Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

I started playing a couple days ago because a friend and his group needed a tank for raids. I have never played WoW before and generally have no idea what I'm doing. I'm a lvl 12 Orc Warrior who has no idea what skills to rank or which talent to choose. I'd just like a basic overview of what I am supposed to do to tank well and any other helpful tips for a newbie.

I would appreciate any feedback! Thanks!

This won't be very comprehensive, as I haven't tanked since vanilla actually came out, but at least it's some basic advice. Others will probably be able to go more in depth.

- First things first, get a gun. Or a bow. Whatever you prefer. Go to Org/TB and talk to the Weapon Trainer, learn how to use a ranged weapon. Then buy a ranged weapon from the vendor next to them. This isn't for damage, but for pulling, Warriors lack any sort of ranged combat abilities, and charging into a group of enemies is a good way to suddenly have a 1v3 battle you can't win. By using a ranged weapon, you can take on the enemies 1v1 on your terms, which is massively important for this class. You will not hit 60 without doing this, so make it a top priority. Again, this isn't for damage at all, you can comfortably use a gray level 5 gun well into 60 if you don't find something better ( but you shouldn't because you can eventually find better ranged weapons with stats ).

- Warrior is extremely dependent on gear. You should reliably be able to take on same level/level above you for most of the game, or two enemies at the same time, as long as your gear is up to date. If it isn't, you'll struggle with same level enemies. Doing dungeons is a great way to keep your gear up to date, especially if you run them multiple times. Always make sure to replace ageing gear, even if it means buying it from the AH. If you have problems leveling, this is the first place a Warrior should check to see if changes need to be made.

- Protection is a really fun spec. At 60. Before 60 you have zero reasons going Prot, and should generally avoid any real investment in the tree. You should be able to handily tank every dungeon from 1-60 as Arms or Fury as long as you keep up to date on the Prot skills/keep your gear up to date. While we'd all love to jump from our leveling spec to Prot and then back again, the steadily rising gold costs of respecs make that a hard pill to swallow, and it's more important you level faster then you having maybe 5% better defenses.

- Certain skills aren't worth it in vanilla, because it wasn't a well balanced time for the game. Rend isn't worth the Rage, even if you have Imp Rend. Thunder Clap actually hurts you by lowering your Rage generation, making it super bad outside of specific situations. Demoralizing Shout is super Rage expensive for something that you'll only use in dungeons/don't really need. Don't buy stuff you won't be using often while leveling, as that's money that can go into your Mount at 40. General rule of thumb is keep Heroic Strike/Battle Shout/Overpower/Slam ( if you use super slow 2H weapons ) up to date, keep whatever else you like to use up to date, and as soon as you get withing the level range of the local dungeon, go mass buy all the Prot stuff at once.

- You are an Orc. Your most useful skill is Axe Specialization. Basically think in terms of DnD hit rolls here. You have a chance to hit, your chance to hit goes up or down depending on your skill with the weapon, and the level of whatever you are attacking. Since missing means death for a Warrior, you always want to have your weapon skill levels up to date, right? From 1-60ish, this just means keep using different types of weapons to keep them up to date. But from 60 on, you'll start facing enemies that are higher level then 60, which means it'll be harder and harder to hit them.....unless you use an Axe. Because you have that Axe Specialization, you'll get less glancing blows/more hits on the higher level enemies then the other people in your raid, which means better Aggro generation/damage. Because while everyone else caps out at 300, you cap out at 305.

- While leveling, you have two choices. General consensus with vanilla is that while DW looks cool, it's not quite as good as 2H for leveling/PvP UNTIL you start getting some +Hit gear. As such, you should GENERALLY stick with 2H weapons, unless you find some really good 1H stuff to DW that makes up for the penalties.

- Both Arms and Fury work for leveling, just look them over and pick which one sounds best to you. Arms is more about big Crits/Bleeds off those big crits, while Fury is more about attacking faster/harder after criting/being crit. I generally prefer Arms, because it has more tools and isn't as reliant on chance, but that's just me.

- You should tank with your friends before you actually tank a dungeon. It's not hard, but it's something to get used to. In most dungeons, tank is supposed to set targets and then control the mobs after that. Control is simple, certain classes ( Hunter, Mage, Warlock ), can take a single mob out of a fight for a bit. Tell them who you want them to "CC" and then don't attack that target. You usually want to CC healers/casters/extremely hard hitting units in that other.

After CC, most mob packs will only ever be 2, maybe 3 enemies big. At this point it's rather simple for you. Go in and Taunt one of them, as soon as you have enough Rage, start Sundering both of them, alternating Sunders, leaving Taunt on hand for if any of them break away to go attack your Casters. Also cast stuff like Revenge as it procs to get a bit more threat/damage in. Then basically play beatup doll for a few seconds while your DPS kills the things for you. It's a bit more complex in the later dungeons, but by then you should be playing with friends who will tell you what makes the bosses more difficulty.

