tanks are worth their weight in mt dew.

good tanks are even rarer.

great tanks are nearly legendary and tend to have faction-wide name recognition...

the elite tanks that can pick up all the adds from a fight gone south while healing and mitigating, while saving the healer, and then recover everyone from the 'just wipe' stage of reaction and then down the boss anyways?

well those guys are a freaking myth. mostly.

Hmmm, I replied to djsuursoo in the wrong comment, a little above here. Annoying lack of an edit button around here...

Short version: Nobody knows who the good or bad tanks are anymore, wow's gone anonymous. All we have now is the quiet tanks and the tanks who blow their own horns.

@djsuursoo
The best tanks are the ones who know when and how to use their survivability cooldowns. Of course, when the new tanking model is released (probably next expansion), this will become even more apparent; really looking forward to active mitigation. For now though, it's rare to see a great tank. You'll see good tanks often, but to be honest what separates good from great is the guy who has the ability to survive for a bit when the tank healer dies or when the dps are dropping like flies. As for faction-wide legendary...not really; but guilds have been known to fight for their tanks.

Just because they included a dungeon finder option for people does not mean that people do not still group from their server. I can name several tanks from my server I have run with for a long time and names were 'legendary' to me before I started raiding.

They know their job, they do it well and they network with everyone on the faction.

Mainly these people started groups themselves and actually made routine runs so they could do things but they should not be looked at as (just) legendary but go-getters. How can you progress if you don't try?