Also a good point.

A lot of ppl don't have the proper respect for the leadership aspect of being a tank. A good tank is also a good leader who has a good understanding of the game and of specific dungeons. Whether its right or wrong, being the one who is first to rush into battle sets the pace for the rest of the group.

@Dril:
Agreed. It's bad enough that I have to put up with mid-level ret paladins or arms/fury warriors trying to tank without shields while I'm leveling my dps and healer alts. I don't want that mentality spreading in to my high level dungeons too.

Hear hear

as much as you make excellent points, they did make a point that the non-tanks can only do as much as a non-heroic dungeon. and will only last for 5 lvls really. after that, its all heroics and raids

When Wrath was coming out, the blues said that any class capable of tanking would be able to tank a normal dungeon in their dps spec. So that's what I did. I tanked every single dungeon as a retribution paladin. RF, sword&board plus some defense gear and get to work. Only one person (1) complained, a mage that dropped group in Nexus after throwing a hissy fit. We finished the rest of the instance with four people without wiping.

Tanking is not rocket surgery.

Sadly, I think you are a little misinformed. Back in TBC, I healed every regular 5 man while leveling with a balance spec. Now, with the way we overgear content, my paladin throws on his tanking gear, except for a big 2 hander, and tanks in his ret spec. I’m still rocking 40K+ hp and there are no problems even in a heroic because I’m at the 535 mark for crit immunity.

There was a time, believe it or not, when instances were harder and people didn’t require tanks to sport some ungodly amount of HP just to tank an easy 5 man like HUK is today.

I will agree there is an opportunity for bad players to exploit the system, but the DPS who require a healer in ICC hear, and healer who expects his 5 man tank to have 50+k hp, or a tank who’s as a-hole because his DPS “only” does about 2k is the problem, not players who can actually perform their jobs in unique specs, and working within the parameters of a regular 5 man instance should include such liberty, after all dual specs didn’t hit until 3.1 if I remember correctly.

5 levels that require much more exp and thus take much longer than any 5 levels between 70 and 80. If you're the type that uses the dungeon finder while leveling, like me, then you'll be using it plenty before hitting 85.

On top of this, I currently have 5 80s, and may have a 6th 80 before Cataclysm's release, and I plan to level them all to 85. That'll be a lot of dungeon running.

Plus I'm sure there will be DPSers that try to tank heroics anyway, if tanking the normals does prove to be viable for them.

This is exactly what I saw and why I don't like it. DPS classes shouldn't be able to tank any instance, neither hybrids unless properly specced. This takes the job from the tank, and makes instances a potential chaos. We'll see dps classes, specially the high damage ones who can't/don't know how/won't control their aggro, going all out because they know that they won't die.

Maybe the vengeance style tanking and the more CC oriented instances won't allow this kind of behaviour. But I'm sure there's going to be the hunter (or any dps class) that thinks he can tank the whole instance.

Just as a reminder to everyone crying about this and saying "I'm gonna level to 85 in the DF from the start" you won't be able to actually queue for a 80-85 dungeon in Cata until you've found the instance in the world from what I saw last.

This may have changed since it was posted on the Cata forums, but that was their last statement on it.

I'm also sick of the trend this expansion started, in that DPS don't have to watch their threat at all.
In BC, if you pulled aggro off the tank, you were going to die VERY quickly, even if you were a plate class.
In this expansion, even my boomkin can pull two or three mobs off the tank and survive pretty easily.
It just encourages laziness, especially since we don't have any CC and we're relegated to 'durr hurr gather and AoE'

Oh sweet jesus, no.

No no no no no. I'm a healer, and I BEG you not to put me through this.

@Rhabella: It's all well and good that it's "only" for levelling, but after that what if people continue with the mindset that "mai class can tank normals, i r can tank everyting else! inv to pug raid pl0x!"? Sure, if they read stuff on the internet they'll find out that they shouldn't be tanking, but I'd rather not take the chance that someone is a clueless imbecile but they're allowed to do stuff anyway because "my friend is RL." Imo they should get it into their heads from day one that tanking is for tanks, healing is for healers, and dpsing/CCing is for everyone else.

I can't help but think that there really is no direction in this expansion as well. I love it already, but there's things that just, to me at least, seem not to work:

1) There were talks about CCing being required and healing being more mana-intensive and tactical, yet people who have never tanked before are saying what should be CCed and pulling according to it, whilst having a healer make up for their spec deficiency despite already more mana issues. Eh?

2) Linking on from healing, apparently we have the option to deeps as well now. Hang on, I thought we would have to plan our heals carefully so we don't run out of mana, and now we're expected to waste some of it doing crap damage anyway? Something doesn't fit.

Right. Went massively off-topic but hey. I like what I wrote :P

At drill, spec really doesn't matter in early dungeons, also i doubt many people will research to start tanking rfc or wc, most people learn how to play by doing.

It will be a LOT faster to get a tank and healer (and thus a group) if dps with tanking capabilities joint hew queue, it won't be an optimal set up, but it wll be doable, even if you get the noob first time tank it will be faster to teach him tanking 101 than kicking him and looking for a replacement and that will also have the added benefit of adding one more capable tank to the player base.

@Dril: I too like to wait 30 minutes or more while on my dps alts trying to do a lower level dungeon while leveling up.