Burning Crusade Horde Tanking TBC

[SadovEZ]

People seem to be extremely attached to the 5% stam boost that Taurens get. I have a lvl 70 Orc and was going to play arms in pvp and play prot on the side in pve. Am I making a mistake by trying to tank as an orc and not leveling a tauren on the side?

[taralej]

Racials are never a "mistake". Don't take it like that and spoil your experience. In the end, you choose what you play.

Tauren may be the best Horde race due to all of their racials adding up pretty well - AoE stun, +5% health, +10 nature resistance (useful in SSC) - but orcs are not bad either. The stun resistance can be really useful and the expertise bonus with axes (The Brutalizer) is also a nice threat boost. The only negative part is that the +pet dmg boost is irrelevant and that Blood Fury cuts your healing received and thus should never be used.

The only really "bad" race for tanking on Horde side is troll. The health regeneration in combat is insignificant. The active racial is near-irrelevant. The other racials are totally irrelevant. But then again, trolls have a strong role-play fantasy with warriors, with troll berserkers and all that jazz. Now add the ZA troll gear and you end up with a really good and really appealing troll berserker.

[poepinjehoofd]

It's not a 5% stam boost Tauren's get, it's 5% overall health, and it counts after all buffs and gear (so it works on the HP provided by Flask of Fortification for example). It's quite significant. A 20k HP tank will have 21k as Tauren. War Stomp is a nice goodie but not that useful. It's affected by Spell Pushback and more importantly, you can't dodge, parry or block while casting it. So if you're tanking 5 mobs it'll take a while for it to go off and while you're casting it you're a sitting duck. It's mostly useful in PvP or if you lose aggro on the pull and want everything stunned for 2 seconds while you grab aggro.

Still, play what you like. Tauren are the best tanks without question but that doesn't mean you can't perform well as anything else.