Tanking: Then And Now

I've been thinking about class balance lately as I look at my own raid team and I thought back to my raiding career over the last couple of years. This is going to be a bit long and rambling, but hopefully productive. :-)

When I started raiding, I was very good friends with a Holy Paladin who healed my bear through all the TBC heroics, Kara and Z'A. A Holy Paladin/Bear combo was pretty beastly in TBC raiding. Bears had massive armor and health (more than any other class) and Holy Paladins could keep spot healing them all day long. Back then, we were the only class that would eat Crushing Blows (unless one of the shield tanks missed keeping a buff up) and the Paladin would just land a big heal to cover it. We could keep a boss going till enrage fairly easily. During this time my tanking partners rotated a lot but I raided a lot with another paladin tank (who were strictly AoE or main tanks and made terrible off-tanks just due to the amount of agro that Holy Shield generated.)