Tanking Topics #3: Health

[Xav]

This is a third post in a series of topics dealing with tanking issues. These posts are the distillation of those discussions, and are presented here formally for the community to debate in a peer-review manner. While the first two such discussions were mainly warrior concerns, this one and future topics are more broad in their scope.

In this topic, we closely analyze something that every single player has, that tanks have the most of: health. Currently, all of the different tanking classes have highly varying levels of health when in a raid, while wearing gear with a similar purpose. Within, we will address the implications this has on balancing both now and for future content in the game.

To start with, we are going to lay out some basic numbers that tanks can achieve currently, with explanations of how we can predict what we will see in the future.

The gearsets you will see here are tanking sets that maximize health within reason - that is, nothing like "Polar Gear" or greens "of stamina". Stacking stamina is simply something that is common for progression, for various reasons. We will elaborate, but the short answer is to survive the worst-case scenario.

The values derived in these tables are averages of what to expect for tanks in similar gear. It is possible to obtain more, but isn't necessary to illustrate the point.

What you must understand for the scaling is that currently gear scales at 13% per tier - meaning every tier of gear ahead of the last, is 13% more powerful in terms of itemization points. This is already known and accepted by the community. The actual stat distribution spent on stamina could vary anywhere from 10-15%, because not every stat has to scale equally (although due to itemization formulas, usually they all go up some amount regardless), as long as the entirety of the item's rating value goes up 13%.

Constants
a) Gear will scale at a rate of 13% per tier
b) Gems will scale by a maximum of 25% by the end (30 vs. 24 for epic gems), this will appear in T9/T10
c) Enchants and Buffs won't scale at all
d) Average stats were taken from exceptionally-geared armory profiles with both Enchanting/LW/BS and Jewelcrafting (the best tanking professions)
E) The numbers given are merely here to serve as an example, and may not be 100% accurate, but we are confident they are close enough to serve as a decent approximation of the point being made.

Stamina Buffs: PW:F, MotW, Food
Commanding Shout: 2819 Health
Flask: 650 Health
Chest Enchant: 275 Health

Warrior
CharDev Warrior

Base Health: 7941
Health Formula:
7941 + (Stamina * 1.06 * 1.1) * 10 + 2819 + 650 + 275

Projected Stats:

         T7     T8      T9      T10
Items    1670   1887    2132    2409
Gems     299    299     374     374
Enchants 216    216     216     216
Buffs    307    307     307     307
Base     159    159     159     159
Total    2651   2868    3188    3465
Health   42596  45126   48857   52087

Paladin
CharDev Paladin

Base Health: 6754
Health Formula:
6754 + (Stamina * 1.08 * 1.06 * 1.1) * 10 + 2819 + 650 + 275

Projected Stats:

         T7     T8      T9      T10
Items    1562   1765    1994    2253
Gems     395    395     494     494
Enchants 232    232     232     232
Buffs    307    307     307     307
Base     143    143     143     143
Total    2639   2842    3170    3429
Health   43730  46287   50417   53679

Death Knight
CharDev Death Knight

Base Health: 7961
Health Formula:
(7961 + (Stamina * 1.06 * 1.02 * 1.1) * 10 + 2819 + 650 + 275) * 1.1

Projected Stats:

         T7     T8      T9      T10
Items    1559   1762    1991    2250
Gems     371    371     464     464
Enchants 154    154     154     154
Buffs    307    307     307     307
Base     160    160     160     160
Total    2551   2754    3076    3335
Health   46249  48905   53117   56506

Druid
CharDev Druid

Base Health: 7237
Health Formula:
7237 + (Stamina * 1.06 * 1.2 * 1.25 * 1.1) * 10 + 2819 + 650 + 275

Projected Stats:

         T7     T8      T9      T10
Items    1362   1539    1739    1965
Gems     383    383     479     479
Enchants 262    262     262     262
Buffs    307    307     307     307
Base     96     96      96      96
Total    2410   2587    2883    3109
Health   53132  56228   61405   65357

The idea is simple, try to figure out how much unmitigated damage a tank can take before he drops dead.
EH = Health x Armor mod x Stance mod
MEH = Health x Stance mod (x guaranteed resist chance)

I'll use rounded numbers from the OP to make things a bit easier. These are values just for T7:


Warrior(EH)= 42 600/(0.9 [D-Stance] x 0.306 [Armor Red]) = 154 700
Warrior(MEH)= 42 600/0.84 [Imp D-Stance] = 50 700

Paladin(EH)= 43 700/(0.91 x 0.31) = 154 900
Paladin(MEH)= 43 700/0.85 = 51 400

DK(EH)= 46 200/0.275 = 168 000
DK(MEH)= 46 200/0.85 = 54 400

Druid(EH)= 53 100/(0.2855 x 0.88) = 211 400
Druid(MEH)= 53 100/0.88 = 60 340

Let these numbers think in for a moment.

