WoW The War Within Patch 11.1 Best Tanks

Jonas Author

Created - 11.02.2025 Updated - 12.02.2025

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The next season of WoW draws near. And if you’re a team player, we know that you only want to use the WoW War Within patch 11.1 best tanks during raids and M+ dungeons. As there are many changes coming to the game, it’s important to know the tier list beforehand.

This guide shows you all of the best specs for the upcoming season so that you can start preparing your builds, buy WoW gold, and much more. We know that the meta will be changing constantly but still, it’s worth listing down every powerful spec before they arrive.

Vengeance Demon Hunter

When it comes to Vengeance Demon Hunter, there’s a lot to unpack in Patch 11.1. This tank spec has been seeing some interesting developments.

While it benefits from a strong two-piece set bonus, there are also some underlying issues—some of which stem from beneficial bugs that may not make it to live servers. If those get fixed, Vengeance might not feel as powerful as it currently does in testing.

Vengeance Demon Hunters received some minor buffs in the patch notes that help improve their defensive capabilities. These changes mainly focus on increasing Demon Spikes uptime and boosting Metamorphosis uptime through their tier set, making it a bit easier to manage defensives overall.

The added sustain is a welcome quality-of-life improvement, but it doesn’t necessarily push them ahead in terms of raw power compared to other tanks.

That being said, there are concerns about the four-piece bonus. Right now, it simply gives a chance for the random proc from the two-piece set to reset The Hunt, a talent that many Demon Hunters don’t even spec into because of how deep it sits in the talent tree.

Investing heavily to access this ability doesn’t always feel rewarding, especially in Mythic+ content, where The Hunt can actually be dangerous to use in certain situations.

Currently, a significant number of Vengeance Demon Hunters (ourselves included) are completely ignoring The Hunt and acting as if they don’t even have a four-piece bonus. That’s not an ideal situation, and it’s probably not what Blizzard wants either.

A tier set should feel impactful and encourage players to adapt their builds around it, but in this case, it’s creating a situation where many are avoiding part of their kit altogether.

One potential solution—if Blizzard is committed to keeping The Hunt in play—would be to buff its defensive utility, making it more viable in both raiding and Mythic+. However, it would likely be more beneficial to simply redesign the four-piece bonus entirely so that it provides something more universally useful.

Right now, the current setup doesn’t feel particularly rewarding, and many Vengeance Demon Hunters would prefer something new that better aligns with their tanking priorities.

With these concerns in mind, it remains to be seen whether Blizzard will tweak the set bonuses before Patch 11.1 goes live. Vengeance has some strong tools, but the way the tier set interacts with talents makes it feel somewhat awkward.

Hopefully, future changes will refine the design so that Vengeance Demon Hunters don’t feel like they have to ignore part of their set bonus just to optimize their performance.

Brewmaster Monk in Patch 11.1: No Major Changes, but In Need of Help

Brewmaster Monk is one of the tank specs that hasn’t received any real changes in Patch 11.1. If you’ve been playing Brewmaster recently, you’ll find that it still operates almost identically to how it does in the current patch.

That means it will likely remain a strong raid tank, thanks to its stagger mechanics and overall survivability, but it’s looking fairly average in Mythic+, where other tanks might outshine it in both damage output and utility.

Now, before diving into specifics, it’s worth noting that Brewmaster Monk is probably the tank spec with the least hands-on experience from the broader community right now. While that doesn’t mean it’s weak, it does mean that fewer players are actively testing its full potential.

One of the biggest problems Brewmaster Monks are facing is their lack of incentive to invest in key talents. Right now, there are three talents sitting right in the middle of the Brewmaster tree that most players actively avoid—and for good reason.

These talents are tied to their iconic cooldown, which should, in theory, be an essential part of the spec. However, the ability is currently so poorly tuned that most Brewmasters are intentionally skipping it just to avoid wasting points.

When players feel like they have to ignore a core part of their class because it’s not worth the investment, that’s a clear sign that something needs to change.

