I recently posted my druid tanking movies here on the EJ boards. These showed druid 5 man tanking from TBC beta in non-heroic instances. Small content, indeed. I assumed that once we startet hitting 70, warriors would once again be the main choice for tanking in most cases.

However, recent trends seem to suggest otherwise. It startet with a druid from my server Ravecrest (EU), Hanabi, showing superior tanking stats and damage mitigation to their guild Maintank against High King Maulgar.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1...ligbjrnxt7.jpg

Well most people would assume that this is a one time example. However, recent screenshots have led me to believe otherwise. My friend Rulah, from Nihilium (don't think the guild needs an introduction) is even specced Feral and tanking at the moment for Nihilium, not as maintank as far as i understand though.

So, any other high end guilds who startet TBC raiding have something similar to report? What about paladins, since they also have a dedicated talent tree now (and i Dare call them the highest threat generating tank in the game post-druid threat nerf, Seal of Vengeance for alliance paladins is serious threat generation, rank 1 Consecration, Holy Shield and you are going strong). Anyone else have something to show us of Feral Druids and Prot Paladins in TBC raids?

Wrong, i took account for that. A prot warrior with thoughness has around 13.5k-14.5k armor from items. Add say 2k from Pots and Auras etc. and you are at 16k (can get higher if you wanan blow more pots than the druid did). Add LoH, which only applies to armor from items, aka. 14k * 1.3 + 2 = 20.2k. This gives 66.53% mitigation after Defensive Stance. A druid with 31.6k armor has 72.54% damage mitigation against a level 73 mob. This effectively means that even after LoH, the druid takes 17.96% less damage than the warrior per hit (aka. a 4k hit on the warrior is a 3.28k hit on the druid.

This is very far from "entirely different". Also, yes BoK is natural part of raid buffs. If they had a shaman, throwing the druid a Grace of Air totem would also benefit him more than the warrior because of the new agilyit-to-dodge conversion for druids, meaning it would grant the druid around 6.6% dodge and only grant a warrior 2-3% dodge.

This has nothing to do with the thread btw. I asked if there had been any more reports of this, i didn't start a discussion where druids pwns warriors or the other way around. I asked for specific examples where druids or paladins are earning a tank spot, why they are doing it (lack of warriors, better tanking stats or whatever) and personal experiences.

While we aren't using a feral Maintank, we do have a feral druid who is maxed out pre-raid tank gear wise, and whom I tank Karazhan with, as well as constantly 5manning, so I have a little insight.

So far we find prot warrior + druid to be a excellent combo in terms of flexibility. Their threat generation is exceptional, and they have the unique advantage of being able to put out pretty good threat gen while not being fed rage from being hit, which actually makes them the ideal offtank in many situations. Very easy to lock down dual-Skeletal Ushers with that combo, unless you get an unlucky string of dodges/parries.

Crushing blows eat them alive though on some boss encounters, and negate much of the AC advantage. We experimented on Romulo with each tank, and its noticeable how much less damage a prot tank takes, with most crushing blows being blocked and never being crit. Talented demo shout is also stronger than the druid version, and is the greatest boss debuff in the game.

In any encounter where you have to take down initial or periodic adds, and then switch back to single target (half of all encounters in the game?) Feral druids simply excell because of their ability to perform varied roles without dropping combat. Tank/DPS and still battle res and innervate if they get time.

Horde, so unfortunately little experience in paladin tanking, although that will change in the next couple weeks.

Interesting, thank you Shik, very insightsfull. Im going to bed now (4:20 AM in Denmark) but i will check back tomorrow in this thread.

Demo shout gives -300 AP, talented gives -420 AP and lasts 30 seconds (also gives some threat). Locks CoW gives -350 AP and lasts 2 minutes (can talent it to be -420 AP though, but I don't think a Lock would ever spec that).

I could be wrong, but I recall using CoW on a mob and the Warrior's Demo shout overwrote my CoW, he could have been speced into imp Demo though.


I have seen Druid and Pally tanks do fine in 5 man content, no experience past that.

