Well, you’re right; I have not healed on my warrior in Classic at all.
That’s interesting. I notice when I ask some of the healers who I find are performing the best in my runs, they tell me they use different ranks. Sometimes when I ask a healer who is performing poorly in my runs if they are, they don’t even know what that means.
You can thank retail for breeding this lazy braindead generation. They never needed a tank in 5mans before. They also want to pull 5-10 mobs and AOE it all down, because that’s what you did in retail. They never played a version of the game that required you to carefully pull 1 group at a time and make use of CCs. They will wipe constantly when they get to the higher levels, if they even make it that high before giving up. I bet most are already quitting after they found out mount is at 40. That’s right kids, no epic speed mortar bike at level 1.
Never ever stated in any form that warriors should never use 2H when tanking lower lvl stuff. You seem angry and emotional with your response, please stop putting words in my mouth I never said.
Enjoy the cleave groups for whatever it is you do =)
I used, “if” and that’s based on the premise of this threat, which is based on the premise set by the OP. If you do not support that statement, then the condition of “if” is not met, and the rest of the statement does not apply to you.
I am not angry, nor emotional; perhaps you are reading that into my text, but it isn’t something I feel, nor intend.
I don’t believe I have put any words into your mouth. You can look back at anything that I’ve posted for further clarification of what I have stated, and what my opinions are on the matter of 2-handed tanking.
You can downrank without +healing to avoid overhealing. But lower rank heals are still less mana efficient.
For example, let’s say I have a Rank 3 Heal that heals 40% of your health and I try to land it when you’re exactly at 60% health so there’s no overheal. I also have a Rank 5 Heal that heals 70% of your health, and I try to land it when you are at 30%.
I will go OOM faster when casting the Rank 3 heal instead of the Rank 5 heal because the higher rank heal is more mana-efficient.
HOWEVER… if your mitigation is worse (maybe because you are not wearing a shield), then it’s greater risk to wait until you are at 30% because you are more prone to spike damage that might kill you before the heal lands.
So when I am healing someone with spiky damage (like a tank with no shield), then I will definitely downrank and start healing earlier because I can’t risk you getting to 30% and suddenly getting critted to death.
But a tank with better mitigation is much, much easier to heal. I can let him get lower, land the bigger heals, and have a larger mana pool available for unexpected pulls (like a patrol showing up in the middle of a big pull).
Thanks for taking the time to give a decent explanation of that.
Personally, I do tank with a shield a lot of the time. Most of the time, prior to getting a Ravager, actually, as I tend to prefer tanking with a shield and/or I tend to have group compositions that are a hodge-podge of classes, that don’t necessarily mesh well with each other for a particular dungeon cleave style of clearing.
However, if there are 3 warriors with Ravagers, and a Shaman with WF, in the group, I have not yet run into a healer that would prefer me to use a sword and shield in say SM Cath, or RFD, which is around the levels up to which I have experience in Classic, so far.
Edited: This would be more for Alliance side since that is the faction I play.
Well I would honestly love to see some current videos on 2H tanking dungeons such as BRD, LBRS, Strath live + dead sides. So far I can’t find any.
All that I do see are warriors who are 5-10+ lvls higher than mid lvl dungeons tanking with 2H and using a partial cleave group, or multiple healers.
Willing to have an open mind, just need to see how these 2H warriors are tanking, keeping good threat, and how quickly they are able to move the group through these higher lvl dungeons.
I honestly haven’t seen this in the above mentioned dungeons yet.
I should also note, things could be very different between Horde and use of shamans vs Alliance builds.
It depends on how hard the mobs hit and how high the dps is. If the dps is good and the mobs don’t hit hard, then use a 2H. If the mobs hit hard and the dps can’t melt them in a few seconds, use a shield. If the dps is low, just use a shield the whole time.
Shields exist for a reason.
If the tank and the healer are both comfortable with running without a shield then that’s coolio, but always remember that you’re still in the leveling phase.
You’re not some max geared badass main tanking molten core in fury spec with a raid assortment of potions and buffs, and those mandatory big pulls hurt a hell of a lot more than you might give your healer credit for.
The dps is also high enough to kill anything in MC in seconds once tanks start dual wielding.
I haven’t posted any videos (or made any), I ran melee cleaves almost exclusively from levels 34 to 38 in SM Armory, and from 38 to 42 in SM Cath, typically with healers 2 levels below the rest of the group, and 1 or 2 others at the bottom end of that.
I don’t have experience 2-handed tanking in higher content, and since getting Mortal Strike (my 31st talent in the Arms tree), I plan on filling in my remaining talents (while leveling) in the Prot tree, to increase my chance to block (obviously with a shield), and Armor.
I wouldn’t yet say though, with any confidence that I won’t be two-handed tanking in later instances. I’m just not sure yet, because I don’t have experience there.
If you are in an extremely high dps group, then healing is also easier because mobs are dying too fast to do much damage. The only stressor there is that in those situations damage is distributed away from the tank because dps’ers tend to pull aggro and take more damage.
It’s just a different style. It’s faster, but it’s definitely more work for the healer and it’s a bit riskier because the wheels are more likely to fall off. Also probably not a great strategy for a druid healer because of the rez limitations unless you have a rezzer in your dps.
But some players prefer the more controlled, casual style. They are not power-leveling or rushing. For example, when I am tanking I often go out of my way to mark CC for dps that can do that, even when I don’t really need it, because I know that most dps’ers like to use their CC buttons. Honestly, it’s good practice for raiding when those skills are really needed.
In the group described, the warriors all average above 140dps.
An honest reply, thank you! While I know you are on Horde side, would be interested to hear of different warriors experiences later on as you lvl up more, and see how 2H tanking may work in higher dungeons and if so, what was that group composition that made it possible.
Best of luck!
sounds like your healers are garbage. ran plenty of SM with 2h tank, as disc priest. drank twice, fast runs.
obviously 60 dungeons are sword board.
Certainly. And having a preference is totally understandable. My only real gripe with any of the arguments in this threat thus-far have been blanket statements that a 2 handed tanking isn’t viable, when it is a perfectly viable preference, and claiming otherwise is misinformation.
No shield = more rage.
More rage = more threat.
More threat = DPS can kill faster.
DPS can kill faster = Shorter pulls.
Shorter pulls = less mana usage for you.
Get with the future old man.
2H = more damage, more rage, more threat = DPSers can blast harder on each pull = less damage taken by the tank overall (in most circumstances) and much faster runs
It’s literally superior in every way for the whole group.
Except up until BRD, a 2hd warrior tank does understand the mechanics of their class- that the damage from mobs especially small pull packs or aoe packs where you don’t have aggro are better dealt with by someone using ravager.
It depends of course on how you’re clearing too- if you’re doing aoe multi packs which is the norm, then as a warrior you won’t have threat anyway. Best thing to do is to pull mobs with a shield, gather them- then once blizzard starts switch to ravager in the SM/ZF range.
But- if you’re doing small packs before BRD, it’s rarely worthwhile to use a shield provided everyone else in the group knows what they’re doing.
Furthermore- if you’re too tanky you’ll have rage gen issues with a shield, it may even be harder to keep threat in that situation, meaning the shield tank ends up doing a poorer job especially with demo shout nerfed.
Reality is- you should be ready to use either a 2h or a shield depending on the situation.
I don’t need a shield. I tank with my face.