This is what i am doing - showing you that the warrrior is better so we can stop talking about this, even discounting additional warrior abilties. My point is, it still beats it. End of discussion. Thank you lets move on to more interesting subjects!

With talented amplify magic on the OT it hits for ~1950 on average. And as for other healers, they use the highest rank heal that they can sustain for the fight, so generally heal 4 / gheal 1 / FoL

I also don't see why it was suggested to use heal 2, if I can keep going the length of the fight with heal 4 then it would seem silly to downrank further and do less healing :P and a slightly nit picky point heal 4 is 1.48 times the cost of heal 2, I wouldn't call that nearly double at all.

In my opinion, the only time to consider using a druid tank is if you're using the discussed "single offtank" strategy. In that case, the offtank is getting pounded by Hatefuls constantly--too fast for healers to act reactively by canceling heals. Thus, the raid's goal is to set up a steady stream of healing with enough HPS to offset the worse case scenario of several max range Hatefuls landing in a row. Parries and dodges are still good since they can cover for mistakes, but the key point is not dying to the 3-max HS's in a row that will happen at some point in the battle. This is doubly true if inspiration also falls off at points during the battle.

A 10k armor tank with pots (2k + 650) and inspiration will have 15812 armor amd around 10k HP buffed
A 14k armor druid tank with inspiration will exceed the mitigation cap of 17250ish and have around 12k buffed (sacrificing some armor for HP due to inspiration)
After defensive stance though, both tanks will have about the same mititgation (though the druid retains a 20% HP lead)

Considering the strikes that aren't being avoided, the druid will less likely to be killed in a bad chain of events. If inspiration falls off, the druid's armor is even more important. Normally, the warrior's higher avoidence would save mana, but in this one case--that's all going to be uncanceled overheal anyway. To sum up:

Druid Pro: 20% more max HP, redundency if inspiration falls off, save some pocket change on stoneshield pots.
Druid Con: Will experience more "bad chains" than a warrior, though the HP will make them more survivable.

In the end, I'd guess it's a toss-up depending on who's got better gear. In all other roles for this fight though, warriors are undeniably better.

As a tangent to Pantone's post, would it make sense to use a druid tank on Maexxna? The real killer there as far as I can see it is the 8 seconds that the raid is webbed and the MT is being pounded upon. The only way to survive it is to 1) maximize MT health, 2) maximize mitigation over the 8 seconds, and 3) maximize HOT's during that period so that your MT is receiving passive healing.

Using Pantone's numbers below it would seem that it's easier to get 1 and 2 with a druid tank than a warrior and 3 would be a wash. I'm a dps caster so I don't know enough about armor values and diminishing returns but it would seem that the special nature of the Maexxna encounter might actually benefit a druid tank.

Thoughts?

No. First off, getting crit by Maexxna would be a horrible thing. Second, even if a tank can't mitigate while stunned then can mash shield block when coming out of the stun to make sure that they aren't getting crushed until they can get topped back off.

there's a thread on the R&D forums about this exact topic, but to summarize it - assuming the tank is chain-chugging stoneshields, the additional armor a druid has isn't THAT much different from that of a warrior, and you lack the +def to avoid crits, as well as shield block to avoid crushes coming out of a stun and shield wall to guarantee survival on the enrage stun.

We just got our first kill last night...I'd recommend saving your imp. LoH and Shield Wall for the enrage...we also had an OT building aggro throughout the first 70% for a second SW if necessary (it was this kill, hopefully not in the future). Do remind your healers to cover for others in the case that the primary ones are webbed - we had several druids watching abolish - which is exactly 8s long...if not applied right before the stun, the poison can be deadly. In reality, the 3 situations where we lost the tank while learning were 1) not topped off prior to stun, 2) abolish wasn't on or ran out, 3) enrage.

how about crystal restores? AFAIK, its another hot you can add to your self.

I brought some of those last night...but given some of the other threads on this forum, I was scared to use them for fear of bumping off a flask or something else important.

A druid wouldn't survive a web spin after she enrages because they don't have shield wall. Basicaly the damage of most web spins would be smoothed out some, but the price you'd pay for that would be near certain death after she enrages.

In response to your next post, sometimes you just get screwed by Maexxna's damage or the timing of necrotic poison (between ticks of abolish but just prior to renew/rejuv/etc ticks) during a web spin and the only thing you can really do about this is get more pieces of dreadnaught for your tank.

Yeah, we bumped a flask and Defensive Stance off last night (and I promptly started inspecting the MT before each pull... "click off that Spirit! click off that Blessing of Might!") resulting in a lovely wipe at 40%. We got her to enrage a few times and then finally deaded her at 5mins left in our raid night.