I have came across many threads about which horde race to make for warriors and have yet to see a guide on how to leveling a tank warrior. From what I have read, opting into fury/arms while leveling is a lot more efficient, then just re-spec into protection end game.

My question is though since I will be majority of the time leveling with buddies that Protection warrior could be potentially optimal since they can tank mobs and tank dungeons.

Playing on private servers I have found that protection warriors are boring and slow and have yet to find it optimal when leveling.

Would love any feedback or tips in making protection warrior viable for "speed" leveling even if this includes running fury/arms talents and just running a shield when doing dungeons or questing large groups of mobs when questing with friends.


Additional notes:
I found myself leveling by myself at some points because I am a frequent player and play at all times of the day/night and with protection warrior solo was miserable.. I want a solution! :P

Level arms or fury, just toss on a shield and/or defensive stance when you're tanking with friends. You'll be ok if they're not online, and you'll be just fine tanking most anything up until raids.

Protection is never an optimal spec while leveling. By all means play it if you want, but it's going to slow you down considerably.

I agree with @Zanthir here. I'd say tank as fury even if you are speed leveling and doing dungeons with friends. It will provide more dps to your group, making the speed leveling even faster. Past 40, as dungeons get increasingly more challenging, you can start putting points into the protection tree. This spec is very rough, and there is most likely room for improvement, but I think you would be looking at something like this:

https://bobo-talents.aerobaticapp.com/? ... qtr3r4r5r6

Xaldron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I agree with @Zanthir here. I'd say tank as fury even if you are speed leveling and doing dungeons with friends. It will provide more dps to your group, making the speed leveling even faster. Past 40, as dungeons get increasingly more challenging, you can start putting points into the protection tree. This spec is very rough, and there is most likely room for improvement, but I think you would be looking at something like this:

https://bobo-talents.aerobaticapp.com/? ... qtr3r4r5r6

Thank you for this! What do you guys think about for weps? Do you think opting into a dagger is more optimal when running fury//tanking or should I just use the standard 2h wep for less miss chance and have a seperate 1h and shield for when I am tanking?

When I tried fury out a little bit I notice 2h being more optimal than your 2 1h weps because of hit chance and ability dmg...?

"Leveling Protection Warrior" awful idea. Produce more TPS outside of protection and you wont need the survivability from prot until you are raid tanking. Youre also making yourself shit for PvP, youre worse at killing things in PvE.

Thomasd00 wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Xaldron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I agree with @Zanthir here. I'd say tank as fury even if you are speed leveling and doing dungeons with friends. It will provide more dps to your group, making the speed leveling even faster. Past 40, as dungeons get increasingly more challenging, you can start putting points into the protection tree. This spec is very rough, and there is most likely room for improvement, but I think you would be looking at something like this:

https://bobo-talents.aerobaticapp.com/? ... qtr3r4r5r6

Thank you for this! What do you guys think about for weps? Do you think opting into a dagger is more optimal when running fury//tanking or should I just use the standard 2h wep for less miss chance and have a seperate 1h and shield for when I am tanking?

When I tried fury out a little bit I notice 2h being more optimal than your 2 1h weps because of hit chance and ability dmg...?

Heya ! I'm leveling a warrior myself when classic comes out and I'm planning to go at every aspect of the game (questing, grinding, tanking in dungeons, playing pvp and wpvp, professions, you name it..). I'm a casual player and will not hit 60 before this year ends I guess but I can tell you this. I'm going into the arms tree and put some points into fury after I get my MS on lvl 40. Meanwhile I'm grabbing an up to date 1 hander and shield for tanking elite quests or dungeons and you can do this while lvling with a arms or fury spec. Just go with your personal preference, but it's certain that a protection lvling spec will be a torture to yourself. But heeey, If you like that stuff than that's the way it is.

Protection spec leveling is a bold move. I've done it for the first 35ish levels and it was alright. It's slower soloing but (unsurprisingly) you don't die as easily. So one of the main complaints of warriors, dying a lot, is relieved a bit.

If you have a couple friends you're going to be leveling with mostly, one option is dungeon grinding. If you go this route then protection becomes far more viable as it increases your ability to hold agro and not die. Then your group can really lay on the DPS without much fear of a wipe. It's pretty surprising what you can do with a dungeon geared, low level, prot warrior as far as adds go.

-ClassicRaids

I just ran arms spec all the way through the original game and tanked every instance along the way. And I don't remember ever wishing I was prot spec tanking 5 man groups. I never really raided, so 5 man dungeons were my game. But if you do end up raiding you can evaluate changing specs once you get there.

Levelling prot will absolutely make tanking easier. Pardon if I'm misunderstanding, but you seem like you're going to be playing this warrior almost exclusively with a group of friends? In which case I'd say hell yeah. Prot solo is hard and grueling, it's efficacy shines in group scenarios only. That is - IF you know you want to level prot. A lot of people have already said it here but you don't need to be prot in order to tank as a warrior. You'll tank very well if you're not in prot, you'll just probably tank a bit better in prot.

I thought the same way when leveling my priest on a private server, as theres a build that has you go into holy instead of shadow if you're primarily going to be doing dungeons. DO NOT DO THIS. Unless you WANT to go protection for some personal fantasy, you should make sure that nothing is stopping you from having fun by yourself. WoW is obviously a community given game but it's still better to make sure you can have fun on your own if need be.

Leveling as holy is garbage and it honestly made me wanna reroll instead of pay the gold to respec.

Depends on what you're after. I only started in TBC so it's not one to one with vanilla, but I leveled my warrior as protection from the start - with 2-3 friends. We had more fun doing it that way, we did a lot of dungeons and it obviously requires a slightly different approach to quest mobs. It probably wasn't as effective but dungeons went smoothly and I guess we enjoyed the role-playing aspect of it as well.

