I have decided to play as a protection warrior and focus all of my game time and resources on PvE tanking. My first objective is to create a solid protection warrior build that can meet the following requirements:
Reduce gold cost by making a well-rounded build that is suitable for both 5-man dungeons and 40-man raids.
Focus on damage reduction to increase my odds of being able to complete boss encounters, even if I am paired with weaker players.
With these requirements in mind, I have come up with what I feel like, is a well-rounded protection warrior build. Please take a moment to read my summary of why I feel like the build is good before automatically shutting me down because I am choosing to use a deep protection build. I can’t include links with my posts, so I will have to write all of this out by hand:
Arms (7)
5/5 Deflection - Extra parry can help reduce damage, so this seemed like a solid choice.
2/5 Tactical Mastery - Stance dancing will be an important part of tanking several different raid encounters and I wanted to retain 10 rage because that should allow me to change my stance, be able to use an important ability, and go back to defensive stance as quick as possible.
Fury (6)
5/5 Booming Voice - The increased range and duration of battle and demoralizing shout should greatly help with AoE tanking since both shouts generate threat and provide great primary benefits.
1/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout - I needed to dump an extra talent point so I spent it here since it was an easy way to reduce more physical damage.
Protection (38)
5/5 Shield Specialization - Reduce incoming damage and generate rage on block, what is not to like?
5/5 Anticipation - Make reaching the defense cap a little easier during the first raid tier. It will likely be possible to take points out of this skill at a certain gear level.
2/2 Improved Bloodrage - Being able to generate rage when you need it is extremely valuable. This skill is also needed to unlock a major defensive cooldown.
5/5 Toughness - Reduce incoming damage by increasing the benefit of armor from your gear.
1/1 Last Stand - Major defensive cooldown.
3/3 Improved shield block - I decided to spend three talent points here to block an additional attack and increase the duration of shield block by two seconds. It is likely that you might be better off only spending one talent point here, but I want to try it out and see if the increase duration is useful or not.
5/5 Defiance - The increased threat will improve overall raid and dungeon efficiency by allowing damage dealers to pump more overall damage into the fight without having to be overly concerned about pulling off of me.
3/3 Improved Sunder Armor - Reducing the cost of sunder armor, combined with defiance, is a great way to improve snap threat and pool rage for stance dancing.
2/2 Improved Shield Wall - The increased duration of shield wall will give healers a few extra seconds to get a big heal off on me after a major attack, which could be the difference between a boss kill and a wipe.
1/1 Concussion Blow - Being able to stun trash will help reduce damage and you need to take this talent to get shield slam.
5/5 One-handed Weapon Specialization - Being able to do 10% more damage should help end boss encounters sooner and further increase threat generation.
1/1 Shield Slam - A great skill which does decent damage and generates a lot of threat.
Do you all think this will be a good, well-rounded protection warrior build that I can use in both dungeons and raids? I am interested in hearing constructive criticism, but please refrain from insulting me or telling me that I am wrong because some guy who played on a private server thinks deep prot is useless.
It isn’t. The 2nd charge is all you need with the majority of raid boss attack speeds.
Improved sunder May be useful in 5mans where rage is scarce, but cruelty is generally better for threat and you can just remove armor pieces if you need more rage. Imp shield wall also isn’t especially important, but its not like there are much better places to put the points. Personally I’d just use the imp sunder points to max tactical mastery.
That’s assuming you’re a raids MT. Otherwise I’d use a fury/prot or 31/5/15 arms build. Full Prot is overkill for 5mans and doing anything solo as prot is a punishing experience.
I’m a main tank, done it for years, so please hear me out…
I wouldn’t level as deep prot, but rather, respec into at later levels or Lv.60. Respeccing once isn’t a lot of gold. Early dungeons are not very prot demanding, you could easily level as 31/5/15 or some variation that gives you soloability when questing.
But if you absolutely will not respec, I recommend Anger Management for the auto-regen rage, and only 1 point in Imp. Shield Block.
Also, Nerdblock do you want to be a main tank? I got some advise if you do, ok.
A real thread! Ty OP!
As others have said don’t punish yourself leveling prot.
Do you already have an established guild or a few friends you will be playing with? Friends are very important when leveling a warrior. Friends can make or break a tank’s dreams. Well at least until you’re the insanely powerful killing machine you can be once geared.
Then the roles switch and tank friends are very important to have. Lol.
I would say stay Arms or Fury until sixty it will go MUCH faster and you will do way more DPS in dungeons. In Classic you can tank just fine as ANY warrior spec doing pre max-level dungeons. Once you sit 60 spec into full Prot and start chasing your BiS.
I believe the common theory is 10-39 2H Fury, something like this: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/AAUzXzxCAAA
Then at 40 you respec to something like this, as a Human I would switch Axe Specialization into Mace Specialization for Whirlwind Warhammer instead of Whirlwind Axe; the Whirlwind Sword is also good, but I find it to be too fast and it has the lowest DPS out of all the options: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/BSPzP9AEAAA
Piercing Howl is so good for soloing 20-39, Mortal Strike is needed for WPvP at 40.
My overall goal is to be the main tank for a raid group once I hit 60. I will be going into the game alone, but plan on making a lot of new friends while I level up and as I do max level dungeons to collect my BiS pre-raid gear. I would appreciate any advice that you’re willing to give.
Also, to everyone else, thank you for taking the time to respond to this thread. I will level up using a more damage oriented build and hold off on going deep prot until I am level 60. I will also shuffle my talent points around as people have suggested.
That sounds great, so for main tanking you’ll have to focus on TPS (threat per second) equally with mitigation. This means that you’ll build a TPS set (hit cap is a good start) but also respec for TPS when you need it. Here’s an example flex TPS: classicdb.ch/?talent#LV0xzZVZEbzoe0dVo (This usually skips Deepwounds as they are ~1% of your total threat. Shield Slam and white hits are the most.)
When you don’t have raids on farm yet and you are progressing through them, a mitigation set and consumables (like armor pots/crystals) will be optimal.
Offtanks may forgo deep prot or making TPS sets, but every raid will want a prot warrior that basically acts as a main tank whenever the raid needs it (ZG, AQ20 are good examples). Sort of a “main off tank” if you will. They usually have the Annihilator weapon for the armor reduction ready when the raid needs it.
Also, my guild has an open raid spot for an OT Warrior, if this interests you, bookmark me and when we start recruiting, you can see if our schedule works for you.
Normally, the build you would use in 5 mans would be slightly different than raiding. Just a minor tweek or two.
People have really good talent advice here, I would look over a lot of guides (old and new) and see what is being said!