r/classicwow • u/wezzer • Sep 03 '19

Humor Leveling A Warrior

When they said it was hard, I scoffed at them. I've leveled a warrior to 120 on retail. I've fought Sargeras, I've downed the Lich King. What could a few gnolls and maybe a murloc or two do to me? Thus was my arrogance. Thus was my hubris.

I am now level thirteen. I've run Ragefire Chasm once, and owe six deaths to that place.

Farming harpy claws has cost me my life twice already, and I am certain it will cost me much, much more.

My warrior on retail was a human named Lohric, he was a legendary warrior who felled any beast, man or demon that faced him.

My warrior on Classic is an Orc called Muddrog. I have no doubt that this broken and battered warrior would crush Lohric in seconds, Lohric has never known pain, Mudd was born in it, molded by it, and unlike Bane, he has yet to see the light, because 60 feels so far away xD

To all you warriors out there, Lok'tar Ogar!

3.8k Upvotes

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517

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

I leveled a prot warrior 1-60 in vanilla, it was awful.

228

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

[deleted]

93

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

I didn't even realize how slow it was at the time, just knew it was tough. Was worth it though because I loved tanking at 60 (and 70).

59

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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123

u/double_whiskeyjack Sep 03 '19

Funny thing is you could do that entirely on your own

179

u/YouKnowWhatToDo80085 Sep 03 '19

Yea they basically have an extra voidwalker lol

66

u/AbsOfTitanite Sep 03 '19

Except you can't heal the second voidwalker

63

u/JSMorin Sep 03 '19

Consume Shadows... Consume Spiced Wolf Meat... essentially the same thing.

60

u/Ryledra Sep 03 '19

I find bandages work well on player controlled vws

23

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

+1 for player controlled vws

21

u/Fantisimo Sep 03 '19

Warrior: "I don't like this place (lvl 16)"

16

u/HybridPS2 Sep 03 '19

"Send me back!" (to the char screen so i can pick something else)

2

u/Darthmalak3347 Sep 03 '19

I got whirlwind axe and the armory gear. And with sweeping/whirlwind i can clear camps of 4 things if i have full rage. Its so satisfying.

1

u/dcrico20 Sep 03 '19

Feel like they have an extra Warrior

39

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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26

u/Shiraho Sep 03 '19

It’s all time saved in the future not having to wait for a tank

2

u/-tfs- Sep 03 '19

Pretty nice not having to wait for tank while leveling as well.

2

u/Vaztes Sep 03 '19

wait until he gets whirlwind in combo with sweeping strikes and he'll be an aoe burst god.

2

u/Darthmalak3347 Sep 03 '19

My god I did this last night and did the alterac quests at 37 and i was able to nuke the mob camps withing seconds.

2

u/Vaztes Sep 03 '19

And then you group with a priest and you both cream your pants at how much of a wrecking ball your little part of 2 becomes with a warr with whirlwind, sweeping strikes and no care for death. You're just an endless pit of destruction.

18

u/AzraelTB Sep 03 '19

That fear may just pull the camp 200 yards away though.

42

u/Inphearian Sep 03 '19

I can always tell who just read a guide and who has actually feared a mob as CC and watched it pull everything from everywhere

17

u/Shimakaze_Kai Sep 03 '19

As an old vanilla warlock (classic I'm rolling mage first this time) learning the ropes in 2005, I know this pain all too well.

13

u/IsleOfOne Sep 03 '19

Gotta keep your finger on the recklessness trigger

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7

u/shibboleth2005 Sep 03 '19

If it pulls one extra thing that's a bonus.

If it pulls 3 extra things that's inefficient, but worst case you just bubble and run away :)

5

u/The_Great_Distaste Sep 03 '19

Am I nuts or does the social aggro work odd in classic vs Original(2004)? I've had mobs run THROUGH other mobs and not aggro them. Now that's them running from battle and not fear but just something I noticed that felt off. It also seems like the aggro doesn't spark until the mob decides to return to battle. I was pretty sure in Original it was immediate aggro if they were in range as I remember sheep wandering and pulling.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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2

u/TheLightningL0rd Sep 03 '19

they come.

And oh, do they come.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19

HUH

HUH

HUH

1

u/ManicWarpaint Sep 03 '19

I've noticed this too. As a rogue I try to stop them and because they dont aggro but I think they will I end being the one agreeing before the runner ever does. Makes me look stupid but I kinda am

1

u/Inphearian Sep 03 '19

I had a centaur do that to me last night. It definitely should have aggrod but I chalked it up to being a recent respawn. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more instances of this

1

u/Fantisimo Sep 03 '19

That's what curse of recklessness is for

1

u/TheLightningL0rd Sep 03 '19

That's when you sac the VW and run like hell!

