FYI I'm defining a tank as a Meat Shield. Those who stand in the front line of combat with a reasonable chance of not getting killed.
I was checking out a post that gave a niche rating for all classes, located here, and it suggested that Druids could potentially be the best.
Certainly Clerics and Barbs can make great tanks, but does anyone have build ideas for a great druid tank build that could justify a top-tier ranking? If they don't deserve it, who does?? I've never played a Druid in Pathfinder but a Goliath Druid or Saurian Shaman come to mind as great possible tanks.
J
Well, druid is versatile, so you can puzzle together a tank role:
You can use a heavy wooden shield from level 1. Even if you downgrade to light shield for casting purposes, that's still a point of AC several frontliners don't have.
Your animal companion adds to the amount of HP and will usually wade into melee anyway. There might be a few domains out there which are better suited for tanking - but only on the long run, I guess.
Obscuring Mist (and its higher-level versions) help to protect your allies, your animal companion and you. I don't see concealment spells in the druid list, but with the fog spells you get around that.
Barkskin comes early and scales quickly.
Becoming big thanks to (later) wildshape helps to threaten more squares. Combine it with Stand Still for devastating effect.
I recently played a Bear Shaman Druid, and once I gained the ability to shapeshift into a Earth Elemental, I was pretty much the most awesome tank ever built. just be sure to take the "Wild" bonus to your armor.
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The core druid is one of, if not the most powerful classes in the game. Yet very few people play them because they are also the most complicated class to play in the game.
I'm currently playing a dwarven druid in Carrion Crown. I stated her as a caster, but took some wild shape feats too, to be versatile. At level 11, she has AC33, CMD33, 105hp, DR10/evil, resist cold 15, acid 15, electric 15, fire 10, and SR16. Fort+13 ref+9 will+16; with +4 to saves vs spells. Also she is a full caster with plenty of buffs to boost those defenses if needed, heal herself, and so on. She can blast enemies with spells, or charge 140ft (ignoring terrain, or just airwalking), pounce (taking 5 attacks), grab with a +30 cmb, and smite evil. Did I mention she's a caster druid, not a melee build. As a melee build she could easily have better numbers than that.
It's an online game and frankly, I probably wouldn't have chosen a druid if it wasn't. Online I can program buffs, toggle them on, and let the computer do all the calculations. Without that, I'd need pages of spreadsheets to play the character. It would just be a nightmare to run.
I ran Bone Keep (the pfs special "challenge" dungeon) for a group with an actual melee druid in it. Everyone else got messed up, most of the party ended up retreating from the final boss. The druid stayed and ripped the boss a new one and was barely scratched, never even cast a healing spell on himself the entire dungeon (though his animal companion did get killed). A well built druid is serious op bull$#@. I think planar wildshape is what pushes the druid over the edge. The celestial template is awfully powerful to give to a player.
The thing is though, druids take a while to get there. Low level druid armor is bad, requiring expensive enchantments or rare materials before they get good ac. Wild shape kicks in at 4th level, but you can't afford wild armor for a long time, forcing you to use barding and be stuck in one form, or go without armor and have a terrible ac. In my experience, it's not until level 8 or so that everything starts clicking into place and they become true beasts.
I've never actually played a Druid, but to my mind it's mostly about summons.
Summons are great because they're offence, defence and battlefield control all in one package (and sometimes buffing and debuffing as well). As far as tanking goes the main thing is that any attack that hits a summon isn't hitting the rest of the party. You can also tailor the summon to suit the enemy by taking summoning something with appropriate Energy Resistance or DR or just HP (My Occultist has been summoning a Lantern Archon for a few levels now because DR:10 is rediculous at that level).
Now the Druid is a 9th level caster (which is always good) with spontaneous summoning, so that aspect is already taken care of. But you also get an Animal Companion, which functions like a permanent summon. Not quite as flexible (can't change to something with Acid Resistance at a moment's notice), but being permanent means you have a body there if you're caught with your pants down.
Finally there's the Druid herself. You can wear armour (even if it's wood/leather/stone/etc) without affecting your casting at all, and you have 2 good saves. That would be good enough (it' certainly good enough for Clerics to he great tanks) but Wild Shape turns YOU into a summon, with all the benefits of that spontaneous DR/Resistances/etc I talked about earlier.
The others have gone into more detail about specifics, but having the ability to put more bodies on the field, and have those bodies specifically immune/resistant to whatever you're fighting is a very powerful way to tank.
While druids can make good tanks, I don’t think they are the best at that. Don’t get me wrong druids have a lot going for them, but a lot of what they do has nothing to do with being a tank. 9th level spell casting is good, but other than a few buffs it does not really help with being a tank. It gives you a lot of options especially when being a tank is not useful.
To me the best pure tank is a paladin. They have the absolute best defenses of the game. Heavy armor gives them a decent base, but that is only the beginning. CHA to save and two strong saves give them the best saves in the game. They eventually gain immunity to disease, fear and charm. Swift action healing keeps them going when anyone else is down for the count. Their offensive abilities are not tied to specific weapons so offer a lot of versatility. A paladin’s smite evil works on any attack they make. So if the monster is fleeing and the paladin cannot reach them, they can pick up a bow and still get the benefit of smite evil. And last but not least a lot of their spells are buffs that boost their ability to act as a tank.
