In The Burning Crusade, tanks play a really important role. Mobs and certain bosses can hit incredibly hard, trash pulls can be more challenging than some boss encounters, threat isn’t always guaranteed, and gearing will always change encounter to encounter, situation to situation.
In TBC, there are only three classes can tank: Paladins, Warriors, and Druids. Each class has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and will shine brighter in certain encounters/situations over others. In this article, we’ll rate each tank and dig into why we chose that ranking for them.
TBC Tank Tier List
The following tier list ranks the tanks in Classic TBC:
S
  B
 |
As you can see, there's no 'bad option' really and each tank has different strengths but let's take a look at why we placed each tank where we did.
A Tier: Feral Druid
Quick Read: The Feral Druid excels in single-target encounters through mitigation, avoidance, and threat generation. Gearing for a Feral is very simple, and benefits both the Bear and Cat, allowing for an easy swap to DPS should an encounter call for one tank only. On top of that, they also provide a 5% Critical Strike Chance buff to their party! However, they lack in their AoE threat generation and are susceptible to crushing blows, allowing for some unfortunate deaths to chance on some harder-hitting bosses.
The Pros
The feral druid is the best “boss” tank in TBC. Their TPS (threat per second), and overall damage tops the other two tank classes in terms of single-target damage. Feral Druids also mitigate the most damage thanks to their high Armor value and Stamina due to Dire Bear Form and Thick Hide. This grants the bear tank the highest EHP (effective health pool) compared to the other two as well.
If their mitigation wasn’t enough, Feral Druids also have very high Avoidance. Their strong threat, mitigation, and avoidance is thanks to how much they benefit from Agility. In TBC, Agility scales with Feral Bear tanks as follows:
- 1 Agility = 2 Armor
- 14.7 Agility = 1% Dodge
- 25 Agility = 1% Critical Strike
The other great thing about Feral Druids is that they are also incredibly easy to gear for! In TBC, there are a notorious number of bosses that strike tanks very hard with their auto attacks. Examples include Magtheridon, Fathom-Lord Karathress, Morogrim Tidewalker, Brutallus, etc. A decently geared Feral Druid that also has trinkets such as Badge Of Tenacity and Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch can dodge almost every single auto-attack from a boss!
If that wasn’t enough, Feral Druids also provide their party with Leader of the Pack, making them just an overall non-negotiable to bring to raids! And, on top of everything mentioned, the gearing difference between the Feral Bear and Feral Cat is very minimal, allowing this class to be a phenomenal DPS when you want to solo tank an encounter!
Who needs armor when you never get hit!
The Cons
One of the downsides of Feral Druid is their inability to gear towards Avoidance Cap (also known as Crush Cap), to avoid crushing blows, whereas Paladin and Warrior tanks can do so. Crushing blows can be deadly, and with bad luck, a Feral Druid can take multiple back-to-back, potentially leading to an unavoidable death. Feral Druids' AoE tanking also lacks compared to Paladins.
Although they are easy to gear for, Feral Druids have two very difficult items to obtain, being their trinket and Idol. The issue with that is just how expensive they will be! The Trinket, Badge of Tenacity, will run players at least 1,000 gold if they opt to not farm it themselves (and the farm will be a VERY tedious task). The Idol: Idol of the Raven Goddess, is only available if they do their Swift Flight Form quest chain, but that chain is only available if they purchase epic flying, which is 5,000 gold!
When comparing the strengths to the weaknesses, you’ll see the pros greatly outweigh the cons, and because of that, we give the mighty Bear tank an A Rating.
A Tier: Protection Paladin
Quick Read: The Protection Paladin is the AoE tank king, thanks to abilities like Consecration and Holy Shield. They also do very well in single-target encounters, and even more so if the target is Undead or a Demon. Prot Paladins can gear to prevent crushing blows, eliminating that chance of death for them, and like all Paladins, provide an additional blessing buff and judgement debuff to the raid/party. However, they perform worst in terms of mitigation and avoidance, and suffer from intense gear dependency and have a multitude of stat goals they should look to achieve that will change encounter to encounter. Failure to know this ahead of time will lead to poor gameplay.
The Pros
The Protection Paladin, the plate-wearing Spell Power tank, will also be ranked A-tier alongside Feral Druid, but for different reasons. The Protection Paladin's main niche will be its AoE tanking; no other class comes close to how the Paladin can generate AoE threat, thanks to abilities such as Consecration and Holy Shield. From Vanilla to TBC, Consecration gains a massive buff in its scaling with Spell Power, which allows this ability to generate so much threat.
All of the Paladin tank’s abilities scale with Spell Power, making it relatively easy to gear for threat when needed. Although they are the dominant AoE tank, the Protection Paladin will also be a great single-target tank threat-wise, although not as strong as the Feral Bear. If the target is also a Demon or Undead, then this will actually put the Paladin Tank on par with the Feral Druid thanks to Exorcism, and in TBC, there are plenty of Undead and Demon bosses.
On top of that, as mentioned earlier, the Protection Paladin can also achieve the stat goal of Avoidance Cap, thanks to the 30% Block Chance from Holy Shield, completely removing crushing blows from their attack table.
Just like other Paladins, the Protection Paladin provides their utility through blessings and seals. The Protection Paladin will typically provide Blessing of Salvation or Blessing of Kings, and is can also be the provider of Judgement of Wisdom if your Holy Paladin is unable to. Finally, Protection Paladins also have additional utility with cleanse and healing spells.
The Protection Paladin can fit in almost any group comp and still get full value from it, whether it's a full melee group, spell power group, or a healer group (just make sure your Holy Paladin talents into Sanctity Aura if the tank is in the healer group!).
