#46 - April 2, 2012, 12:57 a.m.
Maul is a DPS alternative to Savage Defense, and is comparable to Heroic Strike. You shouldn't need Maul to maintain threat (which as I said above may not be the case on beta right now, but that's the intent).
In what situations would you want DPS instead of mitigation? There are several: Maybe you're an off tank and taking little damage. Maybe you want to solo as Guardian. Maybe you're running a dungeon you out-gear. Maybe a new add just arrived, and it's important to get one swing in before it heads to the healer, assuming you can live without SD for a few seconds. (In that example, you're not spamming Maul to fight to maintain threat; you're just establishing initial aggro, which we still want in the game.)
To be honest, we considered pulling Heroic Strike and Maul from tanks, just because we thought they might be a trap. But we decided there were enough situations where more DPS might be desirable. To use my previous examples, inexperienced tank will use Maul too much. Intermediate tanks might forsake Maul altogether. But expert tanks will know when they should use it.
You can try to keep up Savage Defense as much as you can on challenging content, and the best tanks will, but I would still consider when to use it. I would not save it for a big boss smash that isn't going to land for 20 more seconds (because chances are you can use it now and then later), but if one was going to land in 8 seconds, it might be worth holding Savage Defense for then.