Damage Mitigation and Tanking

Critical hit immunity at level 80 for a heroic dungeon is 535 Defense.
Critical hit immunity at level 80 for a raid boss occurs at 540 Defense.

According to WoWWiki, as of patch 3.0, crushing blows cannot happen to max-level tanks. They changed crushing blows from 4 levels below the boss level (83) to 3 levels below the boss level. This change was to improve the validity of the druid and death knight tanks.

Damage Mitigation:
Block - Additional chance to mitigate damage when wearing a shield.
Defense - Helps prevent physical damage by reducing the chance to be hit or critically hit. It also increases block, dodge and parry.
Dodge - Ability to avoid an entire attack.
Miss - A failed attack. (Defense Skill vs Weapon Skill)
Parry - Chance to nullify an attack.
Resilience - Reduces chance to be critically hit. Reduces the damage from melee and spell critical strikes that do hit. Reduces normal damage taken.
Resistance - Reduces, or entirely blocks a particular shcool of magic.

Warrior
Warriors are best for tanking melee bosses with a lot of attack speed and low damage per hit.
They don't do well against spell damage.
They are able to use all the damage mitigation abilities.

Paladin
Paladins are best for tanking bosses with multiple adds.
They can also use all the damage mitigation abilities, but are more reliant on reaching the block cap for shields.

Druid
Druids are best at tanking burst damage bosses because they have huge health pools.
Cannot wear shields = Cannot block.
Weapons do not deal damage when in bear form = Cannot parry.
Depend heavily on high amounts of dodge from agility.

Death Knight
Death Knights are best for tanking spell-casting bosses. They have several abilities that enable them to avoid spell damage all together.
Receives 25% of strength as parry rating!
Cannot wear shields = Cannot block.

It Takes One To Know One

It's hard to understand the intricisies of the game, especially the tank-healer relationship without having first played the other person's role. This is difficult because it requires having leveled a second character to 80.

I lucked out because my wife happens to have a druid and has been building up it's tanking gear. I occasionally play her druid to help her get those pieces that just seem never to drop. I decided that I would run her character as a feral tank instead of boomkin dps which I usually do.

I learned a few tidbits about tanking that will help me be a better healer in the future. Mainly, that the hp required to tank a regular lvl-80 instance is much lower than that required to tank a heroic instance. That seems obvious, but you don't realize exactly how much the difference is until you're the tank.

We tried to have her druid tank Heroic ToC with 25k hp. We're a pretty skilled group of players, but it was still too hard. However, her druid can tank normal dungeons without any problems, even when being healed by a lower level character.

So, how much hp does a tank really need?

"If you ask the tank forums - Any HP is fine
If you ask the healer forums - You can't step into H UK until you have 32k unbuffed
If you ask the DPS forums - It will get lost in the PvP QQ"

-Greymare on Shattered Hand

I find that quote to be right on target. Most tanks think that they need a decent amount of hp, but after that, it doesn't matter -- that the healer will make up for less hp simply by healing faster. They think that the solution to low hp is to get a better healer with more mana and more +spell power. However, this is just not the case. A healer recognizes that there is a limit to how fast one can heal, and that if the tank takes more damage than that, there is no amount of hp that will suffice.

We pulled in a paladin tank with aproximately the same amount of hp, and he managed to tank through it with only small problems. What was the difference? It wasn't the amount of hp. It was the additional avoidance mechanics of the pally tank. He wore a shield and could parry in addition to dodge. I alluded to this fact in a previous post (WoW's Not What It Used To Be) regarding death knight and druid tanks. I'll be posting again on this topic discussing each tank's avoidance mechanisms and which tanking class to select for the job... yes, there is a difference.


However, you must consider some factors while tanking other than just yourself:

Can your healer keep up with the amount of damage you take, even if you don't die instantly?

Will pulling more mobs cause additional AOE or other combined effects that will wipe the group, even though you can take the damage?

Can you see anything once you pull a group of mobs?

Can you chase after a mob if one gets loose?

How good is your group? Can the DPS pull mobs off you? Are they attacking the mob you're directly attacking, or one that you're only hitting occasionally?

Is your group going to AOE, or single target each mob?

The Ideal 5-Man group Make-up

I love this group make-up for 5-man instnaces and here's why:

Warrior Tank
Warriors were made to tank. It was an afterthought that possibly paladins and druids should be able to tank too. If you had to swap someone, you could change out the warrior for a paladin tank, if they were awesome. That way, the pally could hand out Kings or Wisdom to the party which would all benifit immensely.

Priest Heals
The priest is the only true-blood healer in the game. There are very few things that a resto shaman, resto druid, or holy paladin can offer that a priest can't. While druid heals offer more HoT's, the priest's Prayer of mending and renew are usually a much more efficient use of mana. Throw in Fortitude and Spirit which would be immensely useful for all other players in the party.

Mage
Not to mention the heavy DPS, polymorph is probably the best CC in the game. Arcane intellect would be beneficial to every other person in the party. The mage has the most consistant AOE damage of any class.

Shaman
Totems are freaking awesome. Tremmor totem to mass-dispel fear, mana regen, windfury, and a fire nova totem for AOE. I'd prefer enhancement here as the DPS is just amazing.

Druid Moonkin
Throw in a battle rez, innervate, and a 5% crit aura. Very nice spike damage and AOE capability here as well.

It also helps that having a pally, priest, shaman and a druid means that you have 4 people who can throw out an extra heal / rez if needed. If you consider their common off-spec, this is a pretty versitile group if things needed to be switched around in a pinch.

You could easily have:

Druid Tank
Pally DPS
Shammy Healer
Mage DPS
Priest DPS