tanks are just dps with less interesting rotations who push taunt every now and then and use mitigation on tankbusters
in all honesty, they've clearly settled on the kinds of encounters and the overall combat system they want,. it doesn't really anymore resemble a classical RPG style (manage threat, manage mana, etc) and it's now in favor of something more action-y, with rigid rotations and you managing resources that are class-specific and couched around cooldowns. that's fine, except that tanks and healers don't fit into this mold that well the way they've built the encounters.
I get that they tried to standardize some of the tanking stuff to play better with raid buffs, but now there's less to really manage. On a warrior, you can... what, try to cap rage and try to make sure that you cap infuriate charges after you've done bungamode and some cleaves during the buff window? GNB and DRK can also pool resources/cds for that window (get fucked paladins, you can save... your one ogcd with charges?), and that's all the more optimization you've really got. Healers can snapshot their DoTs, wowzers. Scholar can what, pool AF stacks to try to squeeze 9 EDs into a window if they're standing completely still and someone else will use ogcds on the tank? then tanks go 1-2-3 and healers go 1-1-1
Both need more active things to do, but current design on boss encounters doesn't really give them much room. If you try to make healing into a more-active minigame where you could, say, combo heals to get more potency out of them... the damage is too sporadic to necessitate it. If you try to bring threat back as a concept, the culture of parsetrannies means you'll have someone choosing damage over threat every single time, and you'll get even more button bloat despite your core rotation being an unchanging 1-2-3.
Further, dumbing a whole lot of shit down to 1-2-3 (if that) combos has given them a real windfall in the overall playerbase, many of whom are still struggling to master said 1-2-3. Or even the idea of using AoE skills. They aren't gonna make them any more interesting or complicated any time soon. So tanking and healing are roles where you basically need to get some kind of compensation from your friends to play, unless you're more in it to chill and don't really care about being that engaged or having much to do. But I think fewer and fewer people see raiding as a social hobby to chill with friends over, and more and more see it as a stand-in for gainful employment.
Genuinely still not sure how you're supposed to even find people who are even remotely stable human beings to hang with in the first place. It sure ain't like the old days where the football team would raid black temple after practice, that's for sure.
