WoW Stratics IRC Chat

[Mavfin]

Protection warriors are perfectly capable off-tanks, however. I get relegated to dealing DPS because the Protection warrior can get the job done, and I'm much better at DPS than he is.

Exactly. A feral druid *in this case* does the group more good DPSing than tanking. What's a prot warrior going to do if he doesn't tank? Do half the DPS you do? It's a problem with the very class that's being complained about here as the kings of tanking. Prot warriors are so specialized, they're not very good in any other role than tanking. Until that problem is addressed, druids will end up DPSing when they'd rather be tanking, and pallies will end up on other stuff *because they can*. Is it right? Not really. Is it likely to continue? Yes.

Believe me, Alliera, I can see your problem as clear as day. You'd rather tank, but, you outlined the situation that occurs a lot in the quote above very well. I'd *love* for my protection warrior to be able to switch gear and do enough DPS that you could do your share of tanking. I'd love it. I'm perfectly willing to share the tanking load with other classes. But, many raidleaders, if the prot warrior isn't tanking, they just won't bring them. The problem really isn't with the druid class. It's that the protection warrior, like the holy priest, is so specialized that they only do one thing well enough to get a raid spot doing it.

[Skandranon]

Whenever we have more than one Protection warrior in the raid, the second Prot warrior off-tanks. I don't understand why your Protection warriors fail to do the job, though I suppose it could be due to the level of content.

Clearly, because my experiences don't agree with you, my warriors are incompetent.

I ask again: Is there anything I can say which will make you believe me? No matter what I say, you'll just accuse my players of being terrible (all that raid progression clearly means nothing), accuse me of having a slanted viewpoint (my viewpoint is solely slanted towards what works), call me a liar, or attempt to discredit me in some other way. Are you approaching this with an open mind? Is there any kind of evidence you'll accept? Are you willing to admit that you're wrong?

Or am I just wasting my time?

If a single paladin can tank them without dying, it sounds like a gimmick encounter to me. It's pretty much what mages were forced to endure in Molten Core and BWL (Majordomo, Suppression Room).

I love this phrase, "gimmick encounter". It's overused. One thing I've continually stressed, having seen nearly all the implemented raid content from 1.0 forward, is that there's no general case for raid encounters. From the beginning of WoW, all raid encounters have had exactly two things in common.

1) Something will need to be healed.
2) Something will have to take damage.

That's it. Every fight has a "gimmick" of some kind. Some kinds favour warriors, and others favour paladins, and some kinds favour yet other classes (for example, Warlocks on Magtheridon). Yes, so only 20% of the encounters in SSC/TK currently favour prot paladins - I did say paladins need tweaking. But they have their place.

And if they hit for ~1800 on cloth, they'll hit for ~1000 on plate. 12 murlocs on one paladin? It's a bit of a stretch. He'd have to spamheal himself as well as getting spamhealed by at least one other healer, if not two - and if they are higher than level 70, he'll get crushed (can't keep Holy Shield up). I suppose it's possible, though.

Why, thank you. After trying to discredit me yet again, you concede that I just might not be lying to you. How kind of you. How gracious of you.

Seriously, can you lay off the skepticism? I'm trying to be helpful, but you're doubting me at every turn as if I have nothing better to do all day than to lie to you. I'm not asking you to take my word as gospel, but can you at least pretend that you believe that I know what the hell I'm talking about? Every time I relate an experience, you question it, with no counter-evidence of your own besides "oh, that's not true", which isn't really an argument at all. Let's discuss in a manner where you present evidence, and I present evidence, and we talk about it, as opposed to what's happening now where I present evidence and you deny its reality. Unless you're not interested in hearing about why you're wrong, in which case, I am wasting my time.

[Skandranon]

The problem really isn't with the druid class. It's that the protection warrior, like the holy priest, is so specialized that they only do one thing well enough to get a raid spot doing it.

Quite. Take this argument to its logical conclusion, and you wind up bringing a minimum of prot warriors to get beat on, and then bears for the rest of your tanking. It proceeds directly from this argument.

And yet, people are arguing when I say two prots and two bears are great for SSC. Can't satisfy some people.

[Arethor]

Clearly, because my experiences don't agree with you, my warriors are incompetent.

