Are you ready to shine as a Tank in the new Season 2 of the War Within? Want to know which specializations will help you reach the highest RIO? We've got you covered!
In this article, we'll unveil the tank specs that currently excel and look into those that unfortunately fall short — breaking down exactly why they perform the way they do.
The difference between the top and bottom tanks is much narrower than it was in Season 1. While there are still noticeable variations in power, they're much more closely matched now.
Let's break down what all these A,B and Cs above actually represent:
Vengeance Demon Hunter is most likely going to be THE TANK for Mythic+ in the Season 2 of The War Within. Having undergone major changes, the spec now has Better Soul Fragment economy, which results in stronger self-sustain. Blizzard also improved their talent tree, with Feed the Demon now being a 1-point talent, freeing up more talent choices that allows you to finally unlock Last Resort without sacrificing any important part of your toolkit.
Protection Paladin will still be a very strong A-tier tank in Season 2. Paladins were the undisputed kings of tanking in Season 1, but their dominance has slightly declined due to a series of nerfs. They now deal less AoE damage, have less passive tankiness and on top of that their major buttons have longer cooldowns. Another ongoing concern is mana management — Prot Paladins still end up drinking more than their own healer, which is odd, but it remains true!
Despite that, Protection Paladins still carry the best utility toolkit among Tanks, have great synergy with Discipline Priests (most likely the meta healer going into Season 2) and their abilities like https://www.wowhead.com/spell=31935/avengers-shield, Lay on Hands and Blessing of Sacrifice help your party survive even the toughest pulls!
So while they are no longer as dominant, Protection Paladins remain a top-tier choice.
You can learn about the proper utility management in Mythic+ with the help of our Pros
Blood Death Knight is getting a better placement in Season 2 of The War Within, with it's strengths amplified by the new dungeon pool and a decent tier set!
Their self-sustain healing is unmatched, their defensives like Anti-Magic Shield and Anti-Magic Zone are irreplaceable in certain scenarios and Death Grip is a truly unique spell that allows you to make hard pulls happen easily.
However, Blood Death Knight's old issues remain: they still struggle with high burst damage, which is becoming more evident as you push for higher keys and although they have a great set of utility, their party healing is pretty non-existent, which is also a bummer.
Blood DK is a decent tank (especially for lower keys), but unless Blizzard massively buffs it's passive tankiness we don't see it ever reaching A-tier... in this season at least.
Guardian Druid is in a tough spot. Despite receveing some major changes to their talent tree going into Season 2, which increases their durability against magic damage, which they always lacked, Guardian Druids still struggle massively when it comes to bleed damage.
The new Guardian Druid performs much better at handling white swing damage. They also have great mob control and can survive large pulls with raw physical damage better than most other tanks. The issue is that most pulls in Season 2 won't have only physical damage dealers and the Guardian's dps output is currently rather mediocre.
Overall, Guardians are noticeably better compared to their state in Season 1, but they'll surely need a lot of buffs to be serious contenders for the highest keys.
First lets start with Protection Warrior which used to be the best tank at the beginning of The War Within as it's extremely durable against physical damage and deals massive damage. Unfortunately, their recent changes make keeping the uptime of Ignore Pain way harder and the Season 2's dungeon pool just makes Warrior's life even tougher as dungeons have lots of unblockable damage. For these reasons Protection Warriors are barely playable at this point.
Brewmaster Monk is a whole different topic. This specialization has been bad and unplayable for what seems like ages. And sadly Season 2 is not bringing any good news to the Monk, with it's massive durability issues (thus requiring constant attention from the group's healer). Brewmaster is also generally bad against magic and bleed damage, of which there are plenty in Season 2 and doesn't provide any particularly good group utility. On top of that, playing Brewmaster properly is as hard as it gets, therefore you'd struggle to make use of whatever little potential the spec has to offer.
