---
title: 'How Are the Tanks Looking for Midnight? Pre-Patch Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_3W7PN4ZE'
video_id: 'Z3_3W7PN4ZE'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1118
---

# How Are the Tanks Looking for Midnight? Pre-Patch Review

> Source: [How Are the Tanks Looking for Midnight? Pre-Patch Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_3W7PN4ZE)

## Summary

This video provides a comprehensive overview of the state of tank specializations in World of Warcraft's pre-patch for the Midnight expansion. The creator discusses each tank's strengths, weaknesses, and changes, offering personal opinions and recommendations for players.

### Key Points

- **Brewmaster Monk Rework** [00:40] — Loss of Purified Chi and weapons of order, but hero talent rework makes flurry strikes based on Keg Smash, creating a fun loop with auto-attacks and Niaozao. Defensive side feels good without Purified Chi.
- **Blood Death Knight New Player Perspective** [04:34] — From a newer player's view, Blood DK is fun with the consumption ability and blood plague interaction, though some may miss the cooldown festival of Dancing Rune Weapon.
- **Protection Warrior Rage Issues** [07:29] — Rage generation feels low in pre-patch, leading to difficulty in using Ignore Pain and Revenge effectively. Talent tree restructuring is positive, enabling both fueled by violence talents.
- **Vengeance Demon Hunter Button Culling** [09:59] — Reduction of buttons with Eldrachi Reaver and simplified frailty makes Vengeance more accessible and fun, though crowd control may still be too strong.
- **Protection Paladin Smoothness** [13:07] — Paladin feels much smoother with less reliance on Consecration; Holy Power generation is fine, and the spec is now recommendable to new players.
- **Guardian Druid Low Damage and Bugs** [15:53] — Damage is low and there are bugs, but the spec remains an easy beginner tank. Druid of the Claw has a casino playstyle; Raze now provides a shield.

### Conclusion

Overall, the pre-patch brings significant changes to all tank specializations, with Brewmaster, Blood DK, and Vengeance standing out as strong contenders, while Warrior and Druid have some concerns.

