It wasn’t outstanding for everyone. In fact it’s an excellent example.
Here’s the history of tanking design in WoW:
- Originally, there were just Warriors.
- In BC, Blizzard brought Druids & Paladins up to snuff.
NOTE: Tanking was VERY different back then. Instead of attacking to generate resources for defense, you got hit and that generated resources to attack.
- In Wrath, Blizzard added DK’s in all 3 flavors.
- In Cata, Blizzard consolidated DK tanking into Blood, and really liked the new “active mitigation” model which flipped tanking upside down.
- Blizzard re-designed Paladin tanks to bring them better in line with active mitigation design.
- Blizzard re-designed Warrior tanks to bring them better in line with active mitigation design.
And 8. Blizzard added Monks.
Wait a second… where’s step 7?
That’s right. The Druid re-design. Which never happened.
Blizzard tried making Druids a “dodge tank” instead, in a cheap and half-heareted effort which was a garbage design that didn’t work. They tried saving it in Mists by slapping a 20% damage reduction on it but even that was useless so they had to go back to the drawing board in Legion. Problem is, they then threw out the Legion design.
Guardian is still sitting as a boring and undeveloped spec to this day. They prop it up with overtuned math and overpowered items like the Ursoc’s legendary, but the spec sucks.
Why does it suck?
Because they took what should have been its redesign (in line with what happened to the other tanks) and made Monks instead.