The Cons
Now the downsides. Protection Paladins have significantgly increased damage intake when compared to that of the Druid or Warrior tank. Although not too noticeable on some encounters, it can be noticeable on fights like Morogrim, Magtheridon, and other harder-hitting bosses. The Protection Paladin is a block-based tank, and although blocking an attack might seem powerful, most blocks are “partial blocks”, meaning you only block with how much Block Value (BV) you have.
Typically, most Paladins will only have roughly 250-400 BV, so even though you “blocked” that 4,000 swing, you still took roughly 3,700 of the attack. There does come a healthy amount of BV in the game, and the amount increases phase to phase, but in the earlier portions, in order to obtain higher BV, you’d have to drop other more important stats, such as Avoidance stats and Spell Power, making it not worth it in most situations early on. It also isn’t until Wrath of the Lich King that Strength greatly scales with BV, where 2 Strength = 1 BV. In TBC, it’s 20:1.
However, the biggest con of the Protection Paladin is how often it will need to change its gear to fit the situation it's in. Although this really isn’t that big of a deal on paper, in execution and practice, a large number of players are unaware of this. There is no “one size fits all” gear set.
If a Paladin tank goes into a trash pack with a Crush Cap set, then they’re not gearing properly, as they could easily fit more threat pieces to make it easier for their raid (this is because only boss-level mobs, Level 73 mobs, can crush players at level 70). Although the Protection Paladins rotation is incredibly simple, its gearing is not, making it very easy to make mistakes for this class.
Gonna need a bigger wardrobe.
Ultimately you will just never want to run a raid in TBC without a Protection Paladin, so it also gets an A rating, but I would place it still slightly below Feral Druids.
B Tier: Protection Warrior
Quick Read: The Protection Warrior is the jack of all trades, master of none tank class. Its uniqueness is through its defensive abilities that unfortunately have relatively long cooldown timers. It excels in mitigation and survivability similar to a Feral Druid, just not as much, and cannot quite compete in either AoE or single target tanking with the other two classes. It also suffers from poor scaling that gets more noticeable as each phase progresses, and is often played incorrectly, leading to even poorer performance.
The Pros
The Protection Warrior finds itself overall in a lower category compared to the other two tanks. The Prot Warrior in TBC has the niche of being the jack of all trades, master of none class. Where the Prot Paladin is the AoE niche, the Feral Druid is the single-target niche, the Prot Warrior says “I can do both, but not as good as either".
Where the Warrior tank shines the brightest, however, is in its powerful defensive cooldowns like Shield Wall and Last Stand, which can be used on those scarier bosses to guarantee significantly easier healing during the duration of those abilities. Similar to the Protection Paladin, the Protection Warrior can also achieve Avoidance Cap very easily, thanks to a 75% Block Chance increase from Shield Block.
Finally, Prot Warriors can also provide their shout buffs with either Commanding Shout or Battle Shout. Similar to the Feral Druid, the Protection Warrior is also a phenomenal tank when it comes to single-target encounters from a mitigation standpoint, making them a great tank for encounters like Fathom-Lord Karathress, Magtheridon, and others like them.
The Cons
The cons, however, start a bit earlier when compared to the A-ranked tank classes. First, as mentioned earlier, the Prot Warrior is the “master of none” tank class. It does not generate AoE threat like the Paladin, and does not generate single-target threat like the Bear. A very weird, almost oversight, with the Protection Warrior, is that two of its main abilities, Revenge and Thunderclap, do not scale with anything, meaning a fresh level 70 Warrior versus a fully BiS Phase 2 Warrior would deal the exact same damage with these two abilities.
Also, two of their main abilities, Devastate and Shield Slam, scale completely differently. The former scales with Attack Power, and the latter scales with Block Value. On top of that, the biggest threat-generating stats for the Prot Warrior are Hit and Expertise, making it hard to balance out all of that and still gear towards Mitigation when you need to (because you are a tank after all!)
| Ability | Scales With |
| Devastate | Attack Power |
| Heroic Strike | Attack Power |
| Sheild Slam | Shield Block Value |
| Revenge | N/A |
| Thunderclap | N/A |
Because of that, similar to the Protection Paladin, Protection Warrior is often played incorrectly and chances are that many players are making it harder due to improper gearing, combined with the fact that the optimal playstyle of the Prot Warrior isn't always obvious to players.
It is common for a Paladin tank to forgo Avoidance Cap on several boss encounters due to the boss either not being able to deal a crushing blow or they're a weaker boss, allowing the Protection Paladin to fully focus on Stamina and Threat. If the Prot Paladin can do this, then why doesn’t the Warrior? A warrior can opt to duel-wield and spam Devastate, Heroic Strike, and even “stance dance” to Berserker Stance to get a Whirlwind out, which is a massive threat increase compared to a traditional “sword and board” Warrior Tank trying to generate enough Rage for a Shield Slam.
The Prot Warrior will find themselves nearly at infinite Rage when duel-wielding against bosses that don’t strike as hard (Solarian and Leotheras being two good examples). And the final example of improper Warrior play is assuming to always equip the fast “tank” weapon over your slower “DPS” weapon. For example, wearing King’s Defender instead of Dragonmaw might look like the right thing to do; however, if the boss is not a heavy hitter, then this is actually a threat LOSS. You should only look to wear a faster weapon if the bosses are some of the harder-hitting ones.
Although the summary might make it seem like the Protection Warrior deserves a C rating, this mainly stems from the complexities around gearing and playstyle. When performing at their best, although the Prot Warrior will still be weaker than the other two tank classes, they can be strong. Thanks to their powerful defensives that the other two classes lack and their powerful mitigation, the Warrior tank still receives a B rating.
With this tier list, we hope you find it helpful when analysing your tank choices in TBC Classic. Remember that all tanks can play their roles well in TBC, but there are definite scenarios and situations where some classes will rise and fall over others!