Before Patch 11.1 goes live, Brewmaster desperately needs some tuning changes to make those neglected talents more appealing. The current situation leaves Brewmasters stuck in an awkward position, where their talent tree actively discourages them from using an ability that should be central to their playstyle.

One potential fix would be to buff those underused talents to make them competitive with other choices, or even rework them entirely to better integrate with Brewmaster’s existing kit.

Another possible change could be enhancing Brewmaster’s passive defensive tools, particularly Ox Blood, to give the spec more sustain and make it feel more rewarding to play in a wider range of content.

At this stage, Brewmaster Monk is solid but uninspired in Patch 11.1. It still does well in raids but doesn’t stand out in Mythic+, and the talent tree issues make it feel like it’s missing out on potential power.

If Blizzard steps in with some much-needed buffs or talent reworks, Brewmaster could become a much stronger and more well-rounded tank in both PvE scenarios. Until then, it remains a decent choice, but one that could definitely use a little help before the patch goes live.

Blood Death Knight

Blood Death Knights are heading into Patch 11.1 with no major changes, meaning their performance will likely mirror what we saw in Season 1.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as Blood DKs continue to be extremely powerful in raid environments and in mid-level Mythic+ keys.

However, the issue arises when trying to push into the highest Mythic+ levels. Just like Brewmaster Monks, Blood DKs could really benefit from a new talent or an adjustment in their capstone options to help alleviate some of their Mythic+ struggles.

The problem is that no such talent currently exists, so expecting a last-minute addition before the patch launch might be unrealistic. Still, it’s something Blizzard could consider addressing in a future update.

When looking at Blood DK’s tier set bonuses, there’s a noticeable imbalance between how it performs in single-target fights versus AoE encounters.

• Single-Target Weakness: Right now, the four-piece bonus only reduces the Runic Power cost of Death Strike by 2 and extends the damage buff duration by 2 seconds when fighting a single target. This is an extremely underwhelming bonus that doesn’t significantly impact the way the spec plays. It’s only slightly better than Vengeance Demon Hunter’s tier set, which is practically useless if they don’t take The Hunt talent.
• AoE Strength: On the other hand, the cleaving effect of Death Strike in AoE situations actually provides a pretty substantial benefit. Over the course of a dungeon run, Blood DKs are seeing about 30% more Death Strike hits, which is a meaningful boost in sustain and damage output.

While the AoE aspect of the set is strong, single-target fights definitely need more love. If Blizzard doesn’t adjust the tier bonus before launch, Blood DKs may feel weaker in raid boss encounters compared to their performance in dungeons.

Without major tuning changes, Blood Death Knight will likely remain a top-tier raid tank while still being functional but not dominant in Mythic+. Their current set bonus helps in AoE but feels lackluster in single-target fights, making them less effective in certain encounters.

If Blizzard were to tweak their tier set or add a new talent to their capstone area, it could make high-level Mythic+ tanking much smoother for Blood DKs.

However, unless something unexpected happens before the patch goes live, they are likely to remain in a similar spot to Season 1—strong but not without flaws.

Maxing out with the Blood Death Knight can be hard, but you can make it much quicker with WoW leveling services.

Protection Paladin

Protection Paladin is yet another tank spec receiving no major changes heading into Patch 11.1. However, unlike some other tanks, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Prot Paladins already received substantial reworks in Patch 11.0.5, and those changes propelled them to the top spot in Mythic+ tank rankings.

The real question now is whether Blizzard will allow them to maintain that dominance for two seasons in a row, or if there are upcoming balance adjustments that could bring them back in line with other tanks.

As it stands, no nerfs or buffs have been confirmed, so they remain one of the strongest, if not the strongest, tank choices going into the new season.

One major advantage Protection Paladins have over other tanks right now is their four-piece set bonus, which seems to be the strongest of all the tank specs in Patch 11.1.