## Transcript

haven't they? From being gods in Shadowlands and Dragonflight, never threatened, and sometimes having almost nothing to do to the war within season 1 one-shot just about any tank if they didn't rotate a defensive correctly.
But, I feel like we've made some good ground in season 2, season 3, and now pre-patch where the tanks feel like they've kind of stabilized and turned enjoying quite a lot. Have a lot to say about this. Let's talk all about
pre-patch tanks and today. My name is Hazel the Tank, and hey, get subscribed if you like this kind of content. This is now my full-time job, and the growth has been amazing. We're almost at 20,000 subscribers, and it would mean a ton to
me if we could get there in the next couple of months. Thank you so, so much. Let's begin with the tank I plan on playing the most, Brewmaster. And I was the loss of purified chi to make bigger shields and the weapons of order
vulnerability stacking gone, there was some concerns about skill expression and how things might feel. Now, beta did show some promise, and pre-patch has been delivering. The only complaint I'm going to make is that our damage feels a
of like when brew pumps. So, yeah, this is a personal thing, but they are patch notes I read. So, hey, you know what? That's probably getting fixed. So, what's working so well? I think it's the rework to the hero talents. Now, I like
I've only really played Shadow Pond. So, I'll just be reporting on that today. differently. Your flurry strikes that come out of your are no longer based on spending energy. They're now based on hitting Keg Smash. Auto attacking builds
up flurry strikes, and hitting Keg Smash will expend all of your flurry strikes. Niaozao come out and start blasting with you every time you hit Blackout Kick, but will also give you a couple of extra I think it's like seven something flurry
know. I don't have the talent up in front of me. But, this means when you flurry strikes. When you've been auto attacking for a bit, your next Keg Smash non-cooldown windows, what this really amounts to is there are these situations
where yeah, it's nice to throw Keg Smash as a good single-target move that does splash some serious AoE around. However, when you run out of energy, and maybe now you're waiting for a Keg Smash, or
you're waiting to go Tiger Palm then Keg Smash, you know what? It's okay, cuz of hitting Keg Smash is going to feel really really good. And that is actually quite fun. Normally, air gaps can be a little boring or annoying even, like I'm
brought warrior right now. But no, not here. Here, when I have a small air gap, do a little something something, and then boom, here come the flurry strikes, cuz you were waiting a moment. So, I don't know. Nice loop. But on the
defensive side of Brewmaster, I don't miss Purified Chi. I thought maybe that was the skill expression loss that would really make me upset with tanking, but Purified Chi was either you never got
because you weren't taking enough damage, or you're taking so much damage you always have enough Purified Chi. And I actually think, you know, maybe it it was just that I thought it looked
kind of did it one way, right? Oh, I hit Purifying Brew. I'm at red stagger again. I hit Purifying Brew. I hit Celestial Brew. Ta-da, I have a massive shield. Like, I I don't feel like it was that exciting, if you will. And so, I'm
healing, my fire damage converts into healing. I'm hitting my Expel Harm a little bit less because I'm able to mitigate more damage and stay alive just from that fire damage and from that leech. And then, when I do need to heal,
orbs out to get the job done. And of keep myself alive when the going gets really, really rough. But when that going gets rough, you still can do all the Brewmaster tricks, teleport away,
stun them, CC a mob that's about to do something nasty to you. Just stall for that cool down, hit some more blackout kicks into keg smash to get your bruise makes a holding on just a little bit longer as Brewmaster still as fun as it
forward to this. I plan on making a beginner's guide on Brewmaster. If reduction of buttons here has been really, really good. So, if you want to have less buttons on your Brewmaster, this is kind of a great time to give it
a shot and see if you fall in love with it. So, I hope you do check it out. This next tank is up for contention with Vengeance as the tank I really want to play in Midnight alongside Brewmaster, obviously. Blood DK is really, really
fun now. I don't know how Blood DKs are going to feel about this. I just want to note that I I really am starting to get into it now. So, these takes are going to be from a newer Blood DK, so apologies if this is just sacrilegious
I didn't like Dancing Rune Weapon being a cool down festival because, while it is fun to cool down Dancing Rune Weapon over and over again, it felt like that was the entire kit. Everything I did was to cool down Dancing Rune Weapon, and
then they have to balance around that's what Blood does, and that's the only thing Blood is known for. And so, I don't know. Just the loop didn't feel as gratifying for me from a defensive like healer angle, if you will. I like the
our Apex sounds going to give us random Dancing Rune Weapons. I'm pretty excited about that, but Dancing Rune Weapon is a fun, exciting moment. It helps you set up with tons of parry chance. It lets you do a ton of damage. It's an
and a half, so you know, it's a pretty Vampiric Blood. So, you still get some cool down management where you can really bring something back, get a big Umbilicus Eternus shield again, and roll
I still feel like there's some fun loops to play with here, but interacting with Blood Plague and consuming that blood plague with consumption and reapplying plague with consumption and reapplying it is a very fun loop to have inside of
actually interacting with the game a bit more, but I understand if people don't share that take with me. That's fine. I'm new here and I like the way it plays now and I'm really sorry if if if people don't like that. Uh that being said,
sick. I know that's going to get me in trouble, but I'm a Voker player. I like my empowered spells being able to move while casting an empowered spell, you and you charge up a move and then boom, you do a huge damage consuming all
