[giwsgib]

I'm only putting paladin in here because information about it would be nice... But more importantly I would like to know more about the War/Druid seeing as those are the tanks we currently have.

I have looked (probably not hard enough) for a thread discussing how to compare the tanks... I know you cant classify one or the other as a "BEST" tank, but how would you go about comparing gear (assuming equal skill and non random variables) of such different classes to see who would be better suited to take the MT spot? Even if similar gear, and both are capable of tanking X boss, how would one compare the 2 as to see which is better fit to do it with the gear either are using?

I'm asking because well I enjoy main tanking and still working on my gear, but we also have a druid in really good gear and if he would be the better tank I wouldnt mind changing it up and maybe going DPS or just setting into the main OT role.

Also, can anyone link a post (or enlighten me) as to which bosses favor which types of tanks? starting at say SSC? (Not considering add tanking or anything, simply the MT spot) I've seen a few posts when reading about druid/paladin/warrior tanking and each list bosses and say they have these pros to being the MT which some of theme seem really irrelevant... One paladin post for every bosses simply says they are favorable to Snap Threat... a druid post said the same thing about them, IDR what the warrior said in the posts I have read though.

Any experience of any of the above would be greatly appreciated and I thank you all in advance.

Also many thanks to the TankSpot team for putting up such a useful forum that has loads of information.
-Giwsgib

[Kazeyonoma]

The person with the best preparedness, skill, practice, experience will be the best tank for the fight (barring gimmicks that prevent certain tanks). Gear as much as it is important, really can be made up for by knowing what to do, skill, and having good healers.

There's plenty of posts throughout the forums that list which tanks are favored for which, try doing a search.

In general I don't like comparison posts like this but this one is a genuine question, not about who is better, but our strengths and weaknesses. I'll leave it open for now but at first sign of QQ, I'm gonna close it.

[Alent]

Comparing gear is hard... but I would say, in general...

1: A druid's staff + badge of tenacity = your shield. Evaluate the two combined as such. As a druid you sacrifice SBV in exchange for an on use, 8% dodge + raw mit/stam. The only three druid tanking sticks are [item]Earthwarden[/item] (rough equiv: [item]Mallet of the Tides[/item]), [item]Wildfury Greatstaff[/item] (rough equiv: [item]The Sun Eater[/item]), and [item]Pillar of Ferocity[/item] (rough equiv: [item]The Brutalizer[/item].)

2: A druid's avoidance will always be inferior to a plate tank's avoidance. Pallies and Warriors both trump Druids for avoidance, esp T4 and fairly true for most of T5, excepting certain unstable, avoidance heavy gear and gem builds.

3: A druid's mitigation, assuming he's geared reasonably and has 33K+ armor like he's supposed to, will always be superior to a plate tank's when you make the assumption that both will take crushing blows. This is backwards from the usual way this statement is phrased, for one specific reason: when you face a boss that due to cruelties of attack speed eats your shield block charges, forcing you to eat crushing blows as a warrior, you have just stepped solidly into the realm of a Druid.

[giwsgib]

Source: Kazeyonoma The person with the best preparedness, skill, practice, experience will be the best tank for the fight (barring gimmicks that prevent certain tanks). Gear as much as it is important, really can be made up for by knowing what to do, skill, and having good healers.

For my reasons of comparison, I like to think me and this druid are both really good at what we do and always come prepared... Neither of us have experience with the new content we are just now going to do.. i mean we just barely did mags last sunday XD

I understand different mechanics between different classes but the searches i did like you said ends up a big QQ fest somewhat because if a druid is posting about his class he names like 10000 pros to him being the MT and same goes for the warriors and paladins... The only huge thing I've seen regards paladins and their capability to AOE tank much easier than druids and warriors.

Ty alent for some information here... About the avoidance note, I was doing AV on my resto druid earlier and there was a feral w/ some t6 so I asked him his stats... He told me he had 63% dodge in bear form in his BT/Sunwell set... I havent looked at warriors lately so IDK if they get that high but you said plate has better avoidance, was he lying (He was in full pvp gear on armory, and besides that you dont see bear form stats on armory) so I am curious about that...

Anyways thanks for the explenation you gave me

[Nicki]

Most fights in t5 level are even. Most fights in the game are even...
The big stand outs are:
1. Archimonde (doesn't favour paladins or druids)
2. RoS p2 (same as above)
3. Illidan (not very safe to do with a druid MT)
4. Al'ar (Not viable to do this with 2 tanks and 1 is a paladin though p2 is tankable and using 3 platform tanks you do take that 3rd role if adds arent an issue)

Read my signature...I know of paladins who MT but its mostly a warrior thing. It takes an extraordinary player to get past the prejudice and judgements laid on paladin tanks. Druids aren't in that type of situation but good ferals can push dps numbers that are decent (by decent i mean more than top end shadow priest damage).

