Except that it didn't really matter back then. It only mattered so that you didn't throttle your the DPS players in your raid. I just can't wrap my head around why people think that there is only DPS in this game. You had much more to be doing in a fight than just worrying about your personal dps as a tank. Positioning, adds, debuffs, threat etc. Your DPS was an after thought back then, and it wasn't a priority. Most of the time you were limited by cooldowns and resources such as rage anyway so even if you tried to maximize your dps you would find that you don't have enough at key moments.
What are you smoking because I want whatever it is. A tank that took less damage was always better than one who took more but put out a tiny bit more DPS. You really think a raid wanted someone who took 10,000 more damage on average but did 5 more DPS because of it? Healers had to manage their mana back then and if they had to dump a lot into a tank then guess what? It was a wipe. What are you even going on about? Seriously I can't even wrap my head around your so called "argument". After this post I'm not going to address any more of your posts because they annoy me a great deal. I'll be going to sleep anway.
But let's get started on this mess of an argument you managed to conjure up. People pre-potted for the same reason they pre-pot now. But you could use multiple potions in combat back then so it didn't matter as much. You were actually expected to use multiple pots in a fight anyway so what point are you trying to make?
DPS didn't do max DPS by default I'm not even sure you thought about this before you typed it. I'm also sure you didn't even get the point I was trying to make. That back then it didn't make sense to ask your tanks to try and do more DPS for the same reason you didn't ask healers for more DPS. It didn't make a difference at all. You were better off just pushing more DPS out of the players who were already DPS to begin with because they could do a lot more than a tank could. That is the point I was making.