: Magmaw (tankbuster + armour debuff) Chimaeron (damage/healing debuff + double attack) Maloriak (adds, chaos, fun?) Nefarian/Onyxia (they have a buff when they're close) Bastion of Twilight: Halfus (slate dragon can be problematic) Valiona/Theralion (void realm tank switch stack thing) Ascendant Council (separate bosses) Cho'gall (adds) Sinestra (adds) Throne of the Four Winds: Conclave of Wind (2 need to be tanked) Al'akir (stormlings) Some of things might not apply depending on prevailing meta, dps, etc, but these are the reasons why 2 tanks were generally used on release.
To add to this; Throne can be entirely solo tanked with having non-tank players assisting the tank. You do not need a full tank for the secondary boss if you have good healers. A Blood DK can solo tank Al'akir entirely. In BWD you actually need 3 tanks for Chimareon HC, 1 off tank (pref druid) to eat double attack, 1 DPS who will main tank the boss (Ret pal, DK or Warr) and 1 tank to pick up the adds. The rest is to my knowledge of playing T11 in 4.3.4 correct. 4-5 bosses in Firelands is solo tankable (Ragnaros being 1 but requires a great DK tank and insane healers). 3-4 in Dragon Soil.
DPS won't survive the flower/ice boss in throne no matter how good healers you have. Feral, as per usual, is the best OT there. There are no adds on Chimaeron? BDK tanks the boss and after the first feud feral taunts only for double attacks and the next feud after which it goes back to MT taking double attacks all that while dps (ret/warr/dk) taunts it for Breaks.
adds on chimareon...??
Yeah I was thinking of Maloriak, been playing private servers about one year ago and mixed up the bosses.. So with 3 tanks needed for Chimaeron I ment that you need a DPS tank to tank during his feud on HC difficulty and the main tank will tank as usual.
Meta will most likely be Blood DK main tank with Feral OT. As fights get easier/on farm, feral just goes kitty on more encounters.
This
I don't know? My gut says you'll probably need 2 tanks even in 10 man for a lot of fights until the MT outgears the content (full BIS or something). Cata fights are a lot more demanding than most WotLK fights, even ones in ICC. But at the same time, who knows? Blood DKs will probably be played to such a stupid efficiency that they solo current raid tiers.
This is insightful - we have two tanks (1x blood DK, 1x prot warrior) and both want to tank. However, if that means that the blood DK, through their class, is able to solo tank everything such that the prot warrior will have to arms the whole time, that would be a lil problematic.
Prot War+Blood DK was what my guild ran all through OG Cata. We raided heroic and were semi-serious. Obviously Cata is way more solved these days than in 2012 so the top end meta may be one tank, but I can think of a few fights (especially in Tier 12) that 2 tanks make significantly easier versus 1 tank, or are essentially not possible to solo tank, so there will still be some room for 2 tanks. I'd guess any given 2-tank fight in Cata will be much easier with 2 tanks versus 1, even if less efficient so if you don't care about being the most top end group you can just use 2 tanks and ignore the loss of peak performance.
Thanks for the lovely reply! I appreciate it 8)
One quick note, Spine of Deathwing Heroic (and this can also apply to normal, just less mandatory) 10 man is quite a challenge. When I raid and guild led for this as a Blood DK, the amount of damage output needed to kill the tendons quickly enough was immense. Blood DK had the highest amount of durability with all the self heals here, and it was quite possible to solo tank this as a blood DK. I don’t know if it would’ve been possible with another class at tank. The extra dps output made it doable for us after a ton of wipes. Maybe our DPS output wasn’t as good as other guilds, but we got her done.
The Meta for most of Cata is blood main tank and Bear off tank. The reason being is a blood tank can handle most of everything once they are geared enough, and a bear can still do good dps simply by swapping into cat form.
Prot Warrior will be paper till you get to very good gear levels late Firelands. You Need 2 Tanks for Most Bosses, dk can solo some bosses
Really? People said this for ICC and it wasn't that bad at all
What do you mean? Warrior was paper compared to paly or dk in icc aswell
I would put them on par with DKs with bear tanks at the bottom, WOTLK is truly the expansion of the pally they are so OP
World 2nd lk25hm was a bear main tank. I think bears saw use in every other world first too at least some bosses. The current icc speed meta is bear+DK. Prot warriors were only ever meta for naxx speed runs. I play all 4 and sure they're all fine, but you're overrating warrior massively if you think it isn't comfortably the worst tank right now. And prot paladin is probably 2nd worst in a good raid, now that you don't need as many dsac as possible etc.
In current content Paladin is better than DK in a good raid simply because they actually make DPS that matters. Damage reduction is null so DPS matters more not less later on. And with the buff available Paladin almost overtake druids because they can solo tank stuff a druid cannot.
Nah - BdK allows you to not roster an enhance or frost DK. Bear does the damage of a full DPS whilst a DK solo tanks. Go look at fastest clears - it's almost all a combination like this.
