The Spirit Realm

how many druids you you see tanking for there pets? shaman are far better tanks than druids (thanks in part to HoTs)

clerics can solo, i do on mine alot. they have no dots like we do, but with don came a fantastic self buff line, that procs 550 dmg (yeah same as our old panther did) on mobs every tick that they are hitting them...and it crits! also with clerics increadibly fast heals, and bigger HoTs, they get away with unslowed mobs to a point. they also have an advantage of stuns and bigger nukes than us and plate armor. they make good tanks, but arent built for long term solo xp grinding like we are either.

in my opinion shaman are better tanks, we can generate alot of agro to tank for a group, generally try to amass LOTS of hps (for canni usually) and can slow the mob. and we have a faithful companion, ready to chew on mobs butts. there numerous advantage, like the immense avoidance upper lvl shaman gear is given (as a plate about that subject, they have harder time getting avoidance), and im sure druids and clerics have other tricks, but i am a shaman first, i know what we can do...other priests i know for there buffs! !

Love Booboo the bear ... makes DogDog look like an Anguish-geared MT.

my spell list usually look like this:

spiritual serinity
bal of discord, if T.A. resisted after i malos on inc.
malos (our dot's too much resisted witout IMO ).
champion.
yoppas heal.
sislak dot.
DD.
panther.
got right click pant if root/park needed.

rarely do i see a druid soloing with a mob in there face and the little bear chewing...infact never. druids snare/root and stand back to dot/nuke
clerics yeah they can solo tank with a bigger hot (although less efficient than ours)...but they dont get to slow ther mobs. doable, but most clrics dont do this often. at high end plate gear offers few avoidance.
shaman solo tank sice...um as early as they want. at high end chain is loaded with avoidance/shielding/stun resist. we can slow and criple a mob to severly limit its dps, and hot ourself to give us time to dot and debuff/heal/whatever we want to do.

if your talkin in a group, i rarely see druids jump in and lay one dots/nukes oto get agro ...theres no point, they cant hot themselves, and would rather evac
tank dead, mob n camp...cleric jmp in and agro the mob? no, 9/10 times they dont have much in there spell line up to Generate agro...maybe a nuke, but that wont cut it. they could spam some heals...but that leaves them lom to heal themselves when/if they do get agro. clerics DA/run, DA/camp, ...the live and rez everyone back and save long tedious CR's
Tank dead, maybe a dps or 2, 2 mobs in camp...shaman slows each mob, Vp's one off, dots/cripples the other and make sure it only hit him (not hard since alot of shaman have dots/nukes/slow type high agro spells memed anyways), drop a HoT on yourself (i bet the cleric ran into the rooted mob and died, or is half way to the zone out).

these arent what you can call off the wall secnerios...its every day playing. on paper maybe clerics make "better" tanks cause there"plate", but they lack our avoidance AND it more important that they live than if they tank a mob.

Malos on every mob IMO. Every. Single. Mob.
Malos makes everyone better all the time for everyone. Everything lands more reliably on mobs after Malos (except disease). That includes procs from weapons as well.
It's one of the spells I never unmem, like my heal, Hot and Canni.

as for the better tank..... Clerics have higher AC's of plate, but that neglects everything else. Shaman choices for Augs is almost universally aimed towards HP augs, clerics and druids towards Mana. Shaman tend to have more HP.
Now while clerics have more AC that doesn't mean all that much in the grand scheme of things, becuase clerics and shaman have the same AC cap and returns over the cap, so that difference in numbers displayed is a lot less in actual play.
In addition, shaman AA choices tend to be significantly more aggressivly based, prioritising the mitigation and avoidance AA's much earlier in the AA choices. That makes a massive difference to your tanking ability.

Now figure in spells. Slow is still a powerful spell, and omens cripple makes a noticable difference to mob hits. With DoT's and Panther and a decent pet, our kill speed on an individual mob way way outstrips clerics. Tanking for shorter time = less mana for healing = more things we can do.

One final thing about who tanks better, one thing that it's easy to overlook, but it is a critical thing. Mindset (or attitude). Don't underestimate this factor.

I'm ready to tank the mob, I assume that I will have to tank mobs. I am mentally prepared for it, and I have plans already worked out for when it happens. I have chosen my gear (HP/AC > Mana )and augments (HP, never mana ), and my buffs in the certain knowledge that I will be tanking the mob.
The cleric (poor dear), is going to run around like a chicken trying to cast his DA/DB screaming 'get the mob off me'. I'm standing there, toe to toe against the mob, with my tools ready to deal with it for the whole group. VP, Slow, Root, Cripple, pet(s). I make do with what I have.

I'm confident that 'real world' tankign in EQ I outstrip a cleric vastly. I don't bother with any comparision to a druid, druids do not tank in any meaningful sense of the word.