How is prot war for leveling? I know it won’t kill stuff as fast but better survivability. I levelled prot back in original wotlk and it was awesome, but I think tanks got a damage buff in wotlk?
i think prot leveling gets good in WOTLK… Not yet, soon…
no real point in gimping your leveling speed by going prot for the miniscule survivability…20def 10% armor and last stand.
fury imho is the best solo leveling spec for warrior.
spec prot at 60ish and dungeon spam to max level is also viable.
I leveled my warrior starting as MS. It went OK but my gear was pretty bad.
I decided to go prot for dungeons and I realized I had better success and uptime with prot than I did with MS spec. I leveled 62-70 prot just fine in about 1 week real world time. It also allowed me to tank dungeons which was really nice.
Fury WITH A 2H til 40, then switch to MS. Arms is hands down easiest to level with.
Pre-40 most of your rage goes on Sunder Armor. Less armor = kill faster = level faster.
At 40 with MS you can still use Sunder periodically but MS will be the majority of your rage expenditure. Keep your weapon as up to date as you can. You literally live or die by it.
Corpsemaker into WW axe to rockpounder/bonechewer/Stonehaven. At 51 if you can get an AV win, IBS will carry you into Outland and set you up nicely for Hellreaver out of Ramps.
You want a 2h pre-40 as the miss rate is SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER when DWing.
Keep a 1h and Shield as well and keep them up to date too. Even if you don’t plan to tank endgame, knowing the basics of tanking is an essential warrior skill and will allow you to tank your own groups if you can’t find a tank elsewhere.
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I’ve been prot since level 1 in Classic. People seem to forget prot warriors can just dungeon grind through the whole game. You’re a tank. You are in demand.
However with the boosts, there aren’t really that many groups for the Classic 1-60 dungeons. You can thank Blizzard for that. So much for “it doesn’t affect you,” huh?
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If you have a group you’re leveling with it could be great. It was fine when people were leveling and you could get a group for just about anything at any moment. The big problem is a lot of the old world is dead for the most part and you’ll be leveling slow solo. That’s one reason I’ve enjoyed my druid so much, the talents for cat & bear are more or less the same and while leveling most of the gear will be the same so you just switch forms as needed.
I leveled as prot 1-60 so far it’s pretty decent.
I can kill like 6 mobs before I have to eat. While as arms I could only kill like four.
My biggest problem with it, it’s very boring to level you just spam devastate once you get it. Before devastate it was more fun but less effective. Also it goes without saying you will be worse in WPVP. Arms owns in WPVP but atleast Prot Warrior is stronger vs rogues.
Back in 2006 I leveled my warrior as prot. Muscle memory. No distraction of knowing how much DPS I could pump out if I were fury or arms. the one time I specced DPS was arms to do battlegrounds for a few weeks (wasn’t my main back then so i could spec anything i wanted)
Did lots of dungeons so I get XP by letting others kill mobs for me.
pre-60, kill times for 1 mob was 30-45 seconds. it was godawful like watching paint dry.
so when classic wow came out… HAD to do it as prot again… just because
first time I specced DPS was for the furyprot memespec since DPS was so buffed since we were running on basically DPS-buffed pre-TBC state for all of classic 60.
You can prot level easily, but you’ll have to research good aoe pull spots and have the gear for it. Will need gear for your level and a shield with the best spike you can get on it.
good idea, but not really feasible with the leveling gear available.
shield spike does 30-ish damage IF you block.
when tanking a pack of 5 mobs, the shield block’s 2 charges are gone instantly, then you have what… 8% chance to block with leveling gear?
typically, recount shows shield spike being about 5% of my damage. while leveling, a prot warrior dpsing 5 mobs basically means 4 mobs are waiting at near full health while you kill 1 mob at a time (except w/spore shield )
would need lots of twinking like the shield block rating enchant (would add a lot of block for a level 35 shield for a level 35 warrior).
aoe DPS for a prot warrior really isn’t a thing until 62 and the sporeggar shield and then more shield block rating gear as you level up… pretty sparse 61-68. OHB quest ring? a few other goodies but having lots of shield block rating doesn’t come together til 70 and you’ve made a shield block set and let mobs die of 5x poison stack from the shield.
I am pretty much in the same conquerer/dreadnaught gear on my 68 prot warrior, decent hit/sbv/sbr… I would add SBR and SBV for soloing but not come across much (i know there’s stuff available but havent quested or ran the dungeon yet… warrior has been benched for a while)
my 68 prot pally came into TBC with scholo/strat blues coming in to TBC and found very little adding shield block rating up to 68 for those natural shield blocks when holy shield charges are expended before the cooldown.
yes I know there’s … um… OHB ring, a SBR neck, but not a ton of stuff for SBR/SBV pre-70
crawl on the tube for ‘Warrior Petrified Lichen Guard funness’ for old vid of mine. I counted 32 demon hunter initiates.
I found dual wielding without hit rating to be rather frustrating. IMO, go arms or 2H fury.
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I’ve actually been leveling as dual wield arms so far. It’s been a blast and feels really strong. The lack of hit doesn’t even feel bad. I’m only level 32 though so I know it may get harder but so far it’s great and real fun.
My intent was to get to 40 and then go two hander for mortal strike but I might just go fury and see how that goes, dual wield just feels more active and fun.
I think I made it to my high 30’s before going arms.
Solid advice
I leveled as prot 1-60 in both original vanilla and in Classic vanilla. It’s fun if you’re not in a huge hurry to get leveling overwith.
The key is don’t wear tanking gear when soloing. Stack strength/AP and pieces with +block value if you can find them (once you get shield slam). If you have some gold to keep your 1h weapon upgraded and enchanted w/ +damage, that helps. Also, shield spike on shield.
You kill things slower, but you make up for some of that by having to stop and eat less frequently. And fewer corpse runs because with a shield you’re a lot more durable.
And run dungeons when you can. Do them all at least once for the quests. It’s what you’re specced for. And it’s not hard to put groups together if you’re the tank.
As someone who started prot hit 60 went fury prot and is now full prot again. Please don’t level prot. You won’t get any gear that can maximize your shield slam DMG by adding block values. The best thing to do is level arms or fury with something like tac mastery from the prot tree. If you struggle to do any dungeons by the time you hit 58 and can start running with others / boosters it might be wise to start speccing full prot or at the very least pick up the defiance talent.
By getting cleave and sweeping strikes in the fury tree it is extremely easy to get and hold agro tanking now.
End game you will be going full prot anyways if you plan on tanking heroics and raids.
Prot leveling can be done but it’s super slow and super grindy. More often than not I could only handle a one or two mob. When I switched to fury I was grinding mobs so quick compared to prot that I never looked back.
Why would you lvl as port. Lvl 2h fury or arms. I tanked all instance up to lvl 50 with my warrior with a 2h. It’s way more fun that port. It will be more fun for your healer too.
My Warrior is like 62 or something and I went prot to tank dungeons and honestly questing on it isn’t that bad.
Solo Warrior is a miserable experience no matter what so it’s not like its going from good to bad.
I don’t.