Raid DPS tanking?

Kalman · 10/31/06, 5:50 PM

We've had a holy priest tank Razorgore from 100 to 0 (using MC aggro to hold, obviously). Once you're that far ahead, your healers can keep just about anyone up, so they might as well go DPS.

Rane · 10/31/06, 5:57 PM

If content is a few tiers below you, it's actually more advisable to dps tank stuff. It dies faster and you actually get rage while tanking this way. Tier 3 looks awesome but when mobs hit you for only 50 you tend to lose them because you just don't have the rage for tanking :)

Kalman · 10/31/06, 7:10 PM

Make your DPS warriors tank. The practice won't hurt them, and letting your usual tanks take a break from tanking won't hurt them either.

Hypatia · 10/31/06, 8:46 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Make your DPS warriors tank. The practice won't hurt them, and letting your usual tanks take a break from tanking won't hurt them either.

The only gotcha here is making sure that your usual tanks have the opportunity to bid on DPS gear. A DPS-specced warrior in (plate) DPS gear is in much better shape to tank than a protection warrior in tanking gear. Switching things up is definitely good, especially because you have to consider that people get sick or have to call raids because of work or the like, and it's good to have backup. But trading places can really make the thoroughly tank-focused warrior feel sad.

I say this from experience--I focus almost purely on tanking gear, so I feel kind of like a gimp when I'm not at least OTing. Not only is it depressing to be in a role that you're not well equipped for, it also seems somewhat criminal to *not* have the DPS warrior do DPS, since you're decreasing the raid's overall damage potential by a good chunk without really gaining much in return.

The more complete solution for me is: I need to get me some T2.5. It's just that it's hard to justify splitting DKP between that and T3. :)

Gryn(AD EU) · 11/01/06, 4:09 AM

Hypatia, get a nightfall made.

you dont need dps gear to up the raid dps by a good chunk when using that weapon. Im not sure if it will still work in TBC, but your bank probably has loads of mc cores lying around, so it doesnt really cost you anything.

Evalara · 11/01/06, 11:23 AM

We've never had a dps warriors/tank warriors split. All our warriors take tank gear as well as dps gear and do each as needed. We had one prot warrior who MT'd the hard stuff, though he recently left, so we're back to a mix of arms and fury warriors.

It really doesn't seem to make that much of a difference except at the edge of your progression envelope, and sometimes not even then. Our Twin Emps tanks were our prot warrior and a 31/5/15 and if we wiped due to a warrior dying it had more to do with their healers than themselves. My alt warrior can OT Ossirian and Hakkar in 5man/20man blues as 14/37/0 just fine. Our Nef tank is 17/34/0.

I've always been a little disappointed in our warriors' unwillingness to spec protection, but empirically it's hard to argue that it has mattered.

castille · 11/01/06, 11:30 AM

Hell, one of our DPS warriors did the most impressive showing of stance dancing on Nefarian the other night -- being Alliance, they were used to having dwarf priests around. But, when no dwarf priest's to be had? It was funny watching the regular prot warriors bounce around until the one DPS warrior with sword and board on just stance danced the rest of the lifebar away.

Zoro · 11/02/06, 8:38 AM

In theory come TBC dps tanking becomes a lot easier.
With hunters shifting aggro around, you dump it where you like. Allows for things like ful rogue evasion tanking and so forth.