Need tanking advice for my warrior

[Vampiregenesis]

I tanked up to maraudon as arms, I'd say some bosses like princess and rotgrip caused some issues but overall I managed to make it. Now that I'm 52 I went to brd and I can barely survive a pull, even lvl 60 players get shit ton of damage, I think it's about time to switch to shields but I'm afraid I will lose a lot of dps. Can I remain in a dps spec but still make it? what dps spec is the best for tanking? Can you tank brd in a dps spec/gear?

[glowzone]

Just put on a shield, make sure your skill with whatever one handed weapon you are using is high enough to actually hit things in the dungeon, and you'll be fine.

Spec doesn't matter as much as you think it does for casually tanking random dungeons.

[Roxyfoxy]

You can tank just fine as arms, however in brd things start to do more damage than the earlier dungeons.

You should definatly start using a shield + defensive stance, and use proper tanking abilities.
Arms is great for tanking dungeons, and sweeping strikes into whirlwind before you swap to defensive stance is a great way of causing some amazing threat.
As a tank, your damage is irrelevant, you job is to keep the agro on the mobs, and stay alive.

Once you get some proper gear, you can tank dungeons with 2h again if you have a decent healer, make sure that the healer is up to the task, and swap to shield of he struggle to keep you alive

[Vampiregenesis]

I've healed BRD as a lvl 47 resto shaman and have had tanks that were arms/fury specced. As long as you aren't tanking the late parts of BRD until you're a bit higher level then you should be fine

I should also add that we almost never used any kind of CC for our runs, and we didn't outlevel the place either.

do you heal with lesser healing wave or the slow one? are you full resto? I have a shaman too and I'm thinking to go 21 resto - 22 ele or enhance, fury or better totems

[Roxyfoxy]

do you heal with lesser healing wave or the slow one? are you full resto? I have a shaman too and I'm thinking to go 21 resto - 22 ele or enhance, fury or better totems

I havent played a shaman myself, but while leveling i prefere large slow heals, so i can spend maximum amount of time inside the 5 second rule to generate mana inbetween heals.

Fast small heals are usually to mana intensive to be any good outside of emergency situations.

[Mukind]

I tanked up to maraudon as arms, I'd say some bosses like princess and rotgrip caused some issues but overall I managed to make it. Now that I'm 52 I went to brd and I can barely survive a pull, even lvl 60 players get shit ton of damage, I think it's about time to switch to shields but I'm afraid I will lose a lot of dps. Can I remain in a dps spec but still make it? what dps spec is the best for tanking? Can you tank brd in a dps spec/gear?

the key to 2h tanking is making a macro and being able to swap to shield

As to when you should do that all depends on your group and your own stats. Gotta use ur own judgement

Can do the whole thing just 2h in some groups

[Binaris]

Tanking isnt a spec it is a playstyle. Put ona shield. get in defensive stance and do the job properly and you will be fine. Sunders. Revenge. Taunt. You are not a dps you jobis to put out threat.

[Segus1992]

Tanking isnt a spec it is a playstyle. Put ona shield. get in defensive stance and do the job properly and you will be fine. Sunders. Revenge. Taunt. You are not a dps you jobis to put out threat.

Doing damage is often a more effective way of doing threat anyway, it's just a less defensive way of doing it. With good enough healers & slows, a 2h tank is often better than 1h/shield.

[Vampiregenesis]

I have analyzed it a bit and I think that fury is justifiable, on the other hand arms isn't even with sweeping strikes, there is no synergy at all especially if you wear a shield.

[Binaris]

Doing damage is often a more effective way of doing threat anyway, it's just a less defensive way of doing it. With good enough healers & slows, a 2h tank is often better than 1h/shield.

No. There are threat modifiers on your stances meaning unless you are the top dps in the group by a fairly large margin. You are not going to hold threat and you are just expecting your healers to make up for you wanting to be a dps. Think about what you are saying. Slows. So we can kite the shit you aren't tanking? Thats not tanking.

[moresar]

This is what I do and it's not cheap. I play fury spec for raid nights which in our guild is Tues, Wed. As soon as raiding is over for the week I go full protection spec. This makes tanking so much easier and getting in groups easy. I maintain two sets of gear one for fury and one for tanking (and a fire resist set as well). On those days where ony doesnt land on a normal raid night I just stay prot and off tank, kill welps.

[babyback]

Most guilds “back in the days” only had one or maybe two fully specced prot warriors.

Those who off-tanked were usually some hybrid or dps warriors with a shield.

[Will]

It sounds to me like you'd rather just play DPS. At the end of the day if you want to tank as DPS and you can A) hold aggro and B) you're not taking too much damage, nobody is going to care. But if you're way too squishy, then yes, you need to stomach the DPS loss and whip out that shield. If this bothers you, then you really should consider switching to DPS instead of being a tank.

Your job first and foremost as a tank is to hold aggro and mitigate damage. You should be maximising your damage at the same time as this directly translates to more threat generation, but it's about a balance. Worry about getting your damage taken down to manageable levels first, THEN start worrying about hitting harder. (The obvious exception to this is if you're struggling to hold aggro, but this can often be mitigated by playing with DPS who actually understand how threat works and give you a chance, and attack targets you mark rather than just go ham brainlessly before you even get a hit off.)

tl;dr version:

A) dying too fast? play more defensively and/or gear to survive.
B) not making aggro? a. work with your group, mark targets, tell them to let you go first, and b. if they're already doing all that, gear to increase your damage output.

If you're dying too fast and your threat is also fine, PICK OPTION A. (Or just play a DPS and let someone tank who wants to do the job properly.)

[Segus1992]

No. There are threat modifiers on your stances meaning unless you are the top dps in the group by a fairly large margin. You are not going to hold threat and you are just expecting your healers to make up for you wanting to be a dps. Think about what you are saying. Slows. So we can kite the shit you aren't tanking? Thats not tanking.

No, you're wrong. It's possible to be in Defensive Stance with a two-hander you know.

You can tank all leveling dungeons with a 2h until BRD, and even then it can be done with a good healer & tank, you'd have to be pretty bad to not manage before that. Once you're 60 it can be done in almost all dungeons provided you're good and your healer is too.

Also, to kite the mobs I am tanking, to lower damage intake, as there's no point in taking unnecessary damage, shield or not.

Benefit: a lot more threat, a lot more damage, a lot smoother dungeons.
Loss: less safe for the tank, higher skill required.

[Twoddle]

As a healer in dungeons I actually prefer a decent non-prot specced tank because of the challenge. One thing I can't stand is people who insist on a holy/disc priest for healing and a prot tank, yawn. Groups are hard enough to form in the first place. Also bad is when we're forming a group and the warrior says he won't tank "because he's not prot and it won't be fun".

Further tank question though. I'm leveling an arms specced warrior. When I'm tanking dungeons I Charge, Thunder Clap, Demo Shout then switch do defensive stance. Is this OK for a rotation? Someone mentioned above to pop Sweeping Strikes which I've just talented for, would this be more effective? Cheers.

[xGLxAnubis]

Someone mentioned above to pop Sweeping Strikes which I've just talented for, would this be more effective? Cheers.

Yes. Sweeping Strikes then immediately go into Def stance. The issue with TClap is that, since you can only use it in BStance, it generates 80% threat. Sweeping strikes on the other hand, you can utilize in Defensive Stance (By swapping after using it) and therefore gets the full 150% threat modifier.

Also, never Demo shout in Battle Stance. Always do it in Defensive stance. Same reason as above: BStance has 80% threat, Defensive stance has 150%.

[Storfan]

I tanked up to maraudon as arms, I'd say some bosses like princess and rotgrip caused some issues but overall I managed to make it. Now that I'm 52 I went to brd and I can barely survive a pull, even lvl 60 players get shit ton of damage, I think it's about time to switch to shields but I'm afraid I will lose a lot of dps. Can I remain in a dps spec but still make it? what dps spec is the best for tanking? Can you tank brd in a dps spec/gear?

1. For tanking hard hitting mobs/bosses or large packs: Put on a shield. For tanking weak mobs, do what ever you want assuming the healer can keep up.

2. Dont use mortal strike when tanking (unless you have excess rage). Focus on your bread and butter abilities: Sunder sunder sunder and even more sunder. Rotate this with shieldblock and Revenge. Tab targets and apply sunders to each one of them. Use thunderclap/Demoshout when you take alot of damage. Spam demo shout when tanking very large packs (5+ mobs).

3. The best dps spec for tanking is fury. The lower tier talents in fury tree is very good for tanking purposes aswell.

4. You can tank all content in vanilla in fury spec. Arms not really.

5. If you are having trouble tanking multiple targets: Put up skull on a weak caster/cloth mob and IGNORE IT. Tell dps to go ham on that target alone and tell them not to aoe/cleave before skull is dead. This will give you enough time to tab-sunder-tab-sunder-revenge on the remaining targets.

6. Make use of CC if above doesnt work for you.

7. Pool rage between pulls. Having enough rage for opening abilities on next pack will makes things SIGNIFICANTLY easier for you. Really, this is a game changer.

8. Always always ALWAYS include the talent anger management from arms tree in all your specs. In addition to letting you keep your rage longer when out of combat it also got a hidden bonus that ticks 1 rage every 3 seconds when you are in combat. This gives you a nice passive rage income when ever you are fightning a boss but not currently hitting anything.

[Dergiab]

No. There are threat modifiers on your stances meaning unless you are the top dps in the group by a fairly large margin. You are not going to hold threat and you are just expecting your healers to make up for you wanting to be a dps. Think about what you are saying. Slows. So we can kite the shit you aren't tanking? Thats not tanking.

That is correct, people forget about this a lot. Being in Battle or Zerk stance you do 20% less threat (in total) meaning you actually have to outdps the damage dealers in the group (not including abilities with bonus threat).

[anveena]

Just go deep prot and save yourself the headache of tanking as fury without gear. Go for dps gear and you should be fine.

[Storfan]

Just go deep prot and save yourself the headache of tanking as fury without gear. Go for dps gear and you should be fine.

He is lvl52. Going prot will cause him alot more head ache in lvling than the head ache produced by tanking dungeons in dps spec.