There’s plenty that do more. Impale will add a small amount to Overpower, which isn’t going to be procced much (especially if you’re not in the range to be baiting Overpower), and there are better talents. Improve Charge for more rage generation, more points in Deflections, etc. You can hit Mortal Strike without even sweating points or putting them into Impale which is too narrow.
DPS and time to kill are related, but Burst also factors in. If I have a mob that has 1500 hp, and two chars that both do 500 dps, but one front loads it in 3 second bursts while the other does it in 1 second bursts, the one that is front loading is going to kill the mob instantly while the other is going to take 3 seconds to kill the mob. This means the mob also gets almost no time to deal out damage.
When talking about a group all front loading damage, this adds up to be significant and can end up in a position where an Arms warrior takes significantly less damage than a prot war due to time to kill.
I do end up getting 5/5 deflection. I pretty much never get improved charge. It’s a decent enough talent, but there’s no room for it in most Cap Level builds, so it doesn’t get taken by me while leveling either.
Maybe the damage over time effect, after you’ve swapped back to Defensive Stance but not Overpower.
Would the ticks after swapping back have the threat benefit from being in defensive stance though?
Yes, that is what I was saying. The dot ticks benefit from D-Stance as long as you are in it when they tick.
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Ah, OK. Yeah, that makes sense 
I didn’t know if was based on the stance you were in when it was applied, or when it actually ticks.
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Deflection is nice, but Imp. Charge is mostly for soloing. Leveling builds are virtually never the same as endgame builds, so that’s never a good consideration to make while leveling. Rogues, for example, benefit immensely by taking Riposte which is never taken after leveling because it’s bad for endgame. The thing is that when you have Imp. Charge and Charge rank 3 (which is level 46), you generate 21 rage from the Charge alone, plus you can factor in the initial auto which lets you instantly Sunder or Thunder Clap and then swap and still retain some rage. It’s not huge but it’s definitely nice for soloing and decent for tanking while leveling.
There’s really no issue at all with not taking it though. The benefits are minor, and Deflection is still a nice talent.
Sweeping strikes alone would only get you threat on two of those mobs; you’d have to target the other two and wait for ~4 seconds to get threat on the other two. Tab spamming sunder armor with defiance would get you about the same amount of threat within that same 4 second span of time. Whirlwind would get you slightly better aggro on exactly four mobs per point of rage spent, but elite mobs in dungeons usually hang out in packs of two or three, and Whirlwind isn’t an arms-warrior exclusive ability. I talk about this in more detail in that initial wall of text, though if you didn’t read it I don’t blame you, I really should have edited that down. In short: Sweeping Strikes, Cleave, and Whirlwind don’t seem that much better than improved Sunder Armor and Defiance on packs mobs. Though Sweeping Strikes and Whirlwind on packs of 5+ trash mobs does seem pretty damn sweet.
All of the damage and threat bonuses from arms are based on on-hit attacks; the arms warrior loses at least 25% of their bonus threat generation when they use a 1h weapon and shield (realistically more like 35%). Prot warriors threat+ talents are built to be used with a shield (some even require it).
Whirlwind with a 2h hits a lot harder - and thus with more threat - than a 1h would. Sweeping Strikes also helps every attack you do hit an extra target. There is a reason that 2h Arms tanking leveling dungeons was meta for a long time, whereas Prot tanking is considered garbage. Most Warriors aren’t even deep Prot at endgame and won’t be until TBC. The raw gains are negligible and the threat loss is very noticeable, on top of the damage loss.
With a macro you can put on a 2hander, Whirlwind, and then go back to a sword & shield. You’ll have to hit the button a few times and you’ll lose some auto-attack swing time due to the reset on weapon swaps, but your Whirlwind will end up hitting almost just as hard as the arms warriors.
Swapping weapons triggers the GCD, and then swapping back means you eat up 3 GCDs vs. an Arms Warriors’ 1 GCD, on top of doing less threat overall. There’s simply no reason to swap weapons if you’re Prot, just as there’s not really a reason to use Whirlwind as Prot either as Sunder spam is better at htat point.
It also doesn’t hit anywhere near as hard, unless you spend those 3 GCDs, and even then it’s less threat and damage overall.
This isn’t new. There’s no reason to actually do what you’re describing, and there’s reasons why people suggest Arms tanking while leveling over Prot. Because you just don’t have the threat and gain no real benefit from being Prot outside of Last Stand.
