WOTLK Classic - Tank Tier list

its just fcking shit - "Dont bring", difference between all tanks not so big, i wont bring those 3 guys on my raid ^^

this guy must be high

One year later, turns out prot warriors aren´t that bad and there´s no content that would require anything special, or better tanks. So go for it guys.

I tanked alg with DK blood (my buddy) and Druid tank (me) and got the “herald of the titans” title (basically means kill algalon in dog doo doo gear)

Lemme guess, the guy in the middle plays paladin...

Nice to see one person's opinion.... Thought there was gonna be a discussion about it.

In original WOTLK I started as a pally tank. Overpowered but rather boring to play and did not 'feel right' (gear style, sound effects, animations felt more designed for healing).
So I switched to prot warrior and had an absolute blast! Challenge was much greater but with a more proactive play style and insane mobility you could pull off miracles and it was super engaging. As a bonus, everything about a prot warrior screams 'Tank!' - rugged and battered gear esthetics, animations, sound effects. All awesome.
And yes, a bit sub-optimal but you can still clear content. Pro tip: just just become guild / raid leader and you can raid as prot warrior! 😂

Oh ya and i almost forgot put vigilance on a big dick Aff lock as a 4.3k prot warr vs a 4.7k+ prot pally n just hitting devistate will take threat back its actully insane (Glyping it atleast)

Ya bro now that where later into classic like prot warrs are not BAD at all, But the 1 think i can say is prot warr is not as good of use unless its a main tank, and obvi prot pala iis over all a better main tank but there still strong tanks atleast on my server the most popular 2 tanks i see are Prot pal and prot war and there is nice amount of blood dk's mainy the blood dks i tend to see are in high end guilds not many just out here pugging but i play a prot paly and prot war both 4500gs+ Warr is by far they funnest tank yet I do have a 4.2k feral but imo isnt to fun stopped playin it and i just dinged 80 on a dk so im gunna run blood for awhile and give it a shot but im just here to say PROT WARR IS NOT NEARLY AS BAD AS UR CLAIMING IT IS and u say ask other streamer's amsongold been clearing ulduar as a main tank half the time in the arms Rev build lol so ya there solid esp with a ton of block <3 all the tanks tho!

Wow what hate for Prot Warrior in this video :(. I main a Prot Warrior in my guild and i have no problem MT Naxx or Ulduar10 or 25. Loads of Defensive cooldowns, high mitigation, high HP pool. A skilled Warrior knows how to Play this class and not struggle. Also threat ? Spamming threat generation abilities is A Warriors specialty ! Never had a Warlock over threat me :). So yeah maybe not a meta tank but the OG tank from classic still amazing and should not be Underestimated !!!

Crix you can see the dislikes from rugsz perspective stop bringing idiots in the videos

just for asking why is rugsz here what does he brings to the table?
dam baby soyboy

Lvled up my 76 tauren prot warr and now I see this. :(

This didn’t age well.

If you are prot warrior you are guild master back the days also RL thats the way you can enter raid content

as a druid tank, I solo tanked ony remake in wrath with 2 healers in a 25 man and we got the achievement "more dots" on first try

So much hate for prot warrior..

so happy warriors finally get a reality check this xpac haha, they got spoonfed the #1 tank spot for two xpacs, time for them to sit back for a bit and enjoy being in the backseat. silver lining is us paladins kept the seat warm for them ;)

The Rugrat guy has no idea what he's doing by speaking so extreme about Prot Warriors, even Crix had to step in to reset the tone. By speaking so extreme about Prot Warrios (e.g., calling them straight up "dog shit"), you cause your audience to alienate the players that play Prot and will have an even MORE difficult time getting to do the content they want.

Pretty sure his name is short for "Rugrat," cause only a child would care so much about a video game to bash a class as if he were personally offended by its existence.

What person who’s ever played this game in the wotlk era ever says that threat is “Gone”. Threat is a thing for absolute sure.

Also, every tank is viable if you play them well. Someone who’s not good with a Prot warrior rotation is gonna have a struggle. Only when compared to the paladin, who is the easiest tank to use, are others “bad” but it’s relative.

You get skill groups doing a thing and progressing is gonna happen. Lowest common denominator doom bringing about Prot warriors and druids is just that….lowest common denominator problems AND dps that are unable to control their threat.

There is no class in wotlk that is bad or unplayable. While numbers can and are better for certain specs, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better in a way that is noticeable in a practical way. If meters are the nuanced determining factor, then it’s the minutiae versus practical results.


Good players get good results. Every class in Wrath isn’t equally easy to perform with but it’s possible to do well.

