I am not here to bash this and I want to start off with that. What I hope to gain is an understanding of why I am seeing this and to decipher whether or not I am just seeing bad tanks or if this is normal. I am a priest and what I have been encountering lately is nothing but strange to me. Warriors are tanking with 2H weapons and are built Fury/Prot. Now as far as I understand they generate more threat this way and is a form of DPS tanking more than anything. (My assumption) And possibly they are doing this to make solo grinding easier when not in dungeons. With this said the problem I have with it as a healer is that not only do they take an emmense amount of damage but I can’t even pre-cast a heal on them as they are taking the initial damage because I then pull adds or the boss all over me. I can fade but it’s still just not enough in some cases. No warrior built like this seems to keep aggro and dies faster than normal requiring me to depleat my Mana pool healing them on a constant basis. What are some of your experiences with this as healers out there. What do you warriors have to say about this build out there and any thoughts or opinions or information from the rest of you would really be helpful. Thank you again!
If it works, it works. I personally prefer having shield slam, but if the 2h warrior is holding aggro and taking reasonable damage, then why not?
Keeping the aggro, not pulling way too many people and praying to the gods of Azeroth
I too face this issue. I’m really unsure what it is. May be some left over aggro from previous fights. It’s as if I put a renew or pws on them right before the fight started. May be a bug.
The problem you are facing is not in-fact because they’re using a 2hander… it’s because they use a 2hander and don’t know wtf they are doing… CC is a good thing…
That’s the problem it’s not really working as well as it could be. If I didn’t have to spam heal the warrior I would have more Mana to end the fight and we could move on without the constant wait for Mana.
Nobody is going to help you with this lame formatting my friend
Yeah and not many people use CC anymore either. Also I don’t want to just call them out for not knowing what they are doing but that is what it seems like.
It’s perfectly fine with heals that are mid to top of the dungeon level range and with a fury warrior higher level than the rest of the dps, and with some CC.
I’ve been in a couple where I couldn’t even autoshot without pulling agro, so not sure what all the extra rage they surely had over prot/sword&board was going towards.
High level it won’t work until people start out gearing the 5 mans.
Basically you have to be able to tab and sunder. If you can do that and taunt any stragglers that get away from you, and your DPS aren’t being clowns, you’ll be fine.
I’m starting to think it’s just people not knowing how to tank rather than it being a new “meta” for tanking.
Here’s my take on the problem, AND classic in general, people wanted the Classic vanilla experience, but want the expedience of retail. I’ve found that a lot of tanks believe they can play vanilla wow mobs with the run and gun retail mindset. It never worked that way in vanilla, and so far it seems it doesn’t work well in classic either.
As a warrior, I never really had much trouble holding aggro with sword and board and defensive stance. Not sure why people suddenly feel the need to 2h to maintain aggro… sunders, revenge, challenging shout and shield bash maintain aggro just fine, and with much better protection/less healing. I think the 2h tank is just a fad IMHO, but we will see.
I literally could not of said it any better!
So far the worst thing is the tank who waits for 30-40% mana and pulls huge packs with no CC and no mage in the group. It’s DAMN expensive drinking for 3 seconds and standing back up every pull. Pretty sure the 2 hander warrior thing is a great meta for people who know what they are doing and have great group synergy. The problem is that when it’s the meta, everyone wants to do it and feel like a badass. Guess who gets blamed when they die? The healer who couldn’t keep them alive as well as the previous healer.
Oooohhhh yeah my friend. This is entirely another issue I have dealt with haha. You are right also it always falls on the healer. Why is it my fault that your not the right build and dont use a shield?
Until about BRD / ST, I like 2h tanking as long as they can hold aggro and know what they’re doing. They tend to actually have rage, do better damage to hold threat and help with killing mobs faster. Beyond ~50, I much prefer a shield since healing gets much more strenuous on us as healers.
As 2H pre-50, dungeons are laughable so I don’t mind healing a little more to 2H tank. And I’d much rather be healing a little more to a single target holding aggro than a shield wielder that cannot hold aggro and needing to heal the entire party due to him not doing any damage or gaining rage at earlier levels.
On mobile, the way you formatted this means I have to scroll to the side constantly to read it. Then all the way back, and over and over.
Yeah sorry on mobile as well and not sure why it formatted like that…I just fixed it apparently paragraphing and proper use of the English language is just not comprehensive to the forums lol.
Some have mentioned it in this post but it is the new meta currently. tanking with a 2 hander is great for dungeon aoe farming but the caveat is you need the right comp. most warriors dont understand that, i frequently will go 2h for WW SS and Ravager procs only wearing shield for initial pulls and in this situation im not really tanking im relying on mages to do their job after i corral the pull and i can peel out switching to 2h and occasionally taunt back mobs on the healer or one that breaks away. There is complexity to this strat and it is easily blown up if one member is not confident in what theyre doing. however the problem is not that they are tanking with a 2h its that they dont understand their current group comp nor the comfort level of each party member basically turning everything into a speed run when it shouldnt be. If i dont have the right group comp im sword and board the entire way managing tempo and comfort level of party members because exp/hour is better slow and steady than 3 corpse runs trying to force a speed run on a bad comp. OHH! and DS should always be up by your tank and make sure the tank is actually training ranks, you’d be surprised how many try to sneak by never training it. works great for mitigation even though the threat modifier was fixed.