Fellow warriors, I watched some dudes playing the classic beta, and noticed they were tanking as a warrior while two handed, is that something anyone can do? Or should I avoid that if im planning leveling up as a prot warrior?
Thank you!
For dungeons?
It’s perfectly fine at least up until the 50’s. You’ll typically hold better threat that way anyway.
I did it all the way to 60 back in Vanilla but people started getting angry with me around BRD and onward.
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Also don’t level as Protection. It’s fine by 60, but you’ll be severely gimping yourself outside of dungeons all for relatively unnoticeable levels of mitigation when you’re not raiding.
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Thank you!! How should I level then? Do you have any guides or things I could peek at for a better understanding?
you actually hold better aggro through early 2h leveling…and most early prot talents pre-40 are super minor…keep in mind warriors are the most gear dependant class so good ashielding and scaling dont come into effect post 40
I would just level up Arms and really make use of Sweeping Strikes in dungeons. Keep a 1h and shield on you in case you really need it, but that shouldn’t be the case as long as your healer isn’t asleep at the wheel. The good ones will thank you for making the run go by faster.
https:// classicdb. ch/?talent#LGGxduboxzVZxV00x
IIRC, that was the middle of the road build most people used back in the day. Just travel along the Arms path first, then grab Cruelty in Fury, then get your Prot talents. My guild’s MT didn’t drop that spec until we were in BWL, and it was mostly because he had an alt for farming and didn’t care at all about PvP.
As far as in depth guides, I don’t really have any resources other than pre-raid BiS gear, but that’s a quick Google search away anyway. Just make sure you’re stacking Sunders on your main threat target. Cleave and Thunderclap are your best friends for AoE threat, but sometimes CC’d enemies won’t allow use of them so get used to doing a lot of Sunder Armor-tab-Sunder Armor-tab-Sunder Armor-"ohshi-, lost threat on main DPS target-Taunt-Heroic Strike+Sunder Spam during pulls where that’s the case. Whirlwind away whenever you don’t think you’re in danger.
Only other thing I can think of is to make sure you bring ammo for your ranged weapon. That’s a thing I foresee a lot of players forgetting early on whether they’ve played Vanilla or not.
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Healers will hate you if your gear isn’t fantastic while using a 2h.
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Not really. They’ll say something if they’re going OOM every single pull, but if you’re not sitting in Berserker Stance the whole time that’s typically less due to having no shield equipped and more due to lack of CC, pulling too much at once, and/or they’re using their most expensive heal constantly when you’re barely hurt. Healers don’t tend to OOM like that unless you’re losing threat constantly.
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this, if trash mobs are hitting you for 25% of your HP using a 2h please, for your healers sanity, switch to sword and board and put any +defense + stam gear on you are not wearing in order to up your 2h dps/tps. if your not taking undue damage feel free to 2h all you want
2h tanking for better aggro? I never had to resort to that. Manage rage better and be a better tank and you’ll have better mitigation with good threat.
Holding aggro is not just the tanks responsibility. If dps wanna be knuckleheads then they can be knuckleheads facing the ground.
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It’s not about needing to, it’s about being able to. If you’re two hand tanking, you’ll be dishing out more DPS than anyone else in the group as opposed to barely more than the healer is doing. You’ll clear dungeons 10-20% faster.
First off, I wouldn’t advise leveling up as Prot - it’ll be pretty slow. But if you absolutely must be Prot, be sure to get Imp. Revenge since it’s a 3s stun with no DR.
Second, yes Warriors can tank in Arms or Fury, and can toss on a shield whenever. This starts to become harder to do after SM, but outgearing and outleveling the content helps.
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This will tank dungeons completely fine until around 58-60 and allow you to PVP properly if you want to.
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/023050213325100031-55000104005When you reach 58-60 and are ready to do some fairly serious tanking you may want to switch to a good early 60 full Prot spec.
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/05005001-05-50250113500221251Tanking with a 2-hander is a thing for good groups that burn mobs fast and a tank/healer pair that play well together. If you have that kind of arrangement, try it out.
Being reckless won’t do you any favors though, so you have to gauge what the group can and can’t handle. What you don’t want is to be that tank when you reach 60 that has a reputation of being a squishy idiot, no bueno.
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You dont want to do that. Level as arms. Prot damage is gimped, and fury isnt very good without solid gear (mostly from lack of +hit). Trust me, I’m an old school vanilla warrior. Dont level as prot.
This thread is full of lies. Some of the things these people are saying didn’t happen until Wrath or later. The following applies to Warrior Tanks, who I healed plenty of in Vanilla leveling up a Priest.
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Armor matters and that shield gives you a significant boost. Armor ceased to matter as much in later expansions because the developers decided that it wasn’t “fair” that clothies in PvP took more melee damage. An example of PvP “balancing” corrupting logical PvE mechanics. Leatherworking Armor Patches weren’t just for decoration. The additional armor mattered. And you don’t get plate until 40.