Druid(EH) = 211 400
Warrior(EH) = 154 700
Difference: 37%

Druid(MEH)= 60 400
Warrior(MEH)=50 700
Difference: 19%

Now, people use tanks on mobs because they can take the hits. They're consistent. Tanks are simply easier to heal through a boss's hits than say a ret paladin or enhancement shaman. When it comes to progression, the same thought process applies - but it's amplified. Players are familiar with how boss mechanics tend to work, or have worked. Then there's the unfamiliar: new content, abilities that will deal loads of damage or come in intervals that players are not used to. And more often than not, encounters in new progression put serious pressure on the tanks.

This has been the pattern for nearly all content WoW has seen thus far, as soon as tanks "outgear" an instance and get all of the best gear that same zone drops, it becomes significantly easier. However, encounter designers tune the bosses so that they give the tank a challenge, and you need to gear and play appropriately to successfully tank (and survive) the boss.

Two types of scenarios emphasize the health issue:

1) High burst in progression content (example: Stun on Kalecgos, Corrosion on Felmyst, Confounding+Crushes on Twins).
In all of those examples, more health is the best way to improve your chances of survival. You're either forced to take a high amount of damage in a short period of time, or your chances of taking a high amount of damage increase drastically for some time.

2) Magical attacks that armor/block do not mitigate
The best example for this is a standard dragon breath attack, Malygos, Sartharion. Simply, the tank must have enough health to live through the attack, or they die. Or, the tank is able to achieve certain levels of health that others cannot, so they will always live, while the other will always die.

This is where the first potential problem is. If an encounter is designed to stress a tank, which tank do they tune it for? The variance in maximum health and mitigation styles right now is large. If it is tuned to be difficult for a warrior and paladin, but possible, does that mean a death knight or druid, with their huge health pools, will have an easier time? Would a mechanic that requires artful play and timing by a paladin and warrior to survive, be comfortably soaked by the larger health pool of the other tanks, lending to a much easier encounter for some tanks rather than others?

Further, what if that mechanic is tuned on a razor's edge - and is a line that simply kills some tanks, as they have not enough health (or cooldowns). But other tanks are able to do it, because they have the potential to have much larger health pools. If they want it to pressure a Druid and Death Knight to the brink of potential death, how would a paladin or warrior even hold a candle to the other classes?

To counter a common point that is, "Well, Sartharion was admitted to be a potential problematic design" - or something. This one mechanic is simply an example that magnifies the problem. Any such damage, particularly magical, that is strong, and intended to be threatening to tanks in progress, will be hugely varied in threat to each individual tank. It doesn't have to be a 70k breath, it could be a 35k breath that nearly one shots every tank, but some of them are left with enough health to survive a melee swing afterwards, for example, whereas others would instantly die to the following swing.

The second active problem is magical damage. The only way to reduce magical damage taken is through "stance" reductions, and cooldown abilities. Because of this, the single biggest thing you can do to survive magical damage is to have more health, or use a cooldown to mitigate it if it's large burst.

Possible solutions

There's a few possible ways to minimize the drastic differences in tanking classes in regards to health right now.

One way is a rather simple recalculation/redesign of talents. First developers would have to decide on a health value that is an acceptable level that all tanks can be within a few % of. If some classes are at ~43k right now, and others are at 53k, the variance is huge. Perhaps it would be easier to pull them all closer to the middle. In this case, the Death Knight value of 46k might be what they should tune for.

Lowering the paladin stamina % modifiers to be equal to warriors is something that can be easily done. Warriors and paladins share very similar itemization. Add in or modify a talent that simply grants paladins 1187 health (the difference in base hp between warriors and paladins), and now you have two equal plate classes with near-equal itemization design. Then you could boost the warrior's Vitality to say 8% - and keep the paladin's 8% (taking away Combat Expertise's bonus stamina), and you have two equally scaling tanks. Variation would be from minor itemization differences.