The best tank, IMO, is the tiefling fey foundling oradin.
You use life link to heal your team mates from life oracle, you use paladin levels for lay on hands on yourself (but you're taking the hit point damage for your friend with life link). Fey foundling increase your healing, and Tiefling favored class bonus increases your healing with lay on hands on yourself.
You have good saves, can wear full plate, can heal your friends, and will remain enough of a threat against any evil enemy that they can't ignore you. Stand bravely in front of your party, you can handle anything the enemy throws at you.
Yeah Paladins are definitely the kings of personal tanking.
If you optimize it (let's say 18 CHA, Bracers of the Merciful Knight, Greater Mercy) you're looking at ~308hp from LoH at that level.
If you maximize it (Hospitaler with a Meditation Crystal) it's ~504hp from LoH.
Oh and sorry Claxon I forgot about the Tiefling FCB, that brings it up to ~684hp from LoH.
And that's on top of your actual HP (probably ~80-90hp at this level), phenomenal saves, immunities to some serious conditions and the ability to remove selected other conditions as a swift action.
But even Paladins can fall prey to unlucky dice and death effects. The best way to tank is to avoid the hits entirely, and the best way to avoid hits is to have something else take the hit for you. Animal companions and summons do that very well, and when you know you're going to take a hit anyway being able to turn yourself into an Earth Elemental certainly doesn't hurt.
Personally I think Paladins are the best (as noted above), but I think Druids are no slouches here. They're definitely contenders.
Paladins are probably kings of most forms of tanking that aren't super feat intensive.
Their spell list coupled with class abilities make them 100% the best party protectors.
edit: Actually a well built water/earth kinetic knight probably wins the "tank" war mathematically if you invest in save boosters. dr of an invulnerable rager, heavy armor and shield, constant blur, one handed reach weapon and the ability to size up to huge.
Inherent boosts to dex from elemental overflow (con too but thats probably going into burn)
Besides the summoning it's possible for a tripper to tank against many enemies - not flyers and snakes, but then a druid has fallback tactics against those. Wild shaping into something big is a simple way of getting around the size limit inherent to tripping.
Summoners are pretty good at tanking. More specifically, the eidolon is. And when the eidolon goes down, standard action summons.
I was checking out a post that gave a niche rating for all classes, located here, and it suggested that Druids could potentially be the best.
The first thing to realize is that the list is for 3.5, it has absolutely no bearing on Pathfinder. In 3.5, Wild Shape made the Druid take the str, dex, and con of the target creature, of course it's easy to be super sturdy when you can simply change into something with >20 Con even though you maxed out wisdom during point buy.
Another problem is that such list makes a distinction where there is none, ignoring relations in the process. How well a character survives in melee is not purely dependant on HP, AC, etc., but also on offensive stuff - a character who quickly kills, or incapitates, enemies, takes less damage than a character who doesn't, and thus looking at defensive stats in a vacuum is worthless to determining the survivability in actual play.
The third issue lies with the term tank. "Those who stand in the front line of combat with a reasonable chance of not getting killed." is something that should apply to every melee, which means you aren't really asking about defensive stuff but solely who's the best melee. A party role that you'd call "tank" doesn't exist in Pathfidner/D&D, and never has, because without a reliable way to make enemies attack the tank, being better als self-protection doesn't potect the party. Of course, even in games like WoW, tanking is not solely about defense, as being able to draw and keep aggro is vitally important. The classical D&D term for the respective party role is "meat shield", which describes the intended job fairly well (because unlike a tank which protects itself, a shield protects someone/something else). Of course, how good one is at that job is not purely about defense, because no matter how sturdy a shield is, if it can't protect you, it's not good at being a shield. If enemies can simply charge past you and attack the party's squishies, your defensive stats are worth jack.
Quickly killing enemies is the surest method of making enemies not attack your party members, as doing so not only takes the killed enemy out of the fight, it's also likely to draw the enemies' attention. Is that what you're inquiring about? I kinda doubt it. For the record, Druid is actually rather good at quickly killing enemies, especially during those levels between 6 and ~10 where they have pounce but other martials usually don't have that ability yet.
There is one way to force enemies to attack a frontliner, and that's bottlenecking. Who's good or even "best" at that still depends on the situation or viewepoint, because who's best at securing a 5' corridor is probably not the same as who's bestat securing a 20'+ gap. Druid is exceptionally good at the latter type of bottlenecking, as it brings two bodies on the field, possibly both at larger size.
If you are asking about what the list tries to represent with that tank stat, namely the ability for a character to take a beating, (PF) Druid is indeed exceptionally good at that, or at least later on, because it can turn into a Green Man with Wild Shape imitating Plant Shape III and thus (in addition to DR 15/epic) gain Regeneration only stopped by mythic or deific stuff, meaning that the character can survive pretty much everything as long as the Wild Shape lasts. Of course, 'not dying' is different from 'still standing'.
Overall, as pretty much always the case in Pathfinder, there is no singular best, because that depends on a large number of parameters. If you're fighting enemy spellcasters or archers, the Paladin MrCharisma describes is pretty bad at protecting the party, while a more glass connon-y Wild Shape Druid would shine.