Defiant wrote: Fri Jul 24, 2026 12:59 am
Verox wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2026 5:45 pm
Major Issue
* Total Lack of Gear Progression:
I hear this complaint a lot and it's generally from Shaman Tanks that just wear full mitigation gear at all times. That's not really how you should be gearing in my opinion. Looking at *most* Tank classes, they all wear a mixture of mitigation and threat gear, and it should be the same for Shamans. I actually really liked how so much of our Tank stats were isolated to a 5pc set. It allowed us a lot of flexibility in swapping between various sets of gear for different situations. For example the Shaman Tank in my guild would solo tank one side of Twin Emps. He was able to put together enough Physical Mitigation and Shadow Resistance to make it work consistently. The downside being that he would occasionally have threat issues there, but not needing to have another Warlock swap over to Tanking gave the raid composition more flexibility and if the DPS need to watch their threat for one fight because of that it's a fair trade in my eyes.
You mention a lack of a Tanking belt. Therazanes Link is an excellent option for a Tanking belt. 24 Stamina is pretty solid. 1% Crit / AS is really strong. T2/T3 Bracers with +5 Defense isn't horrible, but yeah I'd agree the Bracer slot is one of the weaker slots-- so just go all in on a threat piece for that slot instead. We don't require every slot to be mitigation to be prepared even for the fights that require "full mitigation". Our Shaman Tank for example routinely tanked Hateful Strikes on Patchwerk, and was more than capable of tanking Saph.
I get that there are less raw mitigation pieces for us than other Tank classes, but raw mitigation gear isn't really what you should be wearing most of the time anyways. It's harder for us to reach 440 defense, sure, but you also don't need 440 defense as a Shaman. We have other defensive layers and for example magic mitigation that other classes don't have.
I didn't tank full time but I did have a proper Tank set for my Shaman, I was a healer main, and one of my main tanks was a Shaman. I never felt stressed healing him tbh. I honestly felt more stressed healing most of the Bear Tanks I ran into than Shaman Tanks. Individual skill expression obviously factors in here though, for sure. I would also acknowledge that Shaman Tanking is probably *harder* or takes more effort at least than say a Paladin Tank.
All of that said I do feel like Shaman Tanks could maybe use a slight buff, I would in general prefer Paladin Tanks, but I would also prefer Paladin Tanks over the other Tank classes as well-- although to be clear you do want a mixture. You can't just have pure Paladin Tanks for all your Tank roles. And I'm still not sure if that's a "Shamans need a buff" as much as "Paladins are overtuned".
But yes, make Spirit Link base line and give Resto Shamans Riptide lmao.