And the nerf bat swings around....

We knew it was going to come, we just thought it was going to be the Ardent Defender getting nerfed.  This is Ghostcrawler's response to a borderline troll post:

We don't think "high threat tanks" is a fun niche for the game. We don't mind some variation depending on the specific situation, but paladin OTs were accidentally pulling off of MTs an awful lot. That isn't a L2P issue. That's just the numbers being off and frustrating everyone. 

We didn't want to nerf threat until community perception had turned around that paladins could survive while tanking hard modes. 

Try out the hard Coliseum fights (once available) or the tougher ones in Ulduar and let us know how it feels.

First off, I think the first statement of the first paragraph is plain wrong.  Maybe it's subjective.  I like the fact that I can out-threat my DK MT, if I want to.  I like the fact that my DPS'ers aren't threat capped on Hodir, in fact it's probably how we get hard mode in 10-man every week.

Admittedly, I've pulled off the MT accidently.  He'll say he's grabbing a mob back from me over Vent implying that I taunted, when in fact I hadn't.  But, I think that's my own fault for not paying attention, and it doesn't happen often.  The only time I can see this maybe being a problem is in a fight like Thorim.  When the tanks are trading back and forth after each Unbalacing Strike, if the one with the debuff doesn't watch his threat and let other tank hold Thorim while it wears off, it will basically mean a dead tank.  Thorim just hits hard, and his buff/your debuff is basically a sunder on steroids.  But this is an edge case.  I can't think of any other fights where more threat is a bad thing.  If you're functioning as the offtank, it's a matter of finesse and control to make sure that the MT maintains control of the boss or mob he's tanking.

Hot-headed rant out of the way, I can see Blizzard's point of view, in that they want to make sure that the knuckle-draggers can play too, without screwing up the raid for the other 9 or 24 people.  More on this to come.  I need to look deeper at the details (not that I'm a hardened theorycrafter), but ultimately, once the change is implemented, it may not be that big of a nerf.  We will have to see.