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Now though the lines are a bit more blurred. There are many different ways to distinguish the tanks, but the easiest is shield or no shield. Like most druids, The Big Bear Butt is notorious for saying, “I tank with my face.” Druids have always been robbed of avoidance stats like parry and additional mitigation stats like block. Because of this, they were great off tanks in TBC but unable to tank boss encounters without praying the RNG didn’t hit them with consecutive crushing blows. The introduction of the death knight and the removal of crushes leveled the tanking playing field for all 4 classes, but the shield bearers were left behind because the one mechanic they used to their advantage, block, was deemed practically obsolete.

Warriors, after their golden age of TBC, were left out. Paladins could still keep up because in the new age of AoE, no other tank, not even the death knight could hold quite so many mobs with so little effort as the paladin and their beloved Consecration. We do know death knights and druids are the hard mode tanks because of the massive health pools though.

Warriors and paladins have now found a new alliance with each other. Their glorious shields which were the physical embodiment of the shielding they performed as tanks have become trash and little more than cosmetic additions to their in game appearance. Sure they provide stats and boost your armor, but as GC has noted before, block is epic phail in its current state.

Today in the Warrior Q&A, we were given a little more insight into the direction of block.

The overall message is block sucks. Block is going to see improvements. Block is likely to end up with a percentage reduction and not a value reduction, and warriors and paladins better not expect to block (as in the number of blows that are blocked) as much as they do now.

This is a good direction. Strength can still be tied to block, but it can be seen as a more valuable tanking stat than it is now. I don’t know much about warriors, but I don’t believe they are able to boost their threat stats with a survivability stat like a paladin does through Touched by the Light, so any attempt to allow a stat to boost threat and not compromise a tanks main focus of staying alive would be a welcome change for them.

I have commented not once, not twice, but three times on improving strength for all of the plate wearers and I hope that for the sake of shield bearers across all the realms, they start with how it impacts block.