WoW Forever Best Tank Tier List: Warrior, Paladin and Bear Ranked

How this WoW Forever tank tier list ranks tanks

We score every tank on the same five questions, all answered from tooltips and official notes:

Criterion	What it answers	Where we checked
Threat tools	Can you hold one target and a full pack?	WoW Handbook talents; Kaivax's development notes
Taunt and pickup	How fast can you take a loose enemy back?	WoW Handbook spell pages; Blizzard deep dives
Emergency cooldowns	What do you press when the healer falls behind?	WoW Handbook spell pages
Avoidance and mitigation	Block, dodge, parry, armor, absorbs	WoW Handbook; Warcraft Wiki for base rules
Ease of play	How much can go wrong in a normal pull?	Our assessment from the tooltips

The table is a decision aid, not a damage meter. Rankings from other sites disagree: some guides put the Paladin first, others the Warrior, and most of them were written during the level 30 beta. We rank from the launch client and say so wherever a number has moved.

WoW Forever best tank tier list at launch

Tier	Spec	Strongest tool	Biggest gap
S	Protection Warrior	Shield Wall, Last Stand and Rage from blocks, dodges and parries	Shorter taunt range than a Paladin; damage is modest
S	Protection Paladin	Seal of Fury taunt at 10 yards, Templar's Bulwark, Divine Shield	No interrupt and no slow; Mana to manage
A	Feral (Bear) Druid	Dire Bear armor, Feral Charge interrupt, Frenzied Regeneration	No block and no parry; fewest cooldowns

Within S tier, the Warrior is the easier first tank and the Paladin brings more to the group. The class-wide view, including healers and damage dealers, is in our WoW Forever class tier list.

S-tier tanks in WoW Forever

To reach the top tier, a spec needs an answer to every one of the five questions. That doesn't make it the best class overall. A Protection Warrior deals less damage than a Bear in Cat Form and brings fewer buffs than a Paladin. For the tank job alone, though, these two specs leave the fewest holes.

Protection Warrior

The Warrior is the plainest tank to learn: put on a shield, stay in Defensive Stance and let blocks feed your Rage. Forever removed most of the stance swapping that made Classic Warrior tanking awkward, which is why it reaches the top tier.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Longest list of defensive cooldowns	Lowest damage of the three tanks
Threat comes from things that happen anyway (blocks, dodges, parries)	Taunt range is shorter than the Paladin's Judgement
Works from the first dungeon to the last	Weapon and shield upgrades matter a lot

Rage. Classic Warriors ran dry when they wore good armor. Kaivax wrote on October 8 that Blizzard had been "balancing Rage gained around Warriors having 50% Armor" and rebalanced it "in the 20% to 40% range" by level (development notes). On top of that, Shield Specialization gives 5 Rage on every block, and Master of Defense gives 5 Rage on a dodge or parry while you hold a shield (WoW Handbook, launch client).

Threat. Revenge fires after a block, dodge or parry and deals high threat, and Improved Revenge adds 60% to its damage. Defiance adds 20% threat in Defensive Stance with a shield. Thunder Clap now works in Defensive Stance, and its damage and Sunder Armor's threat scale with attack power (WoW Handbook). Demoralizing Shout also puts threat on everything it hits since October 8 (Kaivax). Vanguard, the 16-point talent, lets you Charge without leaving Defensive Stance, and Shield Slam at 31 points hits for 421 plus your Block Value. Bastion, new to Forever in row 6 of the Protection tree, adds 10% to all your damage at five ranks while you carry a shield, and more damage means more threat (WoW Handbook talents).

Cooldowns. Shield Wall cuts damage taken by 60% for 12 seconds on a 15-minute cooldown, and Improved Shield Wall takes 11 minutes off that. Last Stand adds 30% of your maximum health for 20 seconds. Concussion Blow stuns for 5 seconds, and Improved Shield Bash makes Shield Bash silence for 3 (all WoW Handbook, launch client).

WoW Handbook's Protection leveling plan is 5/6/40 with no respec, so a Warrior can tank all the way from level 10. Builds, races and the rotation are in our Warrior guide.

