In this WoW Season of Discovery tank rankings guide we delve into the strengths and abilities of each tanking class and spec to determine their effectiveness in Phase 4. In our SoD best tank tier list we aim to identify the top contenders for tanking supremacy, dissecting their talents, abilities, and optimal rune setups to dominate Molten Core raid. We also have tier lists for DPS and Healer roles.
4.9Season of Discovery Tank Tier List
It is important to understand which WoW Classic SoD tank is the best for your playstyle in the game. Let’s delve into the World of Warcraft SoD tank tier list to help you with that:
| S Tier | A Tier | B Tier | C Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paladin | Warlock | Druid | Rogue |
| Warrior | Shaman |
Rankings for the best Season of Discovery tank can differ based on personal playstyle and preferences. Hence, the selection of the right tank is subjective. Now let’s take a closer look at each tank class to assist you in deciding what is best for you. We will also give you recommended runes and builds that will increase your tank’s strength.
Paladin
Paladin can be played as a tank or a melee DPS. They can use different spells and abilities to deal damage, heal their teammates, and keep their party safe during any type of seasonal activities. The tank spec of Paladins is strong in Armor, Health, and the ability to absorb damage.
Paladin Talent Build
This Paladin tank build is designed to provide as much survivability, threat, and overall efficiency in the role of a tank as possible. Here are the key highlights:
- Redoubt, Toughness, Shield Specialization, Anticipation, and Holy Shield are talents that enhance your damage mitigation and absorption. These talents make sure that you are able to take a lot of damage and have high survival in difficult situations.
- Enhanced Righteous Fury and Blessing of Sanctuary increase your threat, which helps to maintain the attention of the mobs on you. This is important in order to have control over the area and to safeguard your team.
- Reckoning and One-Handed Weapon Specialization improve your attack skills by increasing your likelihood of getting additional attacks and increasing your damage per hit with one-handed weapons. This helps in maintaining threat and dealing consistent damage.
- Precision raises the hit chance, which means that your abilities will hit more often, while Benediction lowers the mana cost of seals and judgments, thus making them more mana-efficient. In the Retribution tree, Vindication and Conviction further enhance your utility by lowering the enemy’s attributes and raising your critical strike chance.
Paladin is a great option for completing Molten Core, but this raid is still difficult, and choosing a strong character may not be enough. Therefore, seek help from Overgear boosters that will help you overcome the difficulties that you will encounter.
Best Paladin Runes
As a Paladin tank in Season of Discovery, your role includes aggro control, protecting allies, and reducing damage. Equip yourself with the best Paladin runes to maximize your potential in tough tanking situations.
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Improved Sanctuary | Head | Enhances your Blessing of Sanctuary, increasing the damage it prevents by 100% and boosting the damage it deals by 30% of your shield block value. |
| Aegis | Chest | |
| Malleable Protection | Waist | Allows actions during Divine Protection and extends its duration by 50%, though it reduces damage taken by 50% instead of granting immunity. Holy Shield activation grants 4 Attack Power per defense point above 300, lasting 15 sec. |
| Avenger’s Shield | Legs | Throws a holy shield at an enemy, dealing significant Holy damage, Dazing them, and jumping to 2 additional enemies. Affects 3 targets in total for 10 sec. |
| The Art of War | Feet | Melee critical strikes reduce Exorcism‘s cooldown by 2 sec and cut its mana cost by 80%. |
| Hand of Reckoning | Hands | Taunts the target to attack you, ineffective if already targeting you. Increases Righteous Fury‘s threat bonus to 80% and grants mana when healed, equal to 25% of the healing received. Reduces damage below 35% Health by 20%. |
| Hammer of the Righteous | Wrist | Strikes the current target and 2 additional enemies, causing Holy damage equivalent to 3 times your main hand damage per second. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Increases Defense skill by 25. Does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Holy Specialization | Finger | Increases the chance to hit with Holy spells by 6%. Does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Shield of Righteousness | Back | Slams the target with your shield, dealing Holy damage based on your block value plus additional damage. |
Paladin is the best tank in WoW Classic Season of Discovery. Talents such as Blessing of Sanctuary and Holy Shield increase their defense, and Improved Righteous Fury makes the enemies focus on them. They also provide a lot of use to the group with Auras and Blessings that increase the entire team’s defense and offense. Through the right choice of runes, Paladins can deal with aggro control, damage absorption, and party support, so they take the arriors are S-tier tank in our WoW Season of Discovery tank tier list.S tier in our SoD tank tier list.