I haven’t seen others mention it yet, but Whirlwind Axe is very OP and will last you from levels 30 to 52. Especially in your 30s you’re going to want to use this weapon, so 2 handed tanking is the thing to do. Arms supports 2 handed tanking better than prot does.
Everyone in here is worried about threat and tanking but in the mid 30s (especially with a whirlwind axe) arms warrior is by far the highest dps class in the game when its being fed rage, when i was leveling my warrior i would sometimes be 50%+ of the 5 man groups damage going through scarlet monastery, as long as you are alive you will have threat and you will make runs insanely fast compared to a prot warrior
GCDs are only an issue if you’re generating so much rage that you can spam abilities, which as everyone is quick to point out, is usually not the case when leveling. If you’ve got that much rage, then a prot warrior spamming sunder armor will easily pull ahead in rage generation over an arms warrior. The benefit of Whirlwind is that with a 2h it has a bit better threat-to-rage ratio than Sunder Armor when fighting exactly four mobs. I usually don’t bother (because it’s rare that I’m trying to snap rage on exactly four mobs, and I’m lazy), but I have the macro setup and I do it occasionally.
I’ve also dungeon leveled a warrior as prot spec to 60. It’s not bad, and my personal experience is that prot is perfectly viable for leveling dungeons.
The determining factor is your level versus mob level.
If you’re 2+ levels above the mobs people are going to think you’re a godly tank.
If you’re the same level as the mobs people are going to say you’re a decent tank, whatever.
If you’re under the mobs’ level then people are going to say you’re a terrible tank.
This is because pugs are cancer, most DPS don’t understand tanking, and the majority of the people you’ll encounter in game have no idea what they’re talking about.
I’d still go arms to level, and it does make your life easier as a tank while leveling.
Ah yeah that’s true, that’ll give you some really good damage in your 30s
Damn that’s nuts. When I read your post my first thought was “well hell, maybe those DPS just didn’t play their classes right”, but that actually just makes the case for arms stronger and brings up something I didn’t think of: a lot of DPS in PUGs don’t know what the hell they’re doing. The chances that you’ll have three DPS who know their class well enough to put out full damage in a PUG are probably pretty low, so yeah I guess arms damage output is especially useful while leveling.
Except the post says “tanking while leveling”
Yeah your level makes a huge difference, and that brings up another point I didn’t put in that wall-o-text above. The threat-to-rage ratio of arms abilities often plummets if you’re missing a lot, since they consume full rage whether they hit or not (I’m assuming Sweeping Strikes loses a charge even if it misses, though if someone could clarify that’d be really handy, though whirlwind definitely does). You don’t lose a full 12 rage when Sunder Armor misses.
That’s because Arms (and arguably Fury) loses nothing while tanking the leveling content, whereas you give up so much of your damage if you go Prot that defiance feels like a crutch.
5/5 Axe spec + cruelty gives so much free crit that you can easily get 15% base crit before gear and buffs are even considered. With a good axe, that alone is more than enough to hold aggro on anything short of an elemental shaman. And the axe specialization (as well as the other weapon talents) works with both 2H and 1H weapons so it’s useful in all situations. Arms also has a couple decent tank oriented talents such as deflection and tactical mastery.
The problem with prot leveling (and the spec in general) is that most of the spec’s best talents are within the first tiers of the tree; beyond that, the prot tree doesn’t provide nearly as much benefit for threat as the deep arms or fury talents does.
Lastly, warrior tanks in classic are arguably more dependent on gear than talents for both threat and mitigation. That’s why FuryProt and the 31/5/15 Arms build are very common warrior builds for tanking (31/5/15 is more for 5mans/solo play).
Of course, this is all moot since none of the classic dungeon content requires you to have even a single point in prot in the first place – even at Lv60. All you really need for dungeons is the taunt+sunder button, enough gear to adequately soak damage, and MAYBE a 1h+shield for the later levels.
That’s pretty much why you see so many people recommend arms for leveling, even when tanking.
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If you’re level 40, Fury could be better for tanking while leveling. However, dual wielding as Arms isn’t particularly bad because you’d have Tactical Mastery and Impale, but you also get Improved Overpower. With dual wielding you’ll see a lot more Overpower procs to make use of this.