Protection Paladin

Blizzard says Forever Paladins "can be highly effective tanks" (Paladin class deep dive). The biggest reason is the taunt that Classic Paladins never had.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Longest taunt range of any tank (10 yards)	No interrupt and no slow (Blizzard)
Templar's Bulwark and Divine Shield for emergencies	Everything costs Mana
Blessings and Blessing of Protection for the group	Consecration holds only four enemies well

Taunt. With Seal of Fury active, each melee swing adds 35 Holy damage, and with a shield equipped each hit also gives you an absorb worth half of that damage. Judging the Seal deals 153 Holy damage and taunts. WoW Handbook's launch data lists the taunt at 3 seconds; guides written during the beta give 4, so read the tooltip in game. Blizzard notes the taunt has "a uniquely longer 10-yard range" and that the Seal "favors using a fast weapon while tanking." Swift Judgement, the 16-point talent, now gives you an extra Judgement with its own cooldown that doesn't use up your Seal (WoW Handbook, launch client).

Threat. Righteous Fury raises all threat by 33% and Holy threat by another 90% (WoW Handbook). Blizzard cut that Holy bonus to 60% in September and put it back to 90% in mid-October (Kaivax). Consecration hits every enemy in the area, but only the first four take the large bonus damage, and Blizzard's deep dive says it can "reliably generate threat on only 4 targets at a time." Hammer of the Righteous, trained at 40, hits your target and up to three more. Holy Shield is a threat tool as well as a defensive one: each blocked attack while it is up deals 75 Holy damage, and that damage carries 20% extra threat on top of Righteous Fury's Holy bonus (WoW Handbook talents).

Survival. Templar's Bulwark gives an absorb equal to your maximum health for 8 seconds on a 5-minute cooldown (Blizzard). Holy Shield raises block chance by 30% for 10 seconds with four charges, and Blizzard made Bulwark its prerequisite. Improved Righteous Fury cuts damage taken by 9% at three ranks, and the 31-point Shieldsworn lets Holy Strike block spells for 6 seconds. Divine Shield makes you immune for 12 seconds but halves your damage (WoW Handbook, launch client).

Mana. The launch tree has no Improved Seal of Fury. Mana now comes back through Shield Specialization: blocks can restore 4% of your maximum Mana, once every 3 seconds (WoW Handbook). Consecration alone costs 565 Mana, so long pulls test your Mana pool more than your health.

Group tools. Blessing of Kings is trained at 20 for 10% more stats, and Blessing of Protection makes a party member immune to physical attacks for 10 seconds. Blessing of Might (melee attack power) and Blessing of Wisdom (Mana every 5 seconds) each last an hour, and Cleanse, trained at 42, strips a poison, a disease and a magic effect from an ally (WoW Handbook Paladin page). These help any group, but a Holy or Retribution Paladin can cast them too, so they aren't a reason on their own to bring a Protection Paladin. Talents and racials are in our Paladin guide.

Example: a Paladin tank pulls five enemies and Consecration holds four. Mark the fifth for crowd control before the pull, and keep Swift Judgement ready in case a caster turns toward your healer.

A-tier tanks in WoW Forever

This tier is fully playable. The label means the spec has one clear gap against the S-tier pair, not that groups should turn it away. With only three tank classes, a good Bear is still one of very few players who can fill the role.

Feral Druid

Bear Form is the Druid's tank form, and Forever makes it far stronger than in Classic. The catch is the attack table: a Bear can't parry and can't equip a shield, so it has no block (Warcraft Wiki; WoW Handbook). Everything rests on armor, health and dodge.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Biggest armor multiplier of any tank	No block and no parry
Feral Charge interrupts; Swipe and Primal Bite hold packs	Fewest emergency cooldowns
Can switch to Cat Form for damage when the tanking is done	Rewards careful play more than the other two

Armor and health. Dire Bear Form, at 40, raises the armor from your items by 360% and adds a large Health bonus (WoW Handbook). Blizzard fixed a wrong health value in the Bear Form tooltip on November 6, so check the number in your own spellbook. Thick Hide now works in every form, and Blizzard's deep dive says Druid tanks "now gain benefit from Defense skill items similar to other tank classes" (Hunter and Druid deep dive). Natural Reaction adds 5% dodge and 5 Rage on every dodge.

Threat. The beta buffed Bears three times: the Bear Form threat bonus went from 30% to 50%, critical strikes in Bear Form give double Rage, and Primal Bite's threat was "roughly doubled" (Kaivax). Primal Bite deals weapon damage plus 42, and WoW Handbook's launch data lists Lacerate as a Feral talent: a bleed that stacks five times and makes high threat. Swipe hits three enemies, and Faerie Fire and Demoralizing Roar both build threat in form since October.

