Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

My wife and a friend of ours are leveling together and planning on doing a lot of 3-man instancing. Our party consists of me (warrior tank), a Restoration druid, and a Mage (probably fire). Initially I was planning on going heavily in to Protection for the best possible tanking for our micro-group, but with our diminished DPS, and my minimal research, we've found it may be best if I lean more towards Arms. Here's the spec I came up with so far.


https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warri ... 0530220050


We're currently nearing level 20, so it's still early in our leveling process. I'm planning on climbing the Arms tree first, then working my way through what I need in protection. What do you think? What suggestions do you have for my build?
Thanks!

You dont need 3 points in imp shield block, only 1 to remove block crushing blows. Drop imp thunder clap and overpower and reduce the points in tactical master to 2 or 3 points, then put points into imp rend for deep wounds and impale they will help with holding aggro.

However even with all of that, you can spec purely arms or purely fury and tank just fine until 58. Arms might be the better choice because TM allows for charging in and stance dancing. But you only need 2 for a stance dance to overpower or a mocking blow.

Arms and Fury are pretty similar for tanking, both with pros and cons. Fury has more tanking oriented talents, but they're not terribly relevant so it basically boils down to Piercing Howl vs Tactical Mastery.

Levelling prot specced is completely unnecessary and not recommended unless you're a masochist. In any case though, stick to one tree until you either get MS/BT/Shield Slam xD

Here's a spec I would recommend: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LZVxuG0xoVoxfzsx

Just go arms.

surrealist823 wrote:Just go arms.

Or Fury.

But arms is better until level 30 when you can max out Enrage. Sit down to get crit, thus ensuring nearly 100% uptime.

It's hard to answer a question about leveling when you post a spec that requires level 60.

In the event you are level 60, a great 5 man spec that focuses on damage / Threat / utility would be this:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=0530400030200000000300000000000000053230113400001251

You get impale for big crits (I've gotten 1.3K shield slams so far), deep wounds works well with a slower weapon like Quel or Vis'kag which are great for 5 mans, paired with rend when you have excess rage on a high armor target is nice. You get 45% chance to stun mobs on revenge which is HUGE, just not for raiding. And your shield bash will silence mobs, this is really important on 5 man trash as casters do the majority of the damage, and higher levels usually have 2 schools to use. Also this helps for casters that can instant heal.

I didn't take Imp taunt which is nice for 5 mans because you stated you will be playing in a 3 man group with people you know. I assume they will have half a brain and this shouldn't make are break you. Didn't take imp sunder as well to focus on the DPS to get 5/5 imp 1h. When you get used to tanking, shield slam and revenge will hold threat on your primary target allowing you to rage dump with cleave for more overall damage.

Now let's approach your actual situation: LEVELING.

*to future comments, keep the fury vs arms in other threads, this is to help with doing what they want 5 manning with damage help and not respeccing during leveling. Eating crits on purpose isn't something I'll advise a 3 man group.

Level 20:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=0230100000000000000500000000000000000000000000000000

Level 30:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=0232402030000000000500000000000000000000000000000000

Level 40:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=0432402030201050000500000000000000000000000000000000

*went swords as you can get the sword from SM quest if alli which is a slow strong weapon good for rage starved 5 mans. Also Trashblade combos well with this. If horde, take axe especially if orc.

Level 50:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=1532502130201050010505000000000000000000000000000000

Level 60:

https://en.nostalrius.org/talents/warrior?build=1532502130201050010505311000500000000000000000000000


This will give you a nice set of tools and game plan your leveling path w/o wasting gold on respecs til you chose the tank build as mentioned above for the lvl 60 5 mans.

I'd say to go arms with something like this at the end until you get to level 58. Once you get to level 58, use a spec like this for dungeon farming. Though this is what I used for my warrior and is more for general purposes and with pugs, and you will need to take some pugs for when some of your buddies aren't online. You don't need to be prot for tanking the leveling 5 mans. Leveling as arms with tactical mastery and deflection is great for tanking and you can kill stuff efficiently. The reason I didn't put any points into imp revenge is because of pugs pulling aggro if you get some procs in a row early on a single mob that's untauntable. Also, I didn't choose any specific weapon type in arms because you will use various weapon types when leveling and it's not worth respecing every time your upgraded weapon is a different type.

Here's what I would recommend at 60 for any warrior who's gearing up in 5-mans (this includes dps wannabees, man up and start tanking and enjoy instant groups): http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LV0LZihzZxizsxMzVo

This spec focuses on the most valuable talents in general while omitting extremely situational stuff like imp disarm and not wasting points on pitfalls like anticipation.

Fury Tree:
Piercing howl will completely change your playstyle since it makes instance trash a joke. It suddenly becomes really hard to fuck up hard enough to wipe. Some random pug ass pulled 3 packs? No problem. Imp demo shout is also a very good tank talent and you only need 3/5 to reduce mob ap to 0. Booming voice saves some rage, and increases the range on your AoE threat ability -- demo shout.

Arms:
4/5 TM is practically mandatory if you care about being a good tank i.e. damage soaker at all, 10% damage reduction through thunderclap is too good to pass up. Deflection gives more than double the avoidance of anticipation so every point is put to good use here.

Prot:
Regarding the argument made by zman, imp revenge stunning a random trash mob and hurting your rage gen simply isn't of much relevance unless you're in t2 gear, which isn't the point of the thread. You can hold aggro just fine in 90% of pugs with the bare minimum of using revenge (5 rage) and shield bash (10 rage), on top of that you can rely on imp taunt/challenging shout/mocking blow.

Imp sunder is bad most of the time since you never need to use it for threat. It's only when the armor reduction becomes relevant that it sees any use.

Mobs don't fake cast, imp. shield bash is bad.

Imp. shield wall. It sounds good on paper, those 5 seconds could prevent a wipe or give a bad group just enough time to kill baron after 6 attempts. In reality though, it's a 30min cooldown and it's already strong enough that those 5 extra seconds are irrelevant 9 out of 10 times.

vido wrote:Here's what I would recommend at 60 for any warrior who's gearing up in 5-mans (this includes dps wannabees, man up and start tanking and enjoy instant groups): http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LV0LZihzZxizsxMzVo

This spec focuses on the most valuable talents in general while omitting extremely situational stuff like imp disarm and not wasting points on pitfalls like anticipation.

HI VIdo,

can you please explain why anticipation is bad?
I always thought that the defense rating is the most important stat for prot warrior to avoid critical hits and crushing blows.

ty

While I'm not vido:
Anticipation is bad because it has low power.
Defense is great, but anticipation gives very little, only 2 for one whole talent point.