Warrior
Warriors are a popular tanking class in World of Warcraft, known for their high Health pool, high Armor protection, and threat generation. They have different defensive cooldowns and abilities that are used to reduce the damage they are taking and to protect their teammates. In addition to the damage they deal, Warriors can also stun the enemies with their crowd control spells and provide support to the team through their buffs.
Warrior Talent Build
This SoD Warrior tank build is designed to increase your durability and ability to output threat. Here are the key highlights:
- The abilities such as Improved Heroic Strike, Improved Rend, and Defiance help in increasing the threat level. This allows you to keep aggro on multiple enemies, which in turn helps you manage the battles.
- Shield Specialization, Anticipation, and Improved Shield Block enhance your defense and the probability of blocking, dodging, and parrying. Last Stand is a very important Health boost in emergencies, which increases your chances of survival in critical situations.
- Improved Bloodrage makes sure that you get to generate Rage in a much better way, thus enabling you to use your abilities more often and with better results.
- Improved Thunder Clap and Concussion Blow lower the amount of damage you receive from your enemies, while Shield Slam and One-Handed Weapon Specialization increase your damage and threat.
- Deep Wounds and Impale increase the amount of additional damage you deal through critical strikes, which will increase your threat and overall damage dealt.
Best Warrior Runes
In the Season of Discovery, the rune engraving system enhances Warriors’ survivability by temporarily increasing their maximum Health and providing a significant damage boost. This system offers valuable benefits for Warriors in combat. Here is the list of the best tank Warrior runes with the abilities that come with them:
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Shield Mastery | Head | Increases all physical damage dealt by 10% when a shield is equipped and halves the duration of Disarm effects. This reduction does not stack with other similar effects. |
| Warbringer | Chest | |
| Focused Rage | Waist | Decreases the Rage cost of your offensive abilities by 3, making your attacks more efficient. |
| Furious Thunder | Legs | Enhances Thunder Clap to increase attack intervals by an additional 6%, usable in any stance, doubling its damage and increasing its threat generation by 50%. |
| Gladiator Stance | Feet | An offensive stance that boosts damage by 10% and block chance by 10% while wearing a shield, but reduces Armor by 30% and threat generated by 30%. Also grants 50% more Rage from auto-attacks on non-targeting enemies. |
| Devastate | Hands | When in Defensive Stance with a shield, Sunder Armor inflicts damage equal to 150% of your weapon’s DPS, with a 10% increase per stack of Sunder Armor on the target. |
| Sword and Board | Wrist | Devastate and Revenge have a 30% chance to reset Shield Slam‘s cooldown and eliminate its Rage cost for 5 seconds when they deal damage. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Boosts Defense skill by 25. This effect does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Mace Specialization | Finger | Enhances skill with Maces and Two-Handed Maces by 5. This bonus does not stack with other racial traits or ring runes. |
| Shockwave | Back | Sends a powerful wave in front of the Warrior, dealing damage based on 50% of your Attack Power and stunning all enemies in a 10-yard frontal cone for 4 seconds. |
Overall, Warriors are effective tank options in Season of Discovery. Their high Health pool, strong Armor, and defensive cooldowns allow them to absorb significant punishment. Warriors are the S-tier tank in our WoW Season of Discovery tank tier list.
Warlock
One surprising addition to the tanking scene in Season of Discovery is the Warlock. With a new build that emphasizes their survivability and threat generation, Warlocks can now step into the role of a tank with confidence.
Warlock Talent Build
This Season of Discovery Warlock tank build is designed to maximize your threat and damage taken while making sure you can tank in any situation. Here are the key highlights:
- Abilities such as Improved Shadow Bolt, Improved Searing Pain, and Bane decrease the casting time of important spells and increase the amount of damage they do, allowing you to generate more threat in a shorter amount of time.
- Devastation and Ruin increase your critical strike chance and damage, which helps your spells deal more damage and add to the total threat.
- Demonic Embrace raises your Stamina, which is a rather large addition to the character’s Health. Suppression and Improved Corruption increase the chance to hit with spells, even against higher-level targets.
- Improved Imp and Improved Firebolt increase the damage of your Imp, which is useful for more threat and damage.
