SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin

The warrior tank is the single most versatile tank in the game. We have so many options to choose from as far as spec goes that it is almost overwhelming to put together a soul setup. I am just going to go over a few practical tanking setups within this post, just be aware that there are other specs that are just as viable as these. This post won't be a min/max discussion, but I will go into detail on why I picked certain talents and why I didn't pick others. The 3 major tank specs that I will talk about will be the Physical Main Tank, AoE Tank, and Magical Main Tank. The one thing that all 3 of these specs have in common is the inclusion of the Paladin soul. This soul, in my opinion, should be the backbone of any serious tanking spec. Your mileage may vary!

**This will be a 3 part discussion since my writeup actually ended up a lot longer than I had anticipated. Part 1 will focus on the physical main tank as seen below. Parts 2 and 3 will go over the other two specs I mentioned and will be posted at a later date.

1. Physical Main Tank
I dub this one as such because of the fact that you will have very little in the way of aoe, and you will be mostly geared towards mitigating and avoiding physical damage attacks.
Spec
Paladin
Stalwart Shield: Block +10%
Defender: Armor +10%
Aggressive Guardian: Threat +20%
Hardened Will: 9% less spell damage taken
Martial Shield: chance on block to gain AP
Unyielding Defense: -20% damage taken when blocked
Vengeful Wrath: +30% damage to your off-GCD abilities
Reverent Protection: group Absorb Shield finisher, 3min CD
Balance of Power: Blocked attacks reflect damage back to attackers (160% weapon dmg)
Karmic Resolution: 2 of your 3 off-GCD abilities heal you for 30% of the dmg done
Tip the Balance: Any damage done by Balance of Power heals you for the same amt.
Shield of the Chosen: +5% block and +armor
Paladin's Reprisal: off-GCD ability aoe + 3 second stun (up to 10 enemies) procs from a block

Hopefully most of these talent choices seem pretty solid to you. The reason why I did not take Shield of the Hero (+5% block +5% hit) is because you really ought to be hit capped easily through gear... if not, as a tank, it shouldn't matter too much if you miss a few abilities. If you find it is a problem, you can drop your Paladin's Reprisal for this but you will lose some AoE capability.

Obviously this tree is dedicated to mitigation and self-healing. Since this will be the core of all 3 of these specs, I won't repeat this farther down this post.

Warlord
I took all of the obvious mitigation and avoidance talents low in the tree:
Powerful Countenance: +10% armor
Intimidating: When struck in combat, opponent loses 5% attack power and spell power
Enhances Dodge: +5% dodge
Defensive Experience: +5% block

This is where I might need to do some explaining as far as talent choices go.
Call to Battle - increases AP and SP of group mates for up to 18seconds.
- this is a support tree. As such, you need to increase the effectiveness of your group. That said, every time you use a Call ability, you also increase your own dodge by 8% for the duration.
That Which Doesn't Kill Me: When you get crit you are healed for 25% of the damage.
- here's where I expect the obvious question from most MMO players: But Jen, if I have enough toughness won't I be immune to crits? The short answer to this is No. If you read the tooltip on toughness it states that it reduces the extra damage produced by a crit by a percentage. I can therefore speculate that you can still have critical strikes rolled against you by a mob, but these criticals won't hit you any harder than a normal attack if you have the correct amount of toughness.
Call to Entrench: Reduces raid damage by 5% for up to 18 seconds
- this goes hand in hand with call to battle... they last 18 seconds on a 3 pt AP and have a 15 second cooldown. In theory you should be able to weave these two and never have them fall off. In practice, I am sure that shit happens and you'll lose the buffs occasionally.
Figurehead: Increases healing received by 6%
- I am not 100% sure, but I believe this also affects your self healing abilities from the paladin tree.
Aid Command: 20 second buff to all raid healing +15%, 5min lockout
Rallying Command: 20 second buff to max health and resistances, 5min lockout

Now for the talents I did not take and why.
1. Weapon Blow/ Improved Weapon Blow - this ability seems very situational, and without some kind of Recount-esque addon, I cannot tell for certain that bosses can be disarmed. If they can, then a few points can probably be reallocated to these talents. Most likely from Enhanced dodge since it is the weakest of our talents.
2. Dramatic Presence - wasting 5 points to increase your group buffs by a few percent just isn't worth it. i.e. your endurance buff goes from +30 to +45. Other classes can achieve this easier and we have better places to put 5 points
3. Battlefield Domination - increasing the radius of your debuff aura is very situational. The only place I can see this being worthwhile is if you have a dual boss encounter where they have to be tanked away from each other.
4. Locked Down - an attack that causes an AoE root for 8 seconds. Also situational, and this build is really for single tanking a boss.
5. Commanding Presence - increases call duration. If you find you are having trouble keeping at least 1 call up 100% of the time you might want to look into this talent at the expense of enhanced dodge.
6. Untenable Position - reduces chance to hit of targets hit by 3 specific abilites, 2 of which this spec doesn't even pick up (one of them is the 51 pt root ability).
7. Rapid Recovery - when you block you gain 3 power. This is probably a good ability, I just don't have points leftover for it. However, if you are in a raid setting hopefully you have at least 1 bard or chloro with the ability cost reduction buff. This, coupled with Martial Shield from paladin should ensure that you have plenty of power to spend when you need it.

The third soul, Void Knight, I merely took for the buff that gives me a little magic mitigation. There's really no other 0-pt ability worth it.

"Why not pick up a third soul and devote some points into it, like low tree reaver for some more mitigation?"
- This is very tempting, but I would recommend against it. One of the big reasons is the 32 pt root ability given to warlords: Assault Command. It's a 20 second buff to your party's damage by 15%. Pretty much akin to WoW's Heroism. This is shared by the Archon ability Flaring Power, however. If you find yourself the lucky group mate of an Archon, you can probably drop a few points from warlord and place them elsewhere. In my limited experience, though, no one plays Archon.