It's not magic damage in general, but AoE damage. Our talent Predatory Insticts is being changed in WotLK to provide a flat 15% reduction in damage from AoE attacks. Coupled with 12% general damage reduction from Protector of the Pack and we'll be taking less than 75% damage from AoE attacks (not sure if this includes abilities like Whirlwind, but it certainly includes a lot of magic damage attacks that bosses tend to have).

The only way to balance the multiplier is to reduce it to the point where you need to stack full leather + armor jewelry in every slot to match plate, or to not do it at all and get rid of the stuff. The first option chains us to armor jewelry with no upgrade path, and the second frees us to use DPS jewelry. Anything in between makes the armor on jewelry completely imbalanced for us. It's a bad solution.

I have suggested a block-esque mechanic that scales with AP. It could proc on a dodge (scales with dodge, Agi) on an Omen of Clarity proc (scales with haste), on a Maul crit (scales with Agi, crit), on a string of connected hits with no intervening misses (scales with expertise, hit), or some other proc-element. I understand that they are reluctant to add this, but it's a better solution than trying to make straight mitigation + hp pools compensate in some way for the higher avoidance and the block mechanic of warriors and paladins. They are having the same problems with the survivability of DKs and working to fix it also.

As a matter of fact, one great solution here would be to make Imp. Leader of the Pack scale with AP instead of with HP for bears only (and scale better than the party version.) This would "replace" the block mechanic and the additional avoidance of plate-tanks with superior self-healing and scale with haste, agi, crit, and AP. Envision the following talents in those slots:

Leader of the Pack - 0/1

While in Cat or Dire Bear Form, your raid and party members within 45 yards heal themselves for 4% of their life total when they critically hit with a melee or ranged attack. This healing effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds. In addition, you gain 6% of your maximum mana when you benefit from this heal.

Improved Leader of the Pack - 0/2

Your Leader of the Pack aura also grants 2.5%/5% critical strike chance and, while in Dire Bear Form, your cooldown on the healing proc is reduced by 1.5/3 seconds. In addition, you heal an extra 5/10% of your AP each time you benefit from this heal.

This would basically replace the block mechanic and additional avoidance by letting us do a lot more of our own healing, reducing the amount necessary on bears over time while not making us any more able to survive a worst-case scenario (which is the current reason that bears on Beta are so imba.) I think I'll go push for a change of this nature.

Yes, it makes a LOT more sense. Plus it could solve the HP problem without any change to our bear form multiplier, just because we'll be using jewelry with less stamina on it than the tanking jewelry, making the bearform multipliers that increase our scaling more necessary.

I'd rather not have to worry about it entirely, replace our scaling with armor with scaling with a DPS stat, and leave all the defense items to plate-users. It's much more elegant and would solve all the problems of the past 2 years.

The problem with armor jewelry still exists. Look at the trinket slots -- from ilvls 200 to 226, there is one armor trinket. That means at the end of Naxx 25, with full 213- or 226-epics in every other slot, I'll still be chained to using a blue trinket in every other slot. THAT'S BAD.

That's a problem with your guild then. There is ample tanking plate and DPS plate and mail to go around and they should use that. This is a loot system question though and they shouldn't design a class around it.

I think the issue is that with us taking 75% of damage from all AoE magic attacks, they feel a little constricted in the design of bosses who use that style of damage (i.e. dragons) as a major part of their damage output on tanks. Combine it with a 15% HP advantage and voila! Problems abound.

There is still that perception but I'm not worried about it. All tanks do hilarious damage while tanking now and the big numbers should compensate for any whining in that department. Just ask warriors who are revenging for 2 rage and 2.5k damage or whatever.

Kazanir already did, some time ago.

However, I'm not sure I agree that such a solution would help Death Knights. I'll state right now that I know almost nothing about them, but I do know that they get an armor bonus like we do (though much lower, obviously). Making the armor an equip bonus will prevent them from getting a bonus as well, and armor appears to be a major problem for DK's at the moment. From an itemization standpoint the easiest solution is just to remove the bear form armor modifier from non-leather gear slots. That way plate tanks can still get some armor on jewelery slots, DK's can get a little bonus to make up for the lack of a shield, and we don't hold onto ilvl 200 blue trinkets into Icecrown. I don't know if this is easy to implement from a coding perspective, but if they can keep armor enchants from getting the bear form multiplier I think it would be feasible to do this too.

Exactly. Blizzard is well aware of this issue, and have taken some steps to address the situation (Shamans now recieve 1 AP from int, warriors recieve extra AP from armor, etc). In the end it will still come down to itemization. I personally believe that many mail and plate users will still prefer leather pieces for their melee dps gear, simply because they're going to be itemized better for them.

Blizzard are not going implement a different armor multiplier for leather and non-leather pieces. It's a convoluted and non-consistent system, and it's just not going to happen. The solution will either be itemization (itemize certain pieces with less armor, remove armor from certain pieces) or to lower the armor multiplier of bear form.