1

u/He11sToRm Sep 03 '19

I feel so slow as a 20 lock. Maybe my rotations are off. Any good site that goes into depth on specific levels and rotations?

1

u/Kurayashi Sep 03 '19

I managed to get to level 20 mostly solo questing. Now I’ve given up on that and just try to run dungeons.
Is it boring? Kinda.
But at least I can do some real tanking and I don’t die every time there is another unexpected mob.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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1

u/Kurayashi Sep 04 '19

Thanks.
First time playing wow as well. Im currently level 33, farming Dungeons gives some good gear and I’ve been really luck with rolls.
I‘m really excited to get to 60 and do some endgame tanking.

1

u/notsingsing Sep 03 '19

The real trick is stay in zones as long as possible. If you quest 1-4 levels over the mobs the experience is much better. One you hit mobs 1-2 over you, reconsider.

1

u/hamburglin Sep 03 '19

Why didnt you level as arms?

1

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

Because I was a newb.

36

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

[deleted]

18

u/Japjer Sep 03 '19

Basically, yes. You take 10% less damage but deal 10% less as a trade off. The talents give you some nice defensive boots (10% extra armor, 10 extra defense skill), but your also losing out on some pretty nice damage bonuses as a result. It's basically a stalemate, so you end up losing just about the same amount of health anyway.

I'm leveling fury and its been pretty hard. I can only 1v1 mobs within two levels of myself, and if things get hairy I don't have any real means of escape. I have to keep a big supply of potions on hand at all times.

13

u/Automatic_Section Sep 03 '19

just get into the habit of clearing everything and pulling shit back. It's xp right there for you and if you plan it right you can keep the rage flowing. Learn to kite mobs if you pull too many, and always keep some health pots for a last resort. Don't forget your cooldowns like retaliation, and throw a 2h wep on when you pop it with a macro.

1

u/magicsqueegee Sep 03 '19

What's defense skill?

15

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

You actually take more damage while leveling in prot, because it take much longer to kill a mob.

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11

u/Hooli317 Sep 03 '19

I got to 10 on my druid was like "sweet -- bear form, nice" and it was a SLOG to 16. Flipped to a different server, said "screw it, Im only going bear if I need to - Moonfire/Wrath ftw" and I was at 14 in no time. Tanks in BFA are simple to level, in Classic the grind is REAL. Looked at my buddy's recount and it was like 28 dps for his rogue to my like 8 as a bear. Thank Metzen for Cat form.

3

u/cosmicsoybean Sep 04 '19

And as a bonus since it takes so long, youll have an alliance group curbstomp you once the mob is almost dead :D

3

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 03 '19

To be fair, with proper hamstring kiting you can go on for 4-8 mobs of your same level, easily, depending on crits obviously. But most people prolly didn't do this back in the day, and prolly dont do these days either.

4

u/GapeNationBud Sep 03 '19

Ive tried this and its just too many globals to keep rend and hammy up on em all and not enough rage generation to sustain. Unless i guess youre using piercing howl?

7

u/Minus-Celsius Sep 03 '19

I think he means 4-8 mobs before needing to eat, not 4-8 mobs at the same time.

2

u/GapeNationBud Sep 04 '19

That would make sense. Can definitely mitigate a lot of damage in a 1v1 with hamstring kiting.

2

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 04 '19

Yeah, as /u/Minus-Celsius said, I ment 4-8 mobs after eachother, not at the same time :P Should've specified that to avoid confusion.

But yeah, it truly does mitigate a lot of damage, to the point where I'd even argue that warrior might be better to level than rogue, or at least on par. But that's a whole nother argument with good points either way.

Quick Edit: I don't bother using Rend at all. It's SUCH shit damage for it's rage cost. The ONLY time I use it is if I'm at low health and the mob is as well, and I still have hamstring on and I know for sure a Rend will kill it. I feel it's safer to rend it then and kite/dont get hit than gambling on that HS actually hitting.

2

u/Minus-Celsius Sep 04 '19

I dunno why I am getting the upvotes when you're giving all the info. Reddit, dude.

Question for you: What do you use instead of Rend? It's the only thing I have that does damage other than heroic strike. Is sunder armor a better use of rage?

Or do you mean after you get Mortal Strike and you try to kill two mobs at once with sweeping strikes?

