Oh I definitely agree with ZDamned about the ilevel requirements. The issue is more that, at least in my mind, if a TANK is barely at the ilevel requirement for a super hard raid encounter, then surely they should be concerned about minmaxing to optimise their survivability above all else. If a tank can waltz into an encounter wearing strength accessories, spend half the time tanking it in Sword Oath/Deliverance, and have no more difficulty than when geared out to the hilt then something is weird about balance.

It just feels like the incentive in 3.0 raids is much more highly swung in favor of squeezing out every last teeny tiny bit of DPS from healers and tanks, rather than having healers and tanks prioritise being able to actually stay alive and have no real test on that front. I may be wrong but i certainly don't recall MTs on T13 initial clears wearing full slaying sets and spending half the time tanking Bahamut in sword oath (not that I was part of the first clears of course!)

I think the issue is mostly due to the fact that A1S and A3S have much more -hard- enrages than just harsh dps checks. It's literally X DPS in this timescale or you wipe, whereas earlier content tended to be more about low dps meaning the next cycle of mechanics might be harder to deal with, so you'd get overwhelmed but the leeway was just about there.