Is a GWF who specs Sentinel with tanking gear a viable tank?
If so, would they get placed into the tank position when joining the LFP queue?
You might be able to tank well if you could hold aggro, but I'm not sure that's actually possible with a Sentinel spec. And I'm fairly sure the queue would still count you as DPS, so you wouldn't get a tanking spot most of the time anyway since the matchmaking would probably put a guardian in your group. Haven't done it so maybe someone can talk about their experience.
Biggest issue I see is until you have a fairly large amount of points in sentinel, you have pretty much 0 tanking tools. None of your basic encounters have a forced taunt or higher threat modifier, no class feature that increase threat like improved marks for the guardian, unlikely you'd be able to tank properly until 45+ or so.
You can't really tank as one would expect to, Sentinel is still an offtank spec and even if you take it your focus should be in dps. That said, you can go to plenty dungeons as the only "tank" since tanking isn't as much required as it would be in other MMOs.
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You might be able to tank well if you could hold aggro, but I'm not sure that's actually possible with a Sentinel spec. And I'm fairly sure the queue would still count you as DPS, so you wouldn't get a tanking spot most of the time anyway since the matchmaking would probably put a guardian in your group. Haven't done it so maybe someone can talk about their experience.
Biggest issue I see is until you have a fairly large amount of points in sentinel, you have pretty much 0 tanking tools. None of your basic encounters have a forced taunt or higher threat modifier, no class feature that increase threat like improved marks for the guardian, unlikely you'd be able to tank properly until 45+ or so.