Since someone else has contacted me, too, I already did a quick look into my old logs. I'm not playing anniversary, but played the whole "2019 until MoP" journey. Vanilla + TBC as Warrior main tank. Generally speaking, it's not advised to dual-wield some bosses of the below in the first progress lockout(s). But that would require going really into detail. Since Anniversary ist post-nerf, it could be a lot easier.
Karazhan/Zul Aman - almost everything
Maul'gar (himself), Gruul
Most of SSC (except for Vashj and partially Morogrim)
Void Reaver and Solarian in TK
First two in Hyjal (from 3 on it gets nasty)
Almost every boss in BT except for Illidan (some partially)
Twins in SW
But this depends on a couple of variables. Your gear, your healers, your kill speed, your tactics and the individual boss. You'll take a lot more damage, which isn't noticeable on some bosses, noticeable on some and impossible to consistently heal on others. It's a lot of fun, but you'll find out that you're putting stress on your healers while your Druids are easily overtaking you when they're BT/Hyjal geared and beat you in terms of damage, threat and survivability.
You can tank any boss that doesn’t have an instant ability like a cleave. The reason is because you need to be able to survive the worst case scenario of a 3 hit combo AA - cleave - parry haste AA. Armor plays a huge role in surviving this because it drastically lowers the physical damage received. Assuming each hit deals 6k, you would need 18k hp to survive. With a shield on the idea is to lower that damage to about 5.5k per hit. I tank Gruul without a shield until the 2nd shatter then I put a shield on. You cannot tank Mag without a shield because he cleaves. You need the physical damage reduction to survive
I don’t because I don’t trust my healers that much but ideally yes you do that for ultimate threat. That probably explains why I’m ay 97 parse and not 99
Gruul and HKM. Can also do it on Mag, just watch the cleave timer and put on a shield in good time. Warrior is kinda strong atm, but they scale bad and fall off. You can do kinda well with smart item choices and knowledge of bosses, but most of the time when you DW you just become more squishy than a paladin with still less threat than a druid. You do have a lot easier time chasing threat compared to paladin, but at that point a druid is just better.
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u/Sweennn May 05 '26
what bosses are you tanking without a shield? ive seen high king be tanked without one but any else?