I don't want to main tank ... how bad will this hurt me?

Hi all.

I really like to be DPS. Fury, arms, etc. I played EQ back in the day and spent most of my time as a barbarian warrior main tank in a raid guild. LOL that was over 7 years ago and I'm still burnt out on the MT role.

So I'm dual spec- Fury and Arms. I'm 78, almost 80. I'm in a smaller family guild, we do 10 man raids, etc.

I want to stay fury and arms. How viable is a warrior in WOW, being 80, and being solely DPS? I see so many 80 warriors as protection spec, but not many as arms and fury.

BTW nice website. I'm glad I found it :) ....

Some of the best DPS in my guild are fury/arms wars. WOTLK has made them a lot more accepted as DPS

They do some nasty dps. Ive raided with one that would either top the charts or come in top 5. Nothing wrong with a dps warrior in todays day and age.

There are more DPS warrior's in my guild than prot warriors.

The reason you may find a lot of wars are prot spec, is because they run prot as an offspec to roll through 5 mans much faster. Widely known that in almost all battlegroups that que'ing as a tank will net you a pug 5 man group in roughly 30 secs to 1 min. I, like the others, know plenty of Wars that dont go this route and are pure dps spec 100% and they have no problems getting into groups raid or being competitive on the dps meters.

i tanked most all of vanilla and everything in bc up to m'uru as a prot warrior. i got really burnt out on it, so i decided to go dps in wotlk. omg i love it. started off as arms since i played around with it a little in bt on farm nights. arms was very low dps compared to fury so i switched to tg until 3.1 when arms got a nice buff. i love the playstyle, the interaction of the rotation. you can put out some serious dmg as either spec, i would suggest you play both and see which one you like better and stick with it.

My fury warrior friend is our guild's 2nd highest dps. He used to be 1st till the unholy dk got competitive :P. I still have my vigilance macroed to his name on my warrior and my hysteria on him again on my dk.

The only thing is fury warrior scales insanely good with gear. Ofc the reverse is also true, you get exponentially worse with bad gear. With gearing up being so much easier these days, dont despair if you cant pull the numbers at first. Once the emblems start rolling in, you'll start seeing the combat text light up.

The problem with having just DPS as your only option is ... well ... that DPS is a dime-a-dozen and your competing for your spot with a lot more players.

If you have invested the time / effort to build a tank set and are competent at it, that might be the difference between getting a slot over the other upteenthousand dps trying for that same slot in a guild / raid.

Plus, insta queue heroics is dam sexy.

Yes, instaqueues are sexy, especially if it allows you to get emblems of frost gear.

Although this is slightly evil, take a prot dual spec, and do only heroics. Spend your frost emblems on your DPS specs, and upgrade your prot gear from heroic drops or offspec rolls in raids.

Some of the best DPS i know is warrior DPS. They can do insane dmg, when played smart, and don't fall over and die with the breeze like rogues.

Some things to consider: 20 minute queues for randoms w/o friends, harder to get into a good raid guild, and then to get a raid spot without a hook up, and most importantly, some moron browsing /who warrior going "can you tank H HoR lawls"

amaranthine makes great points.

i stopped tanking when i wasnt able to raid anymore. did arms/fury for awhile. decided to drop fury and attempt to tank again for shorter queues, but i havent really been able to get back into it.

You can be running 2 DPS specs, however...

Wait times for getting into Random Heroics can be 10-20 minutes long depending on your battlegroup as DPS, while as a Tank you can get them in less than 2 minutes usually.

Being able to switch out to tank, makes you more yummy for some raid leaders that run pugs, especially if you show a willingness to tank if needed.
For example Naxx for the 4-Horsemen or KT, especially in the 25-man. Those are two fights were extra tanks are nice, but not needed for the rest of the raid.

Also having a tank spec, allows your guild to grow, this way the people that have always tanked, can try other roles like healing or dps, so they don't get burned out from tanking all the time.