#0 - Oct. 20, 2010, 9:37 p.m.
Druid
Blood DK
Paladin
Warrior
In terms of the first raid tier of cataclysm, it seems like there is a similar paradigm in place:
Druid/DK
Empty Space
Paladin
Warrior
In most metrics, this is already true, damage taken, EH, and cooldowns. (Again, toolbox discussion can go elsewhere as it has been stated it is NOT part of tank balance, so please leave that out)
Druids have the highest health, DR and solid cooldowns on short timers.
DKs have solid health, DR, arguably the best cooldown set and tons of self healing with mastery.
Paladins have the capability to be block capped in tier 1 smoothing out damage intake, solid cooldowns.
Warriors cannot be block capped, are missing an equivalent DR cooldown other tanks have, and generally have the spikiest damage intake due to the nature of the critical block mastery.
In terms of Progression Raid Tanking I see no reason to bring a warrior as a main tank. I see PLENTY of reasons to bring them as an offtank on something that doesn't hit as hard.
The question is, with safeguard and vigilance being a unique buff, are warriors being DESIGNED specifically to be THE offtank? This seems to be a situation where "Hey, I bring a really cool buff, you are going to need me, not because you want to, but because of my buff." Isn't this what you were trying to get away from? Then you make vigilance unique and throw in no minimum distance safeguard and bam, warriors are THE offtank.
What about the warriors that would actually ENJOY being the main tank? I haven't enjoyed it for the entire expansion, because we have NEVER been the best or even an equal choice for main tank on any difficult boss in wrath. I would REALLY like it if there were situations where warriors could main tank again, and I wonder if its ever going to happen again.
Disclaimer: This is not qq about warriors not being the best tank anymore, please take that "rebuttal" elsewhere. This is also not about ego, this is about flexibility in raid comp, I wouldn't mind giving my druid main tank a break occasionally without hearing healers groan about having to heal a warrior. It really would be nice NOT to be the brunt of all tank jokes because of the design decisions being made...