Which tanking class is best for raiding at the moment, and in 4.3?

[Deleted]

Quite a simple question really, what class, our of druid, deathknight, paladin and warrior do you all think is best for tanking bosses in normal and heroic firelands, and will be best in future for 4.3? ie. which requires less healing, adds most to the raid, has most useful moves for variety of situations?

[Fastlane_hellscream]

Warrior and Pally take the least spike damage. Druid is quite good atm though. With that said, I prefer DK. Played well, and timing their abilities right should lead to them being a very capable tank, not to mention the changes in 4.3 are going to make them a bit better still.

[Dawnshadow]

Before the nerf, death knight tanks had severe mechanical problems in heroic Firelands; there are changes for 4.3 that aim to correct these flaws. But assuming you're not a bleeding edge raider, all the classes make perfectly good tanks. Death knights have a much higher skill cap than the other three, which is a double-edged sword; a good death knight can survive things they have no right to survive, a bad one can crumple like a piece of tinfoil on contact with the enemy. Druids make very, very good off tanks, since they can pop into cat form and DPS on the fly when they're not actively tanking. Paladins are still really good at AoE and raid utility, and warriors have a ridiculously huge tanking toolkit.

From what I've read, the general consensus is that paladins are the strongest tanks overall currently, but that doesn't mean the others aren't viable. Skill really is more important than class selection. (Disclaimer: my main is a death knight.)

[Reynard]

With Paladins at 10 and DKs at 1?

Paladin: 10. Block caps and Holy Shield for smoothest incoming damage, huge arsenal of utility buttons for themselves and the raid. Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, Divine Guardian, HoP for debuff clearing, Lay on Hands, Cleanse, and even self-healing with WoG.
Druid: 6. While slightly spiky-er than Warriors, the ones I've healed take much less damage overall. Don't play one myself, know least about them, but seen some ridiculous avoidance strings.
Warrior 3. Block caps slower than Paladins, Crit Block is much spiky-er than Holy Shield as a mechanic. Too many linked cooldowns - Last Stand/Rallying Cry, having to decide between using Shield Block on cooldown for the block or saving it for large magic damage spikes. Newest tier bonus will just make it worse, linking Shield Wall to a raid wall.
DK: 1. Really spiky, highest skill cap in gaming Runic Empowerment so that it always refreshes frost/unholy for the most Death Strikes, while also keeping Blade Barrier up. Lots of neat cooldowns but just takes too much base damage.

[Deleted]

Paragon uses Paladin+Druid.

[Deleted]

Paladins and warriors. Shield users so they tend to take less spiky melee damage, but they are the best just because of their raid cooldowns.

Having said that, it won't usually make or break your raiding. We use a dk and a feral, and we were 6/7 hc before the nerfs.

[Lackluster]

Paladins have huge utility through their hands, heals and divine guardian, making them one of the best tanks currently. The T13 4pc bonuses will somewhat compensate for the advantage that divine guardian gives though.
Warriors have similar mitigation to paladins but have more stuns and amazing mobility, this works wonders for certain fights.
Druids have less tools while in bearform but are able to toss innervates, combatresses, tranquility and go into catform. They do take a bit spikier damage than block tanks though.
Death Knights definitely take the most spiky damage at the moment and I personally think runes are a clunky system for tanking (incredibly hard to get the most out of). They are perfectly fine for all normal modes and most heroic modes though. With good cooldown management they can mitigate a lot of burst damage.

Overal, it depends heavily on the encounter.
Will a paladin be able to put his hands and DG to full use?
Is high mobility needed and can adds be stunned, for example? The warrior will shine.
Are there long periods where a tank isn't taking damage? The druid can go cat and do more damage than any other tank.
Are there strong spikes of spell damage? A DK can AMS it and heal right back up with a rune tap and DS.

[Deleted]

Warrior 3. Block caps slower than Paladins, Crit Block is much spiky-er than Holy Shield as a mechanic. Too many linked cooldowns - Last Stand/Rallying Cry, having to decide between using Shield Block on cooldown for the block or saving it for large magic damage spikes. Newest tier bonus will just make it worse, linking Shield Wall to a raid wall.

I don't understand you people saying that, when do you use SW ? It's not an emergency button, comon it's to use to prevent huge incomming damages => healers having difficulties to get everyone to top life (the less your healers have to heal you the more they can heal the raid and of course the opposite is true) so what ? where's the problem here ? I don't see a fight where SW is not the most effective when dealing with raid damages (baleroc is oc off topic). For me T13 4p is a win-win

Off topic over i just can't stand reading these things.

I play warrior as u can imagine, for me DK are the best off tanks mostly due to the stacking blood shield, they also have a lot of good CD and as someone said above, a well played DK is awesome. For a main tank i think warriors, yeah maybe i'm not fair, will be the best because at 4.3 you will easily get bloc capped and u will have crit bloc when other tanks will reforge to raw avoidance (diminushing returns), i also wish to add the very good mobility we have (charge intervene or heroweak leap).

ps: i hope i made it clear for all of you, it's late (past 3am), i'm sleepy and ... i'm french :wink: