How far can you tank in dps spec & weapons?

[kail]

If you don't use def stance mobs will flok the healer after the first heal, unless you CC and kill stuff one-by-one. I still struggle with not pulling aggro from warrior tanks in BRS, i can't imagine them not using def stance.

SS and WW should keep the mobs on an Arms tank alone.

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Been tanking every dungeon with 1h/shield as fury raid specc. Just usual pre raid tanking stuff, nothing too fancy. The biggest "problem" is the threat, specially on large pulls 4-5 mobs. Charge in (if you can) demo shout > whirlwind > go def stance and just do as much threat as your rage allows.

Battle shout tends to be the more secure AoE threat generator, unless your party constantly stays out of range.

[Cede]

Nearly 100 posts and most of them is people with no idea what they are talking about yet here they are.

I play either 19/31/0 or 17/33/0 and I've tanked every single encounter in the game without a shield and at 40-55 defense and I've never once died to a boss. The only time I put a shield on is Rag, I'm wearing FR gear so there's no point dual welding, and Garr adds, we burn Garr then the adds get AE'd down but we never banish.

The single biggest defensive talent in the game is in the fury tree and a properly spec'd prot doesn't have access to it, Imp Demo Shout. If you ever see a tank getting hammered it is because they don't demo shout, they are just bad so spec won't matter, not because they aren't spec'd prot. There are zero defensive talents in prot after the 2nd tier's armor talent and that talent is a pretty shit mitigation talent anyway.

You can DW Fury the entire game, learn what you need to use a shield on, almost nothing, and drink an armor potion instead, Greater Stoneshield is 2k armor which is on par with your shield. Get a pair of slow weapons, school mace or Mass of McGowan are good MH weapons and I'm playing around with different OHs still, and in dungeons remember to stance dance to WW and you will do considerably more damage than a normal Mirrah's/shield prot warrior.

The main reason to be fury is you actually want to play the game. Rage gen in a 5 man with a shield is so slow people 15 years ago used to strip off some armor to take more damage and generate more threat. Don't do that, instead just DW; even if you are impale prot you should just DW for more rage. When you get more rage you can put out more sunders, WWs, HSs, and cleaves which means more threat for your DPS to go harder.

I'll probably go back to Shield Slam with T2 block rating gear but until then there is no point, and I may just stay fury and just go back to defiance fury.

[munkeyinorbit]

Try not to confuse jealously with disdain.

It's not jealousy or disdain. The correct word is envy. I should know, I came 4rd in my English Literature class.

[tikcol]

I healed an arms warrior wielding a staff through ST and we weren't particularly high level for it. He was smart about abilities and knew his class pretty well so that helped a lot.

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Some asshat streamer getting carried through content by his mouthbreathing fans isn't really indicative of any kind of norm.

If he gets carried by mouthbreathers does that make him an assbreather? Seriously. I don't care what your inclinations are towards streamers but it is a fact that good guilds have warriors tanking in fury spec and idiot guilds have tanks full of defense/prot spec yelling in discord to slow down dps.

In my guild all casters start pre-casting on every single mob and bosses. Threat isn't ever an issue.

[Storfan]

Adding to my previous post: Last night I maintanked onyxia in 17/34 cookie cutter fury spec + mix of fury/prot/fire-res gear + defstance spaming heroic strike, bloodthirst, sunder and revenge.

This was with DMT buffs, onybuff and regular raid consumables.

[Xothene]

Nearly 100 posts and most of them is people with no idea what they are talking about yet here they are.

I play either 19/31/0 or 17/33/0 and I've tanked every single encounter in the game without a shield and at 40-55 defense and I've never once died to a boss. The only time I put a shield on is Rag, I'm wearing FR gear so there's no point dual welding, and Garr adds, we burn Garr then the adds get AE'd down but we never banish.

The single biggest defensive talent in the game is in the fury tree and a properly spec'd prot doesn't have access to it, Imp Demo Shout. If you ever see a tank getting hammered it is because they don't demo shout, they are just bad so spec won't matter, not because they aren't spec'd prot. There are zero defensive talents in prot after the 2nd tier's armor talent and that talent is a pretty shit mitigation talent anyway.

You can DW Fury the entire game, learn what you need to use a shield on, almost nothing, and drink an armor potion instead, Greater Stoneshield is 2k armor which is on par with your shield. Get a pair of slow weapons, school mace or Mass of McGowan are good MH weapons and I'm playing around with different OHs still, and in dungeons remember to stance dance to WW and you will do considerably more damage than a normal Mirrah's/shield prot warrior.

The main reason to be fury is you actually want to play the game. Rage gen in a 5 man with a shield is so slow people 15 years ago used to strip off some armor to take more damage and generate more threat. Don't do that, instead just DW; even if you are impale prot you should just DW for more rage. When you get more rage you can put out more sunders, WWs, HSs, and cleaves which means more threat for your DPS to go harder.

I'll probably go back to Shield Slam with T2 block rating gear but until then there is no point, and I may just stay fury and just go back to defiance fury.

I'm going to reroll war soon, may i ask to post some intels about your trees/gears you're using in leveling please ? Because i want to tank but i feel really lost with this fury tanking meta. Thanks

[Storfan]

I'm going to reroll war soon, may i ask to post some intels about your trees/gears you're using in leveling please ? Because i want to tank but i feel really lost with this fury tanking meta. Thanks

Use stam/agi plate pieces and preferable some +hit gear. use 2x weapons, stay in defensive stance and spam Sunder->revenge->bloodthirst-Heroicstrike rage dump. Use shield if you feel you're taking more damage than the healer can handle.

[Xothene]

Thank you dude, i'll try this out. Btw may i ask for an ideal tree please ? Going fury first and putting points in the improved demo shout but in combination with which one would you think ? Deflection and anticipation are looking good, defiance in the prot tree too :x

[Skorpionss]

Thank you dude, i'll try this out. Btw may i ask for an ideal tree please ? Going fury first and putting points in the improved demo shout but in combination with which one would you think ? Deflection and anticipation are looking good, defiance in the prot tree too :x

Don't go fury until you have +hit. stick with arms. Arms 'til Sweeping Strikes, than u can go into fury, but stick with 2handed. Then at 60 when u have enough Hit u can respec into fury and dual wield.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...53010500501005

This is what I'm gonna go with until I get enough hit, start on arms, then continue into fury with Cruelty, improved Demo, Improved Battle, enrage, then u can allocate 5 points freely in fury, I chose Death Wish for the fear break and extra dmg when the boss/pack is a pushover, 1 point into howl is good for aoe slow, and 3 points into wrath for extra rage, since it can proc off whirlwind/sweeping strikes and finally frenzy.

[Storfan]

Don't go fury until you have +hit. stick with arms. Arms 'til Sweeping Strikes, than u can go into fury, but stick with 2handed. Then at 60 when u have enough Hit u can respec into fury and dual wield.

I agree with this. I have leveled warrior as fury in vanilla and fury again on a several private servers and then arms in Classic and I'd say Arms is slightly superior for lvling, as long as you have your weapon upgrades settled 40-60, or be ready to respec if you happend to get a very good upgrade that dont fit your plan.

[Xothene]

Thanks a lot for your insights guys

[Skorpionss]

Also, if you plan on doing dungeons a lot after lvl 37, get your ravager axe, I can't stress this enough, that shit is OP. It has no internal cooldown and can proc off itself. I often found myself just sitting in bladestorm the entire duration of the pull. But don't depend on it for everything, get the axe from SM quest (if you're ally), or WW axe for boss fights/solo content.

[Ehrenpanzer]

I'm tanking in fury spec with dual swords, I don't even use defensive stance or a shield, I managed to do a WC easily like this, it's faster and I don't think that tanking properly makes any difference, I barely tank tbh, I just dps. How far can I go like this? shall I try sfk or bfd like this?

5mans are no problem, even Ony and MC can be done if you had good healers and smart dps.. beyond that.. well... you'll prolly need full prot to tank.

[Aphrel]

I'm tanking in fury spec with dual swords, I don't even use defensive stance or a shield, I managed to do a WC easily like this, it's faster and I don't think that tanking properly makes any difference, I barely tank tbh, I just dps. How far can I go like this? shall I try sfk or bfd like this?

From my own experience in any 5man content up to like zf can be done in full dps spec with a 2hander or dualwielding. And even in max lvl dungeons like lbrs/strat/scholo a fury warr with shield can preform great with stuff like flurry helping with threat generation.

I would recomend being careful when berserk stance dualwield/2hand tanking anything higher than cm cath thou thats when it starts to hurt. And i would recomend a shield for most packs in dungs higher than zf.

[Coldfrostzero]

So the end game strategy as a warrior is to be a Fury/Prot build. If I were to go Fury/Prot it would be:
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...0051-502501105

Now, you can move some points around to suite your play style. Some pick up Blood Crazy. You want to have Cruelty, Unbridled Wrath, Enrage, Death Wish, Flurry, and Blood Thirst. In the Protection tree, you want to have as shown. You need Improved Shield Block for the times when you have to swap to a shield.

In a raid setting, you'll need healers basically max rank healing you until your gear gets to a good place. It's not recommended until your healers and you are geared or at least know how to handle the incoming damage as getting hit with a critical strike is necessary for this build to keep the threat going.

Essentially, this spec allows your DPS to go all out almost the entire fight without having to slow down which results in faster clear times through each raid. If I'm not mistaken, the fastest clear time for Naxx is recorded at an hour, but the timer doesn't technically start until after the first boss was killed so add ~15 minutes.

[Skorpionss]

From my own experience in any 5man content up to like zf can be done in full dps spec with a 2hander or dualwielding. And even in max lvl dungeons like lbrs/strat/scholo a fury warr with shield can preform great with stuff like flurry helping with threat generation.

I would recomend being careful when berserk stance dualwield/2hand tanking anything higher than cm cath thou thats when it starts to hurt. And i would recomend a shield for most packs in dungs higher than zf.

Nah, if your healer isn't braindead and you don't stay in berserker stance exclusively you can do pretty much everything with 2h/dual wield. I loved doing Sunken Temple as Dual wield on my orc, always funny reactions from ppl before and after the dungeon. Also we had record killing speed on some bosses (whenever death wish and recklessness were off cd basically). I had almost 800 dps on the troll bosses, whole fight lasted like 15-20s.

[Aphrel]

Nah, if your healer isn't braindead and you don't stay in berserker stance exclusively you can do pretty much everything with 2h/dual wield. I loved doing Sunken Temple as Dual wield on my orc, always funny reactions from ppl before and after the dungeon. Also we had record killing speed on some bosses (whenever death wish and recklessness were off cd basically). I had almost 800 dps on the troll bosses, whole fight lasted like 15-20s.

yeah not saying its impossible at all, but depending on what group you have backing you up it can go sideways. If i were tanking in a random group id start out careful :P

On the other hand did a strat living the other day with a dualwielding fury tank. And it worked geat since at least half the packs were chasing me on my mage anyway. (theres no way im holding back on that sweet flamestrike+coc shatter combo when we have a yolo furytank xD)

[MrHorner]

I have tanked in 2h until Mara.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I mean when it comes to protection as long as you spec down enough to get a few key things (not insanely deep) you can spec the rest into fury and tank just about anything in the game with the right gear setup.

The real determination is when to shield and when to duel weapon/mix in some more dps gear. This honestly will vary a bit on healer and dps. After all if things die fast and healers can keep you up than it works. I think in the current phase its reasonable to do almost any of the content duel wield if your folks are geared. Some exceptions will of course exsist. More exceptions will pop up as you get into BWL. A lot more in AQ40 and certainly Naxx. But it can carry though a lot of those places as long as your group is allowed time to gear to allowing it and are used to it.

[Cede]

Don't go fury until you have +hit. stick with arms. Arms 'til Sweeping Strikes, than u can go into fury, but stick with 2handed. Then at 60 when u have enough Hit u can respec into fury and dual wield.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...53010500501005

This is what I'm gonna go with until I get enough hit, start on arms, then continue into fury with Cruelty, improved Demo, Improved Battle, enrage, then u can allocate 5 points freely in fury, I chose Death Wish for the fear break and extra dmg when the boss/pack is a pushover, 1 point into howl is good for aoe slow, and 3 points into wrath for extra rage, since it can proc off whirlwind/sweeping strikes and finally frenzy.

Don't use that spec, parry is junk and so is Unbridled Wrath. This will leave you with 3 points to use on whatever you want. You can take Piercing Howl if you want it, finish off Dual Wield spec, Imp Charge isn't bad for dungeons and Berserker Rage isn't bad for everything, you should be using it nearly on CD for fights that don't have a fear. For raids Execute isn't a bad choice but I wouldn't pick it personally.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...00005405010051

Blood Craze is garbage, I'm over 8k fully biffed that equates to 240 hp. Imp Cleave is just the bonus damage portion of Cleave (the 50 extra damage) so it's pretty bad.

This is my current spec, I finished off DW and took Berserker Rage. If I wanted howl I'd drop a point from DW. I've tanked everything in the game with this spec with some of the best DPS there is.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...00005505010251