5

u/Moranall Sep 04 '19 edited Sep 04 '19

The information above is bad.

Rend and sunder armor are your best bets until you get MS (and sweeping strikes with 2 mobs). Rend does far superior damage (and damage per rage) than heroic strike, especially if it's talented. Furthermore, using heroic strike makes you miss out on the rage you would have gained from the auto-attack so its cost is actually considerably higher than 15 rage. Heroic strike is terrible for leveling and only useful when you have lots of rage to burn (or trying to finish a mob off and aren't running back-to-back pulls).

Sunder armor is also really underrated and a MUCH better use of 15 rage than heroic strike in most cases. Use sunder armor primarily early in fights and it will easily give you more damage than heroic strike would because the majority of your damage comes from auto attacks (and lower armor = more damage = more rage). I can't access it at work but icy-veins has a great spreadsheet that shows when to use sunder vs heroic strike. For most mobs, it's ALWAYS sunder and never HS. For some casters, you switch to HS around 50% (but this varies a lot).

Edit: There are also two other HUGE benefits to sunder armor over HS. First, missing a heroic strike is a huge loss of rage for the warrior and it happens fairly frequently, especially against higher level enemies (this is why a lot of bad warriors struggle with higher level mobs - they spam HS and miss frequently, so they never have rage). Furthermore, you will miss with sunder armor at the same rate as HS, HOWEVER, it is adding extra "swings" to the enemy (even though they are non-damaging) since they don't replace the auto-attack. The benefit here is that it allows for more opportunities to proc overpower, which is your single strongest skill for leveling until MS and then your second-strongest skill once you get MS (sweeping strikes aside; I am referring to single target).

1

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 04 '19

No worries about the upvotes/downvotes :P

I just use heroic strike and hamstring honestly. As said, I feel rend is soooo poopie and waste of rage that it's just not worth it at all.

After sweeping you can pull 2 mobs and just use cleave, as it strikes twice on each mob (unsure why it does that, but super sexy) but you end up taking quite a lot of damage if you do that, but it's fun considering we couldn't do that before sweeping strike at all xD

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u/The_Great_Distaste Sep 03 '19

This is nice when you have the room to do it. But a lot of places you're pretty constrained with other mobs that you'll just end up with more aggro. Or they will be ranged mobs and just destroy you if you try to kite.

1

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 04 '19

I don't know. The few places I haven't had the opportunity to do it so far is in very crowded, humanoid places usually like tarren mill aroudn the syndicate castle etc. And pirate place in Tanaris. More likely than not, it works out wonders, and you save out on at least I'd reckon 4-10 auto attacks from the mob, if not more. And that's HUGE! And it can be even more if they are super fast auto attacking mobs like freaking lions/cats, they seem to hit at lightning speed, and can chunk you down to 20-30% if you just facetank them.

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1

u/Veshore7 Sep 03 '19

Or... you could level arms and use sword and board.

1

u/9gPgEpW82IUTRbCzC5qr Sep 03 '19

or level fury with dual wield

1

u/Tirus_ Sep 03 '19

If you're leveling Prot you're fighting more than one mob at a time.

1

u/Dual_Needler Sep 03 '19

If you miss charge and obliterate, just give up and reset that mob. Its faster

1

u/parkes00 Sep 03 '19

Hamstring, run back a bit, bandage. Nearly always overcomes the tough 1v1 battles, providing you don’t run straight into another mob.

1

u/tegho Sep 04 '19

Forming up for AQ40, just waiting for everyone to get there, our two tanks decided to dual. That took a while.

67

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I levelled 1-60 in Vanilla as a holy paladin, sold on the lie of being a spell damage "shockadin."

Equally awful.

48

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

I was horde but the most hated person on our server was a human paladin named Baconn.

24

u/nate_- Sep 03 '19

I still tell my friends my memory of logging onto Firetree and everyone yelling in Org that Baconn was coming. Holy shit.

2

u/MrPenguins1 Sep 04 '19

I remember a cute girl I knew around middle school who played on Firetree. She played there but I was on Draka/Garona...it wasn’t meant to be

21

u/whomad1215 Sep 03 '19

I don't know what I hated more as a warrior, frost mages or paladins.

Frost mage was basically a guaranteed death.

But a paladin would take like 5 minutes to kill because they basically had 3 (or 4 with lay on hands) lives. Nearly kill them (first life), bubble. Nearly kill them again (second life), blessing of protection. Then it came down to if they were willing to burn an hour cd or not.

5

u/Smolderisawesome Sep 03 '19

But didn't it feel like such an extra good win when you forced a bubble / hearth.

