We come at last to the death knight, the red-headed stepchild of the tanking family that nobody really likes but everyone has to put up with because despite all of their flaws, they’re still part of the family.

During the course of Wrath, death knights have enjoyed an interesting spot in the tanking family. While, largely speaking, they haven’t been exactly the most popular tanks to roam around during the expansion, they’ve had a very cozy niche spot in the world of tanking archetypes.

They were built more as AOE tanks like the paladins but not quite as good. They had a great potential for mitigation like the bears but again, not quite as good and they had a decently sized toolset for a variety of tanking situations like warriors but…not quite as varied. They were a perfect jack of all trades type tank.

Their talents trees accented this customizable factor. They could be built to mitigate magical damage or to enhance the raid’s magical damage with the Unholy tree. They could build for stronger snap AOE threat and enhance the raid’s physical damage with the Frost tree and finally, the Blood tree makes them an excellent makeshift bear tank with the stronger mitigation and self healing.

With the coming expansion, death knights are getting bigger and more changes than any other tanking class. While currently, death knights are capable of tanking with any of their three classes, Blizzard is moving towards making death knights more in line with the other tanks by giving them one dedicated tanking tree. This serves the function of allowing them to concentrate their tanking talents into a single area rather than to spread them out across three separate trees, making it hard for a devoted tank to pick them all up.

With the shift to making Blood the dedicated tanking tree, it makes it a lot easier for a death knight in Cataclysm to BE the dedicated tank, though it comes at a cost to versatility. If you’re playing a death knight tank right now, chances are good that when the expansion hits, there are going to be a lot of talents that you rely on now to do your job that won’t be there anymore, or will be placed out of reach. It’s going to be a lot harder for you to tank outside of the blood tree than it is now. While I’m sure that it will be possible, it’s likely not going to be something that’s going to be common or all that popular from the looks of it now. More than likely, it’ll turn into the tanking situation now, where while you can tank as a fury warrior or a druid specced as a cat, it’s not really recommended.

At the end of the day, it’s a little fitting that it’s the death knights that are hit with the biggest changes when new expansion will hit. Because warriors, druids and paladins have been around a lot longer, they’ve had a lot more time under Blizzard’s iterative design to be polished and have their mechanics tweaked. This expansion will likely be only the first of many major changes that death knights go through during the course of their tanking career, but rest assured, the class that comes out of the other end will be stronger and a lot better for it.

Ah, welcome to the gravy train…at least for the duration of the current expansion.

Without hope of competition, paladins are undeniably the strongest tank in the current expansion so if you’re already playing one or already in the process of levelling one up, you’re in luck as you’ll have at least a couple months more of riding the gravy train.

Paladins are blessed with arguably the strongest AOE threat generation as well as very decent single target threat. On top of that, they have the extra mitigation that the block value provides as opposed to those poor bears and death knights. Survivability is unparalleled with the current iteration of the Ardent Defender talent so if you have a little paladin running around in Northrend right now, enjoy it while it lasts because along with all of the other huge changes coming around with the Cataclysm expansion, that talent is on the chopping block for big changes.

The current iteration of the Ardent Defender talent in the Cataclysm beta is one more in line with the cooldowns that the other tanks enjoy today. It essentially removes the purely passive benefit of the talent, making it something that you actually have to think about whether or not you want to pop it right then and there.

From the perspective of prot paladins in game at the moment, it’s going to be a pretty big hit to survivability. While it remains a pretty powerful cooldown all on its own, the simple fact is that human reaction times don’t hold a candle to the instantaneous response of a computer program. While people can have some excellent reaction times, you’ll never really know if that time you used a cooldown is a time that it saved your life or not.

The automatic nature of Ardent Defender makes it obvious if the talent really saved your life or not. When the expansion patch hits, that change is going to require a major adjustment to how prot paladins play but the essential core of the class will remain as it is today; a class that excels in the majority of boss encounters today. Playing a paladin will give you control of a class that’s probably the closest to the “classic” style of tanking that warriors brought to the scene back in vanilla WoW.

