Amazing really, even if non-warriors might find it a bit of sour grapes.

The 5-man tanking game - or rather, the lack of discipline the new tanking types has spawned - has gotten really.. annoying for warriors to tank. I have a friend who I think respects me, but every time I tank for him on my warriors (again, I get all the "wow, you're a great tank" from most people), he just bitches endlessly about how he can't chain-lightning as much as he wants because I'm not a pali. Non-warrior tanks have no idea how annoying that is.

I've tanked heroic Shattered Halls a number of times w/ my warrior, and I find it FUN. It takes some CC, some creative moves, and reflexes, but it's a blast and the place gets done. Still, even though we've done the timed event a few times, people still want the pali tanks who can AOE pull the whole place. It's extremely frustrating to be held up against an impossible bar like that.

So far as tanking threat goes tho? Single-target I can keep up with either other class, but I really optimized my spec (imp HS, anger mgmnt, tactical mastery, imp sunder, focused rage) and my gear (expertise & hit) for it so I can build nearly as much rage as I could ever hope for. I disagree that a highly-geared warrior cannot tank that content. Yes you have to be a better player to pull it off, but "better geared" has so many dimensions as a warrior.

Stacking block value, hit, and expertise, you can do more threat than you can without it, even back when you had more rage and your "lesser gear", because everything you do hits harder and more often. And if you're rage starved? /sit

The fact of the matter is, the other tanking classes are just easier to grok than warrior tanking - it's not to say they're skill-less, but warrior tanking has a higher variation for skill->threat than palis and druids. Simply put, inexperienced tanks in those classes will grossly out-perform inexperienced warrior tanks, which is way out of line with where the classes should be for pre-raid content imo.

Awesome article.

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