Shaman 'tanking'Follow

I'd put a shaman tank in the same category as a hunter tank-- it can be done, but it really shouldn't. If you can tank only when guildies/friends are focused on letting you tank, and can't do the same in a pug, you're not really a tank. There are definitely places where non-tanks can fill a tanking role (four horsemen for instance), but that's a completely different topic altogether.

With the gear changes coming in Cata, not only will Shamans/very confused Rogues/melee Hunters lose whatever minimal ability they had to tank, but off-spec Warriors and Paladins will no longer be able to switch into a tanking set as needed. It will be interesting to see how it works for Feral Druids and Death Knights, though, since those classes have tanking and DPS talents within the same tree... possibly we'll start seeing more kitty-spec Druids tanking.

There are just too many factors missing from a shaman tank for me to say it's anything more than a shaman holding aggro and taking a beating while they're spam healed. That's not tanking. That's being dumb.

The amount of defense rating you need to get from 400 defense (base max @ 80 for all classes) and 540 (crit immune for raids) is so far beyond what you could hope to get through gems/enchants along that crit immunity is not and will not be an option for non-plate "tanks" in WotLK (excluding druids, of course).

Real tanks get a passive stamina boost through talents that augments an already substantial health pool...shaman recently received a 7% boost to their base health to bring them on par with the bottom rung because previously we had the lowest base health of any class. If I'm not mistaken, there might be a talent in the Enh. tree that grants a boost to stamina, but you're adding a bit to not much.

Real tanks get passive bonuses to avoidance stats through their talents trees. Shaman...if they go far into into enhancement...get the ability to parry.

Shield tanks get talents that increase the effectiveness/frequency of blocks as well as abilities to make blocks more reliable/effective in some way at some time. Shaman get...the option to equip a shield as a base proficiency.

"Real" tank classes get a form/presence/stance/buff that dramatically increases their threat output. Shaman can skip their threat reduction talents, but can't do anything to augment their threat upwards aside from maybe a trivial boost from an Armsman glove enchant.

In short, if you look at everything "real" tank classes have in common, shamans get little/none of that. If you had 15 gem sockets available throughout all of your gear and threw epic +Def gems into them + all available +Def enchants, +Def meta gem, +Def head and shoulders glyphs and a tank shield, you still wouldn't be able to reach crit immunity. Without that, the chances of getting one-shot are substantial, and healing a spikey tank with a relatively trivial health pool would be neither easy nor fun.

There are mechanics to tanking that shaman simply lack, and being able to withstand the beating from a selective component of a particular encounter does not make someone a remotely viable tank.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2009 8:34am by AureliusSir

The concept reminds me of the videos from TBC of the Boomkin tanking Prince and Gruul. As you know, low avoidance + lack of passive DR and a near total lack of ******* buttons means your only option is to go in sacrificing dps output for survivability and still cranking out as much damage as you possibly can to maintain threat while relying on overgeared healers to keep you standing.