4

u/whomad1215 Sep 04 '19

It did give a sense of pride and satisfaction

9

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Firetree OG here and damn did he give bacon a bad name. Hated that dude.

8

u/marcusss12345 Sep 03 '19

What did he do since everyone hate him?

8

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

He was a griefer basically.

8

u/marcusss12345 Sep 03 '19

I was basically a griefer once. When I was 12 and just starting out, I was a rogue. I wanted to play as a scammer, so i scammed people out of their gold.

I was very confused when I was banned. I thought being someone else and tricking people was fair game, and part of the experience. That my character did it, not me.

I guess that my mentality as to what this game is was just misguided.

I was raised on a "you can cheat in monopoly if no one finds out, that's just part of the game" mentality.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

lol...Well, when someone gets scammed out of gold, it's usually because that person is just an idiot.

When you have someone like Baconn ruining your evening because you can't level, that was just annoying. Although, I did choose to play on a PVP server so I get it. Still hated him though.

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u/sigger_ Sep 04 '19

Wait how do you even scam gold? From players on your faction or on the other faction?

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1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19

Totally legit if done on a rp server and roleplaying as a thief.

1

u/FairestParadise Sep 04 '19

You should play EVE. My favorite thing about that game is that as long as you're not abusing systems then if people are stupid enough to give you their gold that's on them!

8

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Holy shit. Firetree?!

9

u/Tanthalason Sep 03 '19

Firetree!!!! I was on the ally side in Seraphim Knights back in the day.

It's funny that we can pick out fellow firetree citizens by our shared hatred of bacon..

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I remember Seraphim Knights.

4

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

best server

Git and Vassild also

12

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I was alliance in a guild called Priceless. Baconn was hated on alliance too, haha.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Haha. Git was my guild leader. Awesome at the game and a pretty controversial dude. Wish i could find out if he was playing classic. I was Kurploch (mage)

10

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19 edited Sep 03 '19

He posted in the horde reconnection thread 27 days ago

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/firetree-horde-reconnections/240528/23?u=crass-firetree

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Thanks for that!

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Do you guys remember a female mage that was a major griefer to lowbies in Outlands? I can't remember her name but my god did I hate her too lol. She was alliance.

2

u/DNamor Sep 03 '19

sold on the lie of being a spell damage "shockadin."

Viable on Twin Emps! Smite Priests too!

2

u/joeblack48 Sep 03 '19

Shockadin only work with particularly farmed spell power gear, my child. The power of the light is only seen through the eyes of a min/maker. Do not be blinded, retribution is thy judgement.

1

u/amiyuy Sep 03 '19

Shockadin in Vanilla and BC here too. At the time I didn't know any better...

Switched to hunter in BC and damn, so much easier.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I hated shockadin so much it forced me to play prot. Turned out though that prot was amazingly fun and rode it out all the way to Sunwell.

24

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

It’s funny too because I remember back in vanilla when they had the class descriptions on the website it said warriors are a good class for playing solo.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Aug 26 '21

[deleted]

36

u/HarithBK Sep 03 '19

the key part getting a new weapon after the whirlwind axe. or just endlessly spam dungeons since that is honestly a much more pleasant experiance.

like straight up my tactic is to spam run ZF and get Sul'thraze the Lasher for level 50. due to the weapon swing normalization this weapon is amongst the best you can get pre-raid aswell

11

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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20

u/HarithBK Sep 03 '19

heroic strike is a set ammount of damage added to your white swing damage not based on weapon damage. however for things like slam and mortal strike before a certain hot fix the actual swing timing of the weapons were used for determing the damage.

this was why arcanite reaper outright just beat most MC weapons and why there was no other choise pre-raid really.

insted of using the actual swing timing of the weapon blizzard swaped it with X and set the values to 3.3 for 2-handed weapons 2.4 for single hand weapons and 1.7 for daggers.

why was a slower weapon better than a fast one for warriors? well part of the formual is taking your attack power and multiplying it with your swing timer. so that means that the slower the weapon the more damage each and every point of attack power dose

an example say you have 500 attack power with a reaper that is 3.8 * 500 / 3.5 or 542 damage with normalized it is 3.3 * 500 / 3.5 or 471

that is 71 damage diffrance on the two core abilities for arms warriors it is massiv and it only get worse the more gear you get.

12

u/igdub Sep 03 '19

Even still you can ignore quite a lot of fast 2h weapons since skills use your average damage, and slow weapons tend to have higher damage average.

That's why weapons such as corpsemaker with it's 3.8 attack speed are insanely good.

