Post by Toontang
You are going to get a lot of opinions on tanking classes. Blizzard tries very hard to make them all equal but they all have strength and weaknesses. I'm not even going to touch base on any of that here because it just starts more flame more debate.
It's just pointless because everyone is right for different reasons and they all have passion behind why they argue the points they make, because, they are all right.
I will only tell you that all tanking classes are good at tanking and they all have weaknesses. Some today are OP, and in BC others were OP. The point i am making here is what is a good tank today may be a crap tank in a patch or an expansions. - but not really, again blizzard tries to make them all comparable but sometimes fails and opinion change from patch to patch.
In BC my main raiding toon was a shadow priest, we did crap dps but were a required raid utility for mana regeneration back then. I liked the Utility role, in WotLK, in fact before WotLK came out they gave us an updated talent tree. We were the same as we would be when WotlK dropped with the expecton of 10 talent points for 80. I went from near bottom of the dps to THE top of the DPS in our 25 man because of one patch. Shadow Priest were walking around with huge grins.
I have 7 80s, I love them all I have 3 tanks - every class has its benefit and weakness. From a tanking perspective there is not an instance or a raid that i do not think, "i wish was tanking on my ____ " then the next thing you know i'm thinking, "glad i'm on my ____"
I will recommend you roll a Druid, my Druid is Resto (main spec) but has a tank set. So i'm NOT recommending the druid because it is the best tank - but she can damn sure tank. I recommending the Druid because of what you can do with it:
- Caster DPS (Boomkin)
- Melee DPS (Cat)
- Tank (Bear)
- Healer (Tree)
You will get so much fun out of a druid and they do all roles very well and bring buffs to the raid, some specs more than others.
It is funny that you say you do not want to roll a pally, that is the only tank class i do not play. I love Paladins, I want one or two in my raids, but I have also come to hate them because pre WoTLK it was the most popular class, and guess what, even with all those DKs, Paladins are still the by far the most common class in WOW - assuming our loved armory data mining sites are correct.
Whatever you chose to do, good luck!
Hope this helps