Ghostcrawler had this to say in regards to DK armor nerfage –

As I explained, we compared DK armor, health and avoidance to other tanks, and found that the DKs ended up in better shape than other tanks even if you totally ignored cooldowns. When you consider cooldowns, things are even more skewed.

I just didn’t want potentially disgruntled players to perpetuate a myth that DK armor got nerfed because their cooldowns were too good. DK armor got nerfed because their armor was too good. Many players (some DKs even) argue that the cooldowns are still too good.

The short version of how we got there was that some glyphs and set bonuses ended up being better or worse than we imagined, block ended up mitigating a lot less damage than we envisioned (before the Ulduar bosses actually existed), and because effective health ended up being way more important to progression than any other aspect of tanking.

I’m sure there’s a metric ton of DK’s out there who are outright pissed at this. To them I say, suck it up Princess. Mind you, Rokk is wearing the Hell out of quest greens and those aren’t getting him killed yet. He might get the stink-eye from the androgynous Blood Elves, but that’s like having Richard Simmons and his legwarmers get all up in your grill about the shirt you’re wearing. That’s when you take your Volkswagon-sized Mace and pound his head into some location south of his belt line.

Consequently, Ghostcrawler did have a thing or two to say about Paladin gear –

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Q u o t e:
I feel that this crusade against Paladin Healers is unjust and if you could take another step back, take your dev team, and run Ulduar on some premades (given everyone knows how to play correctly, but honestly I sometimes wonder with some of the patches you guys roll out) then you will see that each class has a specific role. While not all roles are quite as pigeon-holed as a Holy Paladin, I do believe that this is as about even as you will let us become.

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Oh, come on. All of these “If you’d just play my class, you’d understand” comments are a bit silly. We designed your class. We know how it works.

The issue that started all this was paladins saying “We don’t want MP5 on our gear.” The designers designed you assuming you’d have MP5 on your gear — I know; I was there. If you are effective without having MP5 then it probably means you are going to be too powerful at some point because you are able to replace a less-powerful stat with a more powerful one without missing the loss of the less-powerful one.

Imagine you could prune every less-useful stat off your gear. Imagine you could trade in armor, Stamina and everything else for just spell power and crit. Do you think you’d blow away the other healers? I do. That’s more extreme than giving up MP5 for more crit, but carries similar risks from a game-balance perspective.

Healers should care about Spirit (druids and priests) and MP5 (paladins and shamans). It’s fine to care about Int and crit too, but if you’re ignoring Spirit and MP5 and aren’t missing them, then something isn’t working right.

Sometimes this guy knows a thing or two about a thing or two.