A dumb title! TL;DR version included

C'mon, it is.

I guess I'll start with my warrior. He's on alt status now. He was my main in TBC and I was pretty sure he'd be my main in Wrath, but tanking just isn't as much fun as it used to be. I used to really love running into a group of guys and picking out the ones that needed to die and letting the dps CC the ones that didn't need to die yet. I actually enjoyed keeping an eye on shield block. It was easy enough to do (just like spamming HS is actually pretty easy). It was one of the things that pretty clearly separated good tanks from bad tanks, since the rotation was pretty simple otherwise. I think we are a lot more powerful now for dealing with trash than before, but the way we have to go about dealing with trash seems sloppy. Apparently it's more like it was back then in Ulduar, but I've not been in much yet (guild's on vacation). Anyway, I don't play my warrior much, except for helping others gear in heroics, and maybe tanking OS or something every now and then. I still am interested in the tanking community and enjoy discussion on mechanics and strategies.

Warriors seem to get an awful lot of negative discussion. I usually partake in them as well. Tonight I want to see if I can figure out what are the symptoms and what are the roots of the problems we apparently have.

I've thought up a quick list of strengths warriors have. It goes as follow (in no particular order):
1) Good snap agro
2) Large toolbox for various and diverse situations
3) High mobility
4) Strong single target threat generation (as MT)
5) Powerful buffs and debuffs to bring to raid (they're actually pretty good)
6) One of the primary AoE skills used comes with a free stun.

NOTE: I've omitted "coolness" from this list (which I've seen on many people's list) primarily because, with the exception of paladins, all tanking classes are pretty cool. Sorry Pallys, pink's just never been in season for the tough guy color . We still love you and think you are nifty.

So warriors seem pretty good at a lot of things that are important for tanking, and everyone loves seeing one spinning like a top on the front lines. Let's see what they aren't so good at now.

1) Sustained AoE threat gen tends to be lower than other tank classes. Shockwave also has a fairly clumsy targeting system compared to the other tanks for AoE threat gen (bears had it worse until recently).
2) Power gains can be hit or miss at times (literally).
3) Lower end tanking dps.
4) Daunting collection of abilities to use.

Ok, yeah, that last one was kinda put there because I felt silly having half as many weaknesses as strengths. It doesn't really matter how long the lists are anyway. Not for my purposes.

Tanking basically has three major roles
1) Main Tank
2) Off Tank
3) Adds Tanking

Recently these roles have someone seemed to be blurred, so let me explain what I'm referring to when I talk about these.

Main Tank-Not necessarily the most important role in tanking, but the most iconic. Main tanks are the guys that take the heavy hits generally. He's the guy the boss likes to stay focused on the most. He gets hit often and for large amounts and has the task of moving the boss around as needed. He's a pretty big deal. He actually probably is the most important guy in the raid during combat. No pressure there.

Off Tank-These unsung heroes basically do the same thing the main tank does, but they don't get the chicks as easily. On many fights they have to maintain threat above all dps, and often switch roles with another tank and becomes MT for a while. They're also famous for eating cleaves and taking damage for the MT so our VIP doesn't get one shotted. OT's also pick up secondary bosses in the encounter.

Adds Tanks-These guys I have a lot of respect for. They basically get stuck tanking trash all day. They are the garbage men of the tanking community. Their job is to keep adds off healers and would be dpsers so everyone can do their job as smoothly as possible. Often this is a much more complicated process than being the MT, though less damage is generally incoming.

These roles apply to trash in any instance. A trash pull consisting of one hard hitting mob is MT'd. A pull with many mobs that are all tanked together are done by adds tanks. Disagree if you want, this is how I'm using the terms for this post.

It's important that any tanking class be able to do these three things sufficiently to allow a group to progress through a dungeon. Also, each tanking class must be able to do this to a similar degree or you end up with one tanking class and a bunch of would be tank classes that might as well be shamans.

This is really why warriors have come into the spotlight for such scrutiny on their viability. In the past it was just easier to bring a warrior to tank since there were gimmick fights along the way that needed them anyway, and often they were just better set up for it. Now three other classes have stepped in to compare with and warriors are finding weaknesses (many that have always existed, but may not have been perceived as such due to no viable comparison).