• High Uptime on Damage Buffs: The tier bonus provides very consistent uptime on their damage buffs, giving them an edge in both single-target and AoE fights.
• More Shield of the Righteous Casts: The increased frequency of Shield of the Righteous further improves their defensive uptime, adding to their already strong mitigation toolkit.

This combination of offensive and defensive benefits makes their tier set stand out compared to some of the more underwhelming bonuses given to other tank specs this season.

With the lack of any immediate tuning changes, Protection Paladin remains a powerhouse heading into Patch 11.1. They already excel in Mythic+, and their tier set bonus only reinforces their strengths.

However, it’s always possible that Blizzard steps in with balancing adjustments later in the patch cycle if they feel Prot Paladins are too dominant.

For now, though, it looks like they’ll continue to be a top-tier pick for tanks across all content types—at least until Blizzard decides otherwise.

Guardian Druid

Guardian Druids have seen some significant adjustments in Patch 11.1, most notably in their General Talent Tree. This rework makes the tree far smoother to navigate, which is a huge win for the spec. The clunky and inefficient talent paths that frustrated many players (ourselves included) have finally been addressed.

Now, instead of having to rant about the Druid General Tree every single patch, it finally feels functional—so kudos to Blizzard for that.

One of the more interesting additions in this rework is the new talent, Symbiotic Relationship. This talent lets Guardian Druids place a beacon healing effect on an ally, causing 10% of their self-healing to also heal that ally.

This is a cool and flavorful addition to the Guardian Druid toolkit, reinforcing their natural connection to healing magic. While the raw numbers might not make it a game-changing talent, it does offer extra group utility, which is always a nice bonus.

Not everything in the new talent tree is perfect, though. Lairas' Meditation has some serious potential for abuse. This talent grants the stat bonuses from Lairas' Teaching for 5 seconds after shifting out of a form, which opens the door to weird shapeshifting exploits.

• Guardian Druids could potentially use this for strange stat-stacking mechanics.
• Boomkins and other specs might also find unintended ways to take advantage of this effect.

Rather than waiting for these exploits to get out of control, Blizzard should remove or rework this talent now before it becomes problematic.

Despite the overall improvements to the General Talent Tree, there are still some odd choices in talent placement.

For example, pathing through Sooth or Cyclone to access certain capstone talents feels out of place. While not a game-breaking issue, it doesn’t feel intuitive, and it would be nice to see those talents moved to a more logical position.

Guardian Druids also received some tweaks to their spec tree, most notably:

• Reinvigoration now increases the potency of Frenzied Regeneration instead of reducing its cooldown. This change shifts the talent from frequency-based healing to burst healing, which could make survivability feel smoother in certain encounters.
• Raze once again replaces Maul, but now has a passive effect that doubles its damage against a single target. This is a huge improvement because it eliminates the DPS loss Guardian Druids experienced when taking Raze in previous iterations.

This means Guardian Druids no longer have to choose between single-target and AoE effectiveness, making Raze a more well-rounded talent overall.

Another new talent replaces Layered Mane, introducing a scaling magic damage reduction based on current armor DR. This caps at 10% of armor DR, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice, the numbers feel too low given the two-point investment required.

• Right now, the max magic DR sits at 8.5%, which is underwhelming for a capstone-level defensive talent.
• Doubling this value to around 17% at max armor would make it far more impactful.
• Alternatively, reducing it to a one-point talent could make it feel less of an investment for a relatively minor benefit.

Guardian Druids have historically struggled with magic damage mitigation, so any additional survivability in that area would be a welcome change.

Unfortunately, the Guardian Druid tier set in 11.1 lacks any real gameplay impact.

• One of the most exciting aspects of tier sets is how they can change how a spec plays within an expansion, but Guardian Druids aren’t really getting that this time around.
• The set bonus doesn’t introduce any new interactions or mechanics, making it feel a little bland compared to some previous Guardian Druid tier sets.