I ask again: Is there anything I can say which will make you believe me? No matter what I say, you'll just accuse my players of being terrible (all that raid progression clearly means nothing), accuse me of having a slanted viewpoint (my viewpoint is solely slanted towards what works), call me a liar, or attempt to discredit me in some other way. Are you approaching this with an open mind? Is there any kind of evidence you'll accept? Are you willing to admit that you're wrong?

Or am I just wasting my time?

I don't think this is what's being said Skan. It's not an attack on our warriors, I see it as a possible question to gain further info and insight. Yes the higher encounters are a bit different warrior aggro generation (from my limited knowledge) seems to stay about the same while DPS get boosted. Meanwhile the way blizzard has designed a number of encounters require DPS to burn mobs/adds immediately in order to beat enrage timers, meaning tanks need snap aggro that locks mobs onto them. Warriors do have Taunt and Shield Slam but again it comes down a bit to what we said about Warrior/Druid rage/aggro generation. This is of course just from my observations and glimpses I get while pew pewing (my main is my warlock) and watching Trends on Threat meters.

I think that there's been an unnecessary tension building. I suggest everyone take a step back, take a few deep breaths and re-read a post before replying to it. I myself have been guilty of making an assumption on someone's point or purpose to a post and afterwards realized that I made a null point or myself look like an ass. As Mav said, let's try and leave personal attacks and retorts out of this discussion. I'm sure if we all be reasonable we can flip this into a very resourceful thread but we need to check our attitudes at the door.

[TheDragoon]

Bro I'm not just hitting them with thunderclap to hold them all. I'm also cleaving and sundering each and using Demo Shout.

Certainly, if you're switching targets you definitely hold them. However, I'm also talking about all of the other times when all you do is Thunderclap something and I can't get aggro on it unless I switch to it and Maul/Mangle it. There have been plenty of times when your Thunderclap, alone, has pulled things off of my Swipes and it is very less likely that Swipe will pull off of Thunderclap. Heck, even just looking at KTM on big pulls shows that Thunderclap usually out-aggros Swipe because you are usually about even with me, or ahead of me in total aggro, even after Druid single-target aggro beats out your single target aggro. :)

[Taelas]

Clearly, because my experiences don't agree with you, my warriors are incompetent.

I ask again: Is there anything I can say which will make you believe me? No matter what I say, you'll just accuse my players of being terrible (all that raid progression clearly means nothing), accuse me of having a slanted viewpoint (my viewpoint is solely slanted towards what works), call me a liar, or attempt to discredit me in some other way. Are you approaching this with an open mind? Is there any kind of evidence you'll accept? Are you willing to admit that you're wrong?

Or am I just wasting my time?

You're misinterpreting me.

I have rather limited experience in the end-game at 70. The furthest I've seen is one attempt at Magtheridon, and from my experience, Protection warriors have been perfectly capable off-tanks on all encounters so far. I can imagine that damage out-scales Protection warriors' mostly non-scaling threat at higher levels of content, however, and I'm saying that might be why your warriors have trouble off-tanking. It was in no way meant as a shot at your warriors. I wouldn't have thought that damage scaled enough prior to 2.1, but that's that.

Why, thank you. After trying to discredit me yet again, you concede that I just might not be lying to you. How kind of you. How gracious of you.

Seriously, can you lay off the skepticism? I'm trying to be helpful, but you're doubting me at every turn as if I have nothing better to do all day than to lie to you. I'm not asking you to take my word as gospel, but can you at least pretend that you believe that I know what the hell I'm talking about? Every time I relate an experience, you question it, with no counter-evidence of your own besides "oh, that's not true", which isn't really an argument at all. Let's discuss in a manner where you present evidence, and I present evidence, and we talk about it, as opposed to what's happening now where I present evidence and you deny its reality. Unless you're not interested in hearing about why you're wrong, in which case, I am wasting my time.

I'm not trying to discredit you. You said you don't have a Protection paladin to do it, and I said I'm a bit skeptic as to whether or not it can succeed, though I'm leaning towards it being doable. Your comment implied you hadn't tried it with a Prot paladin.

Look, I'm sorry I implied that you were lying. I wasn't really in a good mood when I wrote that post.

Now it seems that you're dead-set on me antagonising you, though. I really don't want this to turn into a fight.

