Arms if your going to solo level. you can still tank 5 mans just fine in arms or even fury while leveling.
Stack spirit while leveling. Not even trolling. Warrior’s and Rogue’s benefit significantly from the out of combat health regen when compared to any other class.
As Versath said: Go Arms. This spec will allow you to both solo quest and tank through the leveling process. If you find that you vastly prefer tanking and wish to do it all the way to max level, switch specs to prot at 40. Shield slam really is just that good for tanking.
Stacking Spirit over other stats is a meme. It helps while out of combat… but that hurts rage and efficiency. Bloodrage + Bandage is good every few mobs, and if you have to you can eat. It’s all faster than relying on Spirit regen.
An item having Spirit isn’t a downside, but there are better stats.
First of all warriors are more popular in classic than you realize. I have been playing on two different servers and there is a lot of warriors. In fact I am very surprised how many people are playing warriors compared to everything else. If your aim is to tank, just be aware there may be other plate wearers who might ninja loot on you. If I look on the /who list its usually warriors, mages and priests dominating the zones. If there is a shortage of tanks it’s probably temporarily because there is a lot of warriors coming up.
Second, leveling a warrior relies heavily on your weapon. It really doesn’t matter if you’re wearing leather w/ strength or mail. Armor won’t hold up to spells without some kind of spell resist, and since there are a lot of casters its a moot point focusing on armor. Focus instead on your weapon, complete your whirlwind warrior quest as soon as possible or complete the SM quest that gives you the Bonebiter. If not find something that close to your level. Dungeons are another story, armor is important and so is the block value from your shield.
Third, rage is an issue. Part of managing rage is conserving rage and learning to resist mashing buttons as soon as you get rage. I’ve read too many comments about how people say its so easy for arms warriors to use sweeping strikes and cleave on multiple mobs. In reality its tough to generate that much rage early in a fight to use both abilities and stay alive long while being bashed in the face by multiple mobs. Yes you can do it, but I have yet to see a warrior chain pull multiple mobs several times in a row without stopping to bandage.
Fourth, (this affects both rage and weapon skill) it would be better if you out level the mobs you are fighting to minimize the hit, miss, dodge, parry, and glancing blows. If your attacks are not hitting you will not be generating much rage. Also, if a priest bubbles you while tanking it will affect your rage too.
Last, I strongly encourage you to level with someone. It does not need to be a healer, rather another dps. Warriors take longer to kill stuff, even a DW fury warrior needs more time (which some are against due to the hit penalty). Currently, 2h furry warriors are the safest to level up to 40 due to small heal procs and damage buffs from the fury tree. After 40 its pretty much whatever.
If this is too long to read, just remember this:
- learn to stance dance
- learn to manage / build / conserve rage
- find the best available weapon for your level
- spend money on skills you actually use or need
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There’s a lot of good information about leveling specs and builds. (edit: There are also a couple of good Classic Warrior Discords. I’d recommend checking them out. There’s a Classic Community Discord list of links on classic dot wowhead)
Most people go with a deep Arms build, and can tank instances fine while leveling, but also solo some content for questing.
Spirit is great, if you are solo questing, and under ~30… it’ll help prevent downtime, and Warriors benefit from it more than any other class in the game.
Stormdragon brought up some great points, so I won’t bother reiterating, but here’s a low level Warrior Tanking Guide I put together.
You’ll notice there are some mixed feelings on two handed tanking, but I’d recommend taking some time to familiarize yourself with the full range of your toolkit, and add some weapon swap and stance dancing macros to your bars as well.
Spirit isn’t a stat to avoid, it’s just not a stat to stack. Strength is your bread and butter - and AP when it gets there, and the rare crit or hit (god that ring) piece. Stamina is nice if you’re soloing as you just need a larger healthpool. If you have a group, or a healer, Agility is a nice bonus stat as everything it gives (+1 AP, a small amount of crit, dodge, and armour) is very valuable.
Spirit is a nice stat to have when you’re not chain pulling, but having to wait 5s to drop combat and then regen through ticks is bad if you’re not burning all your rage every mob… and that’s inefficient to do.
The Discord you mentioned has an infograph that talks about why Spirit is overblown and isn’t as good as people claim it to be, as if you’re specifically building a Spirit set or prioritizing it over more damage you’re going to find yourself having issues. Better to Bloodrage + Bandage when you can, and if you do it right, that should be the extent of your self-healing outside of larger pulls.
You can quest as Prot. You can quest as any spec.
You can also quest naked. You just shouldn’t. Prot is garbage while leveling, both in soloing and in groups, and is also worse at tanking until higher levels anyway. Arms outperforms Prot until about 40 - Shield Slam is really when you have the ability to deal threat and damage. Before that you’re doing the same thing but slightly better (though no TM + AM and other talents).
Even if you have a 5 man group, you shouldn’t be Prot. There’s almost no elites you need someone durable to kill… and even then, you wear mail/plate and have a high health pool and armour value. Worst comes to worst slap on a shield. That’s all.
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You can also post from Retail characters in Classic forums.
The only relevant information you actually need if you’re set on tanking while leveling:
Always have party lead so you can kick dps who don’t listen.
Make good friends with a healer who will back you up and a warlock who will summon replacements for all the mages and warriors you kick from the party.
You have been warned.
I hadn’t noticed the previous post where someone mentioned to stack spirit.
There are 2 Classic Warrior discords in the list of links, the Classic Warrior (Fight Club) one has a lot of great information, including tabular data, and theorycrafting (I just found out about it today, and I have no experience with private servers, so it’s really a goldmine for me).
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full arms till 60. then do whatever you want. i put a few points into fury but ya, that’s just me.
love talking about my current class, feel free to post more topics!
<.<Excuse me? I don’t like you telling me not to be naked. Next it’s going to be “No Torong you can’t punt that gnome.” Or “No, you cannot eat that whole sandwich you Blit.” I DO WHAT I WANT MOM!
thanks bud, i’ll check these out.
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Factually incorrect. Yet another person who sucks at prot.
Zero damage, no utility (TM/AM is amazing), and thus no real way to generate threat.
You don’t know something the rest of the Warrior community, including the best players, don’t.
Start a petition for Blizzard to give us dual talents.
I’m getting a vision of the future… hold on… oh wait there it is…
It’s telling me, there will be an expansion… something about an elf invasion of the Horde or … it’s a little hazy… and another expansion and …
oh, there it is… dual talents are coming… in 2 expansions.
Leveling and questing as prot is going to be a nightmare. Just go arms and 2h tank like everyone else.
You can 2h tank easily, especially with a ravager. If people don’t want you as a tank, that’s their problem. People who actually know how warriors work are fine with 2h tanks.
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