Tanks that think they are DPS, just stop...

[Temjiu]

to a certain degree I agree with the OP. As a tank, our first and foremost job is to hold threat. secondary job is to beef ourselves up to be able to take more damage. third job is any party support we may/may not have. LAST in 4th is additional damage. It's last, not first. If you can't hold threat, you have no job griping or stacking damage bonuses.

HOWEVER...Threat as a mechanic is still dependent on DPS (regardless of our threat multiplier). So to a certain point, DPS can help us. After that variable threshold is met, It's non-essential, and IMO prohibitive UNLESS all the other priorities are already maxed or met with stats and rotations. So while I don't see added damage as an issue with tanks, It's silly to try and use it as an excuse to stack damage stats or lose threat because you want to pump out more damage.

And no...they didn't give us DPS skills to communicate that we needed to DPS more in a tank role...the sheer fact that we have skills that specifically have threat multipliers built into them should show this. you have skills to tank with, and you have skills to solo with (the only exception being that of an off-tank role, when DPS skills are simply logical to use). That being said, there have been plenty of roulette runs and Primal battles where after a few rotations of my threat skills, I switch over to my DPS skills and have no issues holding threat. But then again, I'm one of those tanks that tends to stick in tank stance for most of my fights...Cause I spend 80% of my time in roulettes where most DPS don't even realize they have threat reduction skills.

overgearing a dungeon or raid that you have on farm is a different issue, but it's also a different environment. I think this is where most people picked up the bad habits we see today. a year of overgearing farm content leads one to be a bit lazy when it comes to fulfilling your job role in times where it matters.

EDIT: Upon personal reflection, I think that in a general sense, one of the reasons many tanks like to discuss and tweak damage numbers is that compared to threat production, and having X effective health, there isn't much to tweak on your character. Damage is a variable that is interesting and consistently (infinitely) tweakable and will always have benefits no matter how much you have. Threat simply isn't interesting outside of having "enough". same with health. to summarize, it's simply gives us something to work towards. Still not an excuse to argue a need for "more" DPS from a design perspective, and not an excuse to be a bad tank. But I don't see why a tank shouldn't be able to improve their numbers in a dynamic fashion just because we have the job of pissing the boss off the most.