Shadowlands Tank Damage Analysis in Mythic Castle Nathria – Patch 9.0.5

Blood’s state of affairs regarding tank DPS has been largely unchanged, both in terms of covenant ranking, and globally when compared to other tanks. With a 15% buff to Shackle the Unworthy‘s damage and the rework of Crimson Rune Weapon being the only changes of importance, Kyrian Blood Death Knights will have noticed a small (

The population representation has also broadened, with more and more Blood Death Knights getting into Mythic Nathria. And, with it, comes a greater diversity in covenants coming from people not necessarily aiming for the absolute best for raiding. From offspec DPS players dipping their toes into tanking to people primarily focusing on Mythic+, we’re seeing a bit of a melting pot in terms of parse count, with Necrolords having the biggest relative uptake (nearly doubling compared to 9.0!). Some of it could be down to the Fleshcraft rework, but as it is relatively unimpactful, it may just be the alluring appearance of an additional damage reduction cooldown drawing people in, although practice quickly shows that Fleshcraft is still a very, very niche spell to use as a tank.

In terms of representation compared to other tanks, there is little change on the Blood front. As expected, there are more tanks in Nathria (purely down to the tier being well on its way and cross-realm being open!), and there are many more Protection Warriors than before thanks to the flurry of reworks and tweaks the spec has seen. Blood hasn’t changed and is still firmly fourth in representation; the biggest “losers” and potentially the source of the population shift to Protection Warriors being Brewmaster monks.

Vengeance Demon Hunters have taken a small hit in 9.0.5 due to the blanket 10% nerf to the three competitive Covenants of Kyrian, Night Fae, and Venthyr targeted at the spec, while the reworked Necrolord remains behind the others. However, this hasn’t particularly affected our standings as we were never taken as a high DPS tank in the first place. Looking at WarcraftLogs historically, we can see that Vengeance was either the lowest or second lowest damage tank overall on the majority of fights, and in the bottom half on every fight except Sun King’s Salvation. Personally, I don’t agree with the nerf as we received no compensation to our base kit when it’s clear we are not doing nearly as much damage as other tank specs overall.

Despite being one of the lowest DPS tanks overall, we have extremely good snap threat due to the front-loaded power of Infernal Strike, Sigil of Flame, Immolation Aura, and any of our Covenant abilities. In combination with the ability to quickly pick up adds, Vengeance provides the raid a 5% magic damage debuff through Chaos Brand which is critical as most raid comps are heavily magic-based and Havoc is currently in a state where it isn’t often taken. With strong cooldowns for survivability and high passive magic damage reduction, thus reducing the burden on healers, as well as utility through sigils and mobility that allows kiting which is a lynchpin in many of the progression strategies that are currently popular (Council and SLG), Vengeance is a well-rounded tank that continues to see much play in 9.0.5 regardless of damage output.

9.0.5 has not really changed much in terms of Guardian DPS output in Castle Nathria, the only small buffs we received this patch were to the Necrolord and Venthyr covenants, neither of which were particularly popular raiding covenant choices with Night Fae being the clear front runner. Necrolord is however rising in popularity as the Fleshcraft changes and Adaptive Swarm buffs have made it quite competitive single target. The biggest flaw of Necrolord is that it is severely lacking good soulbind tree options for PvE bears, all of the start and end tree options are just either extremely weak or poorly designed for raid environments and if we were to see minor tuning in that department the viability of Necrolord for bears would rise drastically.

Guardian remains the second highest DPS tank behind prot paladin, however we are the second LEAST played tank in raid behind warrior, so we are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of correlation between DPS and representation and this is largely swung by the lack of buff/debuff that warrior/monk/demon hunter tanks bring. Our primary utility being only Stampeding Roar, excellent defensive capabilities, and quite high tank DPS make us a great choice in Castle Nathria if your raid already has buff/debuff slots covered and slowly more people are seeing the upside of the big bear.

Possible changes to the mandatory required buff/debuff system in the future would see a huge spike in bear representation and would be a fantastic choice for the game in general as these have quickly become quite an expected nuisance, creating an unhealthy environment where tank players primarily are forced to play tank specializations that they may not want to just fill out optimal raid compositions.

Brewmasters basically received no meaningful changes with Patch 9.0.5. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the only real weakness that Brewmasters have is sustained spell and bleed damage (this does put them at a serious disadvantage against a certain final boss of Castle Nathria).

In terms of damage output, Brewmasters have consistently been a top-of-the-middle-of-the-pack option thus far in Season 1 of Shadowlands. Weapons of Order and Invoke Niuzao, the Black Ox are great offensive cooldowns that perform well both in raid and Mythic+. Charred Passions is a great single target DPS legendary for raid parsing, and Stormstout’s Last Keg is a great AoE DPS legendary that adds a good amount of tankiness. Monks deal solid sustained DPS and have good offensive cooldowns for burst windows. They don’t have the meter-incinerating burst potential of Paladin, nor do they have the versatility and sustained DPS potential of a Cat-or-Owlweaving Bear Druid. That being said, Monk is still doing well, and remains the second most-popular tank in Castle Nathria, well behind Vengeance Demon Hunter.

Unlike other tanks who saw changes to legendaries or tuning, Protection Paladin received no real changes of substance to their dps output (or even survival) in 9.0.5. Assuming no additional hotfixes or nerfs, Venthyr Protection Paladin tanks were already the highest damage tanks for raiding and will continue to be so for the remainder of this tier.

But the damage a Protection Paladin brings has not affected their representation this tier compared previous tiers. In fact it’s gone down if you compare it to similar points in Ny’alotha and Eternal Palace. I would explain it by the general perception that Protection Paladin does not bring anything unique to trivialize any encounter that could offset the risks that come with their damage reduction profile.

Protection Warriors received numerous buffs in Patch 9.0.5, including a redesign to Reprisal that has made it the leading option in Mythic+, and a very competitive option with The Wall in raids — although it can be a lot to manage, and the frequent movement can be annoying to your DPS. Protection Warriors also received a 10% damage buff, and an extra 10% damage buff to Thunder Clap on top of that base boost. The redesign to Conqueror’s Banner has made Necrolord a more competitive option, but it has only seen a moderate uptick in terms of popularity. Kyrian is still by far the most popular option, and the best performer in raids. In Mythic+, Kyrian is again the most popular option, but Night Fae is arguably the strongest choice. Ultimately, Necrolord is not able to add as much damage as you sacrifice by not being a superior covenant at this point in Shadowlands Season 1. Perhaps this will become a go-to choice in future tiers, but not yet.

All these changes have pulled Protection Warriors out of a distant last place in terms of raid damage among tanks, and put them into a highly-competitive battle for last place against Blood DK’s. In terms of Mythic+ popularity, they are still in last place, but have become a much more appealing and fun option than their prior iteration. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better.