The post above makes many good points. I disagree with weapon choice and weapon skill though. Weapon skill is the single best stat available in game (if you are a fury warrior at lvl60). However, if you are tanking at lvl60 you will be rage-capped alot, meaning you can spam heroicstrikes and since heroicstrike converts a white-hit into a yellow-hit, it cant be glancing so you wont benefit from the extra weapon skill. The theory behind choosing a good weapon as a protection warrior is take what ever weapon is best, no matter your choice of race. And what is best is a very fast dagger because its lets you put out more heroicstrikes/minute. Get Alcors, Finkles Skinner or Scarlet Kris and you wont need to upgrade again unless you obtain Thunderfury. Sadly there arent any really fast axes available.

anrey wrote:Weapon skills doesn't remove glancing blows, it's remove penalty of it, do skill cap your glancing blows will do same damage as your non crit hits. Otherwise it's good post, just pick arms tree and until 40lvl use heroic strike, after mortal strike. Also you must complete that warrior q for blue axe.

True. Although the fact remains that weapon skill dont hold much value for a raiding tank, while holding incredibly good value for a raiding fury warrior.

Some days ago, i saw a big great post in the warrior forum created by Armilus.

Maybe you try this: https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16057

I'd like to thank everybody for the informative feedback so far. Yesterday I managed to meet up with my group and do a couple RFC runs. We beat it a couple of times even though I was being a newb at times. I made it to lvl 15 and we are considering doing harder stuff now as most of my group is lvl 17 or higher now.

As for the skills, I am generally ranking up and leveling any skill that is green at the Warrior Trainer. I have asked a lot of players and my group and they have told me that that is the general rule of thumb.

The only thing that I am hung up on is which talent to between (between Arms and Fury). I feel that if I'm going to be doing a lot of group play, I should most likely stick to Fury, which is what I've done. But even in that case, I do not know which skills in the Fury talent tree that I should pick. Could I perhaps get more feedback on that?

Again, I appreciate any and all feedback.

The given idea is that you stick with fury until level 30 IIRC.

Here's a list of useless talents you should not use:

Fury

Booming Voice - Saves you 10 rage every 6 minutes for 5 talent points...

Improved Demoralizing Shout - Each serious raiding guild should have 1 warrior with this for bosses, otherwise you really don't need it, especially while leveling

Blood Craze - If you have 5000HP this will heal you for 150HP... over 6 seconds. That's barely anything.

Improved Execute - You should have this in a raiding DPS build, while leveling it doesn't do much. Just makes your execute hit slightly harder.

Improved Intercept - Great for PvP, useless for leveling. If you plan to PvP while leveling, you might want this, otherwise, it's useless.

Arms

Improved Thunder Clap - In any situation where you need thunderclap and 3 rage is going to make a difference, you're probably already screwed.

Improved Hanstring - Great for PvP, don't need while leveling.

Axe/Polearm/Mace/Sword Specialization - Only get one of these and whichever one you go with, that is now your weapon type until you hit 60 (unless you want to spend a crap load of gold respecing all the time). There aren't too many good polearms or maces while leveling.

Everything else is situational, read what it does and decide if you think it will be useful for you. If you are often low on rage, Improved Berserker Rage is awesome (10 rage every 30s, for 2 talent points, compare that to booming voice). If you aren't low on rage, it's useless.

Put all your points into 1 tree, either fury or arms until you have 31 points in it, your 31st point must be bloodthirst or mortal strike. Once you reach that point, some great things to go for are 5/5 Cruelty in the Fury tree or Tactical Mastery in the Arms tree.

If you really want to tank as horde step one would be go re-roll tauren.

St0rfan wrote:The post above makes many good points. I disagree with weapon choice and weapon skill though. Weapon skill is the single best stat available in game (if you are a fury warrior at lvl60). However, if you are tanking at lvl60 you will be rage-capped alot, meaning you can spam heroicstrikes and since heroicstrike converts a white-hit into a yellow-hit, it cant be glancing so you wont benefit from the extra weapon skill. The theory behind choosing a good weapon as a protection warrior is take what ever weapon is best, no matter your choice of race. And what is best is a very fast dagger because its lets you put out more heroicstrikes/minute. Get Alcors, Finkles Skinner or Scarlet Kris and you wont need to upgrade again unless you obtain Thunderfury. Sadly there arent any really fast axes available.

This is rather funny to read, since weapon skill holds nearly no value for a tank spamming heroic strike since yellow hits CAN'T glance xD