Great post! Love the attitude and experimenting with things like this is what makes vanilla fantastic imo.
There's actually been a lot of experimental work done on tanking shamans in vanilla on both Kronos and the old Nostalrius showing that tanking shamans are viable 1 - 60 in 5 mans. Here's a great thread from the Nostalrius forums that compiles community info into one place (link below):
https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=33076
It's a great read, incredibly useful, and nice to see the community coming together and sharing info.
Findings:
Without bugged Rockbiter threat, Shamans actually generate the most raw threat while leveling among tanks, though they lack a taunt for emergency situations.
Based on the calculations in the thread above, Enhancing Totems is actually a superior choice to Guardian Totems in terms of sheer damage mitigation and avoidance at max rank: "-6 dmg from melee sources vs 1.30 DPS +1% crit +1% dodge and token additions to armor and block value"
Similarly, Mana Spring Totem is superior to Healing Stream Totem while tanking instances. The HP from healing stream is negligible as a tank while the mana is invaluable for keeping ES and LS ready.
Keeping Lightning Shield up at all times helps maintain threat on multiple targets significantly, though downranking may be necessar due to mana.
Fast weapons lead to higher, more stable threat due to increased number of hits with Rockbiter, smaller penalties for missing, and increased chances to proc Flurry. That said, slower weapons gain slightly more benefit from Flurry resulting in spikier threat.
In short, if you're digging tanking shaman I say stick with it :) A few friends and I just started new chars on Anathema (Shaman, Mage, Priest) and our Shaman has decided to go the tanking route; will post updates as we progress!
EDIT: Grammar, syntax, added info
