Protection — We want more tanks in the game. Main tanks. We think it’s fun to have a diversity of players and see how different spells, abilities and class mechanics get used to solve problems. A Protadin with the right skill and gear should be able to tank any fight in the game. Previously, we tried to push Prot into the offtank and AE tank roles. While your abilities are still really well suited for AE in particular, overall our philosophy has changed and we want you to be able to do anything the other tanks do. Note that this means other tanks will get better at AE tanking though. Prot represents a special challenge when not tanking because you can both heal and do dps and some players want to do either. Or both. One final comment, that you have already seen, is we want you to gear like a warrior: collect Strength and Stamina and use tanking weapons instead of caster weapons.
Emphasis is mine, something I have been professing for some time now ever since I got my hands on Hammer of the Righteous which got a change in the last patch before the current one. The tooltip caught up to the change which tied the damage of the ability with the DPS of the weapon and not the speed making it desirable for fast tank weapons. That are plentiful in Wrath of the Lich King and current content come 3.0.2 when it launches.