[Arethor]

Aye, we've not tried the Prot Pally tank approach for Morogrim since we don't have a Prot Pally. However a number of guilds listed it as a working, viable start that they used. Also as it is we have a few healers dedicated to healing people in Watery Graves and the AoEers. Theoretically if we used a paladin tank, those healers could focus on him instead of the AoEers. Honestly I'd love to try it, but we'd need a Prot Pally first.

[Artega]

Honestly, I wouldn't suggest a Protection Paladin for the murloc phase of Tidewalker. I'm running a Holy/Prot build, specifically designed to sacrifice a few caster-like talents for offtanking talents without losing any of the exceptional healing, and it works great for me. With Concentration Aura running, I can heal without pushback, and I still have Redoubt, Toughness, Anticipation, and Improved Righteous Fury to be able to generate solid threat and be able to survive a modest beating. Obviously I'm not going to be able to tank something for an extended period of time due to lack of Holy Shield (as well as Ardent Defender, Sacred Duty, and others), but I could easily see a Holy Paladin grabbing and maintaining aggro with consecration spam and chainhealing himself with Flash of Light or Holy Light for those murlocs. The difference would be that said Holy Paladin can go back to being a superb healer afterwards, while the Protection Paladin can't:(

[Artega]

Prot warriors are so specialized, they're not very good in any other role than tanking. Until that problem is addressed, druids will end up DPSing when they'd rather be tanking, and pallies will end up on other stuff *because they can*. Is it right? Not really. Is it likely to continue? Yes.

Honestly, I feel like a moron for not noticing that. And I don't have an excuse to fall back on, either; I've played as a career Protection Warrior since release! It's a very good point you've made, Mavfin, even if it makes me feel like a moron for not realizing it until now:)

[Frag]

None of those are something you're going to bring a protection-specced warrior into a raid for, though. Fury/Arms can do solid DPS unto themselves for a raid slot, and can OT some, albeit not as well as a feral druid or prot pally, usually. If that's all warriors can do well, the protection warrior is standing outside, looking in. So, I don't see those as applicable to the MT discussion, IMO.

I responded to what is quoted below, Mav. He didn't say "as well as a Prot Warrior", he said "as a Warrior". The question posed was "What happens to Warriors if Druids/Pallies tank equally as well?" His theory is that "Warrior's have no alternatives.". I offered a counter-argument to that theory, and I'm so ever so sorry that it didn't meet your criteria of application, bub.:rolleyes:

That's how I see it. If they make Druids and Pallies able to tank as well as a Warrior, what happens to the Warrior? If a Pally can't find a tank spot in a guild, he can spec to heal. Same for a Druid. That may not be what they rolled the character for but they have the option of doing it to get into a guild. The Warrior has no alternatives. And if Pallies and Druids are taking his MT spots, his chance of finding a guild has greatly decreased.

~Frag :blink:

[Skandranon]

I have rather limited experience in the end-game at 70. The furthest I've seen is one attempt at Magtheridon, and from my experience, Protection warriors have been perfectly capable off-tanks on all encounters so far. I can imagine that damage out-scales Protection warriors' mostly non-scaling threat at higher levels of content, however, and I'm saying that might be why your warriors have trouble off-tanking. It was in no way meant as a shot at your warriors. I wouldn't have thought that damage scaled enough prior to 2.1, but that's that.

I see. I want to clarify what I mean by off-tanking in the raid context. Simple off-tanking, which is to say taking an elite mob of level 71-73 and keeping it on the player and away from other people, is something I feel that all tanking classes, even paladins, can accomplish in the current environment. There are minor differences, but for the most part, they don't matter. Even against 73s, Shield Block isn't the key advantage it is on bosses, because these mobs just don't crush for that much, when they crush at all. What spike damage they have is easily absorbed by a well-geared player of any tanking class (even Paladins can reach the 13000-ish buffed health they need). It's when additional complications are involved that warriors start to suffer.

Take for example the Coilfang Fathom-Witch. One aspect of this particular trash mob is a tendency to mind control its tank, causing it to run around slaughtering DPS or healers. Two of these are usually present in a trash pull with up to three additional mobs. So that's five, and someone needs to act as an off-tank on each Fathom-Witch. Assigning one player to each job, that's seven tanking roles, which is a bit much to expect out of a 25-person raid. Instead, you can do it with five, assigning one player to hold two of the weaker-hitting other mobs - a druid is best for this with Swipe, but a warrior doesn't really have much trouble with TC/Cleave/etc., after all, the warrior's being hit.