There are some cons to the life of a paladin tank of course. The primary problem is that the majority of your tanking rotation comes from casting spells instead of simple physical attacks like warriors, druids and death knights. This makes paladins doubly vulnerable to enemies that silence regularly whereas their other counterparts would breeze past it. While this is only a slight problem in terms of threat generation, it can make a huge difference when it comes to timing your survival skills. An improperly timed silence lined up with a devastating attack could render the paladin unable to react or throw up a defensive cooldown to save themselves.

Paladins are a fun class to play. If all you’ve played before were the other varieties of tanking classes, a paladin can be a fun change of pace. There’s a bonus to variety of play style due to the fact that paladins have three specs to try out. Due to spellcasting, they’re a little more vulnerable to anti caster mechanics during fights but that’s a very small price to pay for such a versatile and powerful tanking class.

So by now you’ve realized that your protection Paladin has about 6-7k mana unbuffed at level 80, and all of your abilities for tanking but the average melee swing, require mana. So let’s go over a way to keep your mana pool alive and full so your not having to sit for mana after each pull.

With this discussion I will go over some basic talent tree specc’ing for your mana regen, as well as your Paladin’s Seals and Judgements.

Lets touch basics first, your talent tree. If you tab over to the Protection tree on the 1st column 7th Tier down you will have the passive talent called, Spiritual Attunement

Having 2/2 on this passive is highly recommended for your Protection Paladin because instead of just giving you equal to 5% mana back for the amount healed, having 2/2 will increase that by another 5%, giving you equal to 10% of the amount healed. It may not mean much of a difference. But for tanking with a Paladin you need your mana!

The next ability your Paladin has to regen mana is your Judgement of Wisdom, this is a must have when it comes to your 9696 Rotation as explained in my previous tanking guide. This will help you keep your mana up during some of those weaker mob pulls.

Last, but not least is the type of Seal your using during pulls.  Now, depending on the size the pull, keep this in mind, Seal of Wisdom for single target pulls, and one of your other Seals for bigger pulls, like Seal of Vengeance.

I hope this gives you a better understanding on how to preserve that 7k manapool.

Good luck and Tank Hard!

Yes, this really is what will fill your screen about 90% of the time if you choose to be a bear in the upcoming expansion.

Nah, I’m just kidding but to be fair, druids do have a slight issue with being a bit more…chubby than their plate wearing counterparts so if you’re planning on running around as a druid come Cataclysm and you’re a bit leery about controlling a character that looks as though they should be skipping on those extra midnight snacks, this isn’t for you.

For those of you not scared away but the unsightly fat bear, you’re in luck! Being a druid has a wonderful perk attached to it, namely, versatility. Every role you can fill in a raid or dungeon, whether it’s melee/ranged DPS, healer or tank, the druid can fill, and handily. What this means is that if you choose to tank as a druid, you’ll never really lack for options should you want a change of pace, whether you feel like dealing some damage or saving lives.

While there are many upcoming changes to the class as a whole as with every other aspect of the game, the core role of the bear as a raid tank will likely not change.

The druid is a wonderful tank to choose when it comes to survivability and damage mitigation. Druids are blessed with the highest health pool and the highest armor value; the armor making them the easy choice to deal with hard hitting physical mobs while the higher health pool makes them an easy choice for tanking magical damage as while they’ll take them same amount of damage as the other tanks, their higher HP makes them easier to keep up.

Ask any healer if they’d prefer to heal a tank that drops in spikes or one that takes a bit more damage but drops at a steady and regular pace and nine times out of ten, they’ll opt for the second. Geared properly, a druid tank has a proper place in any raid encounter with their access to an in combat resurrection and Innervate and have often been chosen over their other tanking counterparts for that purpose.

Cataclysm has the further benefit of bringing some new toys to the table such as Stampeding Roar which acts as a Heroism/Bloodlust for movement speed. While such a skill may admittedly be situational, in the instances where it would be helpful, it’ll be very helpful.

