Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
If you want to tank dungeons a lot I would advise Arms over Fury (and stay away from prot unless you want to make your solo questing experience horrible). I personally prefer Arms over Fury because Arms has Tactical Mastery, to allow you to keep rage when switching stances. It's a very underrated talent for tanking. It allows you to quickly Intercept any mob on your healer. It also allows you to almost instantly Mocking Blow any mob when you're in Defensive Stance, very useful because Taunt resists quite often. You can't do that as Fury because you lose all your rage when switching stances (Mocking Blow is a Battle Stance ability).
Indeed. And as a nice bonus you get Anger Management which generates rage for you in combat and makes it easier to carry leftover rage over to the next pack.
stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Yeah I've done this the entire time I've played the game. Shield on during the entire dungeon, taking things slow. I never spent any time on forums or reading about the game so it's just been how I played this whole time. Nobody suggested it back then and I also don't remember hearing about people dual wield tanking back then either, seems like it's a more recent development. Or I just never paid attention to different playstyles, also possible, lol.
I'm looking at maining a feral druid this time around, but I'm definitely going to keep my warrior as an alt. I think this time I'm going to try dual wield tanking like you describe here. I keep seeing videos about this on youtube from guys like Skarm talking it up, and I keep reading about it here. Not only is the increased TPS a good thing, but it also sounds more fun too.
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
I don't quite agree. Weapon speed is not equivalent to TPS. I believe low weapon damage equals less rage generation which again does not allow for much HS spamming. Also, your other abilities are gonna suffer from the low weapon damage as well. Interesting argument however and something I'd be curios to test during my many dungeon adentures in the upcoming months!
stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Are you arguing for dual wield tanking during dungeons while leveling, or are you mainly thinking about 5-mans at lvl 60? For the latter, I agree with you, but I believe during leveling (unless you manage to get some +hit early on somehow) you will have a miserable time if you attempt this.
Are you arguing for dual wield tanking during dungeons while leveling, or are you mainly thinking about 5-mans at lvl 60? For the latter, I agree with you, but I believe during leveling (unless you manage to get some +hit early on somehow) you will have a miserable time if you attempt this.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, no. No dual wielding before you reach the hit threshold at 60. Leveling you should be using a 2hander and periodically switching to shield depending on the circumstances.
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
I don't quite agree. Weapon speed is not equivalent to TPS. I believe low weapon damage equals less rage generation which again does not allow for much HS spamming. Also, your other abilities are gonna suffer from the low weapon damage as well. Interesting argument however and something I'd be curios to test during my many dungeon adentures in the upcoming months!
Rage generation should be based on damage dealt to the target. Daggers deal less damage but they connect more often which should mean the same rage generation, just more steady rather than in big chunks.
Other than a higher attackspeed for Heroic Strike dumping, I really dont think the speed matters one bit as long as both weapons have the same amount of DPS.
The actual on hit damage doesnt matter, as your abilities when tanking does not use weapon damage as part of their damage, rather they either add a flat damage, or in case of Bloodthirst, is based entirely on attackpower.
You can actually make a good argument for daggers even as fury DPS. While Whirlwind is based on your weapon damage, it's not that big part of your DPS. With Daggers you can use Aged Core Leather Gloves from MC which has much better stats than Edgemasters, and you can use the C'Thun dagger if you are lucky enough to get that for exactly +8 Dagger Skill, which is the cap for Glancing Blows.
Fast daggers give more consistent rage generation from damage dealt (no huge spikes from crit, but no huge valleys from miss/parry), but if you have high incoming damage and therefore high rage generation, the HS spam capability of daggers is crazy. Shield slam isn't based off weapon damage (as I recall, don't have the tooltip in front of me), and sunder doesn't have damage. If you run fury, BT is attack power based, not weapon damage, so the lower weapon damage doesn't matter at all.
On Vael in particular, nobody in my guild could pull aggro off me spamming HS with core hound tooth.
