I started this warrior back in MOP ( I think) and I really enjoyed leveling and questing with him as a prot. Warrior . I’d round up a bunch of mobs and take them down one at a time. I’d use victory rush (think that’s the correct spell) to heal up and finish the fight with full health. I was hoping to do it again with a Tauren warrior in Classic, but everything I read about warriors talks about how slow and painful leveling is. I didn’t start playing until Wrath, so I don’t have personal experience with vanilla leveling. Was it really that painful to try to level a warrior tank?
Yes. They were the slowest unless you had gold to funnel to them. They’re also good with a healer, but they start with no rage (unless they Charge) and they have to build it up on each mob. Your primary rage spender for quite a while also is on the next attack, so you lose the rage it costs to cast it and the rage you’d get from the attack on top of waiting several seconds for it to go out… and then miss.
slow and expensive as you will need mass food while lvling
Once you get the use to vanilla leveling it’s not that bad.
Honestly, if you’re going into classic blind with never playing this sort of play style, I would say rolling a warrior will be perfect. It will help you learn about pull management better than if you rolled something like a hunter or mage.
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So in classic Warriors are very gear dependent so if you have a good weapon it can significantly improve your leveling speed, but its hard(and time consuming) to make sure you have a good weapon at all times.
They have no movespeed increase like shamans or druids
They have no stealth like druids or rogues to quickly complete quests
They have no health regain moves except bloodthirst which you only get at 31 points into fury.
They have no CC to help with pulling multiple mobs
They don’t really have any escape mechanics
Its really just a combination of a bunch of things that other classes have which causes them to be the slowest levelers in classic.
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Befriend a healer.
It is slower to level. And your character is one of the slowest to move around the world and stuff, too.
Now if you don’t spec primarily as a Protection Warrior, you will have much more fun, imo. I remember enjoying the game more as an Arms Warrior than a Prot Warrior. When it comes to instances, Prot can be fun and takes a certain amount of learning and experience to be good at. But for the most part, Prot isn’t very friendly for leveling or doing anything outside of instances.
Arms is great. I’m told Fury is pretty great, also. But if you sink a lot of points into Prot, be prepared for an uphill battle whenever you solo.
Wtf? Mogar JR???
Anyway, yes Warriors ARE the slowest. If you’re alone, you won’t be killing more then two mobs at once till probably late 20’s or 30’s depending on your weap and the mob itself,
If you want something more in-depth then just ask. But TLDR It’s a slow road and a tough one that doesn’t pick up till later, but damn does it feel good when it does…
I didn’t realize that victory rush didn’t exist back in vanilla. As I said before, I didn’t start my warrior until sometime in MOP, so clearly I had a very different experience that what it would be like in Classic. Time to look at other classes. Ty for the input
I’ve heard people say that you don’t even need to be prot to tank low level dungeons. Going into protection stance was a warriors way of turning on their threat which could be done from any spec. The same was for most tanks. there was essentially an on switch for threat generation.
I’m not sure how this will effect your abilities though as you should probably have a shield equipped
You don’t need to spec prot until you start progression raiding, and even then it sorta depends if that helps, I didn’t even need a shield till about Ulda,
Yea one big thing is you have 0 active ablity’s to spam that acutally do damage, rend isn’t worth useing in PVE past i think 20ish, and the other thing you press with is hamstring comes in a bit later does near 0 dps, but you do get slam at i think 24. Which holds you over till execute, but all that’s timed. So the real skill comes in at 36, or 40.
You should be using a sword and board. Like hybrids, you want to keep at least a 1h and shield (and your 1h weapon skill up to date) for tanking dungeons.
Yep, pretty much. Rend is better DPR than Heroic Strike purely because it’s so slow and eats a lot more rage than it suggests, and it’s damage that is constantly ticking. It’s not great but there’s not a lot else to use rage on - plus the optimal way of leveling is Hamstring kiting, so Rend ticking helps more.
Tanked many a pre-60 dungeon in whatever whacky spec I had at the time (I didn’t even think about talent management). Defensive stance, a 1h and a shield and a general idea about how to keep mobs on you is all you need. Certain abilities could not be used while in defensive stance, and certain abilities could only be used in defensive stance (same goes for Battle, and later on, Berserker Stances).
For the OP, it won’t be as hard as it was back then with the wealth of knowledge out there on how to level a warrior. It just didn’t exist back then in the same regard, so do some studying. However, yes it can be an extremely painful process at the start.
Keep your gear up to date, keep you WEAPON as good as it can be. My best suggestion is to level as 2h Fury. Wish I had known that on this warrior back in the day. Switch to Arms @lvl 40.
To add to this, for those who don’t know Heroic strike will eat your white hit, and your white hit generates rage. So you’re using 15 rage ontop of whatever rage you’d get from your next strike. If nothing else you can spam hamstring if you’re arms and speced deepwounds lol, so long as you keep a rend up. But even then eh.
It really doesn’t.
You miss out on last stand at 20, a single target stun at 30, and shield bash at 40. You get every other prot ability like shield block, retal, taunt, etc. As a dps spec you will also be generating more threat. There is no pull while doing dungeons where it is make or break unless you’re prot. Just pull wisely use retal if you pull way too much, shout as a LAST resort, and it’s all good.
And sword spec. Hamstring damage can proc Sword Spec, but for leveling I think we’d all agree if you’re gonna dump talent points into a weapon spec, it should be Axe, regardless of racials. The extra crit is just too important for rage generation
Stance dancing was a skill to master.
That said, leveling was a chore for a good while. My first 60 was a warrior, and I swore never again. (Until this bank alt, notwithstanding).
You’ll want to bring a lot of food with you. You’ll be eating quite often if you want to maximize your time, even with all the “Of the Boar” gear you’re likely going to be hoarding.
One lost skill that will be returning is Stance Dancing. You would switch between two stances depending on what you wanted to do, and you could effectively use one stance’s abilities, like switching to Beserker to Pummel.
A couple of my guildmates were honestly curious why I leveled a second warrior in TBC. Mind you, it wasn’t -as- bad as getting this guy to 60, but the 1-60 range was still a hassle. I couldn’t even use the “main is the bank for the alt” because my Warrior was constantly broke thanks to respeccing and being a blacksmith.
I don’t know if I’ll play a warrior again in classic, but if I do, I can’t wait to get back to stance dancing!
Not even the crit, just the weaponize. At least as alliance, WW axe > Bonebiter > 44
last you till about 44 or something then you just buy a BOE. Sword proc is a good thing to bring up, but damn if i don’t like that + crit rage,
So true, if you can’t berserk rage before Ony’s fear you’re a goof ball.
Also remember band-aids are your friend. Level first aid, over selling the cloth. Worse case, level it then sell the band-aids to vendors. AND DONT SKILL EVERYTHING