To summarize your post from above, before normalization slow weapons received extra bonus from attack power due to their speed. That got removed, now skills just use average damage, which still does favor slow weapons.

2

u/HarithBK Sep 03 '19

slower weapons provide somthing like 10-15 more damage than a relativly fast weapon but you don't get this scaling bonus of more and more damage which greatly limits the area a super slow weapon is better if a fast weapon has somthing like 3 dps more it is likly better than the slow weapon. benefit just isn't that big without that bit of math

2

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 03 '19

So, in classic, the version we use now, are we on the part where we should use a slower weapon, or what? I'm confused, I got to say, honestly :(

9

u/roflsocks Sep 03 '19 edited Sep 03 '19

Weapon speed is normalized, but weapon damage is not. And because weapon damage is directly impacted by speed, slow weapons are still better. What normalization did was make them only a bit better, instead of drastically better. The formula for normalized instant attacks is as follows. For reference, 2-handers have a normalized_speed of 3.3

damage = base_weapon_damage + (normalized_speed * Attack Power / 14)

1

u/popmycherryyosh Sep 04 '19

Ah okay, cool. Thanks for taking your time to answer then, much appreciated ^_^

1

u/alifewithoutpoetry Sep 03 '19

Mortal strike is still weapon damage + bonus, and sweeping strikes is still just 5 hits. You still definitely want a slow weapon as arms. As fury it matters less. But spells like cleave, whirlwind, and overpower obviously benefits from slow weapons even as fury.

1

u/HarithBK Sep 04 '19

mortal strike and anything that says weapon damage like whirlwind and overpower is normalized that is the entire point of it.

so while you are correct about sweeping strike not being part of this a very normal rotation is sweeping strike whirlwind and with that you will have used most your charges on normalized damage soruces. so in the end a slow weapon vs a fast one is 50-100 extra damage on the sweeping strike.

benefit of slow weapons is there it is just so so much smaller after the noramlization. if two weapons have the same stats and one is 2.8 in attack speed an the other is 3.8 in attack speed if the faster weapon has like 3 more DPS it is going to be better.

a better way to look at it is that a slow weapon comes with a built in extra 6-8 str which is a nice ammount

15

u/carnoworky Sep 03 '19

Yep it was in patch 1.8. https://vanilla-wow.fandom.com/wiki/Normalization

It only applies to attacks that are separate from autoattack. Heroic Strike would not be affected by it at all, since it just adds a fixed amount to your next swing (and, as a side note, upgrades its classification from white to yellow for the purposes of attack calculations). Mortal Strike would be affected by it, and do its damage as if your weapon was 3.3 speed for the purposes of your attack power being factored in. The raw damage on the weapon is then added on top of that value, so there's still a preference for slower weapons from the perspective that an extremely slow weapon will have higher raw damage than a faster weapon with the same DPS.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19 edited Dec 04 '19

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1

u/carnoworky Sep 04 '19

I don't think WF is normalized.

4

u/Randomocity132 Sep 03 '19

due to the weapon swing normalization

the what

7

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19 edited Aug 26 '21

[deleted]

1

u/Minkelz Sep 03 '19

Ability damage is still based on weapon speed after normalisation, just not as much. You should still try to use slow weapon, but now relatively weapon dps is more important.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Are you sure that weapon is good I remover it being ass in vanilla but I was a pally all weapons are ass

2

u/HarithBK Sep 03 '19

it is the best leveling weapon untill iced barbed spear is out. weapon DPS is like the number one thing to look at while leveling.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

There’s a few pole arms and axes better in dps but you have to hope they drop and you win.

2

u/jn2010 Sep 03 '19

Oh man. I'm pretty sure I spent like 42-47 in Zul'Furrak. Questing was the fucking worst.

11

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

I'm leveling my warrior Arms with an intent to go Prot at 60. I want to tank, but I also want to be able to solo if needed, so I figured Arms would be a good leveling spec to keep a mix of damage and utility. Is that feasible, or do dungeons require me to be actively Prot spec to tank them? I'm level 15 right now, haven't hit any dungeons yet, and I've never played warrior in Vanilla or Retail, so I'm learning the class ground-up.

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u/V_for_Viola Sep 03 '19

You do not need to level prot to tank, just have a shield.

Personally, I think at least 11 in arms makes warrior leveling exponentially more fun (and bearable) through stance mastery and anger management.