Druids would need to be pulled way down, a 25% multiplier on top of a 20% multiplier just creates enormous numbers, as seen. If druids need a large multiplier to get to the levels of plate tanking classes without scaling far past them, shifting in to bear form can simply increase health by a flat value (based on level), and then make the individual %'s smaller so they still scale faster, but don't end up over 10-15k ahead of the other tanks.

A small variance is acceptable - after all, different tanks lived through sunwell with some stacking stamina and others avoidance, but that was only a thousand or so HP back then, 5-10% of someone's health pool, max; not the 20-30% we're looking at now. Giving each tank a different means to reduce damage is a good thing. Ensuring that the baseline "effective health" (magical or physical) is relatively equal for each tank should be the goal. Some classes may have a slight edge in some situations vs others - but the variance should never be so much that one class has a clear, distinct advantage.

Another potential way to help equalize health, or at least "effective magical health", would be through cooldowns. Right now, Death Knights are the kings in the cooldown department, having enough to nearly Solo tank Sartharion with buffed breaths without external help. Other classes don't have many at all. They could add to each class short-cooldown abilities that reduce magical damage by percents that make up the differences in hp. Some suggested ideas would be to make Holy Shield and Shield Block (or Spell Reflect) reduce spell damage taken by a % while they're active.

Example:
Tank A has 50k HP and 5% magical mitigation

Passive 5%

Tank B has 45k HP and 15% magical mitigation

Passive 5% + Activated 10%

Magical Boss Nuke for 35k -

Hits Tank A for 66.5% of their health (33250 / 50000)

Hits Tank B for 66.1% of their health (29750 / 45000)

Another possible option is for Block and block mechanics to work on magical damage, allowing for more "effective magical health" for paladins and warriors, without needing to make drastic shifts in numbers. Numbers and talents would have to be modified to account for this, but it would be a start.

Regardless of utilizing activated abilities to reduce magical damage or more passive magical mitigation by some classes, overall health should be brought more in line. Balancing tightly for tanks with such large variances possible would be equivalant to allowing outlier dps classes to sustain 25% more DPS than their peers, at no opportunity cost.

(The following people also contributed numbers, input, and discussion on this original topic: Ciderhelm, Dots, Jamor, Jayde, Hypatia, Liar/Tyds, Veneretio, Satrina)

[Xav]

The following is a short list of common questions and concerns in response to this topic:

Q: But Sartharion is just one encounter so it doesn't matter, so why are you arguing this?

A: This one mechanic is simply an example that magnifies the problem. Any such damage, particularly magical, that is strong, and intended to be threatening to tanks in progress, will be hugely varied in threat to each individual tank. It doesn't have to be a 70k breath, it could be a 35k breath that nearly one shots every tank, but some of them are left with enough health to survive a melee swing afterwards, for example, whereas others would instantly die to the following swing.

Q: Why should Warriors and Paladins have equal health to Druids and Deathknights even though you have Block and they don't?

A: Blocking does absolutely nothing for magical damage burst because you cannot block magical damage. The only thing important there is your effective magical health (health x passive reduction x uptime on CDs).
The point is, Block can be balanced around other things like lower armor or avoidance because, like Block, avoidance and armor only help against physical burst (and even then, armor is the best stat in cases of bosses that stun you).


Q: But Warriors and Paladins have a better Shield Wall ability for burst damage!

A: True, but they are on vastly longer CDs (5 mins for Warriors and 4 mins for Paladins) so you can only use it once a fight. Just think about how much good it does Warriors/Paladins on Sarth.


Q: But if you make all health values similar wont every tank be the same?!

A: No. Just as DPS classes do damage in different ways, so can tank classes. There can be some variance in how each tank handles and survives every situation, but they don't have to be identical. A few % within another tank in every situation is reasonable.

Q: I'm an Deathknight and I think you picked a Blood spec just to inflate our health numbers! Why didn't you spec full Unholy etc?
Q: I'm a Druid and I think your gear choices are terrible! Why didn't you gem more agility, our avoidance already sucks as is. You are trying to skew the numbers!

