Bear Tanks

[pinotnoir]

I have a feral druid that I used to tank all the way up to BT with. I stopped raiding because I didnt have the time anymore. My original plan was to use my druid tank, 3 shaman, and one mage for heroics. It works but not well. You will be limited on encounters with that group. I also have a pally tank but his gear is not anywhere near the druids. He takes a beating but I find it much easier to multibox with him. The druid tank needs to be near perfect. You have to make sure all your macros are setup to work with the tank skills. I had a mangle/maul macro for my dps spam button.

I dont know how the expansion will work. Right now 5 shaman can blow through stuff my druid couldnt do. There are heroics I just cant do because of the bs like heroic mana tombs. You get stunned on your tank and your group dies. Stuff like that really kills tank dps healer groups. My advice to you would be make a pally. Druids are great tanks I love my druid. However, pallys utility is way better than a druid. You can go powerlevel any new character once you have a 70 prot pally. A druid cant single pull SM and grind xp super fast. A druid cant pull all the npc on BT and kill them all.

The stuff you can do with a pally is much better than a druid tank. And remember you can still tank with a pally without consecration. Its not like you will be shooting the other mobs when you are using a pally tank. With a druid you may end up shooting a mob the druid is tab targeting to build aggro so they dont run after the alts. The pally has salvation for the alts. Their range pull puts nice threat on off targets if there was a reason you couldnt use consecrate. Consecrate can be applied with cc if your smart. I really like how I can sheep a mob and pull with the pally. The range pull bypasses the sheep so I can consecrate the adds I want. I wish swipe did that. There was a blue post saying swipe would ignore cc targets but that didnt work at all. If they fix that a druid tank would be much better but I still prefer a pally.

[Los]

Hope you all realise that druids are not the only type of tank getting a bit of changes, pallys are changing in LK just as hard/fast (new agro abilities, scaling with AP as 2 examples). Also it has been stated in numerous blue posts that all 3(well dk as well so 4) tanking specs/classes will get about the same type of viability. In the end in LK it will be what works best for you.

Check out http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/index.php for some information and remember its still all beta and even in the first few patches things will be ironed out by blizz and are opted for changes.

[oxxo]

Why is everyone saying WotLK bears will be better??

As of now bears are bottom tier tanks by far. I do believe that they will be buffed but all that has happened so far in WotLK beta is:
Paladins have gotten nothing but tanking buffs. The only problem is mana which *should* be fixed.

Bears have gotten 6% SotF and 4hit swipe. They have lost all their armor (due to gear), no block or parry still, and have lost alot of crit/agility due to the agility nerf (which affects them more than other tanks). New talents are also extremely lackluster (in general and for tanking).

But like I said I think they will be fixed since druids haven't gotten their "review" yet.