WoW Classic Shaman Tanking Guide

Interesting guide but has this ever been attempted in a raid or is it just for dungeons at best?

Nymis Shamans tanking has grown tremendously since Vanilla. They can tank the majority of raid bosses out there. I was capable of reaching AQ, just before the server I was playing on was closed. Keep in mind, I was not using special event buffs. With these buffs, I would confidently see myself tanking NAXX.

Have a nice day

I can help with some of those from testing back in vanilla:

Vanish wipes threat and has no resist chance.

Flask of Petrification prevents movement, attacking, and spell casting – but you become immune to damage. It does not wipe threat, but you cannot have aggro unless there are no other targets on the threat table or you have the enemy taunted. Enemies will ignore you and go after other targets on the threat table.

Limited Invulnerability Potion works like Blessing of Protection – enemies which deal physical damage will ignore you and go after other targets on the threat table. It does not modify or reset your threat or threat generation, you will continue to generate threat while under the effect, and can potentially gain aggro once the effect ends if this puts you in 1st with 110% or 130% of whoever has aggro.

I very much appreciate your help 🙂 Do you know if the Petri buff can be clicked off?

A lot of subjects in my guides have been polished and generally revamped to reflect Classic WoW more adequately. If some thing is incorrect (values/data, etc…) please bring it to my attention.

Why is Stormstrike taken? High mana cost and cooldown.

Also, can a 0/30/21 spec work for dungeon tanking or healing? Not raiding.

Stormstrike is taken in dungeons because of its bolstering of nature damage, which increases the damage of Earth Shock (our highest threat spell). Also, dungeons are considered very easy, therefore, it’s suggested to have a threat weapon which also takes benefit from the instant attack portion of SS.

Yes, you should be fine with 0/30/21 for tanking and healing dungeons. You may encounter difficulties threat-wise if 2 fury warriors are present however, so be on your toes if this ever happens.

What talents would you suggest for a 0/30/21 dungeon tanking/healing build? Or would 0/31/20 be better? I’m just looking for something flexible for gearing up and getting into dungeons faster.

0/31/20 https://classicdb.ch/?talent#hZVV00Exukxctz0x I’d recommend carrying a spirit/mp5 and equip it when you drink to save time on drinking.

If you have more questions, feel free to let me know!

Choffer

Thank you for the support! Avoidance is more sought after for dungeon tanking since there is no stat increasing buffs to take advantage of since less classes are present. However, this avoidance meta was merely for a few weeks. Atm dungeon tanking is fairly trivial and assuming a semi-competent group, it’s altogether better to go Agi over avoidance since it increases our armor, dodge and crit. Also stamina is more attractive since it defensively helps us with physical and magical damage. Hit and spell hit is not needed in dungeons since the mobs are lower/similar level as you, thus requiring barely any hit chance. Simply equipping a dagger or fast weapon will help you meet the hit requirement in a roundabout way. Refer to the first talent setup in Talent section to learn more.

You should not have any problems dungeon tanking at this point in the game. Have the appropriate gear on you and carry a few health potions just in case, talents are secondary.

Serathil is a threat weapon, if you have threat problems.
Timeworn Mace is a defensive weapon, if you have survival problems.

Spineshatter offers the unscalable defense stat, as opposed to timeworn mace (scales with “Toughness”, “Inspiration”). However, weapons with a lot of stamina are good to equip versus magical dealing bosses.

Shifting Cloak is ideal if survival is not an issue all the while bolstering threat.

I have Malistar (in the spreadsheet) listed as the 5th best shield in the game for threat in the game, maybe I am misunderstanding your question?

Mark of Tyr is ideal for raid tanking but if you don’t see doing this in the future, choose Blackhand. Mark of chosen is the 2nd best defensive related trinket in the game and best threat trinket in the game, assuming it procs. Against +2 target it should absolutely be equipped.

Choffer

Malistar is the best threat related shield and 2nd best defensive related shield. Rank14 shield is the best defensive related weapon but doesn’t surpass the threat potential of Malistar. (unless the nature damage of Rank14 shield does something unforeseen, time will tell…)

Yes, dungeons are trivial. The talent setup for dungeons in “Talents” assumes a new person is tanking and they won’t put a lot of effort and need as much going for them passively as possible.

