A tank's lament

[RyuujinZERO]

So, I'm a huge fan of tanking. It's my preferred role in most MMOs, and I'm especially fond of the "life steal/punishment" variant of tanking that rewards aggression and overwhelming odds in order to claw back additional health and/or class resources.

But every guide for tanking or forum discussion or even mentor advice in the Novice Network sounds like a DPS guide, in which the "tank" is just a DPS with better armour who has designated aggro and leans on their healer to keep them up. Where staying in tank stance for anything more than the opening pull is frowned upon, burning those precious tanking resources on mitigation instead of damage dealing (Outside of tank busters) is a sin before the twelve and insult to your healer. Furthermore this doesn't seem to be an isolated opinion but the "minimum standard" expected by PUGs in higher end content like extremes.

How much of a difference does this "Dedicated main-tank DPS" really make to total group DPS in 8-man, non-progression content? Does it really matter that much outside of bleeding edge progression, where a few percent might make or break a run?

I ask because I've been tanking on and off since ARR launch, yet the same cycle repeats. I reach a level of confidence where I try get in on current tier of relevant raid content (Not savage! - Just extreme)... and promptly get kicked out and insulted for not DPSing enough as main tank (Prompting me to lose all confidence in tanking ability and go play something else for several more months); and to be clear this is "not enough", not "not at all".

I lament, because it's a weirdest situation, I hear DPS complaining all the time about the bad queue times, yet tanks who want to tank are actively driven away.