LF tips on leveling prot warrior

Hey yall,

So im working on leveling a prot warrior, and I am looking to learn the class as i level so that when I do get to 60, Tanking wont be a new concept.

Things I already know
-Prot is not the OP/Most efficient/ fotm spec to level in
My goal is to level and learn the ways of the tank. What better way to do that then to level as the spec i intend to play in end game. I thank you in advance for any helpful tips.

(Update)
To add to Why im thinking prot for leveling. While im leveling and learning to tank, My wife is also learning to heal along the way. My reasoning is to help me learn, but to also help mitigate the dmg being out put to have her have a better time learning as well?

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Threat generation is probably the biggest issue for tanks, especially early on. You really want to spend your first five points in crit chance on the fury tree to help with threat. You’re going to need it.

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I’ve not leveled a Warrior beyond 14 in Classic, bu ti played Warrior in vanilla and the issue is you do not get much aggro tool and or Prot optimization until later levels.

Level 10 you get Sunder, Taunt, Defensive Stance
Level 12 you get Shield Bash

Shield Specialization, Anticipation, Iron Will , Toughness Etc really will not help you as Prot at low levels. You would be better in the Arms tree with Tactical mastery and Improved Charge these give more Rage and allow rage saving while stance dancing which you will need to do a lot.

I would honestly carry sword and board and a 2 hander and macro up weapon swaps as you need them. Once you can create rage and maintain some aggro then if you want you can work on damage mitigation.

With that said I am not a Classic Warrior pro, and this is just my opinion.

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You don’t need to level prot to tank. My advice is to tank dungeons in a DPS spec. That’s what I did, and it works fine. Once you get to 60 if you want to go prot, just swap in Shiled Slam for Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst and Concussion Blow for Sweeping Strikes/Deathwish. In terms of how you play, that change in moves is the only difference in tanking between specs.

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I would not level as a prot warrior, as said above you will struggle with threat generation. Fury/arms will be better and you can still tank dungeons, prot spec is usually only used for the MT of a raid and even off tanks are usually fury.

Ill give the advice these guys wont: leveling prot is fun. I rolled two warriors. One went to AM first to stance dance, the other pure prot to LS. I dinked around with Fury and decided Feral Druid was more fun for that kind of play.

Ill only post my prot talent progression if you ask for it as not to trigger the correct A+ meta peeps.

Youll eventually want AM in the other tree, however to keep rage high.

So you haz pocket healer? Beautiful.

Watch YT runs and read Tips’ or Skarms’ guides to the appropriate dungeons beforehand when possible. Study boss fights. Easy in Classic.

Run dungeons for xp and loot with pugs.

Youll learn fast.

There is another awesome tankvadvice thread going on and read that, too.

When you need fresh air and want to play outside, I advise grinding green/even mobs outside. Healer can go dps most of the time. Find a mob grind guide for locations.

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Correct advice, sure but overrated. Here is why: you arent doing speedruns for 95%+ of content and prot can gen rage just fine in classic. Its not world ending to put off AM in Arms, until the levels you need more rage.

Yes your dps-tgreat is higher with Fury/Arms but if playing with SO new healer, the added mitigation with prot allows them to alternate dps and heals.

Prot is fine for leveling and most overlooked: teaches you how to operate with limited rage pools.

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Tip 1: Dont spec prot. Arms and fury tank better while leveling than prot does.

Tip 2: Unless you’re gonna start your own guild as the MT don’t spec prot because you won’t get any gear at 60 in any reasonable timeframe, hell you may not even have a raid slot at all. Warriors are overpopulated as hell and raids only want 1 maybe 2 prot wars. The others are dps spec with tank sets for off tanking. Speccing prot essentially benches that character for most world activities too. So, without a guaranteed raid slot its a waste of one of your character slots.

you have a pocket healer…
just run fury untill 40+ when you get your full plate set.
then switch to prot and stay in dungeons.

you are trying to level prot ( NO DPS)
with a pocket healers ( NO DPS)

once you are about 18 you are going to hate life untill around 45 if you stick to this plan.

stick to fury. do DPS. and use the pocket healer to heal you.

I’m leveling as Prot. I have a pocket shammy with me all the time and she puts out the damage. I have no probs keeping threat and I love the prot talents.

The key to me was spending the seemingly required 11 in Arms before I put anything into Prot. Every warrior must do the stance dance. But after that I went pure Prot and I simply love it.

5 man tanking is all I want to do at end game. I’m not interested in raiding. So leveling as Prot and staying there at end game makes perfect sense for me. If you are interested in raiding you’re going to have a hard time finding a slot as a tank. Those are coveted positions. But if you put in the time a guild will eventually promote you to the tank role.

