Here's a thought: would it necessarily be a bad thing for tanks to focus on getting gear that isn't necessarily "more tanky"?

One of the problems identified in WotLK was that while gear progression made tanks tankier, DPS got more powerful, leading to ludicrous disparities in DPS between tanks and DPS, and at times threat problems.

Blizzard has decided to address this through the Vengeance mechanism. This feels rather kludgy to me though. I honestly didn't mind having to balance defense rating, and don't think it's a bad way to go. What if, instead of readjusting stats so that the avoidance cap isn't achievable, Blizzard instead kept sufficient amounts of these stats available on pieces of gear to make the cap achievable, but then allow a certain amount of leeway for pieces that are more threat-oriented? In this way, tank DPS progression could occur more naturally than with Vengeance. This would also make gearing much more puzzle-piece-oriented instead of so obviously MORE = BETTER, which I think would be more interesting. Tanks would also still have enchantments and gem slots to customize for more survivability, i.e. stam (or how about an armor gem, Blizz?).

The issue in raid design then wouldn't be having to worry about compensating for tanks getting more avoid-y; instead, the focus could purely be on a combination of the logistical nature of the battle combined with a hit point total consistent with the sort of DPS you'd expect from folks who have more or less mastered the mechanics.

Of course, there's probably some PvP implication that hasn't occurred to me. On the other hand, resil is so overwhelmingly necessary and effective in pvp, I can't imagine this creating a problem.

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