To be honest....

I kinda agree.

The ability to perform multiple roles is a big draw for hybrids. But its a role to which Blizzard has traditionally proven hostile. I say traditionally, because its recently stated that (at least in soem cases) it think that was a mistake.

Allowing off spec tanking for 5 man heroics would also be a way to allow players to get used to the role without needing to respec or regear or learn a new rotation. The problem here is simple....how to do it without makign it over powered.

You'd need the basic toolkit to be baseline and available to all specs.
You'd also need crit protection baseline. Speaking of which, you could also consider a "double skull" boss mode for harder, raid level content that requires, as an example, an 8% crit reduction while the class gets 6% baseline or is consdered 4 levels higher sinstead of three.
And you'd also need to provide enough mitigation tools to ensure the off spec tank can survive.

Taking paladins as an example....

You'd add a stance mechanic to enhance healing or tanking or DPS modes.
You could design Prot and Ret to work best with a 2H weapon. However, if you allowed ShoR to increase block chance and allowed Ret to wield a 2H weapon in one hand at the same time as a shield then you'd have a system which forced him to spend his HP on mitigation instead of DPS but which allowed him to tank in Ret gear and with a Ret spec.

You would need to provide enough physical and magical mitigation to make it doable, but with the larger gap between heroics and raids allowing a Ret to tank 5 mans may not be a bad idea. This leaves raids for the tanks, with true tanks also having a much easier time in 5 mans.

The same arguments would hold for the other tanks, albeit with different mechanics.

Of course, the downside is obvious....do we really need specs if this occurs?

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