WoW wasn’t the first game where tanks used to spec offensively to be PvP viable, WAR has gone away from this model, and while dps-specced tanks are quite viable, there is the other path to be a superior PvP machine. To accomplish this thing, you need to be able to deliver some serious pain in the ass while having insane survivability, and luckily enough, a Black Orc can have both!

 
Our best friend here is a shield, which provides block rating allowing to block all incoming damage and effects from any source (as long as it’s not a morale ability or another undefendable attack). But while a shield is nice and all, it’s not enough alone, we need to stack a bit of block chance %. Our options are: Good Wif Shield - core tactic gained at rank 27, Less Stabbin’ Me - available with 4 points into path of Da Toughest, if you reach high (70+) renown rank it’s possible to get 12% block chance from that as well. The biggest source of shield block however is Can’t Hit Me! - deep Da Toughest channeled ability. Combining all of the above can give us some pretty sick +block% values, that’s A LOT of avoidance. And what to do with all of that? Well, for example you can use Youz see me blok’ dat’?! to boost morale gain by a quite big margin, and exploit some defensive morale to the fullest, but be careful kids, there are only 4 tactic slots!

Shield block is not the only survivability tool there is, but let’s leave it there. Let’s take a look at the second part of being a tough motherfucker, which is being a motherfucker. One of the most annoying things you can do in RvR are knockbacks. And what’s more annoying than a knockback? An AoE knockback! That’s brawling spec ability, but it’s a core ability, and we are not interested in it’s damage here, so it’s fine and dandy to use it with another spec. Two other things that are worth to notice is the cooldown increase on Not in da face! and from offspeccing path of Da Boss we get Big Brawlin’ which gives us effecitve aoe snare and disorient on Big Swing, now we are talking! There is more good stuff to be taken, and with additional 4 mastery points from renown it only gets better.

Terhix