One of Blizzard’s primary goals that they’ve stated since the beginning of Wotlk beta was that they wanted to close the distant gap between the capabilities of certain classes versus another in terms of how well they can perform their role. In the case of the tanks, in TBC there were three types of tanks and each one of them was specialized in tanking under certain conditions.
Protection warriors had been considered a staple tank for boss fights ever since classic WoW thanks to their wide range of benficial debuffs they can apply to the boss to reduce incoming damage/increase overall raid dps, and one of their largest advantage in TBC was their ability to easily reach crushing blow immunity thanks to Shield Block, which increases their block rating by 75% for a short duration, but the skill was spammable.
Feral druids have the advantage of being able to reach the armor cap and have a high dodge rate, which are offset by their lack of block and parry. Still, feral druids excelled in boss fights where crushing blow did not exist and against bosses who dealt physical damage at an extremely fast rate that would otherwise eat through Shield Block/Holy Shield charges that make the plate tanks crush immune.
Protection paladins are specialized in AoE tanking thanks to their ability to generate threat on an unlimited number of targets with Consecration. They also have an advantage in fights against bosses that are demon/undead. Also their damage scaled by far the best out of the three tanks in TBC since their threat came directly from holy damage which they could get from their gear.
Paladins were definately the undisputed king of AoE tanking in TBC, but this can very much change with the coming of Wotlk as a recent change to each tank’s AoE tanking ability have been altered. The prediction for Wotlk on what the core AoE tanking ability each tank will have looks like this: warrior – Thunderclap, paladin – Consecration, druid – Swipe, death knight – Death and Decay. Now Consecration and Death and Decay never had a target cap on them and so they are definately considered AoE skills, but Thunderclap and Swipe were severely hampered by a tight target cap back in TBC with both only affecting up to 4 targets. This effectively put paladins as the tank to go to in pure AoE tanking situations such as the trash waves in Hyjal where any other tank simply cannot get the job done.
With this recent change, all tanks are now on an even playing field in terms of AoE tanking, and as a warrior tank, the additional boosting of the new Damage Shield talent simply makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. My dreams of AoE tanking down Hyjal can finally be achieved!
- Xei
