Originally Posted by
rhandric
You're right, there doesn't seem to be any consistency.
On the one hand, monk/druid tanks share their gear (outside of tier) with rogues and dps druids/monks, while plate tanks are (supposed to) share gear. On the other hand, the same argument could now be made in favor of having tanking leather gear as there is for tanking plate: "enough" specs share that type of gear to make it worthwhile (ie, 3/9 specs for plate tank, [1/9 for plate int], 2/10 for leather tank, [3/10 for leather int]).
Since, obviously (and appropriately, IMO), they're going to continue not making tanking leather, it seems the only direction to move is to not make tanking plate. True, it probably will take an expansion for that to happen, but honestly it should have been this expansion in the first place - they didn't, because they like avoidance, despite it being the antithesis to the active mitigation paradigm. The problem with avoidance is that they don't fill a role in AM tanking. Sure, they increase TDR, but since they're unreliable, stacking them is useless.