[Wars]

One thing about the avoidance issue. Warriors as i'm sure you know have both dodge and parry as total avoidance, of course also having shield block rating as a third tertiary mitigation avoidance(which helps passively negate the chance of a crushing(to a fair degree).

Druids only get dodge, which as you said, is pretty good at between 65 and 80% fully raid buffed(sometimes even higher than 80% during combat). As you see, warriors have more actual mitigation and with shield block rating factoring in, have near 80% chance to passively not get crushed, I know my warrior is up there. So we've got 50% total avoidance, and then 30% added to passively avoid crushings. Warriors are great mitgation tanks as is. Though paladins are also up there and will almost never get crushed with all their Holy Shield Charges, though we're not talking about paladins much here.

I have a paladin tank and they are very very fun, albeit that I've only tanked t4 stuff with him. Though I would never trade my warrior for a full time paladin. Just too much fun on a warrior with too much utility and oh shit buttons.

[Alent]

um, if you gem straight agi and gun for dodge, you can get some sick, sick avoidance stats in t6/swp as a druid. I don't know stats for warriors in that tier of gear, but every tier leading up to it, my warrior buddies tend to stay a solid 10% ahead of my druid. (Admittedly, I'm not gemming pure avoidance.)

For reference, my guild is 5/5 hyjal, 7/9 BT.

[Worldie]

Actually i got less avoidance than our druids in guild, since they can mindlessly stack agility for both AP, crit, dodge and armor, while i still need some stamina in my gear <.<

[SuperFlounder]

The general rule of thumb is that if the boss has the standard attack speed, a "good" warrior is the best mitigation option. A bad warrior is generally worth less that bear in cat gear frankly. There are various exceptions to this rule, however, and like some have noted, some bosses that crush are still better for druids.

Two opposing examples of fights that crush but are optimal for different tanks are Kaz in MH, and Teron. Obviously warriors, druids, and pallidans(perhaps not Kaz) can easily tank all of these bosses, especially with the gear, but the fact remains the bosses damage output cater to different mechanics.

Kaz crushes, yet is still best for a druid to tank.
1. Stun, guaranteeing crushes are going to get through anyway.
2. Druids take much less damage when stunned. In effect they negate crushing blows when stunned.
3. Actual extra damage from crushes will not hurt healers mana that much as raid damage is minimal.
4. His special single target attack, cleave, is physical but cannot crush, but can be blocked, eating up a warriors sheild block.
5. You can have a warrior easily apply Demo and TC, greatly reducing further damage while stunned.
6. You are unlikely to lose healers.

Teron, on the other hand, is a warrior fight.
1. Swing timer that reduces with TC to be very accomdating for shield block
2. Large instant target attack is magical, will hit less for warriors, and will not eat a shield block charge.
3. Aoe magic damage also very prevalent.
4. You will lose people, and for this reason, a good warrior is optimal in many ways. While druids strong card is being healable through spike, when healers go down, actually perserving mana becomes a major issue. I've had attempts when two MT and one raid healer all got ghosted. This works in the same way when dps gets ghosted. The fight lasts longer and healers need the tank that will conserve their mana better. The prot warrior also does their own debuffs. A druid tank would have to worry about TC and demo going down if their prot warrior gets ghosted, and that's a huge uptick in damage.


As for bosses that hit fast and crush, once again, it matters what the heals are like. After all, that's prince phase 2, perhaps I'm biased but every druid I have ever met has a very hard time on that fight. That would be because while a druid is more easily healable through the crushes that eventually come through, its a 10 man, there are few healers and not enough to just focus on him, with the infernals and raid damage, that is.

[Stubbi]

One interesting point that should not be left out ... A druid has one major advantage and it has nothing to do with tanking.

Unlike both the Paladin & Warriors, you still have a decent role when not tanking without paying for a respec & completely replacing your gear.

This may change in the expansion, it may not ... time will tell ...

[kolben]

I like having feral druids in the raid. They can tank, do good melee DPS, innervate, battle res, and emergency heal. It is the best "patch" class in the game. I do think experienced prot warriors make the best boss tanks in many situations. That of course has a lot to do with gear and experience, a lack of either changes things.

Our raid usually has me as MT, a Prot. Paladin, and two Feral Druids. It works very well for us. That does mean I always have to take care of thunderclap and demo shout of course, but the utility we get from this tank setup has saved us several times.