A: For a progression fight that matters you will spec, gear and gem for whatever gives you the most EH - which is what you can see in the gear lists. That is the whole point of EH gearing; it's reliable unlike avoidance that you might prefer just because you can get away with it in the current content. Don't think this will work on progression fights.
On a related note, don't be take the gear lists as the be all end all; the point they are trying to make is to show the huge gaps in EH for different classes.

These Q+A come from our European without an account on the US side, Tyds/Liar

[Ahti]

The point is, Block can be balanced around other things like lower armor or avoidance because, like Block, avoidance and armor only help against physical burst (and even then, armor is the best stat in cases of bosses that stun you).

I question how well block can be balanced against that, even. Block scales very differently from armor mitigation and avoidance in that it's at its best against very low damage values, and its worst against very high ones. That seems like a tricky proposition for balance, to me. Nobody wants to be the tank that's great on trash and terrible on progression fights.

I think a better solution is just to give all the tanks access to both flat mitigation (block) and scaling mitigation (avoidance/armor/percentage-based-cooldowns/etc) in relatively similar amounts - there can obviously be differences, but there shouldn't be "block tanks" and "armor/hp tanks", which is effectively what we've got now. Blizzard already appears to have gone halfway down that route with Savage Defense and Unbreakable Armor absorbing flat amounts of damage, so maybe they agree.

Anyway, you guys are absolutely right that block doesn't "count" for effective health against magical damage. Nice Tanking Topic.

[Shadevarr]

Add in to shield spec magic damage is reduced by 20/40/60/80/100% of your block value.

That is my suggestion for balancing the tanks for magic damage.

[Lajjankung]

I totally agree with what Xav have posted, the health of different tank classes have gone abit out of hand.
As posted above, a fight like Sartharion who deals massive breaths, that can mainly be tanked by Deathknights atm due to their quite high health pool and cooldowns.
Blizzard don't indeed want this to happen again in the future as they said, and a good step forward would be to change the health of some tank classes.
When it comes to magical damage druids have always been one of the weakest, but due to their high health they can easly deal with it. Warriors have their defensive stance and imp def stance talent but imo its not enough, while DK's have a decent amount of health (usually more than a warrior) and some pretty nice talents and ofcourse their low timed cooldowns.

[Satrina]

So I didn't get to ninja a comment in early, but here's my personal commentary on it all.

It figures that people are going to eventually tie this back to Sartharion. Seriously, get over it. It's one encounter that can be tanked by anyone with enough planning, sure. It's more fun to tank drakes or adds anyway. When tossing this around, the last thing I cared about was whether I get to tank Sartharion 3D before I get into T8 gear.

We're looking forward here, not backward. If Ulduar is all it's cracked up to be, we will be back into the general pattern of EH for progression. This is not about just warriors, it's about everyone and how they relate to each other on content as it comes down the road. Will a warrior or paladin be able to tank everything in Ulduar if nothing changes? Yes, that's a given. However, it's undeniable that at this point that the tanks with the best EH are going to have the advantage. In the case of warriors and paladins, block is in no way sufficient to make up the difference, and that only gets more and more emphasised as stuff hits harder.

Being able to tank and being distinctly harder to heal are two different things. I hate to use history, but I'm sure many druids can relate to Shear. Yeah, some may be all LOL LOOKS GOOD ON YOU, but whatever; blame me for game design choices, that makes sense. The point is to make sure that situations like Shear never happen again, absolutely. You can argue that Sarth isn't the same as Illidan, but that's deceptive because you could always have a warrior intervene the druid tank to eat shear, and honestly, any warrior that tanked Illidan can relate a point where they missed Shear and lived just fine even at 8k health for those few seconds. The point being, you were shifting the responsibility for dealing with Shear to someone else, which is a familiar complaint here.

Anyway, Sartharion is really immaterial to this discussion. Look forward. Look at the projected stamina totals, and think about what's likely to come down the hall at you in Ulduar and beyond, and consider how historically new content gets beaten for the first time.

[nips]

Don't mean to be picky but could you do the health numbers for a frost tank aswell? I dont have the will or the skill to do it

It's a very nice overview of the classes, but alot of dk's will be speced frost or unholy leaving them with less health even on progression fights and i'm not even sure if everyone will be stacking stam since avoidance is such a strong stat for dk's. As an example i would never put 225health on my chest over 22 def even on progression fights unless each boss in ulduar is like sarth (which would be silly).