One tank, however, has the job of being the off-tank on both Fathom-Witches - generating enough threat on both of them to both be second on the aggro list on the one which is actively being DPSed, and to be above the healers (which is more difficult than it seems when tanks are being hit fairly hard) on the second one, without the rage from being hit. Fathom-Witches also periodically deaggro their tank, so you can't have one player tank both from the start and have two off-tanks, either.

This off-tank could be a warrior, but this warrior would effectively have to generate the rage from doing so by swinging with a one-hander. Sure, he could TC some, but he doesn't get to use Revenge at all (since he's not being hit) and he has very little rage to work with. It's going to be a very difficult task to out-threat the DPS on one mob and out-threat the healers on another without being hit. A druid, however, can do it easily, by sitting there and swiping.

Now, the recent nerf to SSC has nerfed these mobs to the point where no one has to tank anything, just kite them around in circles while the raid burns them down. But the pre-2.1 Fathom-Witch was an example of an off-tank role which heavily favours the druid. I'm not saying the warrior can't do it. But owing to the warrior's threat-generation mechanic, and the fact that warriors don't quite have a move like Swipe, it's much easier for a druid to do. The warrior's going to find it hard, and stressful, and a mistake or two means people get shredded, whereas the druid pretty much can't make a mistake if Swipe is striking both mobs.

Let me give you another example from a raid encounter. In Al'ar phase 2, every time Al'ar lands, two Embers of Al'ar, small phoenixes with a fairly hefty attack, spawn next to him. Al'ar performs a whirl attack that inflicts heavy damage and a knockback when he lands, so no one can be close to him or the adds when they spawn. When the adds spawn, they hold still for about a half second and then streak off toward random players at approximately double run speed. They aren't snareable. The key is to get them tanked and then moved out of the raid rapidly, and that means picking up the adds before they get to that random player and kill them. Furthermore, Al'ar spawns heavily damaging patches of flame on the ground.

Warriors have very few options. They can't stand at the spawn point, or they are caught in Al'ar's knockback. The adds move far too quickly for a gun or bow shot to catch. The only thing that works on them is Intercept, but with the size of the room and the fact that Al'ar's location is not controllable, there's only a 35 to 65 percent chance, depending on where the landing location is, that the warrior will be able to intercept the adds before they dart off. Once they've got the add, they have to negotiate a minefield of flame patches to move the add into the correct position. Druids merely cast feral Faerie Fire and the add comes right for them, already in position. Again, this is a tanking role where a warrior just isn't the best choice. A warrior can do it, sure, but it's going to be harder, people are going to get hit by Embers more frequently, and the warrior may very well get destroyed by a flame patch that he stumbles into while trying to pay attention to all the other stuff he has to pay attention to.

Do you see what I mean? I'm not implying that warriors are getting magically destroyed on raid content, or that there's anything they can't tank if they really, really play well and execute perfectly. I am saying that in many situations, many nontrivial, raid-success-critical roles, Druids just have it easier, which improves the chances that the job is executed correctly over multiple iterations. It's merely the difference between a high-stress job rife with opportunities for crucial errors versus accomplishing the same task with a much smaller chance for error. I'd argue that's significant advantage.

I'm not trying to discredit you. You said you don't have a Protection paladin to do it, and I said I'm a bit skeptic as to whether or not it can succeed, though I'm leaning towards it being doable. Your comment implied you hadn't tried it with a Prot paladin.

It's been done many times before. For reference, it's Elitist Jerks' preferred method, and they kill him every week.

Now it seems that you're dead-set on me antagonising you, though. I really don't want this to turn into a fight.

It doesn't need to be a fight. But please, please, please accept that when I'm offering evidence like that which I've posted above, it's something that's been learned from wipe after wipe after wipe and empirically determined to be correct after trying every available alternative. I haven't once said that your own observations of druid vs. warrior tanking were wrong. I respect those observations. Please respect mine.

[Brista]

Prot warriors are so specialized, they're not very good in any other role than tanking. Until that problem is addressed, druids will end up DPSing when they'd rather be tanking, and pallies will end up on other stuff *because they can*. Is it right? Not really. Is it likely to continue? Yes.