The threat granted by the talent Nature Guidance is incomparably low as opposed to the massive threat in the Elemental talent tree.
But, once +spell hit readily become available on wep/offhand, we swap to these when we want to cast ES during combat. During pre-pull you can do the same thing for CL. For now in Phase2, we swap to +spell damage weapon which is similar, to the previous method. You can find what I am talking about in “Raid Tanking Strats” -> Molten Core -> Read more.

TheGreatShambino For new shaman tank players looking to raid tank, I recommend incremental steps forwards, start with off-tanking on easy/quick bosses and progressively go for main-tanking. As far as talents, judging by what you said I am think this https://classicdb.ch/?talent#hiczZVi0dExut it’s not too mechanically demanding or gear dependant. The moment you’re more conformable with shaman raid tanking but need more threat, float the idea of having a resto shaman in the group to place down improved totems or possibly forgo a debuff slot to allow Stormstrike to be applied by another shaman in the raid.

I highly recommend getting Timeworn Mace from DM, it’s the BiS weapon for defensive purposes for the majority of the game. If threat is needed, at any moment swap in a fast dagger, for example: Core Hound tooth. Hand of edward has a low proc rate and is nichely used for aoe tanking, which could be too mechanically taxing atm for you.

Feel free to ask me more questions! I’ll also be starting my streaming debut next week and can answer questions with even more detail.

TLDR: the tps difference between Corehound Tooth and Edward the odd is 8 tps, you can make up that threat when using Edward the odd’s once per minute proc by using healing wave rank 8 in single target, adding 17.33 to 19.85 hps. Unreliable? Yes. However, for longer fights it opens the door to far more threat generation than that dagger while adding in more survivability on top.

Remember Healing Wave won’t cause threat at max hp, you’d have to tell healers to stop healing so you can get a Healing Wave off and if you’re lucky really lucky you’ll heal for 100% of the damage you are missing (cuz of overhealing). And also if Healing Wave crits all of that extra healing is wasted and becomes overhealing. The only solution is to cast Healing Wave on a warlock who has life tapped his hp to low amounts, but this would not be survival focused but threat focused. However, it is still a negative. In this super rare scenario, the warlock would cause more damage from not life-tapping (cuz of CD) and their damage would significantly reduce the boss fight length, which outweighs the shaman threat gain over a boss fight length. Also, Hound tooth is still somewhat a defensive weapon (the stam), if we truly wanted to compare threat we’d use Perdition’s Blade or similar. Don’t get me wrong I love Edward, it’s a core weapon within aoe threat generation. If you’re interested, I am answering questions if you care to join.

In my opinion, if someone can’t time an instant cast self heal with their next tick of incoming damage, they likely have other, more pressing, in game problems than managing threat/survivability, and probably shouldn’t be rolling a shaman tank. Maybe for the inexperienced shaman, a different weapon could be better, but with experience using Edward, the threat and survivability are unparalleled until p3. It takes good timing and more experience, but the results are there to be attained. Like other classes and high performance specs with nuance, you just gotta know what you’re doing and practice practice practice!

With fights lasting mere minutes, Edward “should” not be triggering that often. Perhaps in a more casual guild?
Around P3 fights start lasting longer, so that’d be your best bet. But the amount of agi or spell crit to have Flurry active enough to get consistent proc of Edward is insane. Also, you’d need to be in a luxurious position in order to forgo defensive buffs and go for offensive buffs (JuJu Flurry, chicken, etc…) There’s the option of just getting Bloodlust but that might be too hardcore for most.
Unless, I am missing something, a fast PURE threat dagger with WF will always out-threat Edward’s heal/damage. But you can always equip Edward if the priest is kind enough to throw a PI your way but again this is a luxurious position.

So I still have my elemental shaman, a troll. I’ve not played in a couple months because of RL stuff. But damn it if shaman tank has always interested me but I can’t envision end-game tanking with my skinny ass troll.

Troll’s are the ideal threat race for raids, don’t be afraid of their fragile physique most top guild warrior tanks are trolls. If you don’t plan on raid tanking you’ll still be fine with Tauren.

I’m actually very surprised you don’t mention Eskhandar’s Right Claw as a weapon in gear list.
I suppose its proc has a very good synergy with RB, because extra TPS doesnt descale with Haste.
If I get this weapon, I’ll try to measure its PPM and added TPS.

