Opinion: Druid vs Paladin ... so far

Now that I've gotten to tank some Northrend dungeons on my druid, I thought it'd be a good time to do a quick Druid vs Palain comparison of my experiences so far.

Clearly both classes are fully capable of tanking any content in the game.  They each have their strength and weaknesses, but Blizzard has done a good job of balancing the various tanking classes.  One could argue about slight imbalances here or there, or how a certain class is better for hardmodes than another class.  But for 99% or raiders out there, any class can tank any encounter.

That said there's no doubt that there are differences between the tanking classes.  People can talk all they want about how homogonized the game is and how the tanks are soon going to be the exactly the same with different attack animations, but the truth is that they all feel quite different when you're playing them, at least that's my experience so far playing a druid vs a paladin.

So here's my comparison, keeping in mind this is only in reference to 5 mans.  I'll do a raiding comparison after I hit 80.

AOE THREAT
A paladin's staple AOE move is consecration.  It has an eight second duration and an eight second cooldown.  It's fantastic to standing still and burning things down.  But it gives the paladin terrible mobility.  Druids on the other hand have swipe, which has no cooldown and since 3.2? has the same range as concecrate.  In order to keep threat, druids have to spam it, but they're able to move around while doing so.  In 5 mans, it's nice to be able to move from pack to pack without keeping on eye on your consecration cooldown.  Obviously, paladins will have Hammer of the Righteous, which is great for tagging three mobs, and the new Seal of Command which cleaves mobs left and right.  But they require more targetting and precision than swipe.  On my druid I can just run in circles spamming swipe without targetting anything and no that I'm going to have aggro on everything.  Both classes have great AOE threat, the main difference is that as a paladin you have to think a couple seconds ahead and plan accordingly.  On a druid some foresight helps, but if things start going to hell you can just run around swiping everything and you'll be ok.

SINGLE TARGET THREAT
This is more of a factor for raids and since I'm still only level 73 on my druid I can't talk to that point.  I've been able to keep single target threat without a problem so far :)

MOBILITY
Paladins don't have very good mobility but they make up for it by having two ranged taunts, Avenger's Shield, and to a lesser extent Exorcism.  Druid have decent mobility with charge, but only one ranged taunt and Faerie Fire in their toolbox.  This makes the two classes have very different playstyles.  When I'm tanking stuff on my paladin, I usually make the mobs come to me.  On my druid I'm fine with a caster hanging out 15 yards away for a little while while I'm tanking another pack because I know I can charge in to interrupt his cast anytime I want.

UTILITY
Each class has good group buffs.  Paladin blessings/auras can't really be topped by anything, but Mark of the Wild is a solid all around buff.  Paladins shine in their ability to cleanse while tanking.  It really comes in handy in five mans when you can rarely depend on pugs to get rid of debuffs on people.  Druids can't dispel anything without shifting out of bear form, which makes it tough to do while in combat.  But between pulls or during phase changes on boss fights, they're able to really shine.  On the last boss in UK for example, I've been able to battle rez people, innervate the healer, and tranquility to top off the entire group.

RESOURCE
Mana vs Rage.  Before WotLK introduced mana regen from BoSanc and Divine Plea, mana sucked for prot paladins.  But now I'm farily certain I prefer mana over rage.  It's nice to start off fights with a full resource bar and you shouldn't ever go oom except if you completely outgear content and are only pulling one pack at a time.  Rage is nice because if you're constantly pulling you shouldn't ever need to take a break but on boss fights it can often be a limiting factor for your threat during the first few seconds. As I'm getting more used to using rage it's definitely growing on me but it can be frustrating how fast you can go from 100 to 0.  At the end of the day, they both serve their purpose.  Warriors probably have more to complain about but that's not within the scope this blog.

CONCLUSION
From a 5 man perspective both classes make fantastic tanks.  I'm loving my druid right now and prefer him to my paladin, but a lot of that is because he's new and because Blizzard has won be over with the new LFG tool.  I will say that I can't wait to be able to race change to a troll though!