That being said, there are a couple of specific issues that need addressing:

1. Raze should be included in the list of random spells triggered by the tier set. Right now, it doesn’t interact with the tier bonus, which seems like an oversight.
2. The tier set can trigger unwanted cat form shifting if you’re specced into Fluid Form. This is definitely not ideal, and Blizzard needs to fix it before the patch goes live.

Guardian Druid is in a better place than before thanks to the General Talent Tree rework and improvements to key abilities like Raze. However, some areas still need fine-tuning—especially the magic DR talent and the lackluster tier set bonus.

The good news is that the foundation is much stronger than before, and if Blizzard listens to feedback, Guardian Druids could be in a really solid spot this season.

Protection Warrior

Unlike some of the other tanks in Patch 11.1, Protection Warrior has been hit with multiple nerfs that directly affect the speed and fluidity of their gameplay. These nerfs primarily target their high resource generation, which was one of the key factors that made the spec feel smooth and responsive.

The main changes include:

• Reduced Rage Generation from Cooldowns – Abilities that previously generated high amounts of Rage now provide less overall resource generation.
• Lower Chance to Proc Shield Slam Resets – The proc chance for Shield Slam resets has been reduced from 30% to 20%, significantly slowing down the rate at which it can be used.

As compensation for these nerfs, Blizzard:

• Increased Ignore Pain's effectiveness by 30% – This means each individual Ignore Pain absorbs more damage, but you’ll be able to cast it less frequently due to slower Rage generation.
• Reduced Shield Wall cooldown by 30 seconds – A small buff, but not enough to offset the gameplay slowdowns caused by the nerfs.

One of the biggest concerns with these changes is that Protection Warrior seems to be the only tank spec getting singled out for this problem.

The reasoning behind the nerfs is clear—Blizzard wants to slow down how quickly the spec plays due to its high resource generation and off-the-global spender abilities.

However, this same design philosophy applies to Guardian Druids and Protection Paladins, yet those specs remain untouched. In fact, Protection Paladin’s tier set in 11.1 actively speeds up their gameplay even more, making this change feel inconsistent across tank specs.

On the PTR, Protection Warrior feels noticeably slower than it did in Patch 11.0, which seems to be exactly what Blizzard was aiming for. However, the way these nerfs have been implemented has negatively impacted gameplay fluidity in a significant way.

• More Dead Globals: Previously, there were occasional moments where you might not have an ability to press, but these were rare and short-lived. Now, these gaps in gameplay happen far more often, leading to extended moments where Warriors are just waiting for something to come off cooldown.
• Less Rage for Spending on Offensive Abilities: Before the nerfs, if you found yourself in a lull, you could dump Rage into Revenge to keep things moving. Now, Rage is much more scarce, forcing you to hold back on spending it so you can prioritize defensive abilities like Shield Block or Ignore Pain.
• Less Frequent Shield Slam Procs: The Shield Slam proc rate reduction makes things even worse, as you now have to wait longer for resets, further exacerbating the dead global problem.

All of this adds up to a much clunkier and less satisfying experience for Protection Warriors compared to the fast-paced, engaging gameplay they had before these nerfs.

At this point, Protection Warrior needs adjustments to make the gameplay feel smoother without necessarily undoing the intended balance changes. There are a few possible solutions:

1. Introduce a Filler Ability– Warriors already have Devastate, but it is completely overshadowed by Devastator, which removes it entirely. One option would be to:
   • Buff Devastate significantly to make it a viable alternative to Devastator.
   • Rework the Devastator talent to keep the Shield Slam procs but still allow Devastate to be cast.
2. Repurpose Existing Abilities as Fillers– Protection Warriors already have Slam and Whirlwind, but these abilities cost Rage, making them inefficient as fillers. A simple fix would be to:
   • Remove the Rage cost from one (or both) of these abilities.
   • Adjust their damage output accordingly so they don’t become overpowered but remain useful in single-target and AoE situations.
3. Adjust Strategist and Devastator Talents– Another approach would be to:
   • Modify Strategist to allow melee hits to trigger Shield Slam resets (making up for the lost proc rate).
   • Remove Devastator as a separate talent and integrate it as a baseline effect, then place a new, useful filler ability in its spot.

