If you want a tank that gears fast, survives pulls you have no business surviving, and doesn't punish a single missed cooldown, the answer in The War Within Season 2 is clear: Blood Death Knight is the most forgiving tank to learn and the cheapest to make tanky. Below is the honest ranking based on self-healing, defensive uptime, gear dependency, and how badly a class punishes mistakes — the four things that actually decide whether you survive a +8 with a brand-new tank.

The survivability + ease tier list for Season 2

S-tier for survivability and forgiveness: Blood Death Knight

Blood DK is the only tank that actively heals itself back to full mid-pull without help. Death Strike heals you for a percentage of damage taken in the last 5 seconds, so the harder a pack hits, the bigger your heals get. Your Runic Power bar is essentially a second health bar. Add Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, and Rune Tap and you have a defensive nearly every global. The result: a healer can almost ignore you on trash, and you can solo-survive a botched pull that would flatten any other tank.

It is also the cheapest tank to gear. Death Strike scaling means even at sub-600 item level you feel sturdy, because your healing scales off incoming damage rather than purely off your own stats. You do not need a polished gear set before you can start pushing keys — a major reason new tanks should start here.

A-tier: Guardian Druid and Protection Paladin

Guardian Druid has the largest raw health pool of any tank thanks to Ironfur stacking armor and a deep talent tree of passive damage reduction. It is extremely tanky once geared, with Frenzied Regeneration, Survival Instincts, and Barkskin covering most spike windows. The catch: Ironfur is a physical-armor button, so magic-heavy weeks (think Necrotic Wake or any caster-dense pull) hit harder, and you have to manage rage to keep armor up. Slightly more active than Blood DK, but very beginner-friendly.

Protection Paladin is the best "panic button" tank. Word of Glory is a large instant self-heal, Ardent Defender and Guardian of Ancient Kings are huge cooldowns, and Divine Shield can hard-cancel a wipe. Prot Pal also brings the most raid-wide utility (Blessing of Protection, Sacrifice, Freedom, battle rez via talents in some builds). It is forgiving because its cooldowns are so strong, but you do need to track Shield of the Righteous uptime for active mitigation, which is one more thing to manage than DK.

B-tier: Protection Warrior and Vengeance Demon Hunter

Protection Warrior is excellent in skilled hands and brings Shield Wall, Last Stand, and the best single-target stops in the game. But it is more gear-hungry and more rotation-dependent: Ignore Pain capping, Shield Block uptime, and rage management all matter, and its self-healing is the weakest of the tanks. Undergeared Prot Warriors feel squishy in a way Blood DKs simply do not. Great ceiling, higher floor of effort.

Vengeance DH has fantastic mobility, easy AoE threat, and strong Demon Spikes + Metamorphosis survivability. It is genuinely strong in Season 2. The reason it sits here for new tanks is rotational complexity: Fiery Brand tracking, Soul Fragment management, and Fury budgeting reward practice. Tanky, but not "press a button and live" tanky.

C-tier for ease (not for power): Brewmaster Monk

Brewmaster is one of the strongest tanks in the game at a high level because Stagger smears burst damage into a healable trickle and Purifying Brew wipes a chunk of it away. But that is exactly why it is the hardest to learn: you must read your Stagger bar constantly and purify at the right moments, or you delete yourself when the smeared damage catches up. Incredible in expert hands, brutal for a first-time tank.

So which tank should you actually pick?

  • Brand-new to tanking or pushing on a fresh character: Blood DK. Fastest to feel strong, most self-sufficient, most forgiving of bad pulls.
  • Want maximum health and chill physical pulls: Guardian Druid.
  • Want raid utility and emergency buttons: Protection Paladin.
  • Want the highest skill ceiling and don't mind the work: Prot Warrior, Vengeance DH, or Brewmaster.

The gearing reality check

Whatever you roll, your first 1-2 weeks are mostly about item level. Mythic+ at the +6 to +8 range drops Champion and Hero track gear, the weekly Great Vault rewards scale with your highest completed keys, and a crafted Embellished piece or two closes most early survivability gaps. Tanks live and die on Stamina, Versatility, and the right trinkets far more than on perfect parses, so don't over-optimize before you have the baseline.

This is the one spot where spending money can be a sensible time-for-money trade. If you're short on hours and want to skip the grind to a key level where the gear actually drops — or you need crafting gold for Embellishments and an early enchant/gem set without farming for days — a Mythic+ gearing carry or a WoW gold top-up gets you to "viable tank" in an evening instead of a week. If you genuinely enjoy the climb, though, just play it out: tanking is one of the few roles where reps teach you more than gear ever will, and a Blood DK at modest item level can carry its own learning curve.

Bottom line for Season 2: if the question is purely "which tank is easiest to gear and hardest to kill," Blood Death Knight wins, with Guardian Druid and Protection Paladin a close second tier. Save Brewmaster and Prot Warrior for when you want a challenge, not when you want to survive.