Esk is a luxury weapon, it assumes you don’t need Timeworn (which is godly survival-wise). To get consistent procs of Esk you need a lot of agi/crit, which is gained later on in the game, at that point better weapons are available.

Hi so about Eskhandar’s, word on the street (warrior community) is that you cannot parry when using this weapon, which effectively ranks it at the very bottom of the totem pole for tanking! 🙁 60% reduced attack speed would be brokenly nice, though.

I’ve heard something similar regarding parry on fist weapons.

Interesting. According to this wowwiki patch notes history for parry, fist weapons were supposedly fixed to allow them to parry just like any other weapon back in patch 1.6:

that might be the case I’ll ask around, I’ve never had a fist weapon, since I got Deathbringer first and most weapons generally outperform fist weapons.

Eshkander’s claw just looks so cool though. So is the claw of the black Drake. Shame they don’t keep up.

Esk is in a weird place.
Timeworn mace is so good for raids, you have to be in a very luxurious scenario to forgo it’s defensive stats to opt for a threat weapon such as: Esk.
If you are in this prestige position you would also need a lot of agility to trigger flurry to trigger Esk and you’d be yet AGAIN sacrificing defensive stats for Esk’s proc rate.

You eventually do reach a consistent proc rate of Esk around P3-P4’ish but at that point there are better threat weapons that also don’t demand you to sacrifice defense.

I’d suggest Empyrean (esp if Troll) and Core Hound Tooth, which has stamina and still remains a threat weapon alongside a spell damage weapon like staff of dominance for Earth Shocks.

Here’s my take on current phase 2.5 Pre-raid gear setup.
https://classic.wowhead.com/gear-planne … FOPZExOk4x

Good take, I’d have a set similar like this in my bag if my group is showing bad signs, I’d maybe change the Demon Howl for Lordly and have Timeworn as wep.

P.S. how do you add enchants on wowhead gear planner?

When selecting item for a given slot, there’s an enchant selection below the items window

Thank you, I couldn’t figure it out lol.

If you have any more shaman tank questions, feel free to let me know. There’s also a whole shaman tank discord, if you’re looking to get a second opinion, just tell me and I’ll send you a link.

Hello there, every other source I’ve read states that mana spring totem does not give any threat, am I missing anything here?

Unless it got silently changed in the last few weeks. You can only get threat from your own Mana Spring Totem.

How would it be supposed to work? I did the following test:

The threat generated by Mana is half of the amount, so it would be quite low.
I will re-test this and get back to you.
If you have any other questions regarding the guide, feel free to ask.

Touched up quite a large amount of things (all positive stuff). If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

Guide has been fully updated for ZG. If there’s any questions, please let me know.

Woohoo, Thanks Caperfin, tell us when complete!Which parts have to be changed?

I need to confirm the following: if https://classic.wowhead.com/item=12641/invulnerable-mail effect can be clicked off.The threat generated by Rockbiter at max rank (not as easy as it sounds).Apparently Dragon Breath Chili will stacks with food buffs, if you eat Chili after?Debuff priority of https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13514 and how much threat it deals?The behaviour behind https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13506/flask-of-petrification. Is like BoP, but can it be clicked off?The threat caused by the buff: Eye of the storm, Elemental Focus, Lightning Shield, Flurry and https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=20554/berserking.The threat caused by the buff https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13937, https://classic.wowhead.com/item=8956 and https://classic.wowhead.com/item=17774.The threat caused by https://classic.wowhead.com/item=11564/crystal-ward and https://classic.wowhead.com/item=11567/crystal-spire and if it resets swing timer and if spamming it continue to generate threat?(Phase5) The behaviour of https://classic.wowhead.com/item=21946 and the threat caused by its buff.Behaviour of https://classic.wowhead.com/item=4397/gnomish-cloaking-device (can you drop combat in-between boss combat pulse, if timed properly?)https://classic.wowhead.com/item=20007/mageblood-potion (phase 4)https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13452/elixir-of-the-mongoosehttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=12460/juju-mighthttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=13512/flask-of-supreme-powerhttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=17774/mark-of-the-chosenhttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=13454/greater-arcane-elixirhttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=10306https://classic.wowhead.com/item=13445/elixir-of-superior-defensehttps://classic.wowhead.com/item=20079/spirit-of-zanza (phase 4)https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=26119/stormcaller-spelldamage-bonus (Setbonus-phase 5)