I found while leveling as arms a charge + ss + bloodrage + ww with a 2h, then swapping to def stance with a 1h + shield for sunder / revenge spam was the best for instant threat, total fight threat and mitigation.
Done correctly there is zero downtime between any pull (provided fight takes 30 secs for charge and sweeping strikes cooldowns and or 1 minute for the bloodrage cd).
I even tanked ST like this for 20ish runs. A spirit stacked priest can cast renew and wand spam aswell for regen mid pull, and correctly drinking into a fight until heals are needed.
By far the easiest runs i have been part of were a resto shaman and 4 (all 2h fury, myself included) warriors - wf totem just destroys mobs.
This is viable even in ubrs upto rend before the ‘tank’ needs to tank.
People that tank with 2h are the same ones that think driving 15 miles per hour over the speed limit just so they can arrive 5 min faster at their location is worth it.
Just put on the shield, and dont risk wiping the grp. There is a reason we inv dps.
I accept that 2H tanking can be done. I even will do this on my leveling Warrior alt. However, I regularly see people attempting it just doing a poor job. Again, I know that it can be done and done effectively, but the reality is that many people coming to instances as tanks, are bad at it. Whether they do not hold threat even with the increased damage potential, or they cannot survive due to the lower mitigation (and often do not have/will not swap on a shield).
The end result is that it doesn’t work in many instances, whereas even if they were just not good tanks, they’d probably be at least less ineffective with a 1h and shield.
Shields specifically give you another interrupt for spells and most packs of mobs have one major caster meaning that one interrupt is all you need. The vast, VAST majority of the damage you take is from physical attacks.
If the warrior has gear that is level appropriate and they know the dungeon, 2H tanking can be done. It also helps if they know how to generate threat.
Been in too many groups where the warrior thinks they can 2H tank by running into a group of 3 and smacking one mob and not generating threat on any other mobs. So my first or second heal that is required because of the increased damage they take, I immediately pull threat from the other 2 mobs.
Then I have to drink after every pull because I have to dump more mana healing them as well as bubbling myself and fading a lot more. If you joined a dungeon group that is not fresh and they have no healer, be prepared because you probs have a 2H tank on your hands.
On the other hand, a sword and shield tank we can usually do 3-4 pulls before I have to drink and usually the DPS are the ones out of mana.
Tank threat is always the limiting factor when there are competent DPS players in the group. A 2h/dw fury tank takes and deals more damage so has much more rage to convert to threat. Since threat is no longer a concern at all, the DPS can blast as hard as they want and the pull is done in half as much time. If you’re having issues healing a dw tank in 5 mans, you are very likely healing inefficiently. Look into what rank of what spell you should be using to be mana efficient, try to limit overhealing and play around the 5 second rule as much as possible.
This assumes the Warrior is actually applying enough threat to each target at a rate high enough to offset the DPSers’ damage and additional healing. This is not always the case. Particularly with less skilled/geared Warriors.
There is plenty of dungeons, that will do alot of fysical damage to you if you cant mitigate the damage, for one Dire Maul, you know those ogres, iwe seen alot of 2h muppets try to tank them and get torn apart, or turn their healer dry…
Well as another group healer, I’ll tell you that when your raid-geared main tank is rage starved because he’s barely taking any damage from dungeon elites, and thus can’t hold aggro because he can’t generate any rage, you will only have two pieces of advice for him:
Take off your chest and leg armor so that you can generate rage, or
Drop the shield in favor for a 2 hander or dual wield setup.
Tanks simply can’t go full damage mitigation in dungeons once they get tier 1 level loot because it causes a lot of wipes. That’s just the game design.
You can just click any one of those threads, Ctrl + F, type Ohshiftson, and read what I said.
If that’s too much for you, then you either do not care to read criticism, or you are extremely lazy, which would probably explain why you struggle to heal the tanks on your level 10 Warlock.
Yeah I seem to remember tanks talking about this, from years ago in Burning Crusade when I first played WoW…
A big thing that makes it stressful for a healer is when the dps constantly pulls aggro throughout the dungeon. More heals are needed on the tank (I assume because of lack of shield), AND I need to also give emergency heals to the dps. >.<
What? Now you’re spewing nonsense, or you’re just bad. It’s much more that 20%. I recorded a video of me fighting two elite mobs, first with a sword and board, and then with a 2H. I can solo them with a sword and board, but have to run for my life with the 2H. The increase in the damage taken is on the order of a magnitude, at least 10 times the damage is taken when fighting with the 2H compared to the sword and board. Video below:
How the heck are you only getting 20% damage reduction with a shield? Are you that bad?
A warrior who is 2h tanking a dungeon, as long as he gets to pull/charge, is highly unlikely to be losing threat unless his weapon is highly outdated for the current dungeon. 2h tanking = more rage = more damage done = more damage taken = more threat = quicker runs.
I have macros to Sword/board if I charge in to Sweeping Strikes / Whirlwind on a pack that hits particularly hard, but if I know the healer will be fine, I gauge how long I stay in 2h based on that. If I know the healer will OOM every pull from 2h tanking, i will only use 2h on the pull for the above combo. If I know the healer will be fine for several pulls that way, I stay in 2h. If I see I lost aggro on a mob WHILE In 2h, i swap to Def Stance, taunt/sunder, switch back to Berserker and Whirlwind.
It’s all about adaptability, but your synopsis makes it sound like you don’t understand warrior tanking well, or, have had really bad luck with them.
I didn’t appeciate how much more damage you take with and without a shield until I just tested it myself. See my video above. I don’t think 2H tanking is viable at level 60.
Except Fury tanking is becoming the new meta for many encounters. Sometimes you’ll get the main tank who is full prot and then sometimes you’ll get an OT who is fury prot. Just how it is. Ask them to put on some gear or a shield… If not leave the group.
2h tanking is extremely gear dependent…so is tanking in general… but even more so for 2h tanks…
it is also level dependent… if your tank is on lower end of spectrum for that instance, you are going to have a bad time…
and this is the biggest problem I have seen… as a tank you should not be going to WC at 18… or SM at 28 and think you are going to perform well just because you are inside of the dungeons level range