So confused about warrior talents, please help...

[Kevin]

When I've been in parties lately, the shield has been coming out. 

I find the way tanking works in WoW to be a little frustrating.  In many other games, the warrior's doing the most damage, and he's got the highest defense, turning the warrior into a tank and allowing him to do lots of damage.  In WoW, it's kind of painful to watch the rogue do more damage than you, even when you're dual wielding or have a 2H weapon.

I haven't played a rogue yet, but it seems as if they're simply a more powerful class in that they can do lots of damage, but their weakness for being undefended is easily compensated for by their ability to escape.  Also, what works well when they solo, also works well when they're in a party.  If you're saying that warriors have to split their focus, it makes them weaker in both areas.

My criticisms aside, I don't really mind being the tank, but I'm wondering what are good talents or combinations of talents, that will allow me to increase my threat.  I find that when I'm going sword and shield, monsters will go after other party members who are doing more damage or casting spells.
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Take a look at This thread on these forums and the one it links to on the Blizzard forums.

Basically you want to sunder armor, revenge, and shield bash as much as you can as these skills generate high amounts of threat. Demorilazing shout generates a small amount of threat but it gives that small threat level to every target it hits.

As far as talents go, I think you can do anything you want with them and still be effective. You just have to realize that in a party your job, unless there is another warrior who is main tank, is going to be to lock down the mobs and that is best achieved through use of skill.

I personally have a protection warrior for mainly roleplay reasons honestly. There are some protection talents that help me when tanking but having played a protection warrior from L1 to L60 I've come to the conclusion that the most helpful protection tree talent is defiance. To get that you need 15 points in protection. I'm starting to believe that in 90-95% of the encounters a warrior that has 15 points in protection (for defiance and toughness) and the rest of the points in fury, arms, or both is going to be a better tank than a warrior with a lot of points in protection. Improved shield bash and concussion blow will give protection an advantage over casters and named mobs that don't have boss immunity immunity (i.e. you can stun them). Improved shiel wall will give them an advantage in some situations. Improved sunder armor may give them an advantage on holding multiple mobs because it is cheaper to use, however the right talents in arms and fury could mean the arms/fury is generating rage so much fast that it overwhelms this difference. The extra damage an arms/fury can do even in defensive stance is generally going to be more valuable to a group. The debuff from mortal strike if the warrior goes that way is very helpful when a mb that can heal is around.

So yes, a warrior plays very differently solo and as a maintank (if you are off tank or main assist it isn't that much different) because solo you want damage damage damage and as main tank you what threat threat threat (or aggro or hate, I see all three terms a lot). But any talent build can do both. You will also probably start to develop to sets of gear. One for tanking one for soloing. For tanking maximizing def and stamina is generally the best way to go. 1 defense skill is .04% block, dodge, and parry. It is also that much less chance for a mob to land a critical strike on you. My warrior is up to 414 defense in full protection gear. That adds 4.56% to my block dodge and parry and means that even mobs in molten core and onyxia herself will generally not be able to land a crit on me (the 420 - 430 range is where the Onyxia and the MC bosses will never crit you). So I have 13%+ chance to block or dodge, or parry an attack, I never get hit with a critical strike. This means that I have a chance to use revenge on mobs pretty much all the time since I will block, dodge, or parry one of their attacks while the skill is in cooldown, I get to throw out my sunder armors and shield bashes and make all the mobs that aren't crowd controlled hate me a lot. This lets the rogues, mages, warlocks, and everyone else throw out damage as fast as they want. The healer doesn't use all that much mana in keeping me alive and instances go nice and smooth.

When I solo, I use a big two hander (since it does better DPS than dual wield right now sine my one handers are still pretty poor) and a mix of +crit, +str, +agi, and +stam gear. I have some leather armor in my solo gear set since the damage reduction isn't as important as the +dodge and +crit those pieces give me. I still don't have a full solo gear set so I still have some of +def gear on, but the gear makes a difference. I wear some of my solo gear when I'm tanking lower instances to help out guild members or for some of the "trash" mobs in some of the bigger instances so that I can do more damage as long as I'm not taking more healing. I think I discover that 380 def is all you need to not get a crit on you in LBRS. I think it was 365 for all but the bosses in BRD.