Low level tanks (pre-tank stance) have a very hard time holding threat after the nerf

[Rongway]

edit incoming

Oversimplification

This is a gross oversimplification. Let's take a full set of Lv30 PLD gear.

Pre-patch, the STR set would have been 36 AP and the VIT set would have been 26 AP.
Post-patch, STR set is 27.45 AP and VIT set is 27.45 AP.

Here's the thing. The STR gear isn't a tank gear set, despite what popular opinion may have been, and it's not SE's responsibility to support or even consider it.
For any tank who was wearing actual tank gear, this is a buff.


But the worst part of your argument is that "low level tanks have all just lost a significant chunk of their damage output". Low level tanks were probably not running around in level-appropriate gear, let alone level-appropriate STR gear, and any PLD who was running around in STR gear, without Shield Oath, was pissing off healers because he was too much work to heal. Besides the obvious part where this is just asking for a bad time, it was causing the healers to generate more hate because the PLD in question couldn't be bothered to gear properly.


Tanks who were actually wearing tank gear got a buff, and anyone who's still having problems with hate generation are

• undergeared, requiring healers to heal more
• not mitigating enough damage, requiring healers to heal more

There is also the possibility of

• the DDs don't know what they're doing, and distributing their damage output inappropriately
• the healer doesn't know what he's doing, and healing far too liberally

though neither of these is a problem with tank hate generation; they are strictly skill-based problems that you'll run into regardless of how godly one might think he is with a shield/axe/BFS; and neither is as likely as the scenarios in the first bullet list, especially with the rate at which people rush through the lower level content these days, neglecting to take the time to keep their gear current.