True fact, this is what I heard from the warrior last night in Heroic Sethekk Halls. Let me walk you through how this came to be.
I've done heroic Sethekk Halls before, and quite successfully. I have had very few complaints about any of the groups that I've been in there with. However, I inspected the tank's gear before the run, and he had epic weapon and shield, and lots of blues and greens. I was ready for awfulness.
After the first few pulls or so, I realized that he was not only tanking guys extremely well, but he was also taking very little damage. During the Ravenguard pulls, he tanked both without agro problems, taking low enough damage that I with the shadow priest's HOTs was able to heal him through it. I was thinking to myself at this point...."WTF is going on here? Is this guy cheating?"
So Rubix the mage noticed that he wasn't using sunder armor either. So I asked him how he was managing to hold agro, because I noticed that he wasn't using Sunder Armor. And his response was "Sunder Armor is for noobs." My jaw hit the floor.
He said that Sunder Armor doesn't scale with gear, which is true. So I asked him what he uses. He said he uses Shield Slam, Revenge, and Heroic Strike primarily to hold agro, and Thunderclap for AOE tanking. Mind you, he did one of the best AOE warrior tanking jobs I've ever seen, because Rubix told me "I don't think I could pull agro if I tried."
It got me to looking around, and I found this really good site about warrior tanking. I would recommend it to any warrior, because it's some really good information.
PS: This is the warrior's spec. I'd use his name but I don't want to embarrass him, since he is still wearing greens :-P. Some keynotes: he has Imp Thunderclap, but not Improved Sunder Armor or Improved Heroic Strike. Very interesting indeed.
PSS: He does use Sunder Armor, just doesn't spam it. I'm sure he spams it on bosses to get Devastate maxed out, but for trash mobs, it amazed me to learn how much better Shield Slam actually is.
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If the only thing a tank does is spam sunder armor, they will very definitely have major aggro issues. It simply isn't that good at 70 anymore. It is helpful as a rage dump and yes, it does help some to get devastate up, but arguably devastate does less threat than sunder, especially depending on what weapon you're using.
I'll have to take the time to read that site when I'm not supposed to be doing work - I don't have the spare time right now to get really involved in something good and detailed. However, shield slam is definitely a good thing, especially if you have a high block value on your gear (yes, block value, not block rating). I've heard of a number of warriors who wished they could dual wield shields just to get higher block value - they value the weapon that little at this point.
Thanks for digging up a tanking reference - as I say, I look forward to going through it later to improve Sarroh's tanking (if I ever get around to playing him).
Saro
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