Im a warrior so i can give a few guesses for this. Warriors typically level in arms or fury spec sense def is painfully insufficient, as a result most warriors are using 2h weapons. My guess is many are tanking to get into a dungeon but would rather be dps so they may not even have a sword and shields with inventory space being what it is atm, and if they do their weapon skill is probably so low in 1h they can’t hit anything. This requires prep that alot of players don’t consider while leveling untill they get to the instance. They also probably haven’t replaced their off spec weapons or shield in several levels due to cost or better choice of quest reward so even if they have everything else they still probably have less stamina and dps with sword and shield then their 2h provides.
Ist sentence of my previous post. Once again for someone who professes to read carefully you don’t actually read carefully.
And no, your white damage continues to be insignificant and you should have no problem with rage
Lord is this argument still going on? At the patch we’re playing it is perfectly fine when appropriate level and appropriate gear to 2 handed tank for the rage and extra threat gen if a warrior wants to. If the healer is having a problem keeping them up simply ask them to throw a shield on, how hard is it to just speak to people in your party.
If I have a healer tell me yo you kinda squishy I’ll adapt to make the run smoother, if the tank rages form another group
First sentence of your previous post says:
“I was not talking about max rank anything either.”
Post prior to that:
“Sunder armor does 260 flat threat” (The value you for the highest rank of sunder)
I still fail to see how I am in the wrong and you are in the right about reading comprehension and consistency lol, sorry.
This right here. If the healer is ok with it try it out. However if the healer is having issues keeping the tank up, especially on really difficult pulls like a boss, S&B it. It really only takes an extra 6-9 sec to give the tank sometime to build rage/aggro with S&B in most cases. As someone here said, its a team effort.
I couldnt agree with this more. I tanked back in Vanilla and there were times I 2H tanked early on in dungeons then as I leveled and dungeons got harder I used a 1H and shield. If a Tank wants to be stupid thinking Fury\Prot will be good at Tanking in SM and is dying to pulling massive mobs, I will just kick him and replace him. So will countless other groups until he learns that his setup does not work.
And the second sentence of your post was “I’m not talking about max level anything” which was a rebuttal to a point I never made. Arms or deep prot has been the common wisdom while leveling in dungeons and fury/prot the meta for endgame. Fury/prot is the meta at endgame because of the threat generation it can put out, it isn’t the meta for leveling because damage does little threat generation in comparison while leveling and you don’t generally have the gear for it either.
Then don’t use max ranks as examples and maybe you might make sense.
Because there’s literally zero reason to equip a shield before endgame dungeons 50-55+… I’ve healed as shadow the entire way and I’ve never had an issue, I ask my tanks to 2h if they are capable because 20-30dps vs 150-200dps is a huuuuge difference.
Classic is about resource management. You should be sitting in that 1-2 second window between pulls and jumping to heal the group when needed. Stop being a retail baby.
I used max level as an example to showcase that the meta is for damage to generate threat at endgame, not leveling. And your white damage especially does squat while leveling.
I’m not sure about Ulda, but ZF and ST are where you will learn who is a capable tank and who isn’t. ZF you might be able to wing it if you are either over leveled or have a high dps party, but ST is going to chew these guys up.
Either that or you didn’t know different ranks had different threat values.
First calling people a retail baby makes no sense here because there are some players being 100% stupid and not working as a team. So you call a healer who is dealing with Retail players having the GOGOGOGO mentally where they can tank 100 mobs without risk of dying when Classic is not retail.
Second Your statement is 100% Fasle that there is no need to equip a shield before end game. Take a group doing SM for example if they are all at at the minimum level for SM and the tank tries to tank everything with a 2H he will get killed on bosses. So how do you deal with bosses, you throw in the shield for the bosses especially when a boss is 4 levels higher than you. Yes the boss can be killed but mitigation is your best bet vs trying to use a 2H and get sidestroked in a few seconds.
Simple answer as a prot war for the entire time I’ve played wow is… Laziness and lack of knowledge. Either they don’t want to actually carry a sword and shield, or they don’t understand threat generation in classic so they need that big first hit to hold aggro. One thing people seem to have forgotten, even in some guides, is that demo shout generates aggro per target hit in this patch build. Charge, battle shout, def stance, bloodrage, demo shout will hold an aoe pull. Then , if you have trouble target swapping, a simple demo shout spam will hold aggro easily on large groups in low dungeons like VC until you gain the necessary skills. Even in endgame with gear, if you want to be a dps focused tank, you’ll use a fury/prot build if you know what you are doing.
Level 1 sunder does triple digit threat? Then it far eclipses your white damage threat generation. Especially when you consider your not talking about the whole white damage, but rather the difference between your miniscule 2 handed damage and your miniscule 1 handed damage, which will be even more miniscule a number
Alright, sorry that last post was harsh (but not entirely a joke). Let me talk about this a bit more. Since we’re talking about the pserver fury/prot threat meta now…
Top end private server guilds use fury/prot warriors in order to keep up with the damage the dps is doing when they’re T2.5 - 3 geared right? They also do this just to make the raid go faster, and they’re speedrunning raids, etc. The content is trivial in other words.
This is another fair argument to make about the lower level dungeons. For competent players, who have done them before, they are trivial, and the damage tanks take is really not threatening most of the time. That’s why a lot of healers prefer a 2h tank, that knows what they’re doing. It speeds things up for content that is already trivial.
I think you’re over exaggerating the difference in damage between 1h and 2h at early levels too. Anyhow, this is tiring, I think I’m gonna peace out. Thanks for the input though.
It’s fine 
People spec into fury/prot endgame for sure. It benefits the entire raid. In my opinion though while you can tank 2 handed early in dungeons it puts more stress on the healer. And as someone who used to heal first and foremost before switching to tanking, I find that healers get treated fairly badly for the most part.
With 1 handed and 2 handed weapons when considering white damage you also have to consider speed.
If I have Retaliation up you can bet I’mma stance swap to BStance pull a decent sized pack just for the damage output and in an effort to fully utilize all abilities in my toolkit as a warrior.
On the other note I am going to do a slight nod in agreement to a point the OP kind of touched on - if your tank is just standing there getting wrecked / taking critical damage that is near unhealable, than that guy is an idiot.
Don’t know how many times I have to say it, Piercing Howl is a godsend. Refresh your PH debuff as needed while spamming Demo Shout and kiting to give your healer some breathing room.
Although again, maybe I’m assuming too much, maybe people don’t know how to kite.
Yes that’s fair enough. It should be ultimately up to the healer. My healers specifically ask me to 2h tank because I am known to do it well. Not everyone can I suppose.
My baby warrior got a L4 shield drop (161 armor or thereabouts) and made a 1H mace, but it’s awfully hard to generate rage that way. Buffs and debuffs struggle to go off until most of the fight is over.
I imagine people are getting sick of that and trying 2H by the point you’re seeing them.