LF tips on leveling prot warrior

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
21

Just hit 60 leveling as prot. I did it back in vanilla, too. I just like the sword and board playstyle.

First thing you have to ask yourself is… Are you in a rush to get to 60? If the answer is yes, don’t level prot. Level arms or fury instead.

Most people I run across are in a huge gd hurry to get to 60 for whatever reason. They don’t enjoy questing out in the open world. They view leveling as an annoying obstacle, and they want to get it overwith asap. And they don’t understand how anyone else could feel differently. Thus they look upon a prot leveler in abject horror and will try their best to fearmonger you into another spec. Don’t listen to them. If you enjoy the sword and board style, and you’re not in a huge hurry to get to 60, then leveling prot is certainly viable.

Tips…

Stack strength/AP, followed by agility, followed by stamina. Avoid pure stamina pieces. You don’t need it because you have a shield equipped, and you’ll render caster mobs useless with your two interrupts (Concussion Blow being the other). You want to maximize the damage you do with your 1-hander for rage gen.

And along those same lines, try to upgrade your 1h weapon as often as possible from quest rewards or dungeon drops, or check AH and invest a few gold into a BoE blue weapon upgrade. Then find an enchanter and put +3 weapon damage on it… it’s cheap… mats are only like 1g. Since you will be using a lot less food/bandages than your arms/fury counterparts, you can put your savings toward this.

If you’re soloing, try to focus on green quests 3-5 levels below you. If you run out of green quests, consider hopping to another zone to do all the green quests there, before coming back in a level or two to do all the formerly yellow ones that are now green. If you have a pocket healer, though, you can disregard this.

Run every dungeon at least once, and gather all the quests for them beforehand. As a warrior, you’re very gear dependant. 5-man quest rewards and drops will get you upgrades. And as a tank, putting a group together is quick and easy.

5 Likes
22

get alchemy, you need all healing and self buffs you can get

23

Here’s a tip: Stick to your day job.
And you need to go ona diet

24

Leveling prot as well.
The key is to team up.
Team up for quests and grind dungeons and you’ll have a blast.
Solo a prot warrior and you will probably stick a fork in your eye unless you don’t have a problem with slow progress.

But grinding dungeons is key, that’s how you’ll get the gear to make you an awesome tank, and make people want to run with you.

1 Like
25

Your first 5 should be to crit, your second 5 should be to parry.

If you have problems with rage gen, fix your crit and learn to carry rage pack to pack.

Only the bad ones. I even have TM @ 60 and don’t bother to do that trash, unless its to drop an execute. But its more Anger Management that is needed at that point, not TM.

You just can’t get one without the other.

Anybody who needs TM to tank, sucks as a tank. Why would I want a 25 rage bar, when I get given a 100 rage bar?

26

  1. Because you can only Mocking blow or retaliation in battle.

  2. Because you can only berserker rage, intercept, pummel or recklessness in berserker.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m tanking I try to spend the absolute minimum time outside of defensive stance. If i have to swap to another stance then build rage to use the ability before I can switch back, I’m taking more damage than I should be.

TM makes you a better, more versatile tank. Without it, you’re just second rate.

27

Never bothered to use either when tanking an instance. I’m certainly not going to spend 50+ rage to use them.

Pummel is useless as its overridden by Shield Bash. Almost all stuff I pull to me to set the tanking area so I don’t need intercept and to spend 50+ rage doing it.

And I can do just fine without recklessness. If I was there to dps, i’d be fury.

Zero sounds just about right… with the exception of if you want to throw an Execute on an end-boss, of course.

Ya… except it doesn’t. TM is a crutch in instances for people who are second rate tanks scraping bottom and constantly going dry on rage.

There is absolutely nothing you need outside defensive, and you can then work out of the top-half of your rage bar like a real tank.

2 Likes
28

When your taunt is resisted, you need mocking blow. When something is far away, intercept covers the ground. When a fear is incoming, you want zerker rage. Pummel has the shorter CD, so it sometimes makes sense to use that instead of SB.

