So we all know Paladins and Death Knight can effectively tank by AOE means. Paladins with consecrate are a god send for lazy DPS or no-CC 5 man dungeons and it really does make trash in smaller raids like Kara a freaking breeze sine you just focus fire one target at once and never worry about the 5 others.
Death Knights are panning out to do the same with death and decay as well as spreading plagues and unholy blight. Granted it takes a lot more skill and effort to push those rotations than just slapping consecrate, but that’s part of the flavor. In the end it’s still AOE tanking.
Warriors and Druids fell behind severely in Burning Crusade in this department because they were amazing at holding 1 target but if there were two or more you’d be SOL. Not so anymore in Wrath of the Lich King.
Swipe’s target limit removed
We are going to remove the target limit on Swipe. (src)
Thunderclap’s target limit removed
Done. (src)
The only thing keeping both of these newly revamped abilities in check is their drawbacks. There’s a check with consecrate in the mana cost so there might be a time when the paladin may not be able to use it. Death Knight’s suffer the same with rune costs and having to decide which move to use. Druids swipe now doesn’t have a target cap but it still costs rage as well as has the cone of affect range so it’s not a fire and forget move like consecrate. Same for warriors, they have the complete 360 affect with thundercalp and it does great damage now by comparison to old TC, but it has a decent cooldown to it and a sufficient rage cost to make it something you won’t be spamming everytime it’s up but you still will have the option in a 5 man dungeon.
Excellent. I tanked for my second time last night in Ramps and the first thing I noticed was how much I was running around to get the attention of mob #2 and #3… Keeping the first target on me was no problem (and I’m currently Fury spec while leveling).
These additions, I envision, will work wonders.
I can’t wait to fire off thunderclap now and actually have it hold the mobs to me instead of watching them run off to smack the healers
Not to be rude but have you played a druid tank? Because… now that druids have new swipe one of their talents is receiving rage on every critical hit… They just turned druids into unending rage batteries… Every crit with swipe now counts as additional rage… I have hard a hard time during AOE tanking that I have been able to even use half my rage bar… No offense but all your information was not accurate… I thin druids now are probably the most efficient tanks with No-CC AOE tanking…
you DO realize that this post is from September back in beta right? before they added the crit rage generation because druids were having a hard time with rage…
As a druid tank in Naxx the other night, off tank really it was hard not to overcome the main tanks (pally) aggro. One growl after retargeting from off tanking an add during a boss fight and I was over 90% threat. And rage, jeez, stays full no matter what I am spamming.
I just hit 80 this week and usually run cat form DPS in runs but am tank spec’d. All my gear was lvl 78 blues. The main tank pally has 6 lvl 80 purples. I dont think druids will have a prob being main tanks in any runs.
Sigh, it’s people like you that waste other people’s time, Thunderclap only holds mobs in place, if you have guildies that can do 6k dps, good luck being a warrior and holding onto that aggro, you can’t. thunderclap and shockwave are 2 AoE abilities goodluck. 20 seconds cooldown on shockwave BTW.