I think the whole tanking with 2-handed weapons is more of a thing pre-60 only due to the fact that they want to be able to quest efficiently. Personally if i was going to level a warrior protection spec. It would be purely dungeon runs as soon as i got high enough in level.
But you are correct, threat generation is much better in prot
Which is always. You can never have too much rage XD
Or the tank is seriously undergeared and really needs a shield.
Exactly.
Is the healer good? 2H tank.
Is the healer not AFK? 2H tank.
Are the DPS actually dealing damage? 2H tank.
Are you AoEing? 2H tank.
Do you want faster dungeon clears? 2H tank.
Basically if you’re not trying to slowly creep through the same dungeon for 2 hours, use a 2H when tanking, or dual-wield if you’re geared for it.
Every priest has spirit tap. If they get the last hit, they double their spirit for 15 seconds and Regen while casting. Every priest should be going for spirit tap procs. More Mana, more heals, less drinking.
Thata fine of course, but if they are letting people die trying to snipe kills to save 5 water then…
Because it mostly is. My warrior specifically, the difference between having my shield equipped and my 2h equipped is that I’ll take 16% more damage with a 2h. That’s very minimal. The damage output, rage income, and threat output are way higher.
A specific example to demonstrate why 2h tanking commonly IS better than 1h shield. In Maraudon, I used to tank the 4 packs of lizards with my shield and 1h. This slowed everything down and my healer would have to drink almost every pull. Using a 2h, the dps can go hard almost immediately, my damage is higher, and while I take slightly more damage on individual hits, the net effect is that the healer spends less mana per fight healing me because everything dies so much faster. My group goes 3+ pulls now between drinking.
I switched to 2H tank because I couldn’t hold threat to save my life.
As I’ve pointed out in other threads I do hybrid. Charge in with 2H and spam some abilities and do a ton of damage which produces great threat. Then I swap to Sword/Board and D Stance. It works really well.
Ultimately whatever works for the group works for the group, I do expect some of this to change the higher level I get.
I mean that’s how the DPS is too.
I’m taking all uses of 2H as DW, because that’s what I do sometimes. I’ll elaborate further later.
You can still use most of your tanking abilities without a shield, plus you get more rage from DW than you would with either 2h or Sword+board*
Agreed
The answer is group composition and what level the mobs are.
If you’re slightly lower level Sword+Board is better, if you’re equal or higher DW is fine. Most healers are pretty bored a lot of the time in Classic, at least in my experience, I always ask if they’re cool with me dual wielding, and they usually say “It gives me something to do”.
it honestly sounds like you haven’t run into a disorganised PUG that refuses to follow markings and insists on AoEing as soon as you pull.
I’d argue that, even with Mega pulls to sate the hunger of the throngs of frost magi and warlocks, lest they cry “Go faster”
I actually prefer sword and board, but with how people are playing the game it’s not practical a lot of the time.
My personal experience is that Revenge is utter dog s*** for actual threat generation. Heroic Strike ends up being superior to even Sunder Armor, but I also favor DW tanking.
Heroic Strike crits are fantastic, and I can’t wait until I have more crit. :s
I mean revenge is still really good and you keep it on CD, but HS is better than sunder for sure.
Did you spec into Impale too?
I’m running Impale and aiming for Bloodthirst ASAP. Currently 5/5 Enrage.
To your point on one hands. Isnt a specfic dagger BIS for waeriors threat?
Sounds about right. The mobs in classic don’t have tons of HP compared to TBC. And lets be honest, the best CC in the game is making a mob’s HP = 0. Dead mobs do Zero damage. The faster they die, the less the healer has to heal.
The problem we have is we have some very ‘old school’ type players who have some weird ideas on how to play these games. They find using an ability on each GCD to be… distasteful.
So lets say they get into a group with a tank like yourself. Already they’re out of their comfort zones seeing you use a 2-H. And then you do a pull of four Elite monsters. Probably with little to no CC. Just a kill order.
Anxiety kicks in for these people. Four very ugly and pissed off mobs are attacking the group and they are being forced to quickly target and engage. Normally when they engage in what they believe is a normal (slow) group is they see a pull, take their time to pick out their target and then use each ability after a slight consideration.
I use this, then this, then that. Oh mob is still alive, lets try this. With a second or two, or longer between ability uses.
Instead of a predetermined rotation drilled into muscle memory using abilities on GCD or at the tailend of a longer cast. Being efficient.
Assuming all three DPS are in that second category. The mobs are yellow to them. And their abilities are trained up to their current level… Then there is very few groups of mobs that cannot be burned down in a few seconds irregardless of the gear the DPS are wearing.
But when you get a player in the first category, or god forbid, more than one, in the group. It takes a bit longer, things start getting dicey, unless one of the DPS is overleveling, tank is overleveling, or gear is vastly superior (attack power for melee, spellpower for casters), so pretty much carrying that person.
You see, these players that play this way, think its the proper way to play. They don’t see the need to be ‘hardcore’ as they call it and use a on GCD rotation. And when their playstyle causes the group problems due to damage outputs being low. They look at others.
