Leveling as an Prot Warrior?

Hello all,

I've just startet to play again WoW. The past years I've only played the new content on official Servers (Cata and Pandaria) as an Prot Warrior.
It was easy there to level, as you could use the dual skill to switch between prot and dd.

For TBC, as I never played before, I've also choosed a prot warrior but faceing many problems. I'm just level 18, but can't hold aggro or just getting it back, while missing it.

How should I level my char and do you have a good Guide for Prot Warrios in TBC? All I've found was only for Raiding.
As dual spec isn't availible and reskilling isn't cheap, I would love to play prot from the scratch.


Thanks

First of all, tanking in TBC is totally different to Cata and MoP. While in Cata and MoP you are nearly unable to loose aggro, in TBC the DDs have to know what to do that the tank is at least able to hold aggro. There is no way, that you can hold aggro while DDs dps on different targets or do aoe dps. Golden rule for vanilla and tbc tanking was, only dps if 3 sunder armor are on and only on the same target.

If your group know what to do, there should be no problem to level as prot in dungeons, but there is no rdf and no teleport into it. If your dds believe they can do what they are used to later expansions (and thats what they usually do), tanking will suck.
Questing with prot is not going to be very smooth, arms is the better choice here.

First of all, don't level as Protection unless you're leveling with friends and are doing dungeons non-stop. It's a pain in the ***, it does 0 damage and it takes ages to kill anything.

As for aggro, as Aluschl said, it is not a given on vanilla and TBC and you actually have to work for it. You're 18lvl so your best threat abilities right now are Revenge and Sunder Armor. You should almost never use anything else. Tab between targets and spam SA/Revenge on each. Keep more SA/Revenge on your main target so you don't lose aggro. Also, keep in mind that Taunt pre-WotLK has melee range so you have to be really quick to switch and use it when you lose aggro from a target.

When you get Cleave, you'll be able to use it for better AoE aggro but you'll still have to tab between targets. Then, when you get Shield Slam, you'll be able to hold single-target threat much better. As far as tanking goes, TBC was a pretty sad expansion. WotLK fixed many of these issues, giving Taunt 30yd range, increasing the damage of Revenge by several times, also the damage of Thunder Clap and allowing it to be used in Defensive Stance, as well as adding Shockwave and a talent that makes Revenge cleave. On TBC you have neither of these.

And again - don't level as Protection. Just go Fury.

Thanks for your replies.
I saw that Warmane is giving you free Reset on your abilities and you can unlock dual spec for 100 Gold, that sounds great :-)
I will level as a fury and then switch to Prot!
But as a DD is Fury or Arms better?

Arms is only viable at T4 because at that point your gear sucks too much to make Fury work. Beyond that, Fury >>>>>>> Arms.

I can full cleave right from the start with a bear and a little later with a pally but I always pull agro if a warrior is tanking. Single target is alright. Without speaking about mitigation. Also, I play a warrior so I don't have some bias against warriors. And maybe there's some amazing ones out there who can hold AOE agro but I havn't seen it and I have all the heroic keys. Its just an issue with the class.

And yeah level as fury. Just look at some of the talents and what they provide. Even with a 2h is good and the sustain is nice too. I also love running lower level dungeons and even did so while leveling but its a waste of time. Better to quest. You'll replace that gear the next day anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by taralej

Arms is only viable at T4 because at that point your gear sucks too much to make Fury work. Beyond that, Fury >>>>>>> Arms.

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In terms of personal dps Fury pips Arms, but Arms bring Blood Frenzy which is a straight gain in raid dps, more so than the personal dps difference. Also, a decent MS/Slam rotation with windfury can produce some obnoxious results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Offbeat

In terms of personal dps Fury pips Arms, but Arms bring Blood Frenzy which is a straight gain in raid dps, more so than the personal dps difference. Also, a decent MS/Slam rotation with windfury can produce some obnoxious results.

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This. As Arms you won't top DPS on most fights but you can still easily be in the top 5. People really undervalue how much damage you can do as Arms if you know how to play it properly. The thing is that it's way harder to play than Fury so Arms does garbage DPS in the hands of most people. Here's some screenshots of the DPS I could pull as Arms (T4 geared): https://postimg.org/gallery/dljsr8va/
It's also great for some big numbers. Notice my highest Mortal Strike crit, 6.6k. How can you not love a spec that'll let you do such big crits :D