My voyage to 60 and lessons learned

[nodoze]

To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit torn about that. I'm not a big fan of my warlock - primarily because I cannot count the amount of wipes I've had due to the imp fireballing some random target. On the other hand, he does provide some much needed utility in the ability to summon, soulstone, stamina buff and thorns buff.

Overall I think I might replace him with a mage if I had had a druid as tank. Downside being that with druid/paladin you won't have any stamina buffs. From a stat-perspective, I think he earns his place, but I could go either way since I just find him and his imp annoying to manage.

Can you just have the imp give the stam and "thorns" buff and otherwise fade?

I am considering having at least 1 Warlock on my group for utility and especially for summoning at cap. I suspect I will be regularly be leaving my other 4 grinding team for raiding and/or grouping with guild mates & this will likely only be exacerbated once the battlegrounds are released.

I don't think fiery shield stacks with thorns(?) and warriors are much better tanks than druids.

Only thing I'd change about your comp if I were to make a trinity comp for PvE is swapping the priest for a paladin.

I love Druids (& Paladins) but my thoughts were/are similar to yours. If you were to drop the Warlock for a 3rd Mage (thus losing redundant thorns) and were committed to standard crawling of regular size pulls then I can see Druid being possibly slightly better for grinding regular packs but with less "oh-shit" options. Similarly I think Paladin Tank has some pros with some better salability due to block and better AoE Threat on unlimited numbers of mobs (with better "oh-shit" options than druid) but a Warrior Tank (with a Paladin Healer) likely gives the best overall scale-ability for the largest pulls.

That being said I hope to have all 3 Tanks at cap and do some personal contrast/compare in Classic... I think Paladin Tank gives the best balance allowing good enough scale-ability with lots of utility and likely will be my normal route. I may end up with Paladin Tank & Paladin Healer just for easy mode for my regular grinding (with the Paladin Healer giving Greater Blessing of Salvation (GBoSalvation) to Mages & the Tank Paladin spamming a GBoKings "shouts" on the Mages if threat is ever an issue).