Defensive Stance

[Bob the Beholder]

/rant

Okay, I see a lot of this, and I'm going to spell it out for you:

You do not need a shield, and you do not need Defensive Stance.

While both certainly greatly increase mitigation, they also greatly reduce damage output.  Just because you're the tank doesn't mean you can't be a damage-dealer, too.

I have tanked the entirety of all three sections of Dire Maul, both sides of Stratholme, the bulk of Scholomance, and many areas of Upper Blackrock Spire without ever using a shield, and without using Defensive Stance.

I have chain-pulled in an attempt to force my healer(s) to run out of mana, and I can't do it.  I cannot take damage faster than they can heal it, and there is NO downtime.

While you'll do just fine doing the usual turtle-mode style of tanking, be aware that it ISN'T the only way to tank, and that you can tank without shields and without Protection talents perfectly well.

/endrant
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Okay, so I was really just ranting about certain warriors, without bothering to put in the part where I realize that there are several ways to tank and I shouldn't go about bashing anything that can be legitimately effective.

Obviously, with your list of accomplishments, you know how to tank. Every single warrior I've ever partied with on my pvp server does not. (Minus maybe one I ran with in SM the other day--he was pretty good.)

Certainly it's possible to hold aggro relying on a heavy two-hander's damage. But my complaints are mainly about the seeming impossibility of finding someone who can manage more than the usual, solo-tastic, 'offload all possible damage on one-target, ignoring anything that might happen to other party members' performance. My warrior uses defensive stance and a shield, and actually makes an attempt at keeping the rest of the party alive, so that's what I automatically compare sub-par tanks with.