That's basically it, summarising exactly why I don't play my Bear Druid any more

I'll accept Skan's word that Bears have good threat on adds but they still take more damage. I don't want to come to a raid and dps a bit (as a second-rate rogue), tank a bit (as a second-rate warrior) then heal a bit (as a second-rate healer)

Warriors have three viable raid options: main tank, hybrid dps/tank, and dps. It's ridiculous to favour them because they are a pure class - they clearly aren't. Once everyone's gear upgrades then Warriors as the most scalable class in the game may quite possibly be back to their Naxx status of best tank and best dps. It's utterly biased and unfair

I don't really buy into this Prot Warriors can't do anything else line. Prot is a spec. No other spec receives the same kind of favouritism, some specs are flat out not raid viable. Do Resto Shamans get to be the only viable raid healer because once they're specced Resto they can't do anything else? Warriors always have raid options.

What I think the situation should be is that the tanks who put the most effort in get to tank. Instead it's decided by class not merit. Since TBC came out all of its bright new promises have withered: competitive tanking, options for end-game items which compare with raid loot. I think WoW has proved that you can't change direction midway through the lifetime of a MMO, even if some aspects are stupid and unfair you're stuck with them because once players are used to them they'll fight tooth and nail to keep them

[Arethor]

I think it depends a lot on the guild you run with Brista. Our bear is in tank gear atleast 90% of the time. I can only remember one time recently hearing the RL calling for him to DPS and I can't even remember the last time he was asked to heal. Granted I'm not him so I may not hear all the times he's asked to do such, but that's why I said 90% instead of 99%.

Last night we got our first Leotheras the Blind kill with a combination of Bear/Warlock tanking. Lacerate is quite nice for the normal phase since the bleed effect helps the tank to regain aggro during/after whirlwinds. For those that aren't familiar with the fight during the whirlwind he periodically wipes all threat and after his whirlwind he wipes all threat again.

[Mavfin]

I responded to what is quoted below, Mav. He didn't say "as well as a Prot Warrior", he said "as a Warrior". The question posed was "What happens to Warriors if Druids/Pallies tank equally as well?" His theory is that "Warrior's have no alternatives.". I offered a counter-argument to that theory, and I'm so ever so sorry that it didn't meet your criteria of application, bub.:rolleyes:

~Frag :blink:

I stand corrected:P:D

[Mavfin]

Prot warriors are so specialized, they're not very good in any other role than tanking. Until that problem is addressed, druids will end up DPSing when they'd rather be tanking, and pallies will end up on other stuff *because they can*. Is it right? Not really. Is it likely to continue? Yes.

I just want to qualify this comment with this: How much this comes into play depends on the guild/raidleader. Some, like Skan seems to be, are more focused on results than class, but there's a lot of raidleaders/guild leaders who are stuck in the old ways that pigeonholed most of the hybrids. That's people, and you have to change their minds, no matter how good your class is at another job. And all the debate on here won't change some of those people. If you, as a druid or pally, want to tank in endgame content, you have to find the right guild, first, before you can get to do the things you want to do.

Yes, my quoted comment is true. However, that doesn't mean that druids don't ever get to tank. It means that you haven't found the right place to do it yet, IMO.

[Tuftears]

The SR situation happened because pretty much every warrior (We used to have around 10) decided to wander off except for a couple. The only folks who WOULD tank anything were druids. It's not that folks didn't want warriors tanking, it's just that all the tanks left. Or warriors themselves refused to tank anything, only accepting an invite if they were in a dps role.

This is because they switched to full DPS specs for levelling, and found their aggro holding substantially gimped for it.

I have seen protection warriors do DPS. About 600 dps or so from Malaclypse's protection warrior going dual wield on Pathaleon (pre-nerf heroic), if I recall right, that being in high-end instance blues with the Blacksmithing epic one-hand hammer. I think it's misleading to say protection warriors absolutely cannot do DPS, just because they can't do as much as a fully specced DPS class.

[Artega]

This is because they switched to full DPS specs for levelling, and found their aggro holding substantially gimped for it.

I have seen protection warriors do DPS. About 600 dps or so from Malaclypse's protection warrior going dual wield on Pathaleon (pre-nerf heroic), if I recall right, that being in high-end instance blues with the Blacksmithing epic one-hand hammer. I think it's misleading to say protection warriors absolutely cannot do DPS, just because they can't do as much as a fully specced DPS class.

600 DPS with no raid-benefiting debuffs or buffs (literally, all they can do is provide another Shout, since Sunder is covered by the tank.) Even a Retrinoob would be better in that slot (not that they can't do modest DPS; it's just that Holy is a much better tree than both Protection and Retribution for PvE.)

