What is the "best" tank for multiboxing.

[Niley]

Paladin's bring the most syngery to any group - and have the most "oh shit" buttons.

You mean as oppose to dk having(spec dependent) Icebound fortitude, anti magic shield, anti magic zone, instant 30% ghoul heal, lichborne, rune tap, unbreakable armor and more. You can get most of them in one spec too.

[Hachoo]

I'd argue that for a tank + 4 shaman team, DKs bring far more synergy than a paladin - the 13% spell damage bonus is the most synergy you're ever going to get for a group that has 4 offensive casters. For groups without 4 shamans, sure, a paladin probably provides more synergy, but you can't really argue that anything a paladin provides to a group of 4 shamans comes anywhere close to +13% spell damage.

[Lyonheart]

PALY+4 SHAMS=easy ... Paly+one boomkin+3 shams=more dps and still easy ( not as easy as 4 shams though, just better dps ) DK+4 shams= best dps

[X-Ifist]

Thinking of
DK Tank 12%spell dmg
Bomkin druid 5% crit 13% increase spell dmg
Demon lock 10% spell dmg
Elemental shammy 3%crit hit 280 spell dmg 5%haste
Healing priest

can annyone tell if all this will stack?

[Hor]

That's actually similar to the group I'm working on now X. Right now I have a DK and 4 Shamans at 80, but I'm dropping 3 Shamans in favor of a Disc priest, Boomkin, and Mage.

[Smoooth]

Thinking of
DK Tank 12%spell dmg
Bomkin druid 5% crit 13% increase spell dmg
Demon lock 10% spell dmg
Elemental shammy 3%crit hit 280 spell dmg 5%haste
Healing priest

can annyone tell if all this will stack?

No, the DK, druid, and lock debuffs don't stack. You can see which abilities stack here:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=14214.0

[puppychow]

whole lot of factors come into play, including:

3.1 dual spec - DKs can spec between a good tank and good DPS build, and just have to swap weapon runes. Pallies can swap between heal, ret, and tank.
do you want to arena? while 5 boxing arena has proven to be nearly impossible so far, maybe 3.1 will be different. dunno if DKs or pallys would be better.
do you want to raid? ulduar also may be too difficult to multibox, at least for a while

If you just want to clear heroics with minimal wiping and as fast as you can, then DK + 4 ele shamans is best right now and probably will still be in 3.1. For other things, other comps may be better/more fun - for example if you want to rotate raiding on a different character each week, then having 4 shamans sucks (i speak from experience lol).

I've cleared all heroics with pally+mage+3 shamans and about 7/8s of heroics with DK+mage+3 shamans (just havent done hos, AN, and oculus yet) and I can tell you its quite a bit easier/faster with a DK tank than pally tank. I've also MT'd naxx25 as a Prot pally and a unholy DK and its more "easy" as a prot pally esp with the pull threat, plus auras + kings is good for raid. Although its nice on some bosses (Loatheb, Saph) being able to swap to DPS gear and just DPS away as a DK, you are pretty useless as a prot pally on 1-tank fights.

end of the day I switched from a t7.5 prot pally to a new DK, it sucked for the first 3 weeks but now both are nearly equivalent geared and I much, much prefer the DK - don't underestimate the fun of tanking with a giant 2h sword I rarely log in to my poor pally anymore

[Hachoo]

DK + 3 ele shamans + resto shaman still has more synergy than Paladin + 3 ele shamans + resto shaman because you'll still have 3 DPS classes all getting +13% damage.

Aside from that, the argument that "planning for such and such is bad if something ever changes" can be made for pretty much anything in the world, ever. The fact is, for 5 man heroics its quite easy to do all of them with tank + 4 dps (shamans anyway) and always will be, and for raids they're 10 man plus anyway so you won't need to heal with your 4 shamans.

Paladins still make great tanks - I used one for awhile, as did most people that currently roll with a DK tank, but the fact of the matter is we've all determined that a DK is just better (again, specifically for 4 shamans, or in general 4 caster classes). That being said, all of the content is quite easy with either tank - personally I always tell people to pick the one they enjoy playing more. For me thats definitely a DK, especially when I solo box (IMO a paladin is the most boring class to solo box) and since I plan on soloing with my main account some, I wanted a tank that I would enjoy playing without multiboxing.

[algol]

And I'd argue that a TANK + 4 DPS is not a standard team. You're playing in the 5 Shaman team area that was so popular in BC - and got "nerfed" in Wrath, forcing so many players to rebuild their teams.

The game is designed around the "holy trinity" setup: tank + healer + 3 dps. If you stick to this model, you should be more or less safe from future patches / expansions.

Non-multiboxing teams generally lack the coordination to get away with a "decentralized" healer. And you can always convert one of the shamans into resto when and if needed.

As far as the whole "tanking tree" and "PVE tree" and "PVP tree" argument you seem to be making - a few years ago, I might have bought it. Now it just seems a little like you haven't been paying attention to any patches since before BC came out. Druids and Paladins are hybrids so they still have a "tanking tree"...but that's about as far as the concept goes. Warriors and Death Knights can tank to some degree with any tree...

[algol]

Seems to be going that way for a long time now, anyway. Who knows, maybe they'll about-face on it. But I'm thinking not since it actually did improve the tank problem somewhat.

As far as the retnub...yeah, Paladins are a hybrid class, so their talent trees are more discrete. But with some defense gear and a few prot talents mixed in, I bet he could do it. 80% of holding aggro as a pally is remembering to put on your threat buff, after all...he mostly needs the avoidance gear (+ a few talents) to avoid getting horribly splatted faster than the healer can fix it.