I'm currently playing a Paladin, and have MT/OT'd up to Curator in Karazhan - 14k armour, 500 defence, 14 dodge/14 parry, 9.7k unbuffed health. 7/44/10 build)

However, i'm finding it a real pain when it comes to doing anything but either tank or heal (with specs), and the findings of Donar from beta (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1) makes me wonder if in true 25-man end-game and 5-man heroic if I'll be able to tank competently.

So I'm considering re-rolling and it will be to either Warrior (hybrid spec with 17 in Prot) or Druid (Feral spec). Both offer damage outside of raids and both offer solid tanking utility. Druid gives the additional bonus of caster dps and heals.

I'm finding it quite difficult to make a decision, I have both around L40 so wouldn't be too much of a grind to push either to L70.

Was hoping I could garner some thoughts from here before making a final decision.

Has anything official been said regarding the current tanking potentional of druids? Reading the various comments, from the involved three tanking classes on these and other boards, I cannot imagine that Blizzard is not going to nerf the druid tanking, either by nerfing them directly or by buffing either the armour on plate or otherwise buffing warrior and perhaps paladins.

With that in mind, is re-rolling at this point a good idea? I'd say wait at least one patch.

That's totally not true. I had no trouble leveling from 60 to 70 as mostly protection, soloing or otherwise. It all depends on who you can group with and your gear. Get the right gear and protection does fine. That said, there's no reason to make the trek from 1-60 as anything other than arms or possibly fury. After that you respec, it's not a big deal.

To the OP, Druids are going to have some of the same problems you think paladins will have. No one class is the optimal tank in all situations. Warriors are probably the best generalists, but they have a devil of a time with more than 3 mobs. Druids and Paladins have a bit more flexibility (they can also heal, res, etc.) and can handle multiple mobs better. Play what you want, there is no "supertank" class.

Druid tanks are amazing for OT'ing mobs while not getting hit as they have great rage gen or are great for 5 man/multimob tanking. However where they lack is their avoidance. For example we were attempting to do the muchly bugged prince malchezaar and had a druid tank with full tanking gear and full tanking feral spec, he had circa 17k armour and 30% dodge and 15k health iirc, with imp layon hands he capped armour down to 75% dmg reduction but he was still taking huge dmg.

After 4 or 5 failures and as many soft resets, we both went and respecced me to full prot him to full resto, and killed the prince first try due to the fact my high mitigation through dodge, parry, miss's having quite high defence. It was so much less healing during the duel wield stage and then i picked up tier 4 head and have now been forced into staying full prot which makes even doing quest chains for attunements a pain

So I guess I was just imagining the (group) suggested players 2 or (group) suggested players 3 quests I was soloing in Netherstorm? It took a bandage after the fact, big deal. A feral druid could have done the same quests. It doesn't matter what class you are.

Grinding is different than questing solo, but there's something to be said for 60+% of all incoming attacks = 0 damage. You can easily grind in battlestance with a shield and get your block up to the level where it becomes another form of avoidance (which is pretty much all of the shadowmoon valley and netherstorm nonelite mobs from what I've seen), and still have plenty of burst damage potential with shield slam (not to mention a silence ability, 30%ish more AC). Protection is *not* gimpy anymore with the right spec and gear.

I think your missing his and my point, or maybe just mine. I am suggesting that grinding/questing would be better as a Druid vs a Prot Warrior because of the damage output. In otherwords a mob that takes a prot warrior 5mins to kill can be done in 2 or less by a feral druid. You dont think a prot warrior can match the DPS output of a feral druid do you?

And no you didnt imagine those suggest 2 or 3 player quests, I did them too. Difference was I was melting faces hitting 2500+ shadowbolts and conflags.

Being able to outlast a mob vs burning them down are two entirely different things, rightnow a prot warrior can only outlast them while a druid in direbear form can do both.

No, I understood you just fine. I bet it's a lot more competitive than you think when I'm not in defensive stance. A druid is certainly not killing things twice as fast as me, maybe 10% faster. That's not enough of a difference to matter when you're dealing with 8k HP mobs, particularly when you factor in travel time, etc.