29

I love threads like this.

“I know what I can do to improve but don’t want to do it.”

30

Nope. Not at all. Maybe you need Mocking Blow… lol.

Its either low and you cut bait, or walk to it. I’ve yet to see a situation where the differential in speed saved somebody where it wouldn’t have before… and often the person was never in danger to begin with(particularly given when I see this, you’re trying to save a hunter out in BFE, who has FD).

Killing your rage bar for some silly one-off Hero Move that you can try to use to polish your ego with, is ridiculous.

Most tanking is either mundane nuts-and-bolts keep it busy and watch it die or setting up the next pull.

9.9 times out of 10, you don’t know its incoming… and it usually doesn’t last that long such that BR really changes anything other than annihilating your rage bar.

It never makes sense.

I’m not going to spend 50+ rage to pummel, rather than Shield Bash and silence it. I have something like four different things I can throw at a mob as prot and either disrupt its attack, or most likely get agro. Imp Shield Slam, Imp Revenge, Sunder, or Concussion Blow.

At 60, your threat is so silly anyways, you can be blowing past 2k on a mob in like a second or two on it.

31

Why do you have that much rage? Spend it and get the fight over faster. Any time Im above 30 I start converting it into heroic strikes.

32

Because I know what i’m doing?

You spend enough rage needed to have agro on the mob(s) at the start, and let it build at the end when you already have agro. You can build a full bar of rage pretty damn fast.

If you’re just tossing rage because you’re insecure about your threat and running yourself dry, you’re wasting rage. Understand that I can be past 4K threat before the mob is even 75%. If nobody is even pushing me, I can just bank it on the back end, and take that into the next fight.

1 Like
33

It aint about threat, its about moving the fight along. Why spend 30 seconds killing something you could kill in 20.

Do this over the course of an instance and you’ve converted a 40 minute dungeon into an hour. Just wasting time.

34

how about, I would rather play the game a diffrent way and would like pointers from those who have done this, and maybe have some info to help me along the way…

but while you dab like an idiot like the rest of the kids…i will keep playing my way

35

Rage typically gets turned to threat. The amount of damage it generates isn’t anything to write home about, and isn’t going to significantly shorten a fight.

About the only time I push DPS to any extent(like say 175-200, rather than 100-125), is when I have both a shaman(STR/WF) and druid(Pack) in group… and that’s because it changes the melee dps calculus, not really the damage calculus of specials.

And if I do have a Shaman and Druid, i’m spewing so much threat that by 70% I can literally get up IRL, walk around the room, stop playing, and not lose it.

36

Changing your white hits into yellows actually does improve your damage quite a bit. Yellows are subject to less penalties than white hits are.

Can be a pretty significant output increase, if you can spare the rage for it anyway.

37

I have been having fun leveling as Prot. I started with 11 in arms for AM, then went full prot. I found, so far, I havent needed the 5 points in crit. If the group gives ya 2 secs to actually hit the mobs once, threat is no problem. I wish we could get shield slam quicker than level 51, would be more fun to use while leveling.

Leveling itself solo has been fun. Its a hell of a lot better than Pally, IMO. I keep my sword and shield and stay in battle stance most of the time, unless im interupting.

Hope you enjoy the ride…

38

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here… but i’m going with… no.

Are you saying I should be HS’ing down the excess? Not that i haven’t thrown in an HS here and there… but that’s literally the only rage → damage that would likely be worth anything.

But I always look to leave a fight with a mostly full bar of rage, because it makes agro’ing the next pack super easy. Why run yourself dry, and then have issues with the next pack? Makes zero sense to me.

I’m not looking for Hero Moves that destabilize the group. Groups want a Steady Eddie, not being one bad move from a wipe every pack just to prove your Leet-ness.

1 Like
39

Quillim, I like your style. What addon are you using that shows you are “past 4k threat before mob is even 75%”?

40

How is that any different than what I said?