[Alent]

Source: Stubbi One interesting point that should not be left out ... A druid has one major advantage and it has nothing to do with tanking. Unlike both the Paladin & Warriors, you still have a decent role when not tanking without paying for a respec & completely replacing your gear. This may change in the expansion, it may not ... time will tell ...

It was left out because the question was "how do you tell which one will be better suited to tanking 'this boss'?"

I would like to say, tho', thank you for pouring grease on a slippery slope and inviting everyone to step in it.

[Shadevarr]

my guild is just progressing through SSC and we bring 1 of each tank to the raid as default. Unfortunately none of our paladins are a better choice as MT over the feral/warrior but they serve their purpose. I do find that a feral tank on Tidewalker to be preferred due to the spikeyness of the damage and the larger health pool to compensate (our feral has 25k raid buffed).

As far as saying that feral will negate the extra damage from crushing blows with their high armor.....let's just say that I currently have 64% reduction via armor, *1.1 def stance that gives me 70.4%..not that far from the 75% that EH ferals enjoy hence it is not THAT great of a reduction in crush damage.

[bosephus]

Source: giwsgib I'm asking because well I enjoy main tanking and still working on my gear, but we also have a druid in really good gear and if he would be the better tank I wouldnt mind changing it up and maybe going DPS or just setting into the main OT role. Also, can anyone link a post (or enlighten me) as to which bosses favor which types of tanks? starting at say SSC? (Not considering add tanking or anything, simply the MT spot)

Don't get hung up on the term "main tank". Any guild that wants to get anywhere benefits from having at least three tanks that are geared up for the content level. There are too many encounters that require multiple tanks to perform and too many encounters that favor one class over another (like spell reflect, AOE tanking Hyjal or in BT). You don't want to hit a roadblock in progression because you don't have a tank that can hack it. Plus, there will always be nights when somebody is late or can't make it and another tank has to step up. And since you're not likely to be competing for gear with a druid, you'll both be geared up that much faster.

[mero12513]

Source: bosephus Don't get hung up on the term "main tank". Any guild that wants to get anywhere benefits from having at least three tanks that are geared up for the content level.

I like this philosophy a lot. My guild currently runs with 3 *about* equal tanks, one of each class. Whenever anybody joins raids with us, we tend to laugh when they, inevitably, ask who is main tank. Our Kara runs (me + pally) are something like this:

Midnight: Me, Attumen: Pally, Both: Whoever pulls first
Moroes: Pally on moroes, me on adds + second aggro (Paladins have a tough time keeping second aggro)
Maiden: me
Opera: both
Curator: Pally (I dps)
Illhoof: Pally
Shade: lolwut?
Netherspite: Both
Nightbane: Me (fear dance)
Prince: we roll to see who gets to tank prince.

We swap weekly between raid leader and loot master. There is no spoon. There is no main tank.

[Worldie]

The MT philosophy died anyway with Sunwell.

Try doing Brutallus with a full-t6-mh-bt tank and a mainly-offset-and-random-drop-geared tank.

[Bogota]

Call me crazy, but how about sharing the role of MT with your druid guildmate? You do Hydross (ok it's alot easier with 2 tanks for Hydross ), he does Lurker, you do Leo, he does Tidewalker... My guild has 2 prot wars, 1 feral druid and 1 prot pally and we just share the MT role. We are fairly casual and on any given raid night 1 or 2 of us might not make it. Seems like blizzard has gone out of their way to make tanking more about skill than class gimmicks, why not take advantage of that? Our guild has been pretty successful sharing MT roles. Since TBC came out it doesn't seem like it's necessary to have only one MT. And since you and your druild mate won't even have to fight over drops, 'cept for a trinkets and rings, you've not got much to lose.

[Bogota]

Source: mero12513 There is no spoon. There is no main tank.

I have to borrow that one!

[uglybbtoo]

You got it wrong ... mages make the best tank never any loss of agro issues for a mage tank.

Ok they have some surviability issues but thats because the healers haven't cottoned onto the leetness of mage tank and they havent been active in QQ'ing to blizz.

[Norrath]

Source: Stubbi One interesting point that should not be left out ... A druid has one major advantage and it has nothing to do with tanking. Unlike both the Paladin & Warriors, you still have a decent role when not tanking without paying for a respec & completely replacing your gear. This may change in the expansion, it may not ... time will tell ...

Sigh.

Yes, druids have strong versatility. This is not strictly a benefit, however.

If you have one of each three tanking classes, yet only need two tanks during an encounter, which tank gets to sit out? The druid, because he has a useful ability when not tanking.

How would you like getting told "Sorry, we can't afford to have you tanking, because the other two aren't performing as well as you when they're not tanking"?

YES, it's an amazing strength. Druids pay for it and then some.