I usually start with Cruelty because I think it’s the best place to put your points very early on, but I’ll respec to get into Tactical Mastery before I start tanking at VC/WC, then again at 40 dumping everything back into Arms for Mortal Strike.
If I’m going to be tanking a lot while leveling, I just like to have (from Arms) Deflection and three points in Tactical Mastery; (from Prot) Anticipation, Shield Specialization, Defiance, and only one point in Improved Shield Block. After that I’d usually just add in points towards whatever damage and rage I want (starting with Cruelty). I like to try to be versatile while leveling.
The reason I like Tactical Mastery first for tanking talents is that it allows you to have the option of opening with Charge (and keeping the rage while you switch to Defensive Stance en route), lets you use Mocking Blow more effectively as a backup for Taunt (misses/resists will happen), and makes it easier to use Thunderclap while tanking.
I like to get the one point in Improved Shield Block, because it basically doubles the effectiveness of the ability (both for threat and mitigation) by giving you an extra block per use, which then gives you an extra opportunity to use Revenge, which is your best threat-per-rage ability. It also gives you another bit of reflective damage/threat from your shield spike (blacksmithing) and helps you take less damage. Although you can only use Shield Block while in Defensive Stance, you retain the buff until it expires or is consumed, even if you switch stances.
Other stuff like Shield Slam, Improved Revenge, Improved Sunder, Concussion Blow, and Improved Shield Bash are really nice tools for tanking, but they’re not really needed for lower-level stuff.
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Level up as Arms, most important talents are Tactically Mastery and Anger Managemet for stance dancing.
Keep your amor up todate including a shield.
Learn to tab target and sunder armor.
Or don’t tank. Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you have to or should feel obligated to tank. Just don’t complain about the lack of tanks. 
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As others have said, don’t level as prot. Don’t do that to yourself. You can tank all the same (in leveling dungeons) as arms/fury.
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Don’t tank with a 2 hander. Leveling as prot can be just fine.
Fun fact. Level 20 arms warrior vs 3 mobs=cooldowns and you might die. Level 20 prot warrior vs 3 mobs = 3 dead mobs and you might bandage. The end.
Do not level up as prot. Your dmg output will suffer so much that leveling will be significantly longer due to it. You can tank dungeons just fine as either fury or arms, can just slap on a shield and you still have 90% of your tanking toolkit as arms or fury.
Once you start raiding and getting geared is where prot shines, so you should switch around then if you want to tank.
Also lets them use that handy shield block skill.
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Button 1 macro on battle stance bar
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat/target/shift Charge, thunder clap, defensive stance
/startattack
Button 1 macro on Defensive stance bar
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat/target/shift rend, shield block, cleave, cleave, cleave(for aoe after tab+rending the group)
/startattack
Anyone who cares to level prot, have at that 1 key 
2h tanking is fine, given you are geared enough, with the exception of raids obviously. Due to the way rage mechanics work, you take more damage but you get more rage which = more damage output and more threat. It’s fun. As long as your healer is into it, you’re golden.
It may be looked down upon by people that don’t know any better, but if you have enough gear and a healer that is prepared for it, it’s no big deal, and it actually helps with threat and damage. Make sure to keep a shield handy and swap to it for emergencies, or certain bosses.
Sometimes going 1h/shield in lower level dungeons, you can’t generate enough rage to hold aggro, so 2h can be nice to bust out for when that happens.
For level 55-60 instances, you generally want to start out 1h/shield until you have good gear, and then you can play around with 2h tanking. I used to do it all the time back in the day with my arcanite reaper in Arms PvP spec. It makes dungeons go much faster because you function as a tank and a DPS. But you really need to know what you’re doing, and a healer that does as well.
Stratholme, BRD, LBRS are relatively easy. Scholo, UBRS, Dire Maul you need to be a bit more careful, but still doable. Usually I’d run with a couple of RL buddies who were an incredible Druid healer and frost mage. The Druid actually preferred that I 2h tank because he found it boring otherwise (me too), and it made dungeons go much faster, especially if we were running with our Mage - everything was a cakewalk. People also sucked back then, so we couldn’t rely on them to do consistent good DPS. Classic will hopefully be different, and I’ll probably run with a shield more often than not this time around.
Thanks for all the interesting info!! So I can level as arms and switch to sword and shield when I dungeon?
You can level as arms and tank dungeons just fine; carry a shield with you. You’re going to stress your healers in a big way if you try to tank 2h.
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I’d say about 70% of your post is just false information. The rest is just showing that you know the absolute bare minimum when it comes to warrior tanking. Either way, leave the tanking info to people that know the game please
Out of curiosity, I have a couple questions:
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How did you arrive at “about 70%” as the estimated percentage of “just false information”? So that means the other 30% shows that he knows “the absolute bare minimum when it comes to warrior tanking”?
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What was that 70%? You didn’t say. You didn’t specify anything, even what the other guy got wrong. I read his post, and he seemed right on. If you’re going to say someone is wrong, but now show how and why, then you aren’t helping.
Fair point, so I’ll explain more.
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Armor does matter. Shield armor, especially while leveling, not near as much. At some point (usually during BWL) it’s actually better to go Fury/Prot and DW tank rather than use a shield on most bosses. More threat means more dps going out. Armor is not the end all be all but it is helpful.
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Threat - While sunder and revenge do provide a lot of your threat, if that’s all threat was then warriors would be dog poop in terms of aoe. That is not the case. While leveling and in most aoe situations, cleave, thunderclap, demo shout, and even battle shout will be more used. But in his example, yes for single target bosses, sunder and revenge are the 2 most used for early threat.
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See #2. The only thing correct about this statement is the part about what you don’t get when not in defensive stance.
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You won’t be rage capped while leveling unless you’re aoe pulling. But in most scenario’s you won’t be using CC. Classic is not that hard to the point you need to CC on pulls, for the most part. There are some pulls that may benefit from it but it’s very rare. Runners won’t wipe the group if the group is any good at all. Many classes can stun/slow etc to keep this issue down to nothing.
Some things he says can be adapted to a raid scenario and would be correct, like his statement about sunder and revenge being alot of the threat gains, but other than that, it’s mostly very wrong in a lot of ways.
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Outstanding! That was very helpful. Thank you.
They were outgearing the content. Not atvised