That was a lot of info…… I believe that all Tanks other then Bears…..lol….. Have it hard and DK have the worst. Look…. I have a level 80 warrior that was prot…. I even off tanked kara back in the day……. Pallys and Warriors have some help with badges. They can get some very nice gear with both block rating, and block Value plus extra stam, Strength, and Armor from their Shields…….. OOOOMG DK can’t use a shield….. That stinks….. As a DK I need both Dodge and Parry….. However I see a lot of stuff with Block Rating or Block value…. You as a bear don’t need to think of that and with a Pally the trinket that dropped in H-TOC last night would have been great for your pally Tank. ….. Lotsssss of Block….. Yaaaaa for the warrior & Pally…… that stinks for the DK…… They have tanking gear for a Warrior that includes Strength, Def., Block rating, block value, stam, and armor. And for pallys more Int, some spell power and MP5 plus all the other stuff that a warrior has too. This is not including all the extra stuff that you can get as well as add to a shield. I know what you’re going to say…. as a DK I can dual wield……. Allllll-righty then….. Not if I would like to stay alive…… A DW DK can cause a boss to attack him 50% faster when he miss, dodge or even parry him…. and remember that the off- hand of a DK evening in frost spec can still miss 50% of the time…. that’s lots of stress for the healer and group…. Sorry for the rant…..I just felt the need to defend my DK brothers out there in the Big Bear Blog world and show them some SD Love….lol… thank you for the time bear …. ;)

i wasn’t talking about nerfs, but about the pain in gearing for heroics, that is gearing for the def cap.

i’m expressing sympathy with that awkward time when you have to either shell out a fortune on crafted gear, or do a lot of long chains and pre-heroic instances in order to get the gear you need to tank heroics, while dps and healers can just waltz in without nearly as much worry. i did this with my warrior when he was my only above-50 toon, having hit 70 the day before the xpac hit. i’m sure any prot paladin (particularly when that is the main you are finishing leveling and not so totally awash in cash from higher toons that you can just buy or craft anything you need) goes through the same experience of gathering enough gear in order to play the game you want to play.

as to the warrior/notwarrior tanking debates on the forums, i could care a flying fish. i don’t raid and don’t have to deal with the possibly real possibly imagined “they benched me for the flavor of the month tank!” drama. i can care less about which tank is preforming better in raids at any given time, and i don’t have any ill will to anyone who might be at the bottom. would i like more AoE threat? yes. at very least, thunderclap should be a 2x crit instead of a 1.5, and i’d love to see a shorter cooldown for shockwave (a glyph to take off 4 seconds and remove the stun? yes please!). would i like to do a little more damage? yes. i’m jealous of the fact that every other tank at my gear level does probably 50% more damage, but that barely matters, just it’d be nice, is all. do i begrudge any other tanks their toys and strengths? no. well… i wish non-tank DK would stop deathgripping stuff, but that isn’t the point.

i hope the Righteous Fury nerf isn’t too bad and you still have the threat you need to get things done, that a 30 second cooldown on your stun is sufficient for your stunning needs, and I hope the Touched by the Light change doesn’t hurt your threat much (that said, i’ll agree that it was a needed pvp balance change. prot healers could throw significantly bigger heals than holy in full pvp healing gear and there should be some sort of tradeoff besides casting speed in order to gain the offensive and defensive utility of deep prot as a healer).

quoting from wowwiki:
As of 2.4, Righteous Defense can also be cast on an enemy mob, much like the Warrior’s Taunt ability. Its behavior when used in this way seems to be much like its behavior if cast on a party member. If the enemy that is taunted is attacking another player, 2 more enemies that may be attacking that player will also be taunted.

The current tooltip on the spell doesn’t tell you this, which makes it a bit confusing. But it does work: mob runs of with his friends to naughty mage, I tab-target mob, hit righteous defense and mob plus friends suddenly have a healthy urge to beat the bejesus out of me instead of the naughty mage. Very nifty ability; combined with consecration I even have fun in the nightmare called “tanking a vanilla instance with a pug”.

Exactly !
<3 to all those LF DPS (min. 2400 DPS) in the Tradechannel.
… getting a bit OT.

Great post by the way.