Challenge Mode Tank Tier List for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Below you can find a quick summary of the current Challenge Mode Dungeon tank rankings:

1. Brewmaster Monk (S-Tier)
2. Blood Death Knight (A-Tier)
3. Protection Paladin (B-Tier)
4. Protection Warrior (B-Tier)
5. Guardian Druid (C-Tier)

In order to further understand the reasoning behind these ranks, we would recommend you to read the rest of the page, as that is explained in more detail in the next few sections.

If you are interested in other Challenge Mode role rankings for Mists of Pandaria, check the following links:

When sorting out the rankings for tanks in Challenge Mode Dungeons, we are looking at several factors:

• Damage mitigation — the ability of a tank to mitigate their damage intake, both from Physical and magic damage. Because of the limited gear possible in Challenge Modes, tanks take an incredibly high amount of damage. If you do large pulls, your relative damage intake compared to the possible mitigation and healing can be far higher than heroic raids.
• Damage smoothness — how smooth is their damage intake? Is the tank likely to take huge spikes of damage, or is their damage intake relatively consistent.
• Self-healing — perhaps even more important than damage smoothness or mitigation, dungeons only allow you a single healer despite taking raid levels of damage. Tanks that can self-heal in a reliable manner that scales with Vengeance will be far better equipped to live through the dungeons.
• Damage output — how much damage can the tank do in both single-target and multi-target situations? This is especially important in Challenge Modes where tanks are able to get incredibly high amounts of vengeance consistently, and will be doing the vast majority of a group's total damage.

To put it simply: tanking is messy. There are tons of factors that go into what makes tanks good or bad. Challenge Modes add an additional level of complication due to how varied the dungeons are, but ultimately the best tanks are determined based on their ability to survive large AoE pulls, using cooldowns to live while dealing insane amounts of damage thanks to their vengeance scaling.

Brewmaster Monk is the new class added in Mists of Pandaria, and tanking is perhaps their strongest role throughout the expansion. The new vengeance mechanic of Mists heavily benefits Brewmaster, primarily thanks to their innate damage mitigation ability Stagger. This allows them to delay some damage taken as a DoT instead, giving them far more survivability than any other tank when it comes to living massive spikes of damage. Brewmasters scale the best out of any tank by far, eventually becoming the overall S-tier tank of choice, especially thanks to their reliable defensive cooldowns like Guard. Challenge Mode dungeons are where Brewmasters really shine however, thanks to their absolutely stellar AoE damage output combined with their ability to live massive pulls that would destroy any other tank. Brewmasters also utilize healing orbs to keep themselves alive, giving them self-healing that is incredibly strong and does not require any globals to use. While other tanks have to choose between damage, healing, and mitigation, Brewmasters can consistently do it all.

Blood DKs are exceptional in every aspect of tanking, taking the S-tier spot in almost every individual category for raids. However, Blood DKs fall off slightly in Challenge Modes, ultimately landing in A-tier. Blood offers the best self sustain out of any tank, incredible cooldowns, and some of the best AoE damage and threat in the game due to the power of Blood Boil. While Death Grip is not always required, it is extremely useful in niche cases where relocating specific adds can be very beneficial. Mists of Pandaria also introduces Gorefiend's Grasp, which is an AoE Death Grip that ends up being almost required on several encounters. DKs have the best magic defense out of any tank without question, which is what makes them so incredible for heroic raiding. Despite their strength in raids however, Blood DKs are not able to survive the same type of massive pulls that Brewmasters are in dungeons due to their difference in their ability to mitigate and live large physical hits. Blood DKs first need to live the damage to heal it up, which is a line that is much harder to stay behind when timing Challenge Mode dungeons.

Paladin has returned to some of their former glory that they saw in Wrath, particularly when it comes to self-healing and mitigation. As a tank, Protection Paladins are probably second in terms of damage mitigation and recovery when compared to Blood DKs. Paladins still have the same incredibly array of defensive cooldowns that they normally bring, but their consistent damage mitigation is slightly worse than DKs. In an expansion where Vengeance gives tanks a ridiculous amount of Attack Power, Paladins can utilize it incredibly well with Eternal Flame to do equally ridiculous self-healing. Paladins deal solid damage as well, putting them solidly into the B-tier as one of the best tanking choices throughout the expansion. In Challenge Modes specifically, Paladins have solid survivability and strong self-healing, but lack the damage and durability of the tanks ranked above.

Protection Warrior falls far short of the other tanks above in terms of base damage mitigation. However, Warrior has far more damage and utility buttons at their disposal for larger pulls, and specifically bring the best damage early on out of any tank. While Warriors are going to be one of the weakest choices defensively, if you can live the incoming damage successfully on the hardest encounters, you also substantially outscale the other tanks when it comes to damage done. This is a double-edged sword, which generally is a poor choice to make when progressing difficult bosses. However, during farm when you have a bit more gear, it can be incredibly fun. Ultimately Warriors do not have quite the same number of powerful cooldowns and passive mitigation options that other tanks like Death Knights and Paladins do, putting them behind defensively in Challenge Mode dungeons where damage intake is far higher. Warriors also have the worst self-sustain out of any tank by far.

Guardian Druid have solid damage with Berserk and Mangle (Bear) on specifically three-target cleave that can be extremely strong. However, outside of this specific niche, Druids start to fall short. In terms of damage taken, Druid is awful early on without the required scaling. Druids have possibly the worst active mitigation option with Savage Defense, giving them an increased dodge chance. All it takes is an unlucky string of hits in a row to put you in near-death territory, which makes taking the hardest content a real challenge. Ultimately, Druid can't compete with the tanks above in terms of damage mitigation and recovery. Druid's selling point continues to be their prowess as an off-tank. Druids have several powerful cooldowns for when they do tank and are quite strong even as a main tank. The optimal use for a Guardian is to off-tank when necessary to reset stacks, allowing them to selectively blow cooldowns. Then, Bears have the unique ability to uitilize Heart of the Wild to either deal damage or heal at full power as an off-role, giving them incredible downtime option outside of tanking.