Hey guys,

over the past few days we've had some discussion about Druid tanks vs Warrior tanks in our guild. We have been progressing nicely in BWL recently (no guides, all self-taught) and are up to Ebonroc now. We don't always have enough Warriors, so sometimes a Druid appears in the MT list.

This raises some interesting questions, like:

* How exactly do you compare a Prot Warrior to a Feral Druid?
* Can a Druid be used to tank Vaelastrasz?
* How much does a Druid lose by not having a Shield and Parry?

We have not really been able to find any good stats about this. There is some addon called TankPoints which supposedly shows how 'good' a Tank is, but I have no idea how trustworthy those numbers are.

Do you have any experience in this? Could anyone shed some light on this in a more mathematical or game mechanical way than "omg droods suck use prot tanks kthx"?

Warriors are the best tanks period, I've only ever seen druids emergency tank mobs in mc so im not sure how they would hold out through some duration fights...

No druids are not comparable to warriors. They aren't itemized for it, and they lack parry and block.

Check out this thread:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post693704

TankPoints is just your effective hit points. It basically factors in your health with your forms of reduction and mitigation. It gives a nice idea of how durable a tank is, but I don't think it's 100% reliable in determining how "good" they are at taking damage, because it's very skewed towards stamina. I mean, someone with a bunch of crappy stamina gear could theoretically produce a similar value to someone with a bunch of good epics.

Well, that's the problem - we do not have 30 warriors. We have a guild that is barely large enough to do MC/BWL. Hence the Druid tanking, if some warriors are unavailable. We have 3 prot tanks with (almost) full Might and 300+ FR, but hey, they also have stuff to do IRL (gasp) so they can't always be there :)

Ok, I read the thread. Conclusion: Bears can dish out similar amounts of threat as Warriors.

But what about the other side? Receiving damage? Getting critted? Not having Parry/Block?

Your generic WoW boss, with 4-5K crits incoming often, no, you're much better off having someone with last stand, block, and 400 defense tanking that.

Druids may well end up being raid tanks for certian bosses. Say you have a boss (or an off-tank needed boss) with a small deaggro and a constant torrent of low amounts of physical damage (say 2x500 every second). A druid could MT that better than a warrior.

Anyways, it would be absurd if a druid could be a general better tank in the end game than a warrior. But like everything else, a druid in a compatible spec, with foreknowledge to put the gear on before the fight starts, should be able to fill in at around 80-90% effeciency (depending on the fight) for a warrior. Just like a druid with compatible spec and gear can fill in 80% for a rogue, or a mage, or flat out heal a priest silly (I suspect that the priest revamp will put us at 80% there, too).

I still want to see a raid boss that either polymorphs the MT or does an unavoidable disarm ("Dropped Weapon") on the MT. Come on, it's so simple!

Nefarion, and the disarming royal from silithus. Cleanse spam and weapon chain ftw!

That would be pretty cool, but it won't happen. Can you imagine the uproar from guilds that have denied Druids feral gear up untill now? :)