Ah, it isn't better than talented. I was wrong there. Still you can't assume imp demo, especially in a prot build.

I had an extremely long post, but most of it is strewn over these boards far too many times already, so I will summarize. From my own perspective (Druid to 60, Warrior to 60 with full Dreadnaught, BElf Paladin now to 70 that has tanked Gruuls Lair / Karazhan) -

Warrior - Still the best single target threat / survivability in the game, with excellent itemization and decent support skills.

Druid - Amazing (now) survivability, sub-par (compared to the other 3) snap agro generation, but probably the best out of tanking form utility with the ability to Innervate/DPS/Combat Res. NO Tier 4/5 Tanking Itemization, which says a lot about the future of druid MTs sadly.

Paladin - Singular best snap agro and AOE agro in the game (Avenging Wrath / Spell Damage Trinkets / No Rage Reliance) but subpar long term threat due to the nature of Spiritual Attunement and raid wide mana. Currently horrible itemized in T4, but T5 shows improvement. With proper consumables will make the best OTs, again because of mana vs. rage. Out of tanking scenario can Cleansebot and SoW regenerate, but not quite as useful as a druid (no prot paladin will ever DPS over a warlock pet).

Let's not turn this into a flamewar, ok? There has been enough crap talked from both "sides" about the viability of tanks other than warriors, but nothing ever comes of it.

I'll echo what Shik said in the general sense, although my individual experiences have been different. Right now we run each of our Karazhan groups (we just started running K-Town last week, with two groups this week) with a prot warrior and mangle/tanking druid as the tanks. I as a raid leader find the synergy to be little short of impressive. I'm currently sitting at uncrittable defense, with around 23k armor, nearly 14k hp, and 24% dodge unbuffed. The choice of who is supposed to tank what is usually clear -- I end up tanking things that do large amounts of physical damage (including Romulo) and the warrior handles anything that has to do with magic. On large pulls I can tank many of the smaller elites at once while the prot warrior handles the most dangerous one, or the one with unique (and spell-reflectable!) abilities. The utility a druid can provide even while tanking -- I have shifted out as Moroes vanishes to Innervate or combat rez someone several times -- is impressive. Etc.

I feel like right now the game has achieved what Beef said in an old pre-TBC thread -- he hoped that there would be multiple viable classes for the tanking role. Right now I think we are mostly there. Each class has its own unique niches, while still being capable of, although not ideal for, tanking any boss. What I worry about is the near complete lack of itemization for a tanking druid (Tier 4 sucks and the PvP sets are decent in only some slots) in the near future. Now clearly we don't know a lot about the itemization from the Tier 5 instances, but if Karazhan and Gruul's Lair are any indication, the days of a viable druid tank are numbered.

So far, our druids have become our first choice for an offtank in Karazhan, whereas a paladin is more like a last ditch effort to get an add or extra mob in a pull tanked. It seems like druids are better suited for the role, in that their tree gives them more of a boost than the paladin one does, it seems, and they can dps with the same tree when tanking isn't needed, whereas a paladin cannot. From my uninformed perspective, it seems like paladins need too many stats to be effective at holding aggro, so they can't pour all their gear's attention on mitigation.

I find that remark quite surprising, seeing as I am 5/10/46 specced. I figured having an awesome debuff myself was important. Having to rely on other people to keep thunderclap up is already enough for me.

<insert TC not available in Def Stance whine>

From my experiance (King down in Gruuls, working on netherspite in kara) a feral tank is perfectly viable. However if I have to choose between one and a prot warrior I'll take the warrior, simply due to his 'panic buttons'. Last stand, LGG, SW, Spell Reflect are all there to save us from a 'healing knockbacked, keep yourself alive' wipe, whereas with a druid (with their slightly better stats on paper) thats a death, with a warrior you can sometimes pull things off you wouldnt expect (hi2u 3 man standing aran kill).

Personally I feel both are viable and I'll definatly take a prot warr/feral druid combo over two warrs or two druids as it stands.