A number of the strengths and weaknesses warriors have don't actually matter to balance that much.
Having a large toolbox, while impressive, does the same thing as a couple tools that do everything. Not that any tank class has all the tools that warriors have (they may or may not), but as a rule of design one class can not have powerful abilities that the other classes do not.
Mobility isn't actually very powerful, though fun and useful. Warriors are designed currently to be highly mobile, which makes us good for darting around and grabbing adds from all over the place, but a paladin or DK has to be able to do the same job without a charge. They have other tools to come to a similar end.
At the same time having a frightening number of abilities at disposal for tanking is not much different from having a few abilities to keep an eye on. If you press all the buttons like you should with either the total should come out about the same.
Snap agro is also generally not that useful, and is more of a flavor. The difference is perhaps a 2-3 second wait for dps to burn something down.
The stun on Shockwave is useful, but as many powerful mobs are immune to stuns anyway, and it being unique, it can only give 2-3 second window of damage reduction from weak type mobs anyway. It's also on a slightly longer CD to prevent spamming.
For debuffs, there is no unique debuff that a warrior can do that a raid will not likely be able to replace. The possible exception is the sunder effect, which a rogue could do although they will hate you forever if you refuse to apply your own. This doesn't change that the debuffs are still powerful :P.

Basically this leaves us with strong MT threat as a perk for balancing purposes, and weak aoe threat, rage gen issues, and low dps for weaknesses.
Warriors are not light years ahead of any other tank class for single target threat gen as a MT. They may not actually be at the top at all for it. I do know they are very capable of staying ahead of dps, and they are known for their single target threat gen.
Generally speaking, warriors have a harder time holding agro on large groups of mobs than certain other classes, though they are not really broken by it. Clever applications of cleave and sunders usually make managing large groups fairly reasonable. DPS for warriors while tanking seem to fall below DKs a considerable degree, as well as bears and perhaps even paladins. Part of this is due to balancing being managed by vigilance for warriors, but when it comes down to it the difference between a tanks dps as a dpsers dps is so vast that even if one tank were 20% ahead of another tank with average dps it will still amount to less than magic beans on an overall of damage done per encounter for a standard raid. Yes, being close is good, but for most situations the epeen of doing more dps is the cause of most of the QQ on the subject. It's almost in the realm of tanking flavors.
The only real weakness I'm noticing tonight from pondering warriors is a general lack of ability to control power gains. Warriors get a little rage when attacking, and a lot of rage when getting hit. This makes them easy to balance as MT because they can almost always be assumed to be having as much rage as they can spent, or close to it. This is a problem though when damage incoming isn't very high. All you can do is swing and scrape for rage. Paladins get mana from heals (to a similar effect of rage from damage taken), as well as a number of other abilities that can generate mana though they take a bit more management than warriors do. Druids get rage the same way warriors do, but have the advantage of getting more rage from a higher damage output, due to a more aggressive gearing style that they are encouraged to persue. DKs, for all practical purposes, have infinite energy regen independent of what is happening with the boss. This makes Warriors in a tough spot, as they are similarly good at all things as other tanks, but fall fairly short in the OT department of tanking. Suggestions include buffing devastate, which is a primary spammer while OTing, making revenge proc even when not being attacked, and making swings generate more rage. I'm sure there are more out there, but I'd rather not go into everything all at once. I prefer the last of the three solutions. Buffing Devastate would not only buff our spot as an OT but would make us even greater as MTs due to much higher threat gen (which would allow us to slack on threat talents for more avoidance). Changing revenge would mean taking a reactive play style that warriors currently have and turning it unto more of a standard rotation. While this isn't necessarily bad for balance with standard specs, it would likely require a reworking of arms to prevent UA specs from becoming OP. It's very strong for single target as it is. Due to the nature of Heroic Strike and it's role in MT threat gen for warriors rage generation from normal (white) hits amounts to a very small amount of rage for a MT, but is a much larger percentage of power gained for an OT. As suggested in a recent thread, I propose a buff to a fairly deep prot talent to allow for greater rage generation on white hits. This would make it unattractive to dps warriors looking for extra rage (not that they want it anyway) and would generally not affect the threat gen of a MT during boss encounters. It would only buff the position of the OT, and possibly an adds tank. The whole problem is that warriors rely on a lot of situational things to be able to get the go juice they need to perform, where other classes just get it free or for little effort.

TL;DR version:

I propose a buff to a fairly deep prot talent to allow for greater rage generation on white hits. This would make it unattractive to dps warriors looking for extra rage (not that they want it anyway) and would generally not affect the threat gen of a MT during boss encounters. It would only buff the position of the OT, and possibly an adds tank.

Yay Wall O Text!

Edit: I fixed one of my typo's. Yay for staying up all night and writing a blog with blurry eyes!