When they see your 2H, they’re going to blame that. And why not? Tanks use shields right? It seems simple. Right?
But unlike you, and I, and others who understand the numbers, they don’t run the numbers. Again, they don’t see the need to. They think their way of playing is just fine. So long as they see others playing the way they think they ought to be playing. When in reality, they do not pull their weight.
In reality, these people should not be in general groups. I have a friend who is like this. Keyboard turns, mouse clicks abilities. The whole shabang. After playing MMORPGs together for the last 17 years, they have learned their short comings. He does not enter into groups in MMORPGs unless its with friends who understandably know they are carrying them through.
Unfortunately most of these players simply don’t know to do this.
Nah, I went Defiance for 0/31/20, but I should’ve specced into Improved Heroic Strike instead of Improved Sunder Armor.
This may be ignorance talking but I am new to Tanking as a warrior and I thought it was common sense just to have a shield?
I mean, there are great shield abilities to counter casters and even block!
It also means healers have a easier time to heal you and others.
I thought this was just… general knowledge.
Just prioritize druids over warriors when you are looking for tanks. It will solve this problem for everyone )) and give a much smoother dungeon run.
I quite enjoy leveling with sword and shield. I mean, I do level up my two-hander weapons, but I spend most of my time with sword and shield.
There are pros and cons to each spec for tanking, 2H Tanking isn’t viable in raid but it is fine when doing dungeon content just a little less tanky but from experience I can tell you keeping AoE threat is easier with a 2H. Prot is good if you don’t mind not doing good DPS outside of Dungeon content. Fury however is hands down the best tanking for raiding and dungeon content what it comes down to is threat generation, faster hits= More rage and more threat. Duel wielding FTW
It is general knowledge. When you think of someone using a shield, you think of higher defense, blocking, soldiers holding the line, the greek phalanx, roman tortoise, and various cultures shieldwalls.
And then simply you can block, whereas you can’t block without it. But again, that is general knowledge like you said.
Then there’s esoteric knowledge, or running the numbers. As Tipsy pointed out, when you run the numbers someone may actually need less healing with a 2 Handed weapon overall.
In their example, the reason for this is the fights are shorter. In their experience when they use a One Hand and Shield, it takes longer for them to generate base threat. The DPS have to go lighter on their initial damage.
This results in a longer fight. Longer fight means more healing.
Whereas if they use a 2 Hander, they can build threat immediately, as well as contribute highly to damage. This allows the DPS to start with high damage rotations right out the gate.
This results in a shorter fight. Shorter fight means less healing.
But since we’re talking packs of mobs, we’re talking substantially less healing. Because in a four mob pack, each mob that dies reduces the damage taken over time by 25%.
So while yes, they take more damage per hit on average, the fact the mobs are dropping faster results in less damage over all.
It seems counter intuitive (hence I call it esoteric), but once you map out the numbers over a certain fight, you begin to see the 2 Hander becomes superior.
By this point, you’re probably wondering, what’s the point of a shield? Are they useful at all? Oh absolutely they are. But this usually rears its ugly head when you are fighting raid content. For Classic this will be for any raid boss that has a skull (or pretty much level 63) to you at 60.
There is a two things a raid boss can do. Critical hits, and Crushing Blows. Forgive me, but I’m going to have to paraphrase this, as its knowledge that is over 13 years old. But when a mob attacks you, it checks for things in a certain order:
Critical Hit
Crushing Blow
Hit
Blocked hit
Miss
There’s dodges, parries, ect in there too, but I don’t remember exactly where they go. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t check each one individually. It does them all at once. The system makes an attack roll and depending on what that roll is, it results in one of those.
What this means is your Defense Skill, Blocking Rate, Dodge Rate, and Parry Rate can shift those values up. If Critical hits are shifted out, you can no longer be crit. If you shift it further you can no longer be hit by a crushing blow.
What this means is you can reduce the damage taken by a vast amount. To get there, I believe the total value is 102.4% when you add Block Chance, Dodge, Parry, and Miss rate(your defense skill says this).
I’m not sure if you can get close to this in Classic. I remember TBC having tanking gear that had alot of tanky stats on it that made this work. But suffice to say, you will receive crits more often from raid bosses without a shield, even in classic.
This usually isn’t a problem in regular dungeons where the mobs are equal to you in level. But in raids, the bosses are at levels you cannot reach. But if you’re running say Uldaman at level 44. You will outlevel most of the bosses, and not have an issue until that level 47 Arceadas at the end.
So my advice is use a shield when the mobs are orange level or red to you. If they’re yellow you can use a 2 hander, if they’re green go ham on them.
Again the numbers I pointed out earlier are 13 year old memories of information, I’m sure someone else might be able to clarify them further, but I’m probably pretty close to the mark.
Shield Slam absolutely scales with gear, and so does its massive, massive aggro generation.
EDIT: Sorry for the necro, another thread linked me here and I thought this was recent.