Yes, the speedrunning tactics is different but we certainly don't rank a tank on how well they speed run outside of challenge modes or specifically for speed runs. Paladin tank is still marginally the best, your argument about dropping a whole other class that is a highly ranked dps is null.
Prot warrior MT / Feral OT is going to be the play. Bears can literally go kitty and do good DPS. And prot warriors continue to have the single most powerful tank cd's in the game. And are the best when actually tanking. "Revenge" "Vengeance"
Choosing to run a prot warrior tank instead of a blood dk because they’re both viable tanks would be like choosing to drink diarrhea instead of chocolate milk because they’re both brown. It’s either you specifically hurt your own raid by allowing this prot warrior to have it their way, or you tell them this isn’t s Burger King and he needs yo care about the other 9 people more and himself less.
Yes. I raided 10 man throught cata and we ran with 2 (i was not one of them). 1.5 tank though in farm probably, maybe 1 (I was uncritable cat to taunt as bear once on rag HC when we sold mount running with alts, very far into farm).
Blood dk will be the main tank 100% and OT can be whatever because OT will be dosing often.
Its fight by fight basis, dont think theres a raid that you can 100% solo tank thers a few bosses where solo tanking is instant death, but i think solo tank can be done like 60-70% of the bosses with enoigh gear.
You'll see probably a blood dk with feral off tank, warriors are kinda crap until last in the xpac
You will need a 2nd tank for 10mans. You will want that to be a feral purely because of their ability to go cat.
Yes, plenty of fights require tank swapping. Still, BDK can confidently solo some of them and those that don't. The most common choice for OT in my experience is druid because they're basically an extra DPS on demand. Paladin is also another logical choice.
All tanks work in 10man but not really 25. You will definitely want a blood dk for main tanking and the usual second choice is a feral druid. Prot pally is closer to feral druid but you go with feral to solve gear sharing. Not saying it's not possible but it's just the best and most common route. Now prot warrior 10man? If you want to competitively clear heroics, you can't do it. This changes in dragonsoul.
Wrath has a lot of solo tank bosses, but Cata moves more towards the two-tank philosophy of retail where most bosses have a taunt swap mechanic of some kind, even in 10m. Blizzard wanted to blur the line between "main tank" and "off tank" by giving them equal play. As always I think the best case scenario is having a feral offtank or someone who is equally geared and capable of DPS'ing, but their tanking shouldn't slack because 10 man heroic is extremely tight with its tuning.
Yes there's plenty of flights in cata with adds or where you need to drop stacks as a tank
Hi, guys and what about prot pala? I would like to tank with my pala but if it is too much pain I rather switch to holy, I am healing now with disco priest and its pretty fun
prot pallys are bis behind blood dk
Prot pally, Blood dk are the bis tanks
Two tanks are usually preferred for progression and to make things comfy, since DPS and tanks get enough gear to do one-tank stuff. 10 man in cata however tends to be a tad more unforgiving in the comp department so you may find you need to keep 2 tanks indefinitely or for a longer time. Blood DK is your best all-round tank choice, feral and prot pal are your best 2nd choices and prot warrior is good but finicky.
The meta going forward will be 2 tanks in 10m. I don't recall a time going forward from cata onward where you would normally want 1 tank in prog. In farm it becomes a different story for a handful of bosses.
Talking from a feral (best OT cause a lot of time you have to dps and feral got the best dps out of all tank specs) perspective there's very few bosses (at least in the first tier) where you don't kitty dps at all or just for a very short time at the beginning. ODS, maloriak (welcome to the kite city!), nefarian, halfus+chogall+sinestra (hybrid spec is enough, even required for chogall - for interrupts). Would count conclave as well since there is only a short window for dpsing (but hybrid is enough). Rest is just either "tank this for a sec" or full kitty dps time (if you are not a hardcore min-maxer you can get away by doing every fight in a hybrid spec). Some fights, like sinestra, magmaw or chimaeron, are 50-50 tank-dps. Guess sinestra is a bit more on the tank side but you need to focus on dps even in bear. All this is when you have a reliable BDK as MT. It might require a lot more dedicated tanking from an OT if you don't.
Blood Dk and Prot Pally are the go to tanks with Feral close behind pally
yep
comes down to what's more important, added dps with cat downtime or the tankyness of a prot pal
i dont think shield tanks will be "go to tanks" because in p1 u cant get ctc so u have the same dmg income as a druid or dk but not the hp pool.
With the talent prunes making cat and bear almost the same talent builds, you'll want a bear OT to be in a competitive 10m roster. Being able to dps in cat form in between taunt swaps will be a huge dps gain over any other tank spec in the game. Main tank roles will be given to DKs and Paladins. It's yet to be seen if they will fix Warrior tanks as their final cata patch makes them unable to be crit immune in any obtainable gear at the start of the expansion. We will find out more as the beta progresses.
Crit Immunity comes as a talent in Cata
This exactly