Pre-TBC you could tank in any spec. I spec'd prot 40-60, then switched to Fury while raiding and never had any real issues tanking a 5-man once I had a decent gear setup.

Now, post-TBC, I'm not going anywhere without 14-15 points in prot. The DPS boost to most classes has put them way closer to the tank's aggro than pre-TBC, and levelling 60-70 was incredibly frustrating due to warrior rage nerf and huge dps being put out. (Holding aggro vs my guild's warlocks really wasn't happening on trash mobs.)

And the scary thing I'm now seeing on my druid is the "DPS-Warrior-Only" mindset, where looking for groups, they refuse to carry tanking gear and fulfill the basic concept behind the class. There's only 3 tanking classes in the game, and 2 of them have to be spec'd deep to be effective at it. Non-Prot warriors don't need buffs (although Sunder Armor might need a bit of a threat boost), they need to just put together some stam/defense gear and tank.

Technically, in a way, it does indirectly add threat by making it so that you can use revenge after a dodge/block/parry. For a warrior at least (regardless of spec). For a paladin, unfortunately, it requires at least 31 points in prot and only works on blocks.

Blizzard intentionally made it difficult for basically any warrior without Shield Slam to tank. Presumably their attempt at getting DPS classes to engage their brainswas to make it disproportionately difficult for tanks to hold aggro, and of course, they're going to balance that difficulty around people who are ideally specced for tanking. Keep in mind also that the talent revamp packed an additional 10 high-power talents at the end of each tree, essentially forcing over-specialization to a much higher degree than pre-TBC.

This combines with pathetic threat values on core skills. Basically every DPS class is doing twice as much damage as they were pre-TBC (and pre-talent-revamp) at an equivalent level of gear, while Sunder Armor went from 260 to 301 threat, and Revenge from 315 to around 400 (I think, it's kinda hard to find this information now). DPS-specced warriors *should* be gaining some value from their higher damage output, but then they're saddled with skills that don't scale (and can't even crit) and cause barely more threat than a non-crit sinister strike. Mortal Strike warriors gain basically nothing from the Arms tree except Improved Thunderclap, so they're pretty much screwed; Fury warriors are a bit more workable, but require some compromise of DPS gear even with a 0/31/30 hybrid build to gain anything from their core DPS talents (Bloodthirst and Flurry).

I'd say I'm one of the best tanks on my server, and I generally don't mind pugging when I'm specced Protection. I set up some basic group coordination rules and things pretty much fall into place; it's sometimes even fun to deal with people DPS'ing random mobs, because I generally have the threat output required to deal with that sort of thing and keep it under control. Even with a 0/31/30 build that kind of power just isn't there unless I'm stacked in DPS gear, and with a 41/20/0 build it's a joke to even tank a boss (which are typically the easiest to deal with for any spec). It's shocking how much less fun it is to try to tank anything without a dedicated tanking spec; it's just a totally different game. Probably about as much fun as trying to PvP with a Protection spec.

I think warrior tanking is one of those things that Blizzard has kinda lost control of. It's full of conflicting interests and frustrating mechanics, as well as setting the player up for a massive case of carpal tunnel.

Right but all that dodging and parrying will probably cause a reduction in threat due to a lack of rage generation from not being hit.

Tanking a 5-man in TBC can be a drag especially when it's so reliant on crowd control.

In my estimation, the full-time protection warriors (and druid tanks to a degree) usually get the best picks of guild-run instances so they're usually not running Pugs.

To be quite honest, I don't run 5-mans anymore unless it's to help someone with rep or a quest. Just not worth the time/effort unless it's a heroic. And if it's not a heroic these days, it tends to be people running them on alts so you often get players used to playing other classes.

For me, that's where the rub comes in. At this point, I'm usually dps-specced for raids so to find a group for a heroic, I either need to respec (I find doing this can help a run, gold for respecs isn't a problem [hello, dailies] ) and it can be a nice change of pace/keeping the tanking chops sharpened when not a total CC-fest. And I have the tanking gear and experience tanking (with and without points in protection) to get me through an instance as well as knowing my limits.

So, that leaves a) guild-run instances where I can tank or dps as needed b) running a heroic with friends who are around the same gear-level and mindset) c) taking a risk of ending up with a bad pug where people quit (or join and aren't even keyed for an instance), people can't do their jobs and it ends up costing gold/time/stress in repair bills and runbacks.

So, I personally tend to shy away from (c).

I also think TBC impacted the overall quality of players. Pre-Xpac, you could tell the difference between someone who worked their way through Naxx and BWL/AQ40 vs. ZG and AQ20. Nowadays, everyone and their mom and their mom's alt has Karazhan on farm, has a piece or 2 of Arena gear and various craftable epics.

I think it was similar to finding healers in the first weeks of TBC as every pally was Ret, every priest was Shadow, every druid was Feral and Shamen were agro bitches (OK, some things never change).

And now with Arena gear being so easily accessible and of a decent quality even for raiding, I think you'll see an ever greater number of hybrid builds (too many protection warriors in a raid is as bad as not enough priests).

And my conclusion to this rambling post: Look for quality over quantity and Friends list the good ones and things will go much better in the long run.

I may have miss interpreted what Blizzard was trying to do, but I was fairly confident that they specifically did not want an arms warrior to be able to tank - and by that, I mean 4th out of 4 possible tank 'classes' - in anything considered end game.

It seems like what most people had an issue with was that a fury warrior was "good enough" at tanking, and then invalidating other classes that may have been better tanks but only brought that role, feral itemization being what it was. If you needed a "5" ( 1 to 10 scale )minimum tank even for trash in Naxx, and off spec warriors used to be a "6" and every pure tank was somewhere in the 8-10 range, in my opinion what they have done is move the slider so you want a 7.5-8 for most encounters in the game.

So in a heroic why would you want a DPS spec'd tank when you will never wear pure dps gear given how heroics sometimes are very mix max'ish. If an off spec warrior could tank a tough heroic well enough, I think you would see some "trickle up economics" and it would affect the raid game, and I for one am glad for the changes that allow some flexibility in the tanking roles.