Originally Posted by
Lyth
Most people don't actually know what they want. Some of us do, however.
There's a false dichotomy between "tanking" and "doing damage". The problem with tanking (and healing) is that it's fairly easy for an isolated community of players to think that you're good, simply because you can shepherd them through some levelling dungeons or some experts. When said tank suddenly realises that they actually fall short of raiding expectations, these same players blame the dps mindset. "Surely, if tanks did not do any damage, everyone would recognise our greatness!" And thus the neverending but completely fictitious battle between "real tanking" and "dps tanking" arose. I've seen about six years of this rubbish done to death by now, and am not particularly interested in the rehashed debate.
I also know that, after seeing the debacle over tank accessories last expansion, sometimes it's just not worth it to fight against emergent gameplay. If tanks found a workaround to your cleverly laid plans, perhaps said plans were not so clever in the first place. Maybe just go along with it and see what happens, even if it doesn't go by your "how to create an MMO" instruction booklet? Yes, tanks can do damage too. It's not in the official MMO rulebook, but you have my permission.
I don't mind tank damage factoring in less in the grand spectrum of things if good positional play and mitigation becomes vital to clearing content. But I don't want to cede tank damage without seeing a commitment to this, first. That's kind of the point here - all of these things are important. Let's make tanking feel relevant again.