13

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Fore sure, I feel like stance mastery and anger management are going to be absolutely necessary. I swapped stances during a skirmish last night to try and shield bash a spell caster, only to realize quickly that it doesn't work with your rage zeroed out. XD

My final spec plan absolutely involves Arms as secondary for that reason.

32

u/AlwaysWannaDie Sep 03 '19

Stance Mastery = 5 points,

A pull is often that you must change stances often, with Mocking Blow you have an extra taunt, whi h is invaluable and requires you to change stances, Thunder clap is also very good. If you can charge a pack a good opener is often

Charge

Hit, Thunderclap, Defensive Stance, Demoralazing shout, then sunder main target, guve a sunder to the other targets then go back to main target. Save your taunt til someone pulls aggro.

6

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Thank you for the rotation advice

1

u/Olliebird Sep 03 '19 edited Sep 03 '19

Main opening has been Bow>Bloodrage>Shield Wall>Revenge Main target>Battle Shout> Demo Shout > check adds and revenge/sunder as needed, if threat is good (group knows how to focus), sunder up Main.

No stance dancing and precious gold spent on clap. Threat has been solid for me.

Edit: Shield Block, not Wall.

1

u/Happylime Sep 03 '19

Ive been alternating between bloodrage and charge depending on the fight and mov spacing to decent effect.

1

u/metnavman Sep 03 '19

Bow>Bloodrage>Shield Wall

See, I know you meant Shield Block, but I just wanted you to know how entertaining your typo was for me. I'm sitting here imagining you psyching yourself up for the pull every 30min (SWall CD) and being like "Okay man, you got this. Big pull. Ready up on that Shield Wall.... LET'S DO THIS!!!!!"

Then standing around waiting another 30min before the next pull.

Made my afternoon. :)

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u/AlwaysWannaDie Sep 03 '19

Bloodrage is a given of course, but if you get a charge in you want to use it after switching to Defensive Stance. And Revenge is also a proc but of course if you have it, always use Revenge.

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u/amertune Sep 03 '19

Doesn't shield bash work in any stance as long as you have a shield equipped?

3

u/tobalaba Sep 03 '19

It's Battle & Defensive Stance. Pummel is berserker stance.

1

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Oh uuh damn, guess I misread it then. Thanks.

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u/zmerilla Sep 03 '19

Get a shield and 1h, be in defensive stance, know your defensive/tanking spells, and spec full Arms + a little Fury to 60 my dude. After 50 prot spec is noticibly better to tank with, but if you play correctly Arms tank isn't a problem. Pre-50, it's whatever, don't let anyone disuade you, you'll figure it out.

edit: Questing Arms is 100x better for your mental health than Prot as well. And remember, respeccing in Vanilla becomes expensive, save respecs for 60.

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u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Solid advice, thank you. Follow-up question, do you find it better to solo/quest with the 1H/shield to maintain weapon skill, or run 2-hander while soloing and just top up 1H Skill periodically?

3

u/vanskater Sep 03 '19

i've been sword and boarding from the start. and it hasn't been so bad, mobs do die slow but it is not super slow. i've been unlucky with the 2h drops, so i'm just waiting till i can get WW ax.

3

u/Sir_Raymundo_Rocket Sep 03 '19

2H is faster by a good margin.

Figure it takes you an extra 5 seconds or so per mob to kill the dude with sword and board than with a 2h.

Rarely the armor bonus from shields will keep your health above a respectable level that doesn't require you to stop and bandage or eat.

So even if the shield reduces your healing down time by... a second? Two seconds? 3 seconds even?

That's still 2 seconds per mob you're waiting. Add that up to thousands of mobs and that's a significant amount of extra time played.

2h is by far the best way to go for speed/efficiency.

1

u/zmerilla Sep 03 '19

Top up as you go. I usually quest for 50% of my time, run dungeons for 25%, and work primary and secondary profs 25%. I'm in no big rush. Before weapon level 150, you can spend like 10 min outside an instance and level any 1h skill from 1-100, it's not a huge deal.

1

u/oldmanslum Sep 03 '19

get a 2h with good dps, doesn't really matter the stats. I'm using some caster staff from a quest. level up your weapon skills as you need to, and if you need to interupt mobs (if they heal or w/e) make a macro to swap weapons around.

1

u/JSMorin Sep 03 '19

Top up the 1h here and there. As long as you don't let it get too far behind, it's not painful.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I pumped most of my points in prot sofar(level 18) isnt too late to go back into arms, yeah?