- Shadowburn and Emberstorm are your finishing moves that increase your damage and threat generation at the end of the encounter.
Best Warlock Runes
By using the top tanking runes and managing your cooldowns well, you can thrive as a Warlock tank. This ensures control in battles and boosts group success.
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pandemic | Head | Allows periodic damage from Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony, Immolate, Curse of Doom, and Siphon Life to critically strike, increasing damage output and threat generation. |
| Demonic Tactics | Chest | Increases the critical strike chance of you and your pet’s melee and spell attacks by 10%. |
| Shadow and Flame | Waist | Fire and Shadow spell critical strikes boost your Fire and Shadow damage by 10% for 10 seconds. |
| Demonic Grace | Legs | Infuse with fel energy, increasing dodge chance for you and your pet by 30%, and increasing your critical strike chance with all attacks by 30% for 6 seconds. |
| Dance of the Wicked | Feet | You and your demon pet gain a dodge chance equal to your spell critical strike chance on each critical strike you land, and regain 2% of maximum mana. |
| Metamorphosis | Hands | Transforms into a Demon, gaining increased Armor, reduced chance to be critically hit, enhanced threat generation, and new abilities. Key defensive cooldown for Warlock tanking. |
| Immolation Aura | Wrist | Burns nearby enemies for significant damage each time they melee attack you (no more than once per second), reduces Magic damage taken by 10%, and increases Fire damage done by 10%. Lasts until canceled. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Increases Defense skill by 25. This bonus does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Fire Specialization | Finger | Increases the chance to hit with Fire spells by 6%. This bonus does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Infernal Armor | Back | Infuses your spirit with demonic energy, reducing all Magic damage taken by a percentage equal to your Physical damage reduction from armor. Lasts 10 sec. |
Warlocks are ranked in the A tier of our best SoD tank tier list for their amazing tank form in Metamorphosis. Also, their Demonic Tactics and Demonic Grace talents improve critical damage, dodge chance, and crit chance for both the Warlock and their pet, boosting survivability. Despite they are not as tanky as Warriors and Druids, they are still a viable tank option, especially with the right rune choice that you can always get with our SoD Runes farming.
Shaman
Shamans were not the classic tank class before, but now, with the new build, they are giving potent tanking options.
Shaman Talent Build
This SoD Shaman Tank build is designed to maximize your threat generation and damage mitigation while ensuring you have the tools needed to support your group and adapt to different combat scenarios:
- Abilities such as Concussion, Call of Flame, and Stormstrike boost your damage and threat levels, making it easy to pull and hold the mobs’ attention.
- Elemental Warding and Shield Specialization increase your damage reduction and blocking capabilities, which helps you to be more defensive against the attack. Parry and Anticipation enhance your ability to avoid damage, making you more resistant in general.
- Elemental Focus and Flurry increase your efficiency in using abilities and keep up a steady flow of attacks and keep up with the demands of tanking.
- Improved Lightning Shield and Elemental Weapons enhance your defense in the form of reflective damage and weapon buffs.
- Enhansing Totems and Reverberation make your totems more powerful and decrease the time needed to recharge important abilities, which is always useful in different fights.
Best Shaman Runes
As a Shaman tank, your role is to absorb damage and maintain threat in your raid or group. You also should provide essential support to your team. The best Shaman tank runes in the current game Phase offer defensive capabilities, threat generation, and utility:
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Mental Dexterity | Head | Increases your Attack Power by 65% of your Intellect when dealing damage with Lava Lash or Stormstrike, and boosts your spell damage by 20% of your total Attack Power for 30 seconds. |
| Overload | Chest | Grants your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain Heal, Healing Wave, and Lava Burst spells a 50% chance to cast a secondary spell on the same target, dealing half damage or healing and generating no threat. |
| Maelstrom Weapon | Waist | Melee attacks have a chance to reduce the cast time and mana cost of your next Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lesser Healing Wave, or Lava Burst by 20%. This chance is enhanced by 50% if using Windfury Weapon and by another 50% if wielding a two-handed weapon. Stacks up to 5 times and lasts for 30 seconds. |
| Way of Earth | Legs | With Rockbiter Weapon on your main hand and a shield equipped, you generate 65% more threat, gain 30% more Health, reduce damage taken by 10%, have a 6% lower chance to be critically hit by melee attacks, and Earth Shock taunts targets to attack you with a separate cooldown but a melee range. The range of your Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Chain Heal, Healing Wave, and Lava Burst spells is reduced by 20 yards. |
| Spirit of the Alpha | Feet | Boosts threat generation by 45% for 30 minutes. If cast on another target, the Shaman gains Loyal Beta, increasing Physical damage by 5% and reducing threat by 30% for 30 minutes. Only one effect can be active at a time. |
| Molten Blast | Hands | Blasts up to 10 enemies in front of you with Fire damage, generating a significant threat. Flame Shock periodic damage has a 10% chance to reset Molten Blast‘s cooldown. |
| Overcharged | Wrist | Lightning Shield never loses charges, has a 3-second cooldown, and damages all enemies within 8 yards. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Boosts Defense skill by 25. This bonus does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Fire Specialization | Finger | Increases hit chance with Fire spells by 6%. This bonus does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Feral Spirit | Back | Summons two Spirit Wolves to fight by your side for 45 seconds. |
While traditionally not tanks, Enhancement Shaman has emerged as a powerful option in Season of Discovery thanks to new runes. With Totems and survivability, it offers great utility and threat management. That elevates Shaman to an A-tier in SoD tank rankings.