It's it's a little samurai if I'm being honest with you and I kind of love it. Consumption also allowing you to give yourself a little more DR by popping it too. But if you want to use it to kind of parry a big tank buster, charging it
up is in fact a good way to get that effect and like kind of pseudo parry something with a defensive and then strike back to heal. I like this design. Maybe it can be pushed a little bit further um than it currently is in
consumption. I think this is a great move and a great change. But the real reason that this is even on the map is that yes, I like blood, but unholy is the necromancer I always wanted. And now that it's oh, I actually can play two
specs, it became something I wanted to take a little more seriously. So, with midnight. However, the next one on the list that's fighting it is vengeance, but I'll talk about that one in a minute cuz we have to talk about my love
warrior and some of the problems it's going through right now. Hello, Bowser from the future. I had to reassess how I felt about protection Protection warrior feels like it's missing something. My damage was a
little low, but I don't know if that's because of my gear score. So, I'm going pretty good, so maybe the damage is fine. Might just be my gear, but I definitely have enough haste and my rage generation feels wrong. Now, defensively
prioritizing revenge over ignore pain too often. So, after fixing that, I realized, "Wow, I don't have a lot of rage to play with." Now, this isn't a problem in season 1, but this is season 3 pre-season with all of our secondary
stats. And my biggest concern during the alpha that I made note to myself about was that my rage generation in the alpha felt really low on prot warrior. All the other changes felt pretty good, but mhm, unfortunately, when you don't have a lot
attacking, and you're crying in the club, and like I'm heroic leaping out of a pull to charge back in just to land like one more attack. It's a little just I feel like I had to do that way more often just to get the kind of value
that I wanted out of a pull, out of my buttons. So, hoping we don't run into addressed. Everything else has been a restructuring of the prot warrior tree as what you get out of your talents
you're making more logical choices as to what to give up and what to take to for. But one of my least favorite parts of the old tree that has been completely resolved now is there used to be a choice node that was fueled by violence
where our heals we would heal from our bleeds, or you'd pick that your ignore pain doing damage fueled your ignore pain. That choice node is gone. You now very easily pick up both fueled by violence where you get all those healing
ignore pain talent that takes 8% of our damage and contributes it to our next ignore pain, and in addition raises how much ignore pain we can have. get the best of both worlds, but they're both not too overpowered. So, it feels
like you're playing into your damage as well as your active mitigation tools in don't know how many people think about hitting ignore pain, but I certainly was thinking a lot less about it in previous seasons, and now I kind of feel like I
easier, and it's a little more engaging for me. Might not feel that way for everyone, but I've certainly enjoyed it. And while I still like prot warrior, and there's a world where I still play it, and I will gear it eventually, it's not
edging out my other contenders for what I would like to play next season more seriously. So, I will play warrior, but for now, it's going to be on the back burner for me. Now, vengeance might be the tank that
unholy are looking fun, but I like vengeance and havoc a lot, so they're right now. I've only really played eldrachi reaver. I'll tell you right now from the one test pull I've done, annihilator feels buttery smooth, but I
just do not have enough information on that. So, let's talk eldrachi reaver. The culling of buttons on vengeance was fantastic. Sigil of flames is now for damage and building some resources. I don't believe it's contributing to your
have to worry about cooling it down and rotating it correctly. And sigil of spite replaces the hunt, giving you an option to get an eldrachi reaver without having to juggle even more buttons. It's
a good reduction because I I actively roasted vengeance all the time. I have a video about me getting into tanking all last year, and it's on my other channel, spend an entire section making fun of vengeance because girl, it had too much
going on. It had so many spinning plates. And with frailty now just being to worry about getting multiple applications to overlap, and painbringer feel like they they culled too much of that defensive part of the play. Cooling
down demon spikes still feels good. I don't know. I still feel badass when I'm playing vengeance, and it's just one to two less spinning plates to have to worry about, and you can focus more on the rest of the kit. Also, they did add
a spinning plate, and that when with at least eldrachi reaver, your generation of uh is it called hatred or fury? Oh help. Somebody help me. How do I always forget this when I'm recording? But, your primary resource is a little bit
thinking a little bit about spending some of my moves when I'm about to throw single-target combo rather than the AoE combo. And I like having to do a little bit of thinking about my resources. So, it feels like just the right shift and
I'm having an absolute blast. I'd like to know what some Vengeance mains feel about it, but I'm loving it. But, here's something I I do want some opinions on. Hunter still? They got rid of one Sigil. Misery and
Chains are now shared, so if you pick up Sigil of Chains, your Sigil of Misery turns into Sigil of Chains. You still have Silence. You still have Chaos Nova. Is that balanced? Because my biggest concern was that there was a time period
was the best tank because it brought the most amount of crowd control and that allowed DPS to do crazy damage and take out everything in a kind of invalidated a lot of tanks in a really frustrating way, leading to Sigil of Silence getting
