Casual Meat-wall Ruud the Initiated

Be wary of excessive use of shield block. It will drain your rage fast, especially tanking lowbie instances. The best use of it is to light up revenge (which it seems is your planned usage of it) on bosses, where you'll have more rage. You can also throw in some heroic strikes if you have rage, but again be wary of overusing it because it costs both the 15 (baseline) rage to use, and whatever amount of rage the unmodified white attack would have given.

Other than that, keep on trucking, it gets better once you get to 70

Thanks for the tips on Shield Block, Arrivan! You're correct that I was using it as a tool to light up Revenge. I was in a PuG with two DPSer's 6 levels higher than myself, and they were consistently unloading on two different targets. Actually, I kinda think they were racing to see which one could drop their target/pull aggro off of me first : / All my points are in Fury to boot, so my challenge was in keeping both of their targets on me while doing just enough to keep healing aggro from pulling the other enemies off. I was opening fights w/ Bloodrage (and Charge when a pull wasn't necessary) and following it with Shield Block to light up Revenge, and immediately Sundering to start with some burst aggro. Other than that, I was only using Shield Block when tanking several mobs, which meant I had 3 or more hitting me.

Of course, in this particular situation, the Shammy was not going to die from a hit or two by a Scarlet whatever, but I'm trying to treat these low-level instances as if they were situations where a DPS class could get one- or two- shotted. There's room for error now, but I want to be perfect everytime anyway... and so-

Would you recommend using the SB/Revenge combo in that situation, or relying on Heroic Strike/Cleave? Either way I'm using Rage to do a move, and losing Rage as a result (on HS by turning a white swing yellow and on SB by blocking an attack). Revenges seemed like the only way to maintain a level aggro that was high enough that the enemies wouldn't peel off when I tabbed to Sunder another target. I did suffer some Rage shortages, mostly due to throwing in Cleaves and TC/Demo. I guess the question really ends up being, "How much Rage should I keep in reserve?" Now, I know that the answer is going to be that it is situational, but if anyone has any general guidelines on that topic, I'm all ears... err, eyes. Whatever

I never thought of 'keeping rage in reserve', rather making sure I didn't waste it (HS/Cleave as appropriate).

In low rage situations its about prioritising Threat per Rage (TPR) rather than TPS. Revenge is very good value when available, but remember that TC hits each mob for about the same threat as a sunder - if I have low rage and several mobs I'll just keep enough rage TC on each cooldown (as my base threat cycle) and only use other moves if I have excess rage above that requirement.

I found going into instances somewhat beneath my level (I was boosting buddies alot as I was leveling) a great training ground for low rage tanking.

Instead of keeping rage in reserve, you will eventually learn to prioritise your attacks depending on the amount of rage you have, like Bosk said. What I do is use HS if I have more than about 30 rage and SB or TC if I have more than 50 on melee mobs (but I have enough avoidance + block for Revenge to be lit up most of the time when it is off cooldown anyway). In multiple mob situations, I spam TC and tab Sunder them.

In this case, I'd use SB/Revenge. It only costs 15 rage, whereas HS/Cleave cost 15/20 plus the rage from that white attack. Besides, Revenge is instant and has a higher threat value than Heroic Strike at your level. The only concern is if you get unlucky, because at your level SB still doesn't guarantee a block or some kind of avoidance like it does at 70 with 490 def. In that case, go for a Heroic Strike.

I know the pain of Fury tanking, it sometimes feels hopeless losing aggro and having to Taunt every time it's off cooldown. There isn't much you can do when your DPS don't manage their threat though. If they want to pull aggro they can, especially with you being an off spec tank. Intercept + Taunt can save lives (Intercept being replaced by Intervene at 70), so practice that if you must save your DPS every time. I'll admit I feel the same way; you'd have to be absolutely awful for me to let you die.

I knew that TC was good, but I did not know that it caused threat similar to Sunder Armor. It seems like I should be relying on that much more than Cleave in multi-target situations. I had the priority of those moves backwards, i.e. I was opening with a TC + Demo and then Cleaving as possible while Sundering a different mob every chance I got. From now on, I'll open with TC + Demo, tab Sunders, and TC every chance I get. I think that running lower level instances is a good idea to simulate rage starvation, as long as I'm not critting faces off. I think I'll give that a try.

I did have a couple of times where I used SB and didn't get a block, but, since I was usually using it during multi-mob fights, I generally was able to get a block.

Actually, single target aggro wasn't really a problem. Now, I'm pretty sure that I was doing this wrong (or at least in an unorthodox manner), because I haven't read of anyone else using this technique: with three different aggro snaps, I can afford to let someone unload, taunt, save my rage while taking some hits, let someone else unload, mocking blow, and then blow through my Rage w/ Sunder, Heroic, SB/Revenge, Sunder. It's sort of like a ghetto misdirect, in that someone else provides a burst of threat generation, and then I steal it off the top. By combining taunt and mocking, or challenging if it ever really hits the fan, it's possible to allow DPS to do early threat generation while building up a rage burst. In this way, I don't end up wasting rage on Sunders, etc., when I'm just going to have to use an aggro snap seconds into the fight b/c my DPS unloaded full force. Instead, my strategy was to use my aggro snaps in a planned way; taunt doesn't cost rage, and can provide you with all of the threat of a Pyro, or a backstab crit, or what have you, making taunt an extremely rage efficient threat-generator, even though the move itself does not 'generate' threat.

Of course, I am not advocating this for anything more than situational usage- PuG boss battles with impatient DPS who are going to pull aggro off of an off-spec tank in a fight that isn't riddled with threat wipes, specifically Is it still a bad plan?

I also want to thank you guys for your comments; you're making me a better tank without risking squishy lives, and I bow to your experience.