Originally Posted by
Sindhol
Some reasons why I think this isn't the way forward for the warden, and why I'd focus on cooldowns instead:
(1) Taunts will likely remain the most important way to grab aggro. Going back to the pre-HD threat leeches isn't going to mesh well with how the rest of the game has evolved. In particular, snap aggro changes and solid secondary aggro are important in raids (and I quite like them, myself).
(2) The gambit system is great, but gambits with cooldowns are kind of self-defeating. Taunts arguably need cooldowns to be balanced.
Because of (1) and (2), I don't see main threat coming from a gambit. Threat maintenance, through DPS, heals, or multipliers, sure, but not the initial grab.
(3) All tanks (and many other classes) have small-scale stuff (rotations) that they do all the time, and large-scale stuff (cooldowns) that allow instant response to the environment. Wardens don't have defensive cooldowns, just taunts, which is (a) not good in raids, and (b) a bit boring.
Returning to the 95-115 cap DC would address (3) and respect (1) and (2). And, in my opinion, surviving from DC to DC is fun. It breaks up the flow of gambits, and adds schwung and variety to the fairly monotonous warden-with-only-gambit-buffs. With big skills to respond to the environment--which require limited uptime to be balanced, and therefore wouldn't be gambits--there's more large-scale stuff going on, and tanking is more interesting.
With the +4%/target variant, you wouldn't be crazy high mitted with DC up as you were at 95-115 caps (with raid buffs, you'd hit 89/88 mits, or 91/90 with a guard co-tank), which was a bit overdone, I agree. High mit buffs, however, enhance the value of the small % mit buffs from the Flourish chain, which meshes nicely with the desire to encourage a solid self-buff rotation. Having mit buffs on the taunt and little in the way of alternative cooldowns means that you won't always have a taunt immediately, requiring an alternative strategy based on DPS and heal threat. Meanwhile, this setup of having a rhythm of big upswings in survivability would set the warden apart from all other tanks (as it did in the past). You grab a bunch of things, you DC and harden, and then you kite for a bit. Tanking entirely without a cooldown isn't viable in raids, however, so adding a second DC (or even a DC cooldown reset, similar to skill resets on the burglar and lore-master) would be an easy and effective way to address that.
Also, I really want to throw the Thirteen Dwarves back and forth between wardens and have them beating on those 89% pmits the entire fight, but okay, that's a personal thing :P.