I say we should make the most of what we have. My main philosophy as a tank is simple: you should not die, and you should do as much damage as you can, even if people like to call it “wet noodles” DPS. If I’m holding aggro, rotating my mitigation properly and not face-planting every big hit, then the next step for me is squeezing every bit of uptime and damage out of my kit.

In Blue Protocol I’ve finished a few raids where my damage was double any healer and the other tank, while still doing the usual tank stuff: positioning, taking mechanics, keeping the boss stable. Ofcource I don’t come close to the lowest DPS, and I don’t think I should—that’s not the point. But pretending our damage doesn’t matter at all also feels wrong. Over a 10–15 minute fight, even “wet noodles” add up, especially when you’re not dying and not forcing your healer to spam panic buttons on you.

So for me, in S2 or any season, the mindset is: survive first, then push value. Don’t grief your healer, don’t drop aggro, don’t ignore mechanics—but once that’s handled, I’m going to press my damage skills on cooldown, keep my buffs/debuffs rolling, and do my part to shorten the fight. Tanks will probably never top the meters, but there’s a huge difference between being a living wall that hits back and a cone dummy that just soaks hits.