I would level as 2h arms and just get a 1h + shield for tanking, it wont be a problem tanking with a dps spec and you can still kill mob/players in the open world while playing solo. Healers also level as dps and a still viable healing leveling dungeons.
A lot of specs in Classic are hybrid in nature.
You can level deep Prot if you really want to, but I'd highly recommend doing the Prot tree component last.
https://classicdb.ch/?talent#LV0xzZVZgdzsezzVo put the last four points into armour, you don't want to be running many of those lvl 55+ dungeons without shield slam. Likewise you can max out cruelty closer to lvl 60 too.
Regards
As with most other suggestions, Arms till 60~ish is going to be faster.
I agree with @Zanthir here. I'd say tank as fury even if you are speed leveling and doing dungeons with friends. It will provide more dps to your group, making the speed leveling even faster. Past 40, as dungeons get increasingly more challenging, you can start putting points into the protection tree. This spec is very rough, and there is most likely room for improvement, but I think you would be looking at something like this:
Thank you for this! What do you guys think about for weps? Do you think opting into a dagger is more optimal when running fury//tanking or should I just use the standard 2h wep for less miss chance and have a seperate 1h and shield for when I am tanking?
When I tried fury out a little bit I notice 2h being more optimal than your 2 1h weps because of hit chance and ability dmg...?
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
You would be far better off with 2h fury than dual wield. This is, as you point out, due to hit chance. My recommendation is 2h weapon and separate 1h + shield for tanking. stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.
My advice is, just dont do it.
There's no advantage to being Protection until level 60. None of the Prot talents really make a big difference at that level, and outside of Defiance you will likely do more threat as any other build.
Also having Tactical Mastery if you level as arms will imo be far more useful.
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
If you want to tank dungeons a lot I would advise Arms over Fury (and stay away from prot unless you want to make your solo questing experience horrible). I personally prefer Arms over Fury because Arms has Tactical Mastery, to allow you to keep rage when switching stances. It's a very underrated talent for tanking. It allows you to quickly Intercept any mob on your healer. It also allows you to almost instantly Mocking Blow any mob when you're in Defensive Stance, very useful because Taunt resists quite often. You can't do that as Fury because you lose all your rage when switching stances (Mocking Blow is a Battle Stance ability).
Indeed. And as a nice bonus you get Anger Management which generates rage for you in combat and makes it easier to carry leftover rage over to the next pack.
stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Yeah I've done this the entire time I've played the game. Shield on during the entire dungeon, taking things slow. I never spent any time on forums or reading about the game so it's just been how I played this whole time. Nobody suggested it back then and I also don't remember hearing about people dual wield tanking back then either, seems like it's a more recent development. Or I just never paid attention to different playstyles, also possible, lol.
I'm looking at maining a feral druid this time around, but I'm definitely going to keep my warrior as an alt. I think this time I'm going to try dual wield tanking like you describe here. I keep seeing videos about this on youtube from guys like Skarm talking it up, and I keep reading about it here. Not only is the increased TPS a good thing, but it also sounds more fun too.
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
I don't quite agree. Weapon speed is not equivalent to TPS. I believe low weapon damage equals less rage generation which again does not allow for much HS spamming. Also, your other abilities are gonna suffer from the low weapon damage as well. Interesting argument however and something I'd be curios to test during my many dungeon adentures in the upcoming months!
stfuppercut is mentioning dual-wield tanking, but I'm not sure if that will work before you gain some +hit on your gear. I'd say play safe with 1h and shield, then you also get some weapon skill training in 1handers by the time you reach 60. However you can try to tank with 2hander as well if you feel up for it.
Yea, so dual wield generates a ton of TPS. The shield is actually pretty garbage in most 5 mans, for most pulls - especially if you are using CC and potentially only tanking 1-2 mobs to start out. Keep in mind that block increases in value based on the amount of mobs in a specific pull. From my experience most tanks over value the shield, leaving it on during their entire dungeon. I'd rather have a tank play a bit more aggressively so that packs can die faster and he can take less damage overall allowing the healer to sit and drink quickly so we can continue to pull. Just my 2 cents
Are you arguing for dual wield tanking during dungeons while leveling, or are you mainly thinking about 5-mans at lvl 60? For the latter, I agree with you, but I believe during leveling (unless you manage to get some +hit early on somehow) you will have a miserable time if you attempt this.
Are you arguing for dual wield tanking during dungeons while leveling, or are you mainly thinking about 5-mans at lvl 60? For the latter, I agree with you, but I believe during leveling (unless you manage to get some +hit early on somehow) you will have a miserable time if you attempt this.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, no. No dual wielding before you reach the hit threshold at 60. Leveling you should be using a 2hander and periodically switching to shield depending on the circumstances.
Dagger = nono for a warrior.
Daggers are perfectly fine for warrior, especially for tanking. They're typically very fast which is great for spamming Heroic Strike and generating a good bit of threat. Agree that you probably want to avoid dual wield tanking until you have plenty of hit though.
I don't quite agree. Weapon speed is not equivalent to TPS. I believe low weapon damage equals less rage generation which again does not allow for much HS spamming. Also, your other abilities are gonna suffer from the low weapon damage as well. Interesting argument however and something I'd be curios to test during my many dungeon adentures in the upcoming months!
Rage generation should be based on damage dealt to the target. Daggers deal less damage but they connect more often which should mean the same rage generation, just more steady rather than in big chunks.
Other than a higher attackspeed for Heroic Strike dumping, I really dont think the speed matters one bit as long as both weapons have the same amount of DPS.
The actual on hit damage doesnt matter, as your abilities when tanking does not use weapon damage as part of their damage, rather they either add a flat damage, or in case of Bloodthirst, is based entirely on attackpower.
You can actually make a good argument for daggers even as fury DPS. While Whirlwind is based on your weapon damage, it's not that big part of your DPS. With Daggers you can use Aged Core Leather Gloves from MC which has much better stats than Edgemasters, and you can use the C'Thun dagger if you are lucky enough to get that for exactly +8 Dagger Skill, which is the cap for Glancing Blows.
Fast daggers give more consistent rage generation from damage dealt (no huge spikes from crit, but no huge valleys from miss/parry), but if you have high incoming damage and therefore high rage generation, the HS spam capability of daggers is crazy. Shield slam isn't based off weapon damage (as I recall, don't have the tooltip in front of me), and sunder doesn't have damage. If you run fury, BT is attack power based, not weapon damage, so the lower weapon damage doesn't matter at all.
On Vael in particular, nobody in my guild could pull aggro off me spamming HS with core hound tooth.