WotLK Shaman as an offtank

[Zeaconn]

Hi guys,

Imagine you've played shaman for years, healing, dpsing, you've tried all kinds of playstyle and basically cleaned the majority of wotlk's content.
So, in this hypothetical scenario you decide that you'll try to play a tanking shaman with friends for fun. Let's say ICC 10 with 30% buff
Can you take the hits ? probably. You don't have crazy amounts of HP, but with the right raid you you have enough helpful buffs and self CD to make it out alive.

Can you keep aggro? that's the problem... Can you? You don't have taunts.. Earth shock seems pretty good at generating aggro, but frost shock states it causes high threat, how much threat exactly ?
Should you go for agility mail, or spell mail? On one hand spell will make your shocks more powerful, but on the other hand that will be pretty much the only thing you'll do.
Agility gives you a decent amount of spell via mental dexterity and a little extra armor/dodge, but you're not dual wielding so your melee attacks probably won't pull crazy amounts of threats

What about the weapon buff ? flametongue? frostband? or simply windfury?

Have you ever theorized around offtanking as shammy ? just to see if it is possible, and if you did, what was the most viable way you found ?

[Bastardbottle]

Cant tank ****. Just dont come with a video that shaman shares the dmg.

[jendah]

I don't think anyone tried that or that it's going to work, but lets explore your idea.

1) You need to be uncritable, otherwise you will be one-shot. You either need to get 540 defense or enough resilience to cover same amount of crit chance reduction. Defense is preferable because it also gives additional avoidance, but there is no defense mail gear. So best would probably be defense rings, neck, back, weapon, shield and rest from resilience.

2) You will have low armor and stamina - get any extra you can (stam gems + trinket/s). Resist gear for ldw, sindra. After getting ucritable get as much agi mail gear as possible.

3) Keeping the aggro is not that big of a problem, you could solve that by enough misdirects/tricks. Big problem is tank swapping... You would probably have to let your MT die and ress so you could take the boss a second time. Might be enough swaps with good raid dmg.

4) Whichever enchant gives the most dmg. But definitely not windfury on Sindra (parry haste).



You can probably do it for fun with enough raid cooperation but it's highly impractical.. icc can be solo-tanked with much lower risk/limitations.

[Zeaconn]

So far I've been theorycrafting a bit, and I came up with 540 defense, it's not easy and requires an assload of gems, but it's doable.
Basically:
+def enchant on head
+def enchant on chest
+def enchant on shoulders
+def enchant on shield
defense rings, cloak, neck
Repelling charge as a trinket
10 def gems
and a +def elixir
Which would bring me to 540
The weapon is still a classic enhancement agi weap, because I assumed a 1.6 strength weapon would be the death of aggro for the sham


It could probably be improved upon by swapping a few stam gems for more def, and replacing Repelling Charge by PP10's organ, which I believe would be great for shammy (extra armor and high chance of 100% 270stam uptime on proc since you don't parry).

Mind you this is assuming I use 239 votepoints items and regular t10, I don't feel like explaining to RL that I need 25H tank gear for my shammy
The main difference between 239 and 277 is the stamina, the def cap problem would pretty much remain. It would also mean a few more thousands of armor difference. A better MH weap would also mean better threat.


For aggro swapping I was thinking about a palret giving HoP, thoughts ?
For aggro building though... still working that out. Frost shock vs earth shock , flametongue vs frostband vs windfury..

[Acidmath]

Not sure about Shammy, but Warlock has very much pushed the limits on tanking and not actually being a tank in Vanilla, TBC and WotLK.

I would suggest taking a look at YouTube channel called "sharicasmi" for more info about Shammy tanking.

[Whiteman]

gl with marrow off tanking and getting cleave dmg with 18k armor

[jendah]

@Zeaconn

I don't think that gemming that many def gems is a good idea. I would instead take some 264/270 pvp resilience gear, with added bonus of more stamina.

Yes organ would be nice. Other trink could be black hearth from toc 5.

Hop resets threat only for its duration. Which could work on some bosses, not all though. (Sindra)

[Sammy7]

EHP, talents, armor, and every other defensive stat don't lay out in a Shaman's favor compared to anything that's actually in the tanking portion of the holy trinity.

[Gnimo]

There are like 20 different specs, and this is what you chose to theorycraft? :D
I think there is a good reason there is not a "TANK" spec in shaman talent trees...

[Zeaconn]

I obviously don't intend to compete with real tanks specs, or tank LoD with this guy, cmon
But I think ICC 10 is possible
I will try when I have time to play, sadly I'm a bit busy atm

gl with marrow off tanking and getting cleave dmg with 18k armor

Assuming I have devo aura and druid buff, the shaman should be over 25k armor. Possibly 26 to 27k in "full" gear, maybe 29k with PP's trinket

[HaixzElder]

no
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[jendah]

Assuming I have devo aura and druid buff, the shaman should be over 25k armor. Possibly 26 to 27k in "full" gear, maybe 29k with PP's trinket

How much HP? I am curious about your results.