My question to Ghostcrawler...

(That I can't post because I don't have access to the beta forums...)

How do you expect to see more Paladins main tank when Warriors have both held the tanking standard for so long and still have the superior tanking tools?

And I mean *main* tank, as in being the primary tank in an situation with several tanks. I am not talking about heroics or trivial content that everyone overgears and can even be tanked by a Moonkin. I am talking about progression, hardcore, serious mode content. Please explain to me why you would not still exclusively seek a Warrior for that.

The essence of a tank is mitigation. Any class can generate threat, the developers have made that comment themselves. And right now, we are the overall weak link in mitigation. Warriors don't only have "slightly" more avoidance, "slightly" more health, "slightly" more damage reduction or a "slightly" better shield wall. They have "slightly" more of ALL of the above, and it ADDS UP.

And it's not just a problem against casters, which I've learned to accept as the Paladin's weakness (and by the way the minute cooldown interrupt, or 30 seconds for the waste of 3 talent points, seems pretty lackluster). Warriors offer superior mitigation against melee, which would seem like a strong side for us, too.

Sure, we still have the upper hand at AE threat, but from the way things are looking, AE tanking will not be demanding enough in WotLK to warrant best-in-role tank. At least not in the content we've seen so far, which also happens to be the stepping stone to any later content.

We got great a lot of nice changes in Wrath and I am very excited for them. Warriors got a lot of great changes too and I am happy for them as well. However, in the end they are still "slightly" better in EVERY aspect that matters, and that is bound to keep doors closed for Paladins.

A few of us, me included, will still find a way to main tank. However, if you want to see MORE Paladin main tanks, without it being "special enough to put on YouTube," then you either have to give us a niche or equally good tanking tools. As it stands right now, we have neither.

I like this post.

No mindless QQ's, yet addresses legitimate concerns.

I wholly recommend this being posted.

I think it's obvious that if Warriors are superior on mitigation and threat that they'll be the ones tapped to MT most often. So obvious in fact that it's not really useful feedback. What is useful is data and analysis that establishes that there is such a gap and which tries to to quantify its size.
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...but without numbers, there's nothing to stop you from being dismissed as simply another overreacting hyperconcerned Tankadin. Blizzard can certainly see that Shield Wall is slightly better than DP for example, but it's easy to construct an argument that AD balances this out. The same thing applies at a rhetorical level to avoidance issue for example, one could argue the Paladins have lower avoidance but more block stats and so it balances out. You need data to cut through the counter that you're just worrying over something that's working fine in practice.
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Posted on my warrior:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10043171986&postId=100422793277&sid=2000#0
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Tankadin since before it was a good idea

I'd fully agree with the OPs post except i would leave out the part about shieldwall.

I'm fairly confident they'll dismiss this by going "Your Divine Protection is 10% less damage reduction, but this is well compensated by Ardent Defender once you get at 35% HP. At this point your shieldwall becomes stronger than the warriors".
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