Learn the essential stats, caps, and strategies for tanking in World of Warcraft: Midnight. Discover how Warriors, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights excel in their roles.
Only four classes can tank in World of Warcraft: Midnight: Warriors, Paladins, Druids, and Death Knights.
Warriors and Paladins use shields. Feral Druids stack Agility, as a talent removes critical hits against them, allowing for stacking of other stats. Death Knights (DKs) are the best anti-magic tanks and the only class that can tank in almost any specialization. It's possible to tank with a pure DPS (Damage Per Second) spec if you can negate enemy critical strikes, though you'll lack specific tanking abilities.
Tanking primarily involves inflating your threat (how much enemies focus on you) and maintaining decent DPS. Reducing or avoiding damage and increasing your health are secondary concerns. Pure armor and HP are less critical than threat generation.
This means prioritizing DPS-oriented stats is sometimes necessary. Hit and Expertise are crucial for tanks because you cannot generate threat if you are not hitting enemies.
DKs should use a two-handed weapon for tanking, while other plate wearers use shields. Bear Druids do not need Parry or Defense rating. Agility can be beneficial for all tanks as it buffs critical strike chance, dodge, and armor, but it does not directly increase DPS, making it a stat to consider only if other preferred stats are unavailable.
The Defense cap is 540 Defense Skill, equivalent to approximately 690 Defense Rating. These values can be found under the "Defenses" tab in your character pane. At level 80, all characters can achieve 400 Defense Skill inherently, requiring gear, gems, and enchants to reach the cap. Defense Skill reduces incoming critical strikes and increases your chance to avoid attacks. Reaching the cap is vital to prevent bosses from landing critical hits that could lead to being one-shot.
When choosing between further stats, prioritize Dodge over Parry if given the choice, as Dodge has a higher effective cap than Parry. Here are the approximate caps for DKs, which may vary slightly for other tanks:
- Defense Rating: 690 (DKs may have a slightly lower requirement with the Stoneskin rune)
- Dodge: 88%
- Parry: 47% (Note: Parry is generally considered useless for Druids)
- Hit: 8%
- Expertise: 6.5%
Strive to reach these caps, then focus on maximizing your DPS. During combat, consistently use your Area of Effect (AoE) attacks and any abilities that increase threat. Depending on the dynamics between DPS and healers, your avoidance and mitigation abilities may not always be necessary. You might find that single-target enemies and bosses are often easier to tank than groups of trash mobs.
Finally, when selecting glyphs and enchants, lean towards those that increase threat generation over avoidance or mitigation, as increased threat is a constant benefit, whereas cooldown-based abilities are not always in use.
100% Human-Written. AI Fact-Checked. Community Verified. Learn how AntMag verifies content