All of these benefits don’t come without cost, however. Due to the fact that they are a class built for versatility rather than to fill a single role, their tradeoffs come in the form of a slightly bland playstyle when it comes to tanking and a noticeable lack of some of the signature tanking moves held by their brethren that lets them tank with a bit of flash and pizzazz.

As a druid, you’ll never be sought after due to your ability to prevent your own death through an Ardent Defender proc, nor will you be called upon to zip across the battle like a pinball like a warrior and you lack any and all of the little perks of being a death knight (biggest of which is the ability to yank your enemy towards you).

However, as that same druid, you’ll never be bored and confined to a single role in a raid. As a druid, you will save an attempt with your battle res one day and get the job done by the skin of your teeth.

As a druid tank in Cataclysm, you will become an incredibly tough, furry, and immovable rock for your squishy raid members to hide behind and they will love you for it so if all of that sounds appealing, get started on that druid today and we’ll see you in the expansion, another bear added to the ranks.

We’re going to take a short break from my planned articles on what class you will be wanting to reroll into for Cataclysm to address a topic that I’m sure is near and dear to your hearts at the moment.

Yep, Ruby Sanctum is available now and if you don’t have a solid raiding team and you’ve tried to pug the damned thing, you know just how annoying the trash in there can be.

You might be sitting there, wondering to yourself, “as a tank, how can I make this instance run as smooth as possible for these lowly wretches that I’m absorbing all of these hits for?”

Well wonder no longer for you’ve come to the right place!

First off, a word to the wise, steel yourselves fellow tanks (and fur yourselves in the case of our bear brethren), for it’s been a long time since you’ve really had to think during trash pulls.

The first thing to keep in mind as you walk in is that you’re not in ICC. That delicious buff that granted you 25% more health and healing done doesn’t exist for the moment so you’ll have to be a bit careful. You find out too just how bad your threat drops without the 25% damage done which you didn’t think made that much difference but really does.

We’ll go from the easier trash mobs to the harder ones:

1) Charscale Elites: You’ll run into two pairs of these guys on either side of the third miniboss, General Zarithrian. They’re easy enough to handle and have no real surprises, simply tank them separately and burn them down one by one.

2) Charscale Assaulter: These are the big draconid looking guys that wander around on two legs and swing a glaive and look to be just itching to ruin your day. It’s important to note when tanking these guys that they do a frontal aoe stun as well as a hard hitting cleave so it’s extremely important that you tank them facing away from your raid and do your best not to drag them through your melee group, no matter how annoying that rogue’s been lately.

3) Charscale Invoker: These pansies walk around on four legs and look like casters, so I’m sure you’ll be plenty surprised when I tell you that they are casters. Do the smart thing and make sure that one or two people are responsible for interrupting their spells. You can generally ignore the Scorch that they cast but the Flame Wave should be interrupted at all times or there will be hell to pay. It’s a little hard to miss, a bright orange aura charges around them every time they cast it and if it goes off, all your melee will go flying back, possibly pulling an additional pack from way over there. Interrupt the Flame Wave at all costs.

4) Charscale Commander: Finally, we come to these guys. They’re a little hard to miss as they have a big battle pennant attached to their back. They hit pretty hard, dish out a Mortal Strike which tanks and healers the world over just love and do a fun aoe ability that increases damage dealt by all of their other dragon-y buddies within 8 yards.

Groups with the Commander will give you the most trouble no doubt, so there are a few things to keep in mind when facing the packs carrying these bad boys.

If you have a third tank, have one tank hold the two assaulters, one tank holds the two invokers and the third one grabs the commander and just holds him a safe distance away from all of the other mobs where he’ll be the last one killed.

This is probably the safest and easiest way to go about it, just remember that the invokers must have their Flame Wave interrupted at all times if you expect this to go smoothly.

Barring access to a third tank, the commander should be your primary kill target. Have your stronger tank hold the two assaulters and an invoker while your offtank grabs one invoker and the commander. Kill the Commander, then the invoker before moving on to the rest and things should be gravy.

Stay tuned next week when we go into the three minibosses that you’ll find around the place and a few tips you should know to make their deaths quick and painless.