Why am I suddenly so popular?
Right now I have two level 80 tank/DPS hybrid toons in epic gear. Now, when I leveled my Warrior to 80, and for the first few months, it seemed like everyone and his or her mother was a tank. There were Druid tanks everywhere, every Paladin and DK was a tank, and of course there were plenty of Warrior tanks to be had. There were so many tanks, in fact, that I figured that after my months of service to my BC guild, I could take a vacation and be DPS for a while on my Warrior. Sure, it ended up requiring me to learn a whole new set of skills, but I got to be the Titan's Grip DPS Warrior I'd longed to be ever since I saw my wife romper stomp her way through Diablo II.
Fast forward a few months. Ulduar is more or less on farm, the new Argent Tournament raid and five man are in effect, and I've leveled and geared out a DK for both DPS and tanking. Based on my experience as a Warrior I wasn't expecting to have many opportunities to tank. Instead, not only is the DK in crazy demand for tanking, I'm constantly being asked to tank on the Warrior as well! Since I like tanking, it's not a major concern, but what confuses me is, where did all those Warrior, Druid, DK and Paladin tanks from launch go?
It might just be a case of lots of alts needing runs through all the heroics now that they drop Emblems of Conquest, I suppose. As a guy with a Shaman, Warrior, and DK at 80 I'm aware of the difficulties in getting all of your alts geared up, and even tanks need someone to tank for their Mage, for instance. Without the ability to do a census and see what specs are being played most often by which tank capable classes, it's hard for me to know what's going on beyond an anecdotal level. Alison recently posted about which classes are getting invited to tank, and while it's an interesting subject I have to admit it doesn't seem to matter in my case, the second I log on to either of my tanking toons I'm usually in an instance irritating mobs.
Are there just fewer tanks now? I wasn't tanking seriously before the most recent DK tanking nerfs, do I just not know that I'm not good at it anymore? (I personally love my DK's AoE threat generation, let me tell you.) The recent changes to Devastate make me enjoy tanking on the warrior more, so I can't imagine other warrior tanks have suddenly decided it's not fun, and Pallys and Druids seem as strong as ever when I raid with them... do they just feel like they get enough tanking when they're raiding and prefer to instance as their off-specs? (This is what our main Paladin tank told me he does, so it's a possibility.) Whatever's going on, it's good for me, so I'm not complaining.
What about y'all? Are you seeing more tanks, less tanks? Do you get asked to tank a lot? Are you constantly wishing you could tank, only you're swamped in them and have to DPS or heal instead? I'm curious as to other people's experiences here, as this seems very atypical to me.
