how do the warrior specs compare when leveling?

[Scorned]

I would recommend fury all the way, and glyph for Bloodthirst. I'm currently at 65, dual specced fury/prot. Fury rips through the easy quests while prot gives me survivability to solo elite quests.

I'd recommend this as well. Doing 5-mans while leveling will be more viable with the 3.3 LFG tool as well, so having both a pure DPS and a tanking spec on hand will be useful if you choose to go that route.

[alpha5099]

I've only leveled a warrior up to 63 (need to get back to him at some point), but I've gone Prot the whole way and it's been incredibly fun. It was a little slow going to begin with, but you can do some incredible things. To get the most out of it (i.e. leveling fastest, which may or may not be your ultimate goal), the best is to pull large packs. Popping Shield Block, Thunder Clapping and Cleaving everything around you, endless Revenge procs, Shield Slam once you get it, you can take down mobs incredibly well.

One of my favorite moments with my Warrior was when I was about level 17 or 18, and coming across the three Horde Runners who pat around Loch Modan. Despite them all being elite and a couple level higher than me, I managed to bring them down. It may not be the greatest feat in the history of WoW, but I was quite proud of myself.

Since I've gotten to level 50 and beyond though, my playstyle has shifted quite a bit, and I tend toward more of a single target approach. Devastate is an incredible ability in my opinion, particularly once you get Sword and Board, as you'll start getting free Shield Slams all the time. Shockwave is also an incredibly cool ability.

I had a big lull with my warrior around 49, but I started leveling in BGs, and I absolutely love Prot there, even if Arms is generally regarded as the best warrior PvP spec. Plenty of great defensive cooldowns, a ton of stuns, and Improved Disarm can be godly against some classes. Even now at 63, being near the bottom of a bracket, I can perform pretty well, doing some respectable damage and being quite difficult to kill at times.

Prot is a great leveling spec, if that's your thing. It may be slow at first, but I have an absolute blast playing it. But as several others have noted, all the specs are entirely viable for leveling, so it really does come down to how you enjoy playing. Personally, I couldn't bring myself to take off my warrior's shield, so I went prot. I'm sure an argument could be made that one spec is the fastest, but if you don't like playing it, what's the point?

[Kynttila]

Fury is the best spec for grinding and leveling imo, i did 26 - 60 in 6 days with best possible items and enchants but i think arms is better since fury requires abit of hit rating which is hard to get at low lvl.

[danoob]

Prot is in really good shape right now and I love playing it. With SS at 20 now (I think) you are going to have decent damage all the way up and great survivability. Sure you aren't going to cut things up quite as fast at your fury buddies but in the end it wont' take that much longer.

Personally I say decide based off what you want to do at max level.
Tank - Prot
DPS - Arms
PvP - Arms or Prot

I don't like fury at max level much so I see little reason to level it.

[wacka]

revenge should be good before u get slam right? realy hated lvling warrior before cause u only had heroic strike and it sucked so much, until lvl 30 when mobs died twice as fast cause of slam. or maybe arms for taste of blood?

[kilssii]

fury and you'll have full hp all the time
arms if you want to destroy everything in seconds, but you'll have bandage/eat often
haven't trie prot

[Barunk]

so far, 8 people have posted 8 different opinions. if you read my OP, this is even worse than the situation on the forums.

let's change approach.

what are the advantages and disadvantages to leveling with arms, fury and prot? i think this will help me more than just 8 different opinions from 8 different people. especially since one man's idea of fun leveling is different than that of someone else.

oh, and starting at 40, i do intend to buy dualspec, and spec does not matter before that level if you want to tank (tbh, it's the same after that level).

This may be because warriors have 3 viable leveling specs and it doesn't really matter what you take in terms of speed.

[Grustajin]

Every forum and guide I've ever read has suggested lvling 1-40 as arms and then finish off as prot.

Personally I've been bouncing back and forth between arms and prot as I go, currently lvl 34. Arms is nice, you get the very nice improved bleeds, and thirst for blood is awesome. I absolutely love Overpower. However I do have fairly decent downtime, having to bandage after every other fight at the very least and then eating every five fights or so. It's also very weapon dependent I've noticed, though I'm sure this is just a trait for all warrior specs.

I however enjoy playing as prot more than arms. Prot gets you higher survivabilty, that's a given. You've got 20% more avoidance via talents and equipping your shield, but you also get things like shield bash and you can talent an extra 15% crit onto HS. The killing was slower in a sense because you'll be in defensive stance for this, but because of that you get revenge with a base 30% avoidance with talents so you can just spam it to your hearts content. I added the glyph of Revenge (If i remember that right) so every time Revenge hit my next HS would cost no rage. Overall I had more fun while i was running around on prot. Now the reason I see lvl 40+ as prot is because at 40 you get Shield Slam, which is supposed to bring your dps up a fair chunk making your killing speed much better though still not as good as an Arms/Fury.

Mostly in short: I think all specs are totally viable for lvling, but here's a little summary

Arms +: Higher killing speed, overpower spam, slam spam, big two handers
Arms -: 10% base avoidance, low armor, need lots of bandages/food

Prot +: 30% avoidance, more armor, shield bash, defensive CDs, Revenge spam, cheaper Thunder Clap
Prot -: -5% dmg done (Def Stnc), one hander lower dmg,

I can't comment of Fury because I have no desire to play said spec, though I can't see how much different it would be from Arms.

[seam]

Protection.

This.

Just pick up some dps gear along the way. As long as you have a sword and board, your gear doesnt really matter as prot leveling.

[Pieterman]

the first 30 levels or so it doesnt really matter, it all sucks, after that its either fury for good damage and later on something to heal urself, arms is good damage aswell, later on bladestorm as a powerfull tool, protection has some stuns and obviously high survivability. pick your own ^^