[Tuftears]

Note the qualifier I put in about the tank's gear level. I would say 600dps isn't bad for someone in instance blues who isn't specced for DPS. It should obviously go up when they get epic DPS plate.

The second shout isn't necessarily a bad thing, I hear rogues like battle shout.

I'm not satisfied that retribution paladins can do serious raid DPS at this time, so I wouldn't start pointing them out as better than protection warriors strapping on DPS gear, until there's good solid proof on the subject. Also, my point is not to say that protection warrior DPS is greater than other classes' DPS, but that they can do a decent amount of DPS if they work it.

[Frag]

Note the qualifier I put in about the tank's gear level. I would say 600dps isn't bad for someone in instance blues who isn't specced for DPS. It should obviously go up when they get epic DPS plate.

The second shout isn't necessarily a bad thing, I hear rogues like battle shout.

I'm not satisfied that retribution paladins can do serious raid DPS at this time, so I wouldn't start pointing them out as better than protection warriors strapping on DPS gear, until there's good solid proof on the subject. Also, my point is not to say that protection warrior DPS is greater than other classes' DPS, but that they can do a decent amount of DPS if they work it.

You're right, Prot warriors can do decent dps but I believe there is a qualifier on that. In order for my prot warrior in my experience to do decent damage I need to actively take damage. The most damage I can do is when I in fact have aggro. I'm not suggesting that a prot warrior steal aggro in a raid instance so he can do more dps (that in all likelihood would get him killed) but rather in situations where he's only doing damage with the rage he has from hitting, it's not going to be decent.

There might be some gearing choice I'm utilizing for max prot dps (i.e. +400 shield block value and sword/board = PWNAGE! :lol:) but the usual trio that Tiga used as fury (Hit/Crit/AP) doesn't seem to do 600dps, and he has some epic dps gearing.

YMMV,
~Frag B)

[Skandranon]

What I think the situation should be is that the tanks who put the most effort in get to tank. Instead it's decided by class not merit. Since TBC came out all of its bright new promises have withered: competitive tanking, options for end-game items which compare with raid loot. I think WoW has proved that you can't change direction midway through the lifetime of a MMO, even if some aspects are stupid and unfair you're stuck with them because once players are used to them they'll fight tooth and nail to keep them

I think my original point got lost, so I'm going to say it again in a clearer form before this thread dies.

Tanking isn't one job any more. If tanking is one job, which is to say, roughly the same in all situations, one of the three tanking classes will eventually wind up as the "best" at it, and the other two will be sub-optimal choices. This is how it worked out pre TBC, which is to say, tanking was pretty much the same wherever you were doing it, and warriors were the best at it, so no one else tanked. The only tanking difference between Golemagg and Sapphiron was that Sapph hit harder (anyone can run in and out).

In TBC raid encounters, the devs are, in my opinion, cleverly developing another tank role specifically optimized for non-warrior tanks. It's the only design method to ensure that you always want to bring prot tanks AND feral druids or prot paladins, not just the best of the three. The goal is to get something close to DPS, which is to say, there are a lot of classes that do DPS, but you don't just bring the top class, you bring a mix, because they're all strong in different areas.

I'm reticent to use the words "main tank" because I don't really see what's all that "main" about being the boss-target, except for (occasionally) taking more damage. Sure, if you don't tank the boss he'll run around owning the raid, but if you don't tank the adds or off-tank the boss, you'll also die, just in a different way. A failure in either area means you lose.

WoW 1.0 had brief glimpses of this other tanking role, but they were few and far between and never favoured non-warrior strengths enough to justify gearing and speccing a non-warrior for just one fight per raid instance. Furthermore, in 1.0, non-warriors just didn't have that many strengths to emphasize.

TBC is changing it. There's something for non-warrior tanks to do on nearly every fight, which means that it's now justifiable to gear and spec a character that way since they'll be useful all the time. And it means that warriors and non-warrior tanks aren't in direct competition for most roles. Being the boss-target is never the only tanking that needs to be done in a fight, and while warriors are the best at it, in nearly every fight in TBC raid content, there's another tanking role optimized for a non-warrior. That's why non-warrior tanks (currently just druids, but with some tweaking, paladins too) are viable. That's how they're useful.