Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Dzian]

I’m not sure I am seeing the level of homogenization you are describing. Yes tank defense is very homogenized now for basically the reason I described, all tanks have to be able to tank with the same effectiveness. There are basically two types of tanking: mitigation and avoidance and everyone should be well aware you can’t balance the two...so every tank in this game is a mitigation tank with the same tools. But offensively the four tanks are very different in mechanics.

This isn't necessarily the case you can have tanks with different levels of effectiveness without any real issue at all if the content isn't biased.

a poster said earlier for example that PLD was a very effective physical damage tank but a not very effective magical tank. then you hard DRK that was a very effective magic tank but not very effective physical tank. and warrior as a kinf of middle of the road.
having jobs with different strengths and weaknesses and varying levels of effectiveness is a good thing.

The problem tanks faced with this however was that the devs went and made entire raid teirs magic damage heavy and thus paladin was undesirable because it was totally unaffective at magic damage...

if the damage in alexander was better balanced between magic and physical then the varying levels of effectiveness between tanks would not have been an issue because while paladins may have taken a beating from magic attacks they would have shrugged off the physical and thus balanced themselves out..