Not trying to derail the tread just saying if the boss does mostly meledamage then reaching 77.4 avoidance etc would give dk's 12 sec dmgimmunity on fights and that can be just as big lifesaver as a crapload of stam(patches last 5% comes to mind).

[kolben]

I enjoyed the read, it seemed very well thought out.

All four tanking classes are going to have to be brought within a small margin of difference from each other. That means very similar armor, health, physical mitigation, magic mitigation, avoidance, and DPS/TPS. This really hurts no one if it's done properly, and is something Blizzard should have had the foresight to correct before WotLK went retail.

I'll add that through the how we've always killed new bosses lens, the bosses of the past were designed with a well geared warrior tank in mind. I can't be alone in thinking that the new model might be have been built around a well geared death knight tank.

Will be following this with interest.

[Ariedan]

Excellent topic. My fear of paladins and warriors being inferior for difficult progression content is something I've been chewing on for a while. If Ulduar is every bit as difficult as everyone's chocking it up to be, all the fights aren't going to be predictable physical damage- there are sure to be some Malygos-esque, unmitigatable, burst-magic bosses. Of which scares me to no end.

[Muffin Man]

I don't know Paladins, so I'll just speak on warriors.

I remember when 3.0 was in development one of the things we kept hearing was how Shield Block was going to be a mini-shield wall. Shield Block has been relegated to being a way to get a big SS. Even if content wasn't 'so trivial', is shield block really that great for survivability? I guess it depends on boss design, but so far it doesn't seem anything special survivability wise (at least when I need it). Also, shield wall helps against magic damage... shield block is still useless if you see magic coming at you. And spell reflect doesn't work on raid bosses even as a way to absorb damage.

Seems like some buffs to warrior specific abilites (related to our shield) could help bridge the EH gap.

I'm sure something could be worked around Holy Shield to help Pallies, but I'll let them speak for themselves.

[Gromtar]

How about boosting resistances of the classes with lower EH? Surely not to a point where you resist 50% or more without any resistance equip.

[Darksend]

Also, keep in mind that when savage defense comes out druid EH is taking a huge hit. If the numbers GC posted hold true, I am going from 34K armor to 28K armor.

Now, take two of the situations xav mentioned (example: Stun on Kalecgos, Confounding+Crushes on Twins). In both those situations we lose out with savage defense, granted you cannot block either during this, but they are taking something away and in those cases there is no way for what they are giving us back to be active.

So blizzard is already starting to level the field as far as druids.

Also, i would gladly accept glyph of barkskin, increasing the cooldown by 3 minutes and the damage reduction by 30%.

[Kojiyama]

I was happy to be able to participate in this discussion before it was posted, and am looking forward to some similarly well-rounded discussion on the matter as the previous two tanking topics have encouraged.

I've posted quite a bit on this matter on the EJ forums of late, and feel very strongly that the large gap in HP will make balancing and progression an uneven affair at best.

Certainly, the answer is not just 'nerf Druids'--nobody wants that as the magical solution. I play with a lot of Druid buddies, and they'd be pretty pissed at me if that's what I was suggesting.

Quite simply, however, the capability to block simply does not outweigh the impact of effective health on progression raiding.

One may argue that, "you don't know what the encounters will be like," but there are some general principles of tanking dynamics that only change very little from age to age. Those participating in this conversation are probably people who have been tanking for as long as they have played WoW--and, most possibly, longer than that--and there are some issues which we find to be rather evident as eventual problems.

There have been countless suggestions in recent weeks and months as to how things could be changed to allow for a level playing field--and many of those suggestions are equally valid. The important part of things is that the issue is brought up and that it is, hopefully, viewed as a problem that needs solving.

[Fetzie]

Personally I like the idea of "blocking" magical attacks like

when you take damage from a magic attack, the damage is reduced by x*shield block value. How much that would need to be I dont know, I havent tanked much big stuff (spiderwing+sartharion zero drakes, both 10 man and archavon ofc) so I'm not sure about exact numbers, but I've heard about 30k damage from breaths, so it would need to be at least 2-3 times SBV to be noticed.

[Halgreg]

I've been recently frustrated with this as a warrior in that I feel we simply don't have enough health. I've recently gone back to the old idea of stacking stam to get that buffer which makes it easier on Healers. What more do you want of a meat shield other than more meat?