I plan on doing the same this time around, and it less time to play than 10 years ago, leveling and dungeons are the game so I'd rather enjoy it as an actual protection warrior.

I usually level as a protection warrior because I like it. Speed leveling as a protection is not an option. If you wanna speed level as a warrior go arms till 40 then change to prot IF you have a couple of buddies to go dungeon leveling.

Leveling as protection warrior has it's perks, you won't die as often as arms or fury and you will find groups for dungeons more easily on later levels (40+). If you just want yo tank dungeons while leveling you can just go as arms and toss a shield, it will do the job.

Leveling as protection can be a lot more fun than arms or fury (at least for me) it's a little bit slower, but hey so what?

daisyKutter wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Leveling as protection warrior has it's perks, you won't die as often as arms or fury and you will find groups for dungeons more easily on later levels (40+). If you just want yo tank dungeons while leveling you can just go as arms and toss a shield, it will do the job.

I never had problems finding a group as a tank no matter what my talent build was. Typically tanks are harder to find than the other roles in a group, and that's held true since the original game and remains true to this day on retail with tools like LFG. I don't remember a single dungeon group asking me what spec I was either. They were all just happy to find a warrior who owned a shield and was willing to use it.

I mean if you're going to specialize into cleave groups and dungeon grind or something specific like that, then maybe you need a specific build for speed running purposes. But for general purpose just playing... I doubt being prot spec helps you find dungeon groups as a tank any faster than any other spec. It's kind of a non-issue until level 60 endgame stuff.

Really I'm just advocating play whatever is the most fun for you. I just don't expect being in prot is going to be fun for most people before level 60 lack of mortal strike or bloodthirst sucks against every mob you face outside of a dungeon group.

Prot is awful preraid. You do less TPS. The DPS in your group cant push numbers as hard without pulling threat because you generate less threat as prot. Therefore fights last longer and you take more damage. Prot is worse. It is worse for leveling. It is worse for tanking pre raid. It is bad for PvP. Protection is awful. Unless you have found some crazy niche spell cleave 5 man dungeon grind team that plans to run prot to gather adds (terrible idea because feral druids exist), this spec is just bad if we are being reasonable and logical.

For this same reason you will find MANY warriors dual wield tanking in 5 mans and only swapping to a shield when necessary because they understand how TPS works, its value and when to swap to their shield as a tool. Which is also why many low level warriors without hit are wielding a 2hander. 2hander is simply better for leveling than dual wield due to hit. Prot is just bad outside of raiding.

I would level as 2h arms and just get a 1h + shield for tanking, it wont be a problem tanking with a dps spec and you can still kill mob/players in the open world while playing solo. Healers also level as dps and a still viable healing leveling dungeons.

A lot of specs in Classic are hybrid in nature.

You can level deep Prot if you really want to, but I'd highly recommend doing the Prot tree component last.

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#LV0xzZVZgdzsezzVo put the last four points into armour, you don't want to be running many of those lvl 55+ dungeons without shield slam. Likewise you can max out cruelty closer to lvl 60 too.

Regards

As with most other suggestions, Arms till 60~ish is going to be faster.

Thomasd00 wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Xaldron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

I agree with @Zanthir here. I'd say tank as fury even if you are speed leveling and doing dungeons with friends. It will provide more dps to your group, making the speed leveling even faster. Past 40, as dungeons get increasingly more challenging, you can start putting points into the protection tree. This spec is very rough, and there is most likely room for improvement, but I think you would be looking at something like this:

https://bobo-talents.aerobaticapp.com/? ... qtr3r4r5r6

Thank you for this! What do you guys think about for weps? Do you think opting into a dagger is more optimal when running fury//tanking or should I just use the standard 2h wep for less miss chance and have a seperate 1h and shield for when I am tanking?

When I tried fury out a little bit I notice 2h being more optimal than your 2 1h weps because of hit chance and ability dmg...?

Dagger = nono for a warrior.

You would be far better off with 2h fury than dual wield. This is, as you point out, due to hit chance. My recommendation is 2h weapon and separate 1h + shield for tanking. @stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.

My advice is, just dont do it.

There's no advantage to being Protection until level 60. None of the Prot talents really make a big difference at that level, and outside of Defiance you will likely do more threat as any other build.

Also having Tactical Mastery if you level as arms will imo be far more useful.

Xaldron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Dagger = nono for a warrior.

Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.

If you want to tank dungeons a lot I would advise Arms over Fury (and stay away from prot unless you want to make your solo questing experience horrible). I personally prefer Arms over Fury because Arms has Tactical Mastery, to allow you to keep rage when switching stances. It's a very underrated talent for tanking. It allows you to quickly Intercept any mob on your healer. It also allows you to almost instantly Mocking Blow any mob when you're in Defensive Stance, very useful because Taunt resists quite often. You can't do that as Fury because you lose all your rage when switching stances (Mocking Blow is a Battle Stance ability).

Indeed. And as a nice bonus you get Anger Management which generates rage for you in combat and makes it easier to carry leftover rage over to the next pack.

Xaldron wrote: ↑

5 years ago

stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.

Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents

Yeah I've done this the entire time I've played the game. Shield on during the entire dungeon, taking things slow. I never spent any time on forums or reading about the game so it's just been how I played this whole time. Nobody suggested it back then and I also don't remember hearing about people dual wield tanking back then either, seems like it's a more recent development. Or I just never paid attention to different playstyles, also possible, lol.

I'm looking at maining a feral druid this time around, but I'm definitely going to keep my warrior as an alt. I think this time I'm going to try dual wield tanking like you describe here. I keep seeing videos about this on youtube from guys like Skarm talking it up, and I keep reading about it here. Not only is the increased TPS a good thing, but it also sounds more fun too.