I've been playing around with seeing how far you can go with duel wield tanking. I was wondering how far anyone has gotten with it. So far heroics are pretty easy even with little or no cc. I would like to see the possibility of 25 man content somewhere thats doable.
Might also be noted that while a paladin tanking with a spelldam 2h doesn't lose much of his threat, a warrior loses Shield Slam threat which is significant.
You trade it for more heroic strike spammage i guess.
I find devistate/heroic strike rotations to actrually generate alot of threat.
Case and point Im almost always a tank, its what I was born to do... Although my buddy wanted to give it a shot so I tossed on my DPS gear, went fury stance, and accidently tanked the whole thing anyway =D. Granted I did have alot of PVP type gear for DPS, meaning that I both outgeared the instance and still had enough HP for it.
That said, DW tanking (for a warrior at least) would have trouble in any raid I think. You would get crushed by bosses too easily, without shield block to save you. You would have to have gear that far surpasses the raid, at least thats my two cents... Although Ive heard of crazy cases of rouges or what have you tanking gruul, so Im sure with the will, theres a way.
^^
Throw in Devastate/heroic strike combos and it's surprising just what threat you can generate. Only downside(s) are you loose spell reflect, which can be very handy against casters, and more critically your healers have to be on their toes in case you do take a major spike.
You can easily maintain defence, avoidance etc when dual wielding, as at the end of the day it's just one bit of gear. The loss is a good 4.8+K armour, which is surprising what a difference it makes. Natural block does also generally keep revenge up, which is a cheap threat move if you over cook Dev/HS spammage.
Tried it on Gruul (weaponswap macros) and that was handy to build up threat, and it's always an option if an OT and you can board up if the MT pegs it and survive better than in dps gear, as some bosses still chuck out healng wobbles. Not sure I'd be confident to try it in BT/Hyjal, and it's a good way of killing yourself on ROS P3 (OT), even with slow weaponry.
How would you gear for it? I messed around and staying uncrittable, if res and defense stack(they do stack right?), got 21.1 dodge, 14.9 parry, 107 hit, 15k hp; 20.5 dodge, 15.1 parry, 104 hit, 15.3k hp; 23 dodge, 16.6 parry, 76 hit, 16.3k hp. My crit and ap were vastly higher in the first 2 sets, seeing as I used dps gear. Also, what speed weapons would you use? I can either go 1.6/1.5 or 2.5/2.5. For heroics, I often 2hand tank in enough pvp gear to be uncrittable and the rest full dps, but I'd love to tank kara like this. Would I be able to hold agro in the 3rd set? Or would I be able to survive in the first set?
As has been mentioned, HS/Dev spam generates a significant amount of threat and with unlimited rage....yeah. That shouldn't be a problem, though its not like throwing on full DPS gear. That said, it requires more than the tank to be overgeared to pull it off. You're going to need some serious healers and DPS enough to drag the boss down fairly fast.
I could do it but, for instance, the Kara raid I'm in is me and 1 or 2 other well geared players and then....well, no...not gonna happen.
Ya, even though I run with t5 and up players, my tanking gear is my offset and I don't think its good enough yet to dw tank even the later kara bosses, oh well.
Throwing on full DPS gear is taking it a step too far. Stay in tank gear. Your threat will suffer greatly from losing Shield Slam, but it won't be *completely* ruined -- you do get some OH damage, and you can Heroic Strike like there's no tomorrow. In DPS gear, you just take way too much damage compared to your EH.
Fast/fast is definitely the way to go. There's no benefit to using a slow OH, as you're not going to Whirlwind, and you need as many Heroic Strikes as you can possibly manage, so a fast MH is necessary too.
I think DW Devastate tanking would produce better threat if it were realistic. If you had good +hit & expertise, you would in theory have unlimited rage. You could spam devastate+heroic strike forever, that might actually be awesome TPS. You would have to have decent attack power though, current warrior tanking gear is completely lacking in that department.
What about elemental bosses like the second one in Magister's Terrace or the first one in Arcatraz? Wouldn't it make sense to trade the shield for a second 1H if you have good +hit and expertise even if you're not really overgeared? You can't block magic damage even if dealt as normal hits, right? So the only value of a shield in those fights would be stats and being able to shield slam.
I DW tanked a part of Kara while keeping my tank gear and Ghostly Steward and Phantom Valet still hit pretty hard, and if your healers aren't ready for this, you'll need to swap to a shield quick.
okay I myself i can duelwield tank a few bosses in hyjal and bt im not in full t6 or anything just have alot of avoidances if your wanting to pull it off the most get a full passive uncrushable set gear and then duelwield u can actually duel wield tank most to any bosses doing that
Duel Wield Tanking
