Leveling as a Prot Warrior: Intro

So, I haven't really touched the warrior class since Burning Crusade. Even then, I only got to level 24 or so. But since I'm the blogger who doesn't suck at alts, I figure I should try something out new. It helps that I came up with a reasonable theme for my new family of alts - dwarven farmers from Thelsamar with vegetable names: Radish (warrior), Rutabega (hunter), and Mizuna (paladin). Bonus points if you figure out why I wanted Carrot, and what the last names would have been (without googling it, of course).

Anyway, I went to town, bought some heirloom gear - the Reforged Truesilver Champion (which is, oddly, somewhat better than the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper in raw stats), the Strengthened Stockade Pauldrons, and the Polished Breastplate of Valor. I was planning on also getting a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper with tourney marks (breaking the cost down between stone keeper shards, tourney marks, and conquest marks (pre-3.3, with not much else to do with them) was a pretty good way to go. The heirloom gear is a must for warriors in particular - the weapon means you don't have to keep shopping for a new weapon as you level.

On a whim, because the 3.3 LFG tool is so interesting, I also got a Venerable Mass of McGowan, which is (again, curiously) better than the Venerable Dal'rend's Sacred Charge - it's got about the same stats, but the mace has agi on it, which isn't the worst stat for a warrior (crit/dodge), and it's apparently a free stat. The only bummer is that there's no heirloom shield, but I've found enough so far (to level 31) that I haven't spent any money in the AH on shields.

After running the first instance (Shadow Fang Keep, which is coming back in cataclysm with a heroic mode), I ran to the trainer and respecced full prot. The difference isn't much at this level, primarily a shorter cooldown on Thunderclap, which is a big deal for AoE threat generation. With all the heirloom gear, I've got plenty of health and threat generation, my healers and DPS never seem to worry about me dying or them pulling aggro.

I love prot spec.

I don't miss Arms talents while I'm soloing - I do enough DPS to take down single and double pulls pretty easily in battle stance with a 2H weapon. When it looks hinky, or there's casters around, I switch to defensive stance with a 1H and shield.

Tanking, it's all about spamming Thunderclap on cooldown, using rend to put DoTs everywhere (especially since most at-level groups seem to be bad at taking out runners), and using revenge and cleave when you feel like it. I am bummed that the mace is so slow - I'd rather have my cleave timer hit every 1.5 seconds so I can spend more time tabbing around, but such is life. If there's a big pull, or I feel like I'm in trouble, I've got shield block, shield wall, and last stand to help out.

I also picked up mining and herbalism as my two trade skills - extra health from mining and the heal from herbalism is pretty nice.

Here's my spec at level 30: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LZZVIzrbbz

I'll probably respec later on, and get more points in Puncture once I have devastate as a skill, but I never really bother with sunder. I think devastate will end up being a reasonably useful skill when I get it, not for the sundering, but for the damage - it's a spammable attack that's on the GCD and not the swing timer that hits respectably hard. In a situation where I have rage to dump, I'd way rather hit devastate than slam. But I don't know how much rage I will actually need to save - Focused Rage will already give me a 3 point deduction on it, and I have lots of things to do with my GCDs anyway. We'll see.

I think the only real problem with the spec is that when I end up getting into a dungeon as DPS (I queue as both tank and DPS), I'm at a slight disadvantage. The later prot talents really want you to be in defensive stance to work right, and I don't want to pull aggro from the tank - even if I can handle it, it's bad form and stresses the healers. So at level 40, I'll probably get dual-spec and pick up an arms spec for DPSing in instances (fury is nice too, but there's not a lot of hit rating to be had at that level, and you really need hit rating to make DW or TG work). But for leveling and tanking, it's prot spec for this new warrior baby.

More to come in later posts, as I get more experience.