The alternative to baselining health is giving us similar magic affecting abilities similar to our core warrior abilities. Give us magic affecting features to Demoralizing Shout (lowers enemy Spell Power), Shield Block (Blocks Magic Damage), Sunder Armor (lowers enemy Magic resistance), Thunderclap (increases magic cast time), and Toughness (adds Magic resistance).

...right....or just give us more meat! In the meantime, I'll just continue ballooning my EH in preparation for future progression.

[Darksend]

Quite simply, however, the capability to block simply does not outweigh the impact of effective health on progression raiding.

One may argue that, "you don't know what the encounters will be like," but there are some general principles of tanking dynamics that only change very little from age to age. Those participating in this conversation are probably people who have been tanking for as long as they have played WoW--and, most possibly, longer than that--and there are some issues which we find to be rather evident as eventual problems.

What tier do you project warriors having 102.6% block/dodge/parry/miss and block will once again be counted as mitigation in your normal tanking gear if at all?


Maybe savage defense will allow blizzard to lower druids hp, but take away our armor and take away our HP and you might as well just take away bear form and make feral a cat only tree

i know we are talking about health here, but counting miss
chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x 47%
chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x 48%
chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x 46%
chardev.org - a World of Warcraft Character Planner - x 37.6% (make sure to click on bear form for the extra 10%)

Blizzard may be looking at these numbers and saying, well druids need this extra health to compensate. But as i already stated, you cannot avoid during the situations mentions and the same goes for magic. Up druid avoidance some and lower our HP.

[Soulcutter]

Tank's ability to survive a fight is a critical aspect of most encounters right now and presumably nothing will change in the upcoming content. That being said, hands down one of the greatest factors contributing to survival is how much hp the tank has. Thanks to diminishing returns, the amount of dodge/parry and even block % simply does not contribute as much to survival when comparing evenly geared tanks of different classes as health. In general not counting special cooldown abilities, most tanks have equivalent amounts of mitigation yet highly variable amounts of health.

If I were to take a random sample of experienced WoW players and show them just the numerical stats of different tanks without letting them see what gear they are actually wearing and ask them to choose the tank they think is the best, the one with the greatest amount of hp will be the one selected as the best by most players. Health has become the acceptable blind litmus test for how good a tank is, this is obviously not always the accurate but if we continue down the current path without Blizzard stepping in to do something about it then it will become the truth.

What needs to happen is either narrow the gap in hp between classes or reduce the diminishing returns penalty on dodge and parry.

[Naaven]

My favorite proposed solution is a change to Spell Reflect. As it stands it's almost entirely useless in the raidvironment (officially coined). Add the appropriate amount of magic mitigation and you've got a small change that would correct a serious problem. It sticks to the "shield tank" ideal, it seems like it's on an appropriately medium-sized cd, and it should be a small/subtle enough change that there couldn't be too much outcry from the non-shieldies.

[jere]

A curiosity on the paladin/warrior comparison for health: You mention that you would like to see all tanks within a few % of each other. Before any of the proposed changes, paladins will have, by the projections in this thread, only 3% more health at tier 10 (like you said, not exact numbers, but a good approximation none the less). Not that I don't like the changes you propose (though adding a static health value to counteract base health is a really bad idea in my opinion). What is the thinking behind changing paladin health mechanics? Is it a dislike for the scaling differences in general? The end result numbers seem pretty close. Shoot, by your stated desired endstate, paladins and warriors are already within desired bounds at T10 level. Or is it that you want the health numbers exactly equal?

Mind you, I don't mind having the same scaling as long as we can accommodate the base health difference and the lack of equal ability to stam stack, but I am trying to figure out why you would need to change it if it already fits in your model of "within a few percent of each other" before your proposed changes. Not to mention the proposed model doesn't account for the lack of pure stat stacking in the ranged slot for paladins, so it really wouldn't equalize unless you did something to account for that (you could probably work it into whatever method you use to handle the base health difference though).

[Naaven]

Also, while this is kind of an ancillary concern, and definitely not as applicable to the "cutting edge progression" guilds, the fact remains that hp level is what the average joe uses to determine who's the better tank. I would think that since Blizz is trying (appropriately or not, but I think the former) to cater to the average joe, that big hp difference puts the warrior tank at a big disadvantage.

I'm thinking specifically of <random guild name> who receives 2 raiding apps from 2 tanks. One has 40k hp, the other has 45k. How many of those GM's have the appreciation for tanking theory necessary to determine who's the better geared dude?