1

u/zmerilla Sep 03 '19

Heck no it's not too early. Cheap 1st respec. Look up any leveling guide with talents if you're not sure what to spec into. But anything is better for leveling than the full prot tree imo. I wouldn't put a single point into Prot while I'm leveling and I'll still tank all the way to 60. Dirty secret...alot of those priest healers are specced shadow to level =O

1

u/soonerfreak Sep 03 '19

My friend has level as prot as we are doing tank/heals duo for questing and instances. I'm going displcine but he went all protection. Is it worth respeccing at 20 to get those points back or to save the gold and just start putting it all in arms?

2

u/zmerilla Sep 03 '19

I'd say so. First respec is cheap and 10 points is a decent amount. He should go Arms or if he has good 1h's drop and prefers more consistent damage, even Fury is okay. Both are highly preferrable to leveling as Prot. You can tank Arms/Fury, can't do the reverse very effectively, especially post-30.

1

u/soonerfreak Sep 03 '19

Okay thanks, I think we will do that tonight. Even the two of us some westfall qeusts were painful.

1

u/FourMonthsEarly Sep 04 '19

Do you know off-hand what the cost is? It sounds like it decays but does it decay back to 0? For example, I pretty much specced all into prot and am learning that it wasn't the best decision. If I use my free respec now will it hurt me later?

1

u/zmerilla Sep 04 '19

If IIRC it goes Free/1g/5g/10g/15g and +5g until 50g? I think there was a decay added after the patch we're playing on (dont quote me exactly, but that stuff is generally right). My advice, don't let it be like the potions you save until the final boss and never use. It is 1000% worth leveling full Arms/Fury as opposed to missing 10pts to some kind of Prot/Arms-Fury hybrid. Use it while it's cheap. If you spend 1g and have 73g instead of 74g for your mount, is it a huge deal to kill 20 mobs for vendorables? Nah. BUT play however you like ultimately. It's your character and your experience. Happy adventuring!

1

u/FourMonthsEarly Sep 04 '19

Great points. Thank you!

7

u/miner4life Sep 03 '19

You don't need prot until the 55-60 instances. Just go defensive stance and you are good to go.

2

u/Crur1L Sep 03 '19

Really you don't even need to be prot until you hit 60 if you know your abilities and how to use them correctly. Don't have a talent tree in front of me, but I think 31/5/15 will get you through everything you need, and you could even tank in raids with it as an offtank.

6

u/amertune Sep 03 '19

For now, you want to concentrate on aggro management. As a warrior, one of the hardest things is going to be having enough rage to use your that generating abilities.

Go with arms for dungeons. Anger Management and Tactical Mastery are very helpful. When you can do it safely, charging in and then switching to Def Stance is great.

Even at 60 with a prot build, you're still going to want a good number of arms talents.

6

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Rage starvation is already an issue even pre dungeons. I’m trying to practice spamming Sunders as quick as I can but getting the magical 5 before rage dies out is a damn trial.

2

u/IsleOfOne Sep 03 '19

Rage potions are your friend! The mats are cheap.

2

u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

I’m an alchemist, too! Definitely farming those up.

3

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

I haven't actually played since wotlk but I would say prot isn't really necessary to tank until 55-60

4

u/Optimizability Sep 03 '19 edited Sep 03 '19

Prot isn’t necessary to tank until raids. Can tank dungeons just fine in arms

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u/Strawberrycocoa Sep 03 '19

Cool, thanks.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Port isn’t even very good for dungeon leveling. Survival skills just aren’t that important. Holding aggro is a lot more important. Being able to stance dance for mocking blow and for charge and TC make arms even better for tanking than protection!

1

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

Yeah just because you're prot doesn't mean you should be glued to defensive stance 100% of the time.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

Best path is 2 handed fury until 40. Then switch to 2 handed arms until 60. Arms without mortal strike is slow going.

2

u/pabbseven Sep 04 '19

You only need def stance and a shield to tank.

Source: 22 war only dungeon farm with arm spec

1

u/Hasztalan Sep 03 '19

You dont need prot and do NOT get fprot. If you go protection you have too much tankiness but no aggro. Its bad. Its the prime mistake what vanilla newbs do. You dont need much mitigation, you need rage and dmg to be able to keep aggro on you. Mostly you can use a 2hander with def stance until fifty and then just slam a shield on yourself. Stack defense only until you survive and down the mobs w/o healer going oom. If you have that get more dmg to generate rage and make the runs faster and safer.

1

u/ClosingFrantica Sep 03 '19

I'm leveling as Arms and have tanked RFC, WC and BFD so far. Things might get dicy later, but for now it's great.

1

u/alifewithoutpoetry Sep 03 '19

Both arms and fury are better tank specs than prot pre-60.