Cooldowns. Barkskin cuts physical damage by 20% for 15 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown. Frenzied Regeneration turns up to 10 Rage per second into 1% health per Rage point for 10 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown (WoW Handbook). Blizzard's deep dive describes Berserk as a 15-second cooldown that lets Primal Bite hit three targets, but WoW Handbook's launch-client Feral tree doesn't list it, and the November 9 hotfix removed Berserk from the Cooldown Manager. Check your talent pane before you plan a pull around it.

What the Bear does best. Feral Charge immobilizes the target and interrupts its spell for 4 seconds, which a Paladin can't match. Rage potions, weapon enchants and racials now work in form (Blizzard), and once the pack is down you can shift to Cat Form and add real damage. Mark of the Wild and Thorns are welcome, but a Restoration or Balance Druid brings them too.

Our read: the Bear handles steady, predictable damage well and suffers most against big spikes, which is where Shield Wall or Templar's Bulwark would step in. Crushing blows are the other worry. Warcraft Wiki's attack-table page explains that creatures well above your level can land them, and that only miss, dodge, parry and block results can push them off the table. A Bear has two of those four, so it can't crowd crushing blows out the way a shield tank can. Whether Forever's level 60 bosses crush at all isn't documented yet. That gap is why the Bear sits in A tier. Talents and the Bear rotation are in our Druid guide.

Pick the right tank for you

If you want	Pick	Why
The easiest first tank	Protection Warrior	Rage comes from being hit, and the cooldowns cover mistakes
To help your group the most	Protection Paladin	Blessings, Blessing of Protection, the longest taunt range
To tank and still deal damage	Feral Druid	Cat Form on the same talents
To tank on a Hardcore realm	Paladin or Warrior	Divine Shield and Bulwark, or Shield Wall and Last Stand

Paladins and Druids can keep a second build with dual specialization from level 40 (Blizzard), so a hybrid can quest as damage and tank dungeons. Our dual spec and respec guide covers the cost. For dungeon levels and the first new tank tests, see the new dungeons guide.

Re-check this tier list after December 9

Three things can move these rankings:

1. Hotfix notes. Blizzard has posted hotfixes every few days since launch, and two Paladin details in the launch client already differ from beta-era guides.
2. Raid logs. Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit and Onyxia's Lair open on December 9 (our raids guide). Level 60 bosses will show whether the Bear's missing block matters as much as the toolkit suggests.
3. Your own tooltips. Taunt durations and talent rows have changed between builds, so trust the in-game text over any list, this one included.

The WoW Forever hub links the rest of our class and dungeon coverage.

Want a hand with this?

If you would rather not grind this part yourself, WoW Forever powerleveling services are listed on FullBoosts. Read the publisher's rules before you buy any service from anyone, FullBoosts included — a marketplace listing isn't publisher permission.

FAQ

What is the best tank class in WoW Forever? On our criteria, Protection Warrior and Protection Paladin share S tier. The Warrior is the simpler pick with the strongest defensive cooldowns; the Paladin has a 10-yard taunt, Templar's Bulwark and group Blessings (Blizzard; WoW Handbook).

Is Feral Druid a good tank in WoW Forever? Yes. Bears gained a 50% threat bonus, double Rage on crits and much stronger Primal Bite threat in the beta (Kaivax). They can't block or parry and have the fewest cooldowns, so they rank A, one step below the other two.

How good is the Protection Paladin tank in WoW Forever? Very good. Seal of Fury lets Judgement taunt from 10 yards, and Templar's Bulwark absorbs damage equal to your maximum health. Paladins still have no interrupt or slow, and Mana runs short on long pulls (Blizzard).

Is Protection Warrior a viable tank in WoW Forever? It's one of the two best. Rage now comes from blocks, dodges and parries, Thunder Clap and Charge work in Defensive Stance, and Shield Wall plus Last Stand are two strong emergency buttons (WoW Handbook).

Can Shamans or Warlocks tank in WoW Forever? Not as a full role. WoW Handbook's class index lists only Warrior, Paladin and Druid as tanks. Rockbiter Weapon adds threat to a Shaman's swings, which is why some guides say an Enhancement Shaman can cover in a pinch.

Related guides

• WoW Forever class tier list
• Warrior guide
• Paladin guide
• Druid guide
• Dual spec and respec guide
• New dungeons guide
• Raids guide