Druid
Druids are a flexible class that can play as either DPS or tank. Feral Druids have the ability to shift into Bear Form, which gives them a better Health pool and Armor, and this makes them strong tanks. They have a cooldown also, as well as defensive abilities that help them to reduce the damage they take.
Druid Talent Build
This SoD Druid tank build is designed to maximize your ability to hold aggro, mitigate damage, and provide utility to your group, making you a highly effective tank in various combat scenarios:
- Some of the talents such as Improved Thorns, Feral Instinct, and Faerie Fire (Feral) greatly enhance your threat level. This allows you to keep aggro on multiple enemies, which makes it easier to manage the battles.
- Abilities like Thick Hide and Heart of the Wild enhance your armor attributes, which in turn makes you more resilient when in Bear form. Feral Charge provides mobility and utility, allowing you to quickly engage or interrupt enemies.
- Omen of Clarity and Furor are useful in resource management. Omen of Clarity provides free abilities occasionally, and Furor makes sure that you enter combat with full energy or Rage depending on your form.
- Sharpened Claws, Predatory Strikes, and Leader of the Pack increase your damage and critical strike, which in turn increases your threat and makes you more efficient in a fight.
Best Druid Runes
As a Druid tank, survivability and utility are the keys to success in the toughest battles. Powerful runes help you to tank better and support your group.
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Gore | Head | |
| Wild Strikes | Chest | Increases combat ferocity of party members within 20 yards while in Cat Form, Bear Form, or Dire Bear Form. Each melee hit has a 20% chance to grant the attacker an extra attack with 20% additional Attack Power, excluding those with Windfury Totem. |
| Berserk | Waist | Mangle (Bear) and Lacerate hit up to 3 targets, Lacerate costs no Rage, Mangle (Bear) has no cooldown, and Cat Form abilities cost 50% less energy. Lasts 15 sec. Clears Fear and grants Fear immunity during this period. Requires Bear, Cat, or Dire Bear Form. |
| Lacerate | Legs | Causes the target to bleed for substantial damage over 15 sec plus 20% weapon damage per existing Lacerate stack. Generates high threat and stacks up to 5 times. |
| Survival Instincts | Feet | Grants 30% of your maximum Health and boosts non-Physical healing by 20% for 20 sec. After the effect ends, the health is lost. Regenerates 5 Rage on dodge (Bear/Dire Bear), 10 Energy (Cat), or 1% max mana (other forms). |
| Mangle | Hands | Replaces Claw with Mangle (Cat). Mangle (Bear) hits for 160% damage, increasing Bleed and Shred damage by 30% for 1 min. Grants 4 Attack Power per defense point above 300 for 15 sec. Mangle (Cat) hits for 270% damage, and awards 1 combo point. |
| Improved Frenzied Regeneration | Wrist | Usable in all forms or unshifted. Converts active resource (Rage, Energy, or Mana) into Health every second for 10 sec. Up to 10 Rage, 10 Energy, or 5% base Mana is converted per second into up to 10% Health. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Increases Defense skill by 25. Does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Feral Combat Specialization | Finger | Increases Feral Combat skill by 5. Does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Improved Swipe | Back | Swipe (Cat) and Swipe (Bear) are enhanced. Swipe (Cat) deals 250% weapon damage and generates 1 combo point. Swipe (Bear) hits up to 7 additional enemies. |
Druids excel as B-tier tanks in SoD Phase 4 due to their flexibility and strong tanking attributes. Feral Druids can shift to Bear Form for significant Health and Armor boosts, making them formidable tanks. Their defensive cooldowns and talents enhance survivability, threat generation, and crowd control. And to improve your performance in raids, our boosters are ready to equip you with Pre Raid Gear.
