Oldest question in the book..Follow

Pallies excel at AoE tanking. Warriors can never even come close to their AoE threat (not to mention their damage is pretty good whilst doing this). Warriors are better than pallies on single targets and their itemization allow them to focus more on certain stats. This makes their Mitigation, amongst other things, much more reliable.

That's the short version... we had a discussion about this a year back. More detailed arguments and headchopping is in there. Not to mention it includes the ever-so-illusive dr00d.

Good Luck with this thread man... I feel you're gonna get rate bombed even though you realize that the subject is taboo.

Yeah, pretty much comes down to threat vs mitigation. Warriors have higher mitigation and hp with the same gear level, there is no denying that. Warriors also have higher long-term single target threat. I say long term because the rage vs mp mechanics mean that a pally can dump all their mp on threat right away and gain an early lead in threat, but it is harder to replenish than rage is. Plus warrior's abilities have higher base threat, meaning when you don't have to worry about either rage or mp a warrior will still be able to put out more single target threat.

That said, pallys also excel at aoe tanking. Get a well geared mage or two, a prot pally, and a healer, and run through any heroic with lightning speed. Same goes with raid trash, everything stays on the tank due to better aoe threat, so you don't have to worry about clothies going down. But what no one really talks about is what you are doing on bosses. The main tank tanks, but what about the offtank that you don't need for that boss? A warrior is stuck throwing on dps gear and spamming devastate. A pally can heal. Which would you rather have, the dps of a prot warrior, or an extra healer that can save the raid.

So, warriors are awesome main tanks. Paladins are great second tanks, going through trash easy and giving another blessing.

And no, i'm not going to get into druids lol

which is a better fruit?.. apple or banana

neither is better, neither is worse. they can both be played well and they can both be played poorly. i think blizzard is going to further define their "specialties" so each tanking class has a solid place, especially in raids.

pallies will continue to be the dominant AOE tank
warriors will continue to be the dominant physical tank
death knights will become the dominant magical tank

i'm not sure how bears will fit in; maybe they will keep up their reputation of filling any roll as necessary. they certainly make very good off-tanks, because as feral spec they can switch between tanking and dps better than any other class.