Good luck friend!

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This go into TM and learn to stance dance. As a healer ive seen too many bad fury tanks who wont get a shield when needed nor will they swap stances to use taunt. They also soak up a lot of healers mana whereas healing someone with a shield and decent prot talents is so much easier and faster due to lack of drinking

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Charge, thunderclap, cleave.

This is my intention, I really dont plan to raid…well not till I am very comfortable with tanking 5 mans. As right now with work, dedication to a raid is not even a thought lol.

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Blacksmithing’s Shield Spikes and Sharpening Stones are really nice for warrior tanks.

Even if you’re committed to leveling by tanking as Prot, try to be versatile while leveling. Try to learn how to get the most out of all of your abilities, and how to use them in different situations and different ways. Get good at pulling in different ways, learn how the mobs move and behave. Learn the dungeons and how to counter the abilities that the mobs have.

Look at your abilities in terms of threat per rage, threat per second, damage per rage, and damage per second.

Vanilla warrior can be a really fluid class; tanking and damage go hand-in-hand, and you have a deep relationship with the combat table. So you need to learn about both the offensive side (hitting/crit/miss, threat and aggro), and the defensive side (blocking, dodging, mitigating).

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Wow. Church of Meta speaks.

Prot is a wasted character slot out of nine slots per server…?

Harsh

Have fun racing to BiS phase one, being dogmeat with Fury in phase two pvp unless you game with opposite faction, and finding healers who can stand you in later phases without your mit.

charging is a decent way to get initial aggro on a pack of mobs
at rank 1, you can charge, autoattack, demo shout, then switch to dstance
at rank 2, you can charge, demo shout before the autoattack, then switch to dstance really fast
once you hit level 30, you can charge, demo shout before the autoattack, switch to berserker stance really fast, hit berserker rage, then switch to defensive stance before the second autoattack

while soloing, always use demo shout, even on one mob, as long as it has more than, say, 30% hp left
furthermore, once you get improved shield block, use it if you care about conserving food, or if you’re soloing an elite

when soloing an elite, get 5 stacks of bshout, dshout, then 5 stacks of sunder up quickly, and then spam improved shield block, while clicking improved revenge when it procs; you may delay your shield blocks if revenge is up to see if improved revenge procs
by doing this, i can solo stone guardians in un’goro crater without blowing anything but bloodrage and blood fury

from level 46 to 50, you can charge in, autoattack, tclap, zerk stance, zerk rage, dstance, tab sunder and such

when doing dungeons after level 50, when you should have 5/5 tactical mastery, something that I like doing with a slot weapon is charge->zerk stance->zerk rage or WW->zerk rage or WW->dstance->rotate sunders and such, blowing extra rage on cleave and shield block
though the alliance gets less rage and tab sunder is probably better threat than ww or tclap anyway

also revenge and shield slam are both more threat per gcd than sunder, depending on ranks
and shield bash is more threat per rage than sunder, so dont be too afraid to interrupt something and count it as a sunder

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This is my first crack at a warrior and I have been doing fine tanking with arms spec. The only real issue is dps not giving me time in multiple mobs but nothing crazy. I typically use a shield to give the healer a break plus to have an easy interrupt. If dps pulls a mob, usually not an issue as I look out for the healer first and intercept / taught and stragglers. Honestly the incoming dps seems light and I really cannot see the sense of going prot just yet, I may sprinkle some in for my last 15 talent points. The arms or fury trees are just too good not to use for leveling especially solo.

Church of Slam actually, thank you.

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I notice in these threads its always the same.

OP says: I want to do Insert some thing here, I understand its not ideal but I want to do it anyway, what do you think would be the best way?

Instead of the group being creative and using their knowledge of class mechanics they instead explain that its a stupid idea and parrot the currently accepted “best” way to in this case level a warrior.

I wonder if the problem is reading comprehension or a total lack of understanding of class mechanics and therefore a feeling that it’s better to belittle the OP and tell him the “right” way to do it.

OP: I tried the same and had trouble with rage in five mans. First I switched out to a 2 hander then to Arms. That being said: Go for it! My thoughts would be to look at every possible rage generation opportunity, that’s really the limiting issue at lower level.

I’m sure some people smarter than me could lay out best combinations to use for rage generation for a given situation.

Maybe ask the question differently? “What is the best possible combo for rage generation given a full prot spec?”
You’ll get 90% d’bags telling you the “right” way to tank but maybe a few nuggets of good info.

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did you just use a post to complain about people not giving helpful information…and then give no help on the topic at hand yourself? Irony my friend.