I get:
- 10% extra damage to all attacks as long as I wield a 1h weapon (similar to a druid's naturalist ability)
- 10% more strength (which is 20% more AP from strength itemization, similar to heart of the wild except I'm not in cat form and I get 5% more stamina on top of it)
- 12 rage executes doing 10% more damage than a standard warrior
- Victory rush (35% of AP * 10% for 1 attack every 15 seconds when I'm "grinding")
- A very efficient rage -> damage ability with shield slam (not to mention good burst)

I can kill mobs faster than my charge cooldown. Victory rush, focused rage, vitality, and shield mastery changed things. That's my point. It isn't wow 1.0 anymore. All you need is crit, block value, strength, and ~5% hit. You don't dps in tanking gear, but some of it can translate well.

Am I the only one who has noticed that Victory Rush hits for the exact same amount as Bloodthirst?

Anecdotal evidence time: the 2nd fastest person to hit 70 in our guild, and possibly the server, was a full prot warrior, who i've never seen loot any DPS gear pre-TBC. Given that he likely had few people to group with, I expect he soloed quite a bit. The warlock who beat him to 70 by 12 hours or so was semi-competing with him, so I don't know if they grouped with each other much.

I'd be surprised if a smart prot-warrior can't grind just a well as any other class, druids included.

I did the 60-70 thing as full prot specced warrior and would've been close behind the guys who rushed in our guild but I did a few zones twice as I was duoing with my resto shaman wife when she had time to play.

Two things factored into my favour doing this, I had already done it on beta and I have a TF. All the other things as noted above, like Victory Rush, Focused Rage help prot dps in an not insignificant way. The only times things slowed down considerably was fighting nature immune mobs, but thankfully they're not that common. As my most damaging attacks are not AP based, rather I spam shield slam, devastate and hamstring to proc TF, gear choices are pretty simple as well. In my grinding gear I have about 10.4k health unbuffed, with around 10k armour and 18% or so crit rate (in Battle stance). AP with BS up is probably a shade under 1400.

I must say though, that duoing with a resto shaman is just the business. Pretty much zero downtime and you can easily do all the "group" quests apart from the true 5 man ones (Durn, Ring of Blood etc).

With Regard to one of your Questions about Paladin Tanking viability


All the Tanking classes can reach crit immunity with relative ease

However a paladin has a relatively Low Hit Point pool. In a best case scenario you will have probably have 30% less health than a bear Tank & 20% less health than a Prot Warrior.

Secondly I have yet to see any evidence that you will be able to Pro-actively push Crushing Blows off the table. Holy Shield is the only Pro-active ability that a Paladin can utilize. Redoubt is only a chance on hit proc & as your dodge & parry increases Redoubt becomes less effective.

Whilst Bear Tanks can't utilize Block or Parry they are able push 40% Dodge and in addition they receive a much greater benefit from Armour as well as a much larger Health pool.

Again Warriors can push Crushing blows off the table with relative ease.

With regard to spell damage Warriors receive 16% mitigation as opposed to the 10% Paladin's can acquire. Pro-actively Warriors can use Spell reflection & Shield bash. In Alpha there were indications that Paladin's would receive Blessing of Spell Warding (immunity from spell Damage for 12 sec's but silences the caster) but that never made it to any of the public testing phases.


Itemization is also a big Problem for Paladin's. They require the following Stats

Stamina
Defence
+Damage/Healing
intellect
+Mps

Tier 4 & Tier 5 Tanking set's are low on Stamina, an area Paladin's are already weak in. I'd suggest avoiding intellect & consider stacking +Damage/Healing.

Your Alternative is to go for non class specific Warrior tanking plate although this will potentially make your threat sketchy.


Ardent Defender is also indicative of Blizzard's inability to offer Paladin's useful skills. In your unbuffed Scenario Ardent Defender is potentially worthless where you can be hit for approx 1940 or more


From a game mechanic's point of view I’d surmise that any Guild will look at the survivability of it's Main Tank's. Given a three way choice with optimal Spec & gear you will always come at the bottom of the list of three.


Lastly becomes the issue of perception. Again take a look at this forum to see the paucity of serious debate about Paladin Tanking. I know you understand Paladin Tanking & I know that everything I’ve said above is old New’s.

As it currently stands I personally believe that whilst Paladin Tanking has clearly been Buffed it has been more of a PR exercise to quell the disquiet of many Paladins whose main roll pre TBC has been Spam Healing/Decursing. I have nothing against the people who enjoy that role. But I believe it will take additional tweaks to Your Tanking abilities to get other people of that mindset.


I hope you persevere with your Role, without dedicated Prot specced Paladin's the real issues of Lack of Health, Pro-active defensive mechanics & lack of mitigation will continue to Blight the Paladin Class.