I think the fact that tanks are the least represented role shows that they *need* to change something. A good step too would require more tanks needed for raids, just one and rarely two tanks in a raid is a bit sad with so many dps required.

Certainly increasing the number of tanks required per raid would help. Consider a 25-man raid group that clears enough bosses that they need 2 troll instances every week to top up their valour points. I use that as an example because if they got their valour, they wouldn't be running randoms.

For the sake of simplicity, we'll pretend the entire queue consists of raiders from that one 25-man raid. We'll also pretend that they generally run 5 MS healers with a couple swing DPS/Healer types, and 3 tanks, for a 3/5/17 composition.

Their 3 tanks each run two troll instances. The first run takes along 3 healers and 9 DPS, leaving 2 healers and 8 DPS without a run. The tanks run again, using 3 healers and 9 DPS once more. This leaves 4 healers and 16 DPS who need their 2nd troll run to top up their valour, but with no tanks in queue it's not going to happen.

So yeah, make tanking more attractive by giving tanks more available raid jobs.

They can change taking all they like, but some people dislike change itself and will stop tanking because Bliz "screwed up" what they liked about tanking. So for every change, it needs to be attractive enough to first offset the losses from change itself, then attract additional people so tanking numbers can increase.

Fortunately, I'm a pally tank, so I am used to change. My class gets completely reinvented every xpac, and fundamentally changed every patch.

What needs to change isn't the role itself, it's how other players react to those who play the role.

One of the reasons for the balance of dps/tanks/heals is because of the dps only classes. There is only 4 classes that can tank, and 4 classes that can heal, while every single class has a dps spec. The end result is that you will have many more players rolling dps classes than tanking classes simply due to the mathematics of the class roles. Each and every druid/pally has 3 choices dps/tank/heals, while each hunter/lock/mage/rogue can only dps, so there will always be more dps than tank's or heals, thus the need for more spots for dps in order that more players get involved in raids and dungeons.

If every class could at least do either tank or heal as well as dps, then you could say that there should be more tanking and healing spots. As it is if you increase tanking requirements some will roll tanks but you will only increase wait times trying to find enough people to tank, and make the class number lopsided to those that can tank/heal. If you want more tanks make tanking easier and smoother, yes it may not make the hardcore gamer's happy, but it will generate more tanks.

If you give every class a tank or heal spec, you will also see more tanks and heals, although you may run into the desire then to have more tank or heal roles in raids, which then puts you back into the same situation of trying to make tanking challenging but easy enough to draw more players to choose that role.