Rogue
Rogue tank in WoW Season of Discovery is quite an extraordinary and rather untraditional way of tanking, but it can be very efficient if done right. Although Rogues have always been characterized by stealth and burst damage, they have some tools that can make them quite viable tanks.
Rogue Talent Build
This Rogue tank build is designed to maximize your survivability, threat, and utility in situations where you will be acting as the tank. Here are the key highlights:
- Talents like Malice, Ruthlessness, and Improved Expose Armor enhance your ability to generate threat through increased critical strike chance, finishing move effectiveness, and armor reduction on enemies.
- Talents such Deflection and Precision improve your dodge, parry, and hit chances, making you more resilient and effective in avoiding damage.
- Improved Slice and Dice and Relentless Strikes ensure you maintain high attack speed and energy regeneration, allowing you to keep up sustained damage and threat.
- Improved Backstab, Dagger Specialization, and Dual Wield Specialization enhance your damage output with daggers and off-hand weapons, contributing to higher threat generation.
- Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush provide powerful burst damage and energy regeneration, allowing you to handle multiple enemies and maintain high threat levels during critical moments.
- Opportunity from the Subtlety tree increases your damage output from special abilities, further enhancing your threat generation and overall damage.
Best Rogue Runes
Rogues can benefit greatly from using the following runes to enhance their damage output, survivability, and utility in combat:
| Rune | Slot | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Honor Among Thieves | Head | Whenever any party member lands a critical hit with a spell or ability, you gain a combo point on your current target. This effect can only trigger once per second. |
| Just a Flesh Wound | Chest | Reduces Physical damage taken by 20% during Blade Dance. Additionally, reduces the chance of being critically hit by melee attacks by 6%, significantly increases threat generation, and replaces Feint with Tease, which forces the target to attack you. |
| Shuriken Toss | Waist | Throw a shuriken at your enemy, inflicting damage equal to 50% of your Attack Power, and also hitting up to 4 additional nearby targets. Awards 1 combo point for each target struck. |
| Blade Dance | Legs | A finishing move that boosts your parry chance by 10% and grants 4 Attack Power for each point of defense skill above 300. Duration increases with combo points: 1 point: 14 sec 2 points: 18 sec 3 points: 22 sec 4 points: 26 sec 5 points: 30 sec. |
| Rolling with the Punches | Feet | Each time you dodge or parry, your Health increases by 6%, stacking up to 5 times. |
| Mutilate | Hands | Instantly strikes with both weapons for 80% weapon damage plus additional damage based on your attack power. Damage increases by 20% against Poisoned targets. Awards 2 combo points. Benefits from all talents that enhance Backstab. |
| Unfair Advantage | Wrist | When you dodge or parry an attack, you strike back for 100% of your main hand weapon’s damage and gain 1 combo point. Can occur only once per second. |
| Defense Specialization | Finger | Increases Defense skill by 25. This effect does not stack with other ring runes. |
| Dagger Specialization | Finger | Increases skill with Daggers by 5. This effect does not stack with racial traits or other ring runes. |
| Fan of Knives | Back | Instantly throws both weapons at all enemies within 8 yards, dealing 75% weapon damage with daggers and 50% weapon damage with other weapons. |
Rogues offer an unconventional tanking experience in Season of Discovery with high survivability due to dodge and parry chance. However, their lack of a cleave ability makes them struggle to maintain a threat on multiple enemies, relegating them to the C tier for tanking. While they can be effective, more traditional tanks like Warriors provide better aggro control for groups.
4.9Season of Discovery in World of Warcraft is full of new possibilities for tanks of different classes and specializations. Our WoW SoD tank rankings guide and tier list analysis examine each tanking class’s strengths, talents, skills, and rune setups. Specifically, we focus on Phase 4 content, notably the Sunken Temple raid.