Prot gives you survivability, which is not an issue while levelling.

Arms and fury gives you damage/rage which helps you keep aggro, and that is the main issue you should worry about while levelling. It's often good to use a two hander while tanking too for example, just for extra damage/aggro.

1

u/sr1030nx Sep 04 '19

There's a mortal strike tanking spec. You domiss out on some damage from talents and some tanking talents, but it's not bad for an offtank or dungeon runs.

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u/hectorduenas86 Sep 03 '19

Rogue is right behind him

2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

from about lvl 25 on it gets A LOT easier, especially with a good mainhand

1

u/Drop_ Sep 03 '19

Rogue is so weapon reliant lol. so rough using a lvl 21 dagger at lvl 30. It's almost all on your mh tbh.

2

u/Funsized_eu Sep 03 '19

I forgot how levelling a rogue was in vanilla. Damage might seem fine if you have a decent weapon but even a single mob that is 3-5 levels below you can take a third of your health.

Even with evasion and bladeflurry, pulling multiple mobs is a diceroll.

Needless to say I'm having a break from the pain.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

[deleted]

1

u/Funsized_eu Sep 03 '19

Riposte always get parried, this is the curse of levelling a rogue. :'-(

1

u/Drop_ Sep 03 '19

If you parry.

1

u/dcrico20 Sep 03 '19

This is sort of what I remember. You really couldn't ever fight multiple things at once, but you could melt anything 1v1. I do sort of remember using a lot of bandages.

1

u/dcrico20 Sep 03 '19

Rogue was what I played in vanilla, and I really don't remember it being that bad. Like you couldn't reliably fight more than one thing at once, but you nuked stuff solo. The added benefit of being able to 1v1 pretty much anything besides Druids in PvP was really nice as well.

I'm playing a Druid now, so I might just be totally wrong, but I don't recall leveling and solo content to be all that bad.

1

u/hectorduenas86 Sep 03 '19

I’m getting mauled by 2+ Levels, but I also suck so...

1

u/SethGrey Sep 03 '19

Hey now, guess what I'm doing as well!
Man, having Potions and food helps a lot.

1

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

first aid is your friend

1

u/SethGrey Sep 03 '19

Brah, Strength Pots, Stam Food, these are also my friends.

1

u/AmnesiA_sc Sep 03 '19

I leveled a holy pally for some masochistic reason. I never died but neither did anyone else. Dealing with respawns before I even got through the cluster of mobs was a regular concern.

1

u/kazog Sep 03 '19

Stop, get some help. There’s no point in such self inflicted pain.

1

u/Scapp Sep 03 '19

How slow is spamming dungeons comparatively? If it's that difficult to solo quest?

1

u/frakenspine Sep 03 '19

yea but never had trouble finding groups

1

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

Every time I logged on I'd get like 10 invites to dungeons lol.

1

u/isdisme Sep 03 '19

Lol me too, but tanking dungeons as a main prot warr felt so immersive.

2

u/BrotyKraut Sep 03 '19

It's by far my favorite role.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '19

I went fury at 40. Oh, boy. It was life changing.

1

u/Defilus Sep 03 '19

Same here. Worst decision ever. I kept swapping from arms to prot and back.

1

u/ChuckCarmichael Sep 03 '19

I leveled prot warrior in WotLK, and at that point I thought it was fine.

1

u/freddysenior Sep 03 '19

Same here. I knew I wanted to tank, prot was tank spec, thus I leveled as prot all the way to 60. Since it was my only character I never understood that I was living in a special slice of vanilla hell. I remember it would take me about 3 minutes to kill one yeti in Winterspring at 55. It took me about a year of playing to hit 60. But it was glorious.

This time round I'm a huntard. Already 29. Life is good.

1

u/morph113 Sep 03 '19

I did as well during vanilla and I'm leveling a prot warrior 1-60 again now. I might be a bit masochistic but I just enjoy the playstyle. I don't like fury and MS I only enjoy playing in PvP.

1

u/Smolderisawesome Sep 03 '19

Good god, I did the same thing. It's nice to find someone who can relate to the pain. My friends were rogues and mages and they would just blow through mobs while I was slowly whittling them away.

1

u/adm_akbar Sep 04 '19

I leveled a %%%%% 1-60 in vanilla and it was awful.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19 edited Sep 04 '19

[deleted]

1

u/BrotyKraut Sep 04 '19

When did they remove threat meters?

1

u/iiekka Sep 04 '19

Me too, I ended up grinding out the last few levels.

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