I would Mage tank in a heartbeat. It would be epic.

.. an it's not a stretch class wise. Bubbles anyone?

Sounds like a better fit for Disc priests, then.

Mage tank...?! Epic win! It reminds me of that one old BC raid... with the dragon-killing giants and the group of crazy ogres, those crazy fellas... One of em needed a Mage Tank, and I was tempted to roll a mage JUST to say I tanked a raid boss as it...

I would totally resub if enhancement Shamans could tank.

Battlemage. *nods*

I'm also of the opinion that Warlocks should be able to heal and rogues tank, giving hunters some utility would be good too.

While we're at it let's also make it so Shamans can heal and Priests can DPS!

I haven't magetanked since they nerfed it in UO.

A suggestion: add a 4th tree to each class, turning all classes into hybrids. Pure classes get either a Tanking or Healing tree, Druids get the Bear/Cat specs turned into independent trees, etc.

Mage tanks? Bubbles? I don't think Baleroc would be very happy about that...

Shamans seem like a better choice, the enchantment spec could be a tanking/dps spec like the druid.

I would like to see a Hunter tanking spec. You take out 5 pets at once and they stay stacked around the Hunter at all times, sharing a massive health pool. You wouldn't have to heal the pets, just the hunter. You could have 5 different melee attacks that work like Kill Command, but with different effects depending on the pet.

Back in BC I remember coming across mail defence gear ,To be honest it makes no sense to me shamans cant tank with abilitys like rockbiter and usability of shields thay would be perfect. Also at the start of wrath Dks could Tank in any spec ,rather then scraping this like thay did I think that is were the future of tanking is. All thay need to do is make Blood Presence a tanking presence for all spec same thing could be done with auras and Rightous fury ect, What do people think??

Precedent for mage tanks:
/tar Balrog
/cast Taunt
/yell "You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!"

I don't know if deficit of tanks is something you can really ever fix in WoW. Surely, adding a few more tanking specs wouldn't hurt but in the end, tanking is a role that attracts a certain type of people, people who don't mind the responsibility, natural leaders.
And there will always be more followers than leaders, and don't really mean that in a bad way. That's just how it is.

My first main was a mage and gradually realized that I wanted more responsibility, so I rolled a tank and I'm loving every minute of it.

I also thought that we should get fourth trees. Let Locks and Hunters tank (by fusing with demons/animals) and let Mages heal (with arcane) and rogues heal with a first-aid style, melee-range heal, but abilities to bounce around quickly. Then the other specs get what is missing, like a ranged non-spell non-pet spec for warriors (for someone who wants to be a true archer and not a hunter), the druid feral split out, a ranged casting for DK, a melee-monk like tree for priests, and I don't know, pallies can do a lot already, I guess range spellcasting as well.

As for the tanking shortage, it would be nice if tanking responsiblities could be spread out. Like each class could take up some damage, switching who is the "temporary tank" until they can take no more and the next one takes it up. Each person steps up, like the one ZA fight where people move into range and take a hit, there is a group cohesion to it.

Instead, whenver there's a wipe in a dungeon, often fingers go right to the tank, and it hurts. When I get "your dps is low" in a dungeon, I start looking at what is wrong, what I can fix, did I mess up. When we wipe and people are like "fail tank", I quit tanking for a few days and go to DPS characters. It's the attitude that "wipes are the tank's fault" that hurts tanking. But likewise, the huge egos of a lot of tanks "i run this dungeon you follow me, I'm not stopping for mana" that makes it worse. That culture needs to change if we want more tanks.

I have noticed that my DPS queue time has been reduced to about 15 min, it was 45 for a while, so things have gotten somewhat better.

@Didax .. you sir... +10 internets for you.. best comment ever.

I think all classes can have a 'tank' spec and it wouldnt be that hard to implement. Somehow clever players managed to do it sometime on the game cronology. Back in Vanilla (I started my wow like in mid-end BC) ppl say Enh Shammies could tank a bit, on BC rogues could tank raid bosses, LK locks could tank some bosses too so...

Mages (Frost), Priests (Disc), Locks (Demo), Hunters (BM), Rogue (Combat), Shammans (Enh), Druids (Feral), DKs (Blood), Warriors (Prot), Paladins (Prot)

I liked the answer of bluesky_v2.01 I have a toon of every tanking class and I like it so much. I've wondered why I like it and came to the same conclusion: i don't know if I am a natural leader but I don't mind to have the responsibility of the party on my shoulders, I like to take the damage instead of the weaker and I like to teach and help others.

I also think that tanking has more to do with people's personality than with quantity or diversity of tanking classes, or with how easy tanking is. Same happens with healers: it's people naturally inclined to help others. For everyone else, there's DPSing.

How about a "Titanic" Hero Class? Any race character gets cured from the "curse of flesh" and becomes and stone or metal living being that has two tanking talen trees.