His description of warriors is what separates Modern players to those of us who played at original releases. Yes "technically" prot warriors was the worst tank if you compare them all but if your raid group truly knows what they are doing and you don't have noobs that need to be carried it honestly doesn't matter. So imo when he calls them trash that tells me he just played with shit players and groups. There is a difference between "preference" and not viable. If you want to be picky and easy as possible that's fine but I am running with a group that knows wtf they are doing and reliable to show up then I don't care.

Lol some no one who hates prot warriors. Oh well I'll be having fun while he's seething over my decision.

From a healing position all of WotLk, the easiest tanks to heal full way were this order... protect Pala 1, warrior 2, druid 3, dk 4

Hes talking about aoe threat, you cant out threat a warrior on single target.

I was in a top 10 progression guild on Korgath during Woltk.
Back then, prot warriors generated more threat than any other tank. Shield slam by far had the most threat generation. I personally experienced this around the time of Trial of the Crusader.
Prot warriors also had a lot of good damage mitigation abilities on fairly short cooldowns.
They were incredible tanks... but they had to work 10x as hard as prot pally or deathknight to do it.

Warrior is the best single target tank.
Forget DK its garbage played DK tank on vanilla Wotlk.

He said pay them a lot of gold to do so, do people pay tanks to tank raids for them?

I really can't trust a guy with that shoulder width to talk honestly about Our Beloved Prot Warrior.

Update: currently MT prot warrior on all Phase 1 content, 10 and 25 man, with ease. I'll let you know when I start to sweat.

Update 2: currently MT prot warrior on all Phase 2 content, killed 25m Yogg week 2, 10m HM XT, Council, Thoriml, Freya, and Hodir done week three.

i like the song on the bg :)

As soon as I heard “dogshit, never bring this” I have heard everything I need to hear from that guy. Whole point of wrath is everything can be viable. His mindset is what makes the game way worse.

"Don't bring prot warrior." This tells you right there this guy has no idea what he is talking about.

Using Rugs in these videos and making his Pserver opinion religion, is toxic for the community. I actually have his channel blocked. Dude is a click baiting fool who has no idea what wotlk is going to be like.

Please indicate that you are talking min/max hardcore. Please don't say you have to play x class since I won't rn with them ever. I get you are hardcore. But the majority of players are casual. But hey we are all hardcore.

So you're telling me I should play as an edgy goth, a woodland critter or a catholic in plate? No thanks, WARRIOR ALL THE WAY BABY

Idk HOW i didnt not notice my twitter name at the bottom of the screen during my first watch of this vid 😭, Crix could of gave ya boy a shoutout rofl

What's parry hasting

Yuck fou!

I'm gonna play prot warrior just to stick it to this dude

i had a prot warrior in wotlk built him for mitigation spec out tanked dk's druids that relied on stam stacking, though my defense rating was around 680 ish when 540 was the cap thanks to that onyxia 25 sword however prot pally is s tier i will admit couldn't beat the threat of the pally

Lol everybody sad that prot pally is goated

Thanks for your video. I'm wondering about a couple of things:
1. Is Ardent Defender really that important? If I look at Vanilla and TBC raiding, the ability would rarely be used if you have a semi-competitive raid or better
2. Is single target threat not the most important thing? If Blood DKs are the kings of single target threat, shouldn't they be at least S tier as well?
3. I remember that one of the strengths of Blood DK is that you do a lot of selfhealing, which means you can cut a healer. Isn't cutting one healer and bringing one dps not more important than a prot paladin having some more overall damage?

Rugsz is trash. Downvote this

Putting Prot warrior in "don't bring" is 100% a mistake. In Wotlk when tanking, player skill makes a much bigger difference than the tanking spec, because every tank spec is good enough. You don't have to work too hard to tank well at high level in the worst spec, and on the flipside, a bad tank player can make your raid wipe even if he plays prot paladin.

Eekbawb on benediction is prob the best warrior tank in the game. I agree with this list haha we suck ass

Server first lich king 25(h) w protwar & protpally.

I wish I could find old posts from back in the day for vanilla TBC . Where everyone told me prot paladins couldn’t tank. Hilarious. And now everyone says Prot paladin are OP

I’m considering playing WOTLK classic.
I remember solo tanking heroic LK on 10-man . So much fun ! I did wow classic , prot paladin thunderfury & totally proved that paladins could tank.
Really burned me out .. but it could be fun playing WOTLK. Ugh . Gonna have to see where I’m at mentally / physically.

This middle guy doesn't know shit about warriors at all.

I know everyone is commenting about warrior. But Druid is honestly being slept on.

You can't drink walk in wotlk....