nerfed like a bazillion times. But, is this balanced now? Cuz I like using it. I still think we have a really capable and good crowd control kit, but I don't know if it's broken and I don't know if I'm the tank player who can
decide if that's too strong or not. So, I figured I would just redirect that to blast and I can't wait to get my hands on Annihilator in the next couple of not called Annihilator, I'm cooked. Like I I said it so many times, we're just
hope that's what it was called and I'm not going to worry about it. tanking journey, you know I talked a lot of crap about Paladin because Paladin sounded cool, felt cool in theory, and then felt like a clunk festival.
Managing to survive with the way the talents worked before seriously made me so frustrated. And Consecration was ass. I hated using Consecration, running out of your Consecration and losing your mastery and just uh it made it feel way
uglier than it should have been given that there was so much potential. And cleaned-up, beautiful version of Paladin I think I always wanted. Paladin mains know if I'm absolutely off my rocker right now, but I've been mostly playing
Templar, swinging a giant hammer at people, and hitting my rotation, hitting my Shield of the Righteous, and it feels good. You no longer have to Word of longer have to stand in your Consecration. I mean, you do. You want
you're not worried about it if it falls off for a few seconds. It provides with talents a 5% DR, and it heals you, and it can pulsate more healing and more can't remember. One of your moves makes it kind of do even more. But that's that
that's a good thing. Paladin was clunky, and now I I feel like it's smooth. Um my bestie 40 and I would always talk about how is Avenger's Shield not producing a Holy Power a bad thing for prot Paladin? Does
that make it clunky and less fun? And I think it did for the longest time. But I can officially say the Holy Power generation, the utility of the kit, and mitigations, like throwing Avenger's Shield for that parry chance, and
hitting Shield of the Righteous for that armor. You know what? I don't think I have any problem with it not generating Holy Power. I feel like this is a perfect spot for Paladin, for somebody like me who plays it kind of casually.
There's a lot of people I think who also want to play Paladin. It brings cool external defensives, great utility with its silence, right? Like who doesn't want a Paladin? Except it felt so flimsy before. And the best Paladins made it
look incredible. But the moment they faltered, even the best Paladin I know, Vedar, watching him make one tiny little overlap, and then he loses like 75% of like, "Oh, I really don't want to play this spec." Like it made me not want to
try it. But now, I don't know. I I think I can recommend it to a new tank player. I still think Bear is the go-to beginner tank, but Paladin in its current form is fast, fun, and starts with a few enough buttons that I think getting its core
loop is not only easy now, but incredibly joyous. Also, to add to that, hammer. Blessed hammer is my favorite thing in the world. I've never been able to say that in a video. I love Diablo. I love blessed hammer. God, I I don't know
enough of that stupid spinny hammer. It's my best friend. Last, but certainly not least, bear. Man, oh man, I love bears. I also forgot to play bear when writing this script because I played it a lot in the alpha
actually test it on live. Let's get the bad news out of the way. The damage is a little low, so hopefully that gets addressed. And it's a little buggy right of all the different things not working on it, but I think bug fixes can come
through. For now, I'm excited that both Fury of the Loon and Druid of the Claw for both single target and dungeon builds for both enjoyers of a Loon and the Claw. However, I did hear that from higher level players,
Druid of the Claw is a bit of a casino play style right now where you're very reliant on procs and luck, which, you know, hopefully can be smoothed out a little bit. But my precious disco bear still slaps, and it's still a spectacle
bear just tearing through enemies and laser beams coming down. Listen, it's beat. Bear still remains an easy beginner tank, and I'm going to stand by that. But because Thorns of Iron is gone, you no longer just press Iron Fur
to do a whole a bunch of damage. You now want to hit Raze. Raze now replaces good button now. Even with Raze providing a shield and Thrash providing a shield, you still kind of don't get all the rage you need in order to get
Iron Fur out and hit Raze. I feel like I'm kind of stuck hitting Iron Fur and then occasionally being able to get one Raze off. And I don't know if that's how it's supposed to play. And my haste might be too low, too. But if it's bad
now, I'm really worried about that season one dropped just like warrior. However, I haven't explored the towns enough. Maybe there's a low rage build and we'll be playing that until we can have access to more haste. Who knows?
what bear players think, but also like playable right now because they're bugged and not working as intended. So, with any luck, things will get fixed and we'll be able to fully explore bear, but
you know what? W bear. If I really didn't like any of the the tanks, I know a good time and that remains true for midnight. And I do have a lot more I need to test and play given all of the tanks. However, all of you know I'm a
healer player as well and I got a big preservation guide to make and this not going to focus on too many more tanks. However, something you're like, "Hey Bowser, you got to try this paladin build. Bowser,
build." Hey, I'm all over it. I would love to get some more hands-on with the they're coming up with and having fun with because I'm still a newer tank all know the game pretty well, uh I'm still a very mid-core tank that just likes
teaching and helping people get better at the game. So, bring me your thoughts, bring me your comments and I hope you all have a good one. I'm going to go ahead off and start working on those videos, but thank you all for watching
videos, but thank you all for watching and I will see you all soon.