DPS and Healers have both historically valued throughput stats. DPS is all about throughput, to the extent that it's really the only thing (after hit/expertise, though that's going away) they care about when it comes to gear. Healers gain a great benefit from greater throughput, as when their heals come stronger, they can cast fewer of them or more mana-efficient ones, though Healers also have Spirit to take into consideration, which gives them longevity.
Tanks have always been about survival, though. And survival is a different beast than throughput. Arguably, tanks are concerned more with reducing the throughput of the enemy attacking them, and until Warlords, tanks have done so with different stats. Before Mists, a tank's attacks were pretty much just there to maintain threat (though Death Knights got on the "active mitigation" train an expansion early.) The line between survival stat and throughput stat has blurred a little, but in Warlords, it will be utterly eliminated. Dodge and Parry will no longer be found on gear, and tanks will now be taking on only stats that also provide some throughput boost. That said, while in most cases these stats will be more obviously throughput-ty, some will come the other way around, being more obviously defensive.
In Warlords, there will be six stats that tanks look for beyond the standard Strength/Agility and Stamina: Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, Multistrike, Readiness, and Bonus Armor. Let's look at each of these stats and see how they affect tanks.
Mastery:
Mastery is already pretty well-suited to various tasks because the very idea of Mastery is that it does different things for different specs. Since its introduction in Cataclysm, this has made it quite good as a stat for gear that is useful to both tanks and DPS, because the Mastery can provide, say, extra block chance for a tank and bonus attacks on a DPS.
So the only real tweak to Mastery is that, to keep it in line with other tank stats, it will now also boost one's attack power by a percent.
Readiness:
Readiness, like Mastery, is a stat that lends itself to being good for just about every spec. Readiness will boost the recovery rate of tanking cool downs, though I don't know if it will provide any offensive benefit, which does make it something of an odd man out (unless they do something like giving Protection Paladins back Avenging Wrath, and having Readiness affect it.)
Bonus Armor:
Bonus Armor will be the only tank-exclusive stat. But even though it's only for people who just want survivability, it will, like Mastery, boost attack power, but in this case by an amount proportional (perhaps even equal) to the armor it grants.
Haste:
Now we get into the trickier territory. For some tanks, the benefit of haste is already obvious. Death Knights and Monks recover their resources more quickly with more haste, and Paladins can use their Holy Power-generating abilities more often (which amounts to the same.) But the two Rage tanks need a little more incentive to make haste look good. Warriors will be gaining their own version of Paladins' Sanctity of Battle - theirs being called Headlong Rush, which is a pretty elegant solution. Likewise, haste will now lower the cooldown of Mangle for Druids, so it looks like the Paladin model is being spread across the various classes that need it.
Critical Strike:
The first major way that crit is being made useful to tanks is that among the three plate tanks, all will be getting the new version of Riposte. Crit Rating will now convey parry chance to these three specs. Likewise, Warriors will still benefit from the crit-induced enrages. Monks already had the benefit of getting Elusive Brew stacks from their crits, and Guardian Druids gain, I believe, Tooth and Claw as well as Rage from their crits through Primal Fury.
Multistrike:
Multistrike is a totally new stat, and one that does not obviously lend itself to tank survival, so every class needs some kind of baked-in benefit.
Death Knights will now gain their Scent of Blood procs through Multistrike.
Druids will gain extra max health as they Multistrike with auto attacks, Lacerate bleeds, or Mangle.
Monks now gain their Gift of the Ox healing spheres through auto-attack Multistrikes, as opposed to crits.
Paladins now have a chance to effectively Multistrike on receiving heals, with a chance for 30% extra healing based on one's Multistrike rating.
Warriors gain a self-heal through Multistrikes, which refreshes the duration with each Multistrike auto-attack.
Gearing Defensively:
Overall, it looks like there won't be a single stat (other than Spirit, but we won't be picking that up now, will we?) that will be utterly useless to us in 6.0. Certainly, some stats will be better than others (if it is mathematically possible for them to all be equal, I doubt it's something Blizzard could easily achieve,) but I think that the philosophy here is good. One might even find that certain stat weights benefit different styles of tanking (that said, there's bound to be one proven "better" than the other - these days you could imagine a Mastery-heavy Paladin who has good timing, mitigating all the biggest boss hits with super-effective ShotR's, but the vast majority of them will go for higher uptime with haste.)
While overall it might not be a problem, I wonder how this will all effect tank DPS. Vengeance has been a pain in the ass, but it's also been something of an equalizer. If one tank favors, say, Crit and Bonus Armor for survival, but Haste and Multistrike for threat, are they going to be at a disadvantage if another tank gets the biggest benefit to both threat and survival through the same preferred stats? Readiness might not confer any benefit to threat, and even as they've eliminated Haste breakpoints, Readiness seems like a stat that will definitely have breakpoints (either you have enough Shield Barriers for every Deep Breath or you don't.) Still, I think we're heading in the right direction, and I'm excited to be able to just switch out my sword-and-board for a warhammer and be ready to go Ret.
EDIT:
Not really related to gear, but all tank stances are getting a buff, raising threat generation by 900%, as opposed to the current 600%. They really want us holding off the DPS/heals. I remember when you got like, only 200% threat.
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