it really doesn’t affect survivability etc at all?
Almost all damage mitigation/survivability comes from our stamina/hp and abilities.
Either make all classes able to wear any armor or actually make the type of armour play a significance in its role.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the stats on the armor literally dictate varied statistics to enhance our survivability.
Ya but every armour type has the same stat types so there’s nothing unique to a certain type
I’m wearing a leather helm because it dropped and was better than the plate helm I had. 
(or so I thought)
But it doesn’t. This toon wears leather and receives a 16.7% damage reduction from my armor, while my lower geared warrior wearing plate receives a 34% damage reduction.
Class survivability is tuned around armor type, but there is still a difference.
My ret paladin feels squishier than some of my leather and cloth users. It’s so dumb.
You do know you take a performance hit for not wearing the proper armor type, right?
I didn’t think it was still a thing until the other day when simming my DK.
Even though the leather pants had the correct stats and was 20 ilvl points higher, it was still a pretty large DPS loss.
I think I went from a 276 to a 350. I didnt sim it though.
It’s one of the few elements left in the game to remind you that this was once an RPG.
You’ve lost 250+ str tho and the extra armor plus your plate bonus is diminished.
Those secondary stats do not make up for that.
Won’t matter to level though.
Check your armor skills in your spell book.
Yeah, Raidbots will even have a warning banner down at the bottom telling you about it if you try to sim with the wrong armor type.
OK… thanks. I will replace my mismatched items when I can! I will probably feel much stronger. 
Luckily I just level and dont group up with others. 
It might say that but it doesn’t make as much difference as it should
If you take a rogue and warrior with the same HP in their separate gear and have have another character do the same abilities on them while those 2 just stand there and don’t use damage reduction or healing abilities… they will both melt at almost the same pace
The plate should offer a significantly noticeable damage reduction over a cloth or leather wearer
But because of all the self healing and mitigation etc abilities classes have, the armour type becomes moot really fast
How much should it affect? Should a rogue do 40% less damage to a warrior by comparison to each other?
It is mostly cosmetic, and one of the best parts of cosmetics so it should never go away. Armor type only really matters in games where it affects your speed. All plate and a shield will slow you down, but you take less damage, that sort of thing. We don’t have those mechanics in WoW so it’s mostly for show.
Functionally speaking it really doesn’t actually make any difference. Most damage you take in dungeons and raids, and even a large portion of the world, is magic damage, which ignores armor. Even against physical damage, the difference is quite small.
Like, 90% of a class’s survivability comes from their passives like, say, my Soul Leech, and active defenses like Dark Pact. That, and a buttload of HP and self healing.
But the moment you step into a raid or dungeon that armor doesn’t matter at all, really. Everything is gonna kill you in one or two hits there anyway.
Go get whacked by a boss doing psychical damage in cloth, than do it again in armor and tell me who took less damage
And then make it’s impact upon movement. I would love to see one of your full plate wearing fools trying to jump, run or swim 
It used to, mages would be physically hit harder, now everyone gets hit the same. I dislike this change.
It all goes back to the homogenization that started in mid to late WOTLK. You can thank Greg Street (ghost crawler) for pushing all that garbage.