If you want to tank dungeons a lot I would advise Arms over Fury (and stay away from prot unless you want to make your solo questing experience horrible). I personally prefer Arms over Fury because Arms has Tactical Mastery, to allow you to keep rage when switching stances. It's a very underrated talent for tanking. It allows you to quickly Intercept any mob on your healer. It also allows you to almost instantly Mocking Blow any mob when you're in Defensive Stance, very useful because Taunt resists quite often. You can't do that as Fury because you lose all your rage when switching stances (Mocking Blow is a Battle Stance ability).
Actually, this is a very solid point!
Shield slam isn't based off weapon damage
That is correct.
Otherwise, you (and Holyfrog ) make strong points about daggers. I've never seen any warriors run daggers either during original vanilla nor on private servers. I always assumed it had to do with the low damage output and rage generation, but if your arguments hold true, I'm looking quite much forward to try it out.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, no. No dual wielding before you reach the hit threshold at 60. Leveling you should be using a 2hander and periodically switching to shield depending on the circumstances.
Can you explain the hit threshold? I never got into dual wielding before and vaguely remember something about the offhand doing less damage, not sure if it has less hit chance to go along with it.
Shield slam isn't based off weapon damage
That is correct.
Otherwise, you (and @Holyfrog ) make strong points about daggers. I've never seen any warriors run daggers either during original vanilla nor on private servers. I always assumed it had to do with the low damage output and rage generation, but if your arguments hold true, I'm looking quite much forward to try it out.
I know a few, and their logs are all solid.
Good example, I was surprised to see that guy on second top dps in Naxx encounters. I'm not entirely convinced private server numbers reflect what we will actually see in classic once it hits. However, that goes for most specs, not only dagger-wielding fury warriors.
I will be running through fury tree leveling with my group through dungeons mainly and then swap to deep prot around 56-58 when we hit the higher dungeons to get ready for MC
I'm not entirely convinced private server numbers reflect what we will actually see in classic once it hits. However, that goes for most specs, not only dagger-wielding fury warriors.
Time will tell for sure. For what it's worth, I'm not referencing private servers, but my (possibly flawed) memory from vanilla. I used Quel'Serrar when tanking for the most part, but had niche uses for Core Hound Tooth on fights where I was swimming in rage and could make use of the faster speed for Heroic Strike dumping. If weapons have similar stats and DPS, daggers were fine for warriors. I was primarily a fury warrior and would offtank when needed, but was also the first tank every week on Vael because no one in my guild could match the threat output of Heroic Strike Spam with a dagger and Burning Adrenaline.
I've gotten up to about level 50 mostly playing as protection and in protection stance only because I wanted to be hardcore.
It's not ideal and it takes forever, you are better off attacking single target in balanced and switching to protection for a group of targets. I have levelled to 50 with only protection talents.
It is painful to attack monsters by myself and watching every body else tag and kill the monsters around me 3 times faster than me.
If there is someone around you with the ability to heal I recommend grouping up and tanking them altogether that way you can AOE them down.
You will save a lot of time that way.
If speed or efficiency is not an issue for you, and you are not playing on a PvP server, by all means go prot. It's going to be considerably slower compared to arms (or even fury), but you will at least be more durable for dungeons. I wouldn't really recommend leveling as prot, but if that's going to be your playstyle you do you.
Also I don't agree with daggers not being suitable for tanking. Specifically at lower levels, you need to be able to hit whatever you can, whenever you can. This is because threat is a huge problem whenever you miss / get blocked / parried / dodged, which happens A LOT at lower levels. Plus you have like 2 abilities. Having a dagger with 1.6 attack speed vs a sword with 2.4 attack speed is a huge difference if your first 3 attacks get blocked/dodge/parried.
However once you get more abilities and better gear, you can switch out daggers with more appropriate weapons.
Edit: If you are horde, once you get to the level of windfury totems, go for slower weapons!
I leveled my warrior as protection and I had no complaints but a ton of fun. Obviously it took me ages to reach max level, but I didnt mind that as well. After all I had no idea about the concept of endgame and wasnt in a rush. Also I had no idea I made life harder on myself, I just picked it because I liked the idea of fighting with a shield.
So my personal advice: If you want to level as prot and dont have any set goals in game you want to reach in a timely manner... just do it. You will always have the option of switching specs in case you are not content.