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Threat generation is more about using Sunder Armor and Revenge than how much damage you’re doing, and some abilities require you to be in a specific stance. It was joked that Warriors could tank end game using a Large Bear Bone gray vendor item because damage didn’t really matter for threat generation. DPS were often told to wait for 5 Sunders.
Later on, the devs tried to entice people to tank by redesigning tanks as DPS with a threat multiplier and having their threat generating abilities do damage, so they could keep up with actual DPS on the meters. That was not the design in Vanilla.
- Warriors had no real AoE threat. You have to be in Berserker Stance to use Whirlwind, in case you thought you were going to be AoE tanking with that. If you’re not in Defensive Stance, you don’t get the mitigation, the threat multiplier, and you can’t use Revenge.
At one point Thunderclap became completely broken and Warriors could just run around spamming Thunderclap to not only hold aggro but top the DPS meters. That’s not how it was early on.
With more than 1 mob, your rotation is going to be tab and Sunder. Get used to it.
- The only time you’re going to stay rage capped is if you’re taking massive damage. If you’re taking massive damage your group has failed to use CC. If your group doesn’t know how to use CC, or refuses to use CC because they’re more concerned about DPS meters, runners are going to wipe your group.
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Also, it’d be great if this idiotic forums program didn’t mess with my spacing on numbering. There are free text editors that consistently maintain spacing, yet this billion dollar company has a text editor that looks like it was written by a child.
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I was thinking the same thing. Not only the priests, but the dps, who will wipe when the priest runs oom, from healing the noob tank, who just died.
Sure, you CAN tank without a shield. You can also fly without wings, or propulsion of any sort, as long as you want to fly straight down, and crash. The shield gives necessary stats, almost doubling your armor, increasing your chance to block attacks, and puts you in the mindset of tanking.
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Your post is full of information that wasn’t even accurate in Vanilla among educated Warrior tanks. Certainly not while leveling, which is a whole other kind of tanking than tanking raid bosses. Please update your info so you aren’t confusing people.
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if you have friends to play with and run dungeons with, then you can experiment between shield tanking or 2H tanking to see which works best for you and the healer. If you are new to warrior, I suggest 1H+shield until you can get a good blue 2H, or the Whirlwind axe around 30 to 40, whenever you can get it. Then you can switch to more of a 2H build.
Stance dancing is a big part of playing a warrior in vanilla, but its more advanced. You can level and tank dungeons just fine with a 1H+shield in defensive stance the whole way, its just slower.
I leveled 3 warriors back in Vanilla, BUT…they were not my first char, so I was able to supplement them with gear so they killed stuff quicker and had better survival in dungeons. I did one fury/arms the whole way, one Prot the whole way, and one was mixed, but I always tanked dungeons with 1H+shield. I always thought the damage without a shield was too high.
Starting from scratch as a warrior, your gear is going to suck, your healers gear is going to suck. Their mana pool will be pretty small. That’s why I suggest starting as 1H+shield first until you get used to it.
I guess you can level as Arms/Fury as some suggest and try to get into dungeons as DPS, but since the tank will likely be a Warrior, they most likely won’t take you so they don’t have loot competition, and lose a CC spot. Again, this goes back to leveling and dungeon running with friends/guild so they are all ok with it.
This is the build i am most likely going with, but I am going to experiment with the 2nd one.
Prot/Arms: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/30305001302-03-50240113530001051
Arms/Prot: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warrior/333250213520100001--5025011051
You can move 3 out of Deflection and 2 out of improved overpower and move into Axe or Sword Specialization based on your weapon as well.
There is no perfect build. Talent re-specs are cheap the first 2 or 3 times, but go up quick, so don’t go crazy.
There are several guides on Wowhead, a leveling guide for warriors on Icyveins, and lots of Youtube videos. So dig in and do some research.
The point of leveling Arms (or Fury, but Arms is better) is that it is a better tanking spec while leveling. We aren’t saying, play arms and get a DPS spot. We’re saying, you really don’t need to be Prot and will do a lot more threat and have a better time if you play Arms. Just to clear this up, because it is a common question.
Reasons:
Impale. With the exceptions of Sunder Armor and Battle/Demoralizing/Challenging Shout, every other ability a Warrior uses to generate threat is a flat threat value + damage. More damage = more threat.
Tactical Mastery. The freedom to stance dance whenever you want is liberating and makes tanking easier.
Anger Management. Not only does your rage decay 30% slower, you continue to gain rage while in combat at 1 rage per 3 seconds. This makes it much easier to finish a pack and start the next with > 50 Rage which means you can go to town picking them up.
Sweeping Strikes. Situationally good. You have to be in Battle Stance to activate it, but as soon as it is up you can get back in Defensive Stance and Cleave and Revenge spam for a big threat boost.
Weapon Specialization. The weapon specializations work for both 1h and 2h weapons. So for example if you take Axe Specialization, you get 5% additional crit chance if you are tanking with a 1h axe.
Prot specs become better when most of your rage comes from incoming damage, which is unfortunately not the case until close to end game.
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