Defensive Stance

[Kevin]

I have used this type of pull all the way up through Dire Maul for certain and even when leaving Scarlet Strat to get to TIMMY!  Any time that it is safe to charge a crowd that will be AOEed I think that it is a big benefit if you can charge in, thunderclap, Demo, and Howl.  This will minimize damge to everyone involved and probably even allow you to hold aggro for a tick longer.  However, Darian's points are also important.  Some places charging to meet the mobs is a bad idea and you need to pull them toward you...

Yep, understood and there are times when I start a pull with a bow in defensive stance or do a CC pull or other types. I'm pretty familar with and used to working with most every type of CC, except SAP and I've worked with other's being the puller too. This all jives with what I have said and what I have experienced.

To be perfectly honest these are some of the situations in groups that I still like having Tactical Mastery.  That said if you are good (and just a touch patient) with applying TC/Demo and then stance switching you probably won't lose much rage at all.  I still find Tactical Mastery to be of more use when I am soloing, especially against tough mobs that I want to fight in defensive and then execute at the end.

Yep. TM just makes it easier to do.

The question as I see it for you is whether you want those three points or if you want improved sunder and/or the last point in anticipation.  I personally love the idea of improved sunder as it allows you to lay down those sunders quicker and still have rage open if necessary for things like shield bash.  Any chance you can lower the rage cost of a skill you use constantly seems like a good investment to me.  Sunder is almost certainly the button I hit most often when I am tanking (with Revenge easily being second) so lowering the rage cost of that skill seems like a big winner in my book. 

I agree and that was the main skill that I was lacking that I wanted that got me really thinking about it. I first looked at TM, but as you say there are other places to look for the points.

I am personally enamored of the idea of stopping damage before it ever happens.  For this reason I value things like dodge/parry above blocking and way above AC. 

I agree with this, the points were put in toughness early on and I have debated on moving them to anticipation. I'm still wearing mail bracers and I just replaced my mail belt with a blue one that I got in ST, well I had another plate one that was sent to me but I was still debating it and the mail one I had. The other side is that 10% more armor from items makes those lower AC +def or +agi items become closer in AC effectiveness, yeah yeah the higher AC stuff becomes even more effective, but I don't look at it that way. :)

I've heard of slow soloing speed for warriors due to less than peak damage and the need to eat/bandage constantly.  I can tell from the timer on Demo that I routinely kill mobs slightly below or even to my level in about 40 seconds on average and can routinely fight at least 4-5 in quick succession before I even have to worry about food or bandaging.  I am so confident in my character's mitigation ability that I routinely engage mobs of equal level with only half health knowing that I will come out on top unless I get added on (and then I run).  I always have a heal pot or invulnerability pot and bandage ready to go if it becomes necessary but that really doesn't happen often.  This is obviously not as much of a concern for you with Aleri behind you but it still speaks to what mitigation I'm getting.  This is also more regularly in battle stance (so I can kill faster while soloing).

While Aleri and I duo pretty much all the time with pretty much zero downtime, I may add, we still do solo stuff. Some of the collection quests we will solo because it doesn't feel as much of a grind or one of us doesn't want to grind while the other does. But my solo experience is pretty much the same as yours, I start fights at half health, I chain 4 or 5 before eating/bandaging, etc. I've got my parry and dodge at around 11-12% and that is where I would like to keep them at least. I try to hold about 50% damage reduction with a shield on as well. Best of both worlds type of deal. I also pretty much never use defensive stance outside of an instance, unless we somehow manage to get a ton of mobs. That was one of my arguments against TM for me. I don't use it outside at all really, and it gets less useful the higher level you get.

So, after rambling on forever the last thing that comes to mind is the idea of losing some points in weapon specialization. ...  I personally consider my weapon damage bonus to be in crits or extra damage from strength bonuses to AP.

So a suggestion might be this: Leave Arms/Fury as they are.  I will assume you haven't put any points into 1h weapon spec yet considering your level and what you have said thus far. ...  Then you can play with shield discipline and see if you like it.  This saves you from respeccing now so that if you want to respec later it will be cheaper as it will only be your first respec.

I've got a pretty decent one hander in my Viking Warhammer so I'm lucky with one handers even if I'm not lucky with 2 Handers. :) I have one point in weapon spec that I just put in there. Not sure why I didn't put that in Improved Sunder, I think I was still thinking of that talent the way it was before they changed it to reducing rage cost. I look at it more as an extension of defiance as opposed to more damage. I'm also not sure how it might interact with defiance. My points went into defiance early and it, like subtlety on a healer, is something that is hard to judge the effectiveness on. The other advantage for me of weapon mastery is that it will help my off hand as well. Since I will dual wield in def stance if I'm not really stressing the healer (easy to tell when she is in the same room) to up damage and aggro, the one hand weapon spec helps me even more. Of course now that I just got a Razor Axe of the Monkey That is +17 on both str and agi I can probably do better damage with that on than my Viking hammer and my Warlord Axe of the Tiger that I have in my off hand.

But I may just go with 2 in weapon spec, 3 in improved sunder and leave the rest be as well. It's lots to think about.

When all is said and done I think you will be an effective tank either way so go with what suits you best.

Thanks. Yeah, I think I can be effective regardless since I think I have been pretty effective so far, but I'm trying to do a bit of optimization while minimizing experimentaiton, like you said earlier, good to know before you pay for a respec. :)