These changes would smooth out the downtime issues, keep the gameplay engaging, and allow for flexibility in talent choices without breaking the intended balance adjustments.

Right now, Protection Warrior is in a frustrating position. The nerfs have slowed down the gameplay significantly, leading to frequent dead globals and an overall clunky feel.

While the buff to Ignore Pain and reduced cooldown on Shield Wall help a little, they don’t fully compensate for the loss in fluidity and uptime.

There’s still time for Blizzard to make adjustments before Patch 11.1 goes live. Whether they choose to rework filler abilities, tweak talents, or make additional compensatory buffs, something needs to be done to prevent Protection Warrior from feeling like a sluggish, unresponsive tank compared to its competition.

For now, the best course of action is to keep providing feedback. We hope Blizzard takes another look at the state of the spec before the patch goes live. The Protection Warrior build is a good one this season and hopefully, that remains the same in the next.

Tank Tier List for Patch 11.1 (Based on Current Information)

Ranking each tank from S to C tier based on their expected performance in raids and Mythic+, considering their strengths, weaknesses, tier sets, and potential balance concerns.

S-Tier (Best Tanks, Strong in All Content)

1. Protection Paladin
• Why? Already top-tier in Mythic+ thanks to Patch 11.0.5 buffs, and their tier set in 11.1 is the strongest among all tanks.
• Strengths: High damage, excellent self-sustain, frequent defensive uptime, and fast-paced gameplay.
• Weaknesses: May receive balance changes if Blizzard decides to rein them in.
2. Blood Death Knight
• Why? Extremely powerful in raid environments and mid-level Mythic+ due to high sustain and self-healing.
• Strengths: Strong defensive toolkit, excellent self-healing, good in AoE with tier set.
• Weaknesses: Single-target performance is lacking, struggles in high Mythic+ due to damage output limitations.

A-Tier (Very Strong but Slightly Flawed)

3. Vengeance Demon Hunter
• Why? Great defensive uptime improvements and a strong two-piece bonus, but their four-piece set is underwhelming and may not see much use.
• Strengths: Good mobility, strong self-sustain, improved defensive uptime.
• Weaknesses: Four-piece bonus feels weak, some talents may not see use, and Mythic+ utility is situational.
4. Guardian Druid
• Why? Massive improvements in their General Talent Tree make them much smoother to play, and tier set isn’t terrible.
• Strengths: Better tree navigation, useful new talent (Symbiotic Relationship), stronger sustain.
• Weaknesses: Lackluster tier set, some remaining talent pathing issues, and magic DR talent feels too weak.

B-Tier (Playable but Has Issues)

5. Protection Warrior
• Why? Significant nerfs to resource generation have made the spec feel much clunkier and slower.
• Strengths: Still tanky, Ignore Pain buff is decent, Shield Wall buff is nice.
• Weaknesses: Dead globals, slower gameplay, more punishing decision-making, and no strong filler ability to make up for lost speed.

C-Tier (Needs Major Fixes or Buffs)

6. Brewmaster Monk
• Why? No meaningful updates, still mid-tier in Mythic+, and lacks strong gameplay improvements.
• Strengths: Solid raid tank, playable but nothing special.
• Weaknesses: Completely ignores a core cooldown due to tuning issues, lacks incentives to take certain talents, and nothing about the spec has changed significantly.

Choose The Best WoW Tanks

Knowing the best tanks for the upcoming season is going to be important if you want to make more dungeon runs successful. Having a lot of WoW The War Within gold isn’t enough if your class isn’t within the meta after all, so choose your tanks wisely.

Once you’ve chosen your tank, it’s time to check out which tier sets are best for Mythic+ dungeons in Season 2.