Leveling as Prot in Cata - any major drawbacks?

[Deleted]

Hey guys, like many others I'll come back to WoW in Cataclysm and plan to level with a group of friends. I've chosen to be a Warrior and am unsure about what specc to chose for leveling. Now I know anything will work alright, but since I enjoy every aspect of the game I just wanted to hear your thought.

As said, I'll be leveling with a group of roughly 4-8 friends. I think at least one of them will be playing another tank class. While we'll probably level together at the beginning, I imagine people will progress at different rates resulting in less grouping together as we head towards level 85.

I expect to be doing:
-30% instances, probably mostly as the tank. This might decrease slightly at higher levels.
-60% solo or small group questing. I'm a bit of a perfectionist as I like to finish EVERY zone completely before I move on to the next.
-10% PvP, I'll be leveling on a PvP server for the first time and expect quite a few random skirmishes. I don't think I'll be doing more than an occasional BG while leveling, but I don't want to play a gimped specc.

As far as I see it:
Prot: Good for the dungeons, probably ok in PvP, slow killing speed when solo but good survivability still allows to solo big mobs.
Fury: Not so good at tanking, but can also go as DPS, PvP power difficult to access but probably a little meh, high killing speed when solo, but also takes a lot of damage,
Arms: Slightly better at tanking than Fury, but not much, probably quite good in PvP, good solo killing speed and takes slightly less damage than fury,

So, what would your assessment be?

Currently I'm tending towards Prot, but only if it isn't too gimped in PvP. I hate loosing to equally geared/leveled players, since I consider myself quite a good player.


Edit: Since I'll be leveling on a new server I have no access to Heirloom items or additional resources.

[fizikz]

as far as I've heard, you pick up an heirloom 2h and go two shot stuff as arms. new victory rush healing for 20% of your max hp will make downtime zero, unless people are stealing your KB's all the time. prot has no self-healing until later, but will take less damage but also kill things slower to compensate.

I'm currently planning to level arms until 20 or so, and see how that goes, maybe respec prot or dual spec (think they're lowering level req for DS) ASAP to tank instances while still 2-3 shotting mobs with my big golden 2h.


edit: ) no heirlooms? still with the victory rush changes, it might be better to level as arms. i suppose 8 of you aren't going around doing the same quest together, as that would suck for quests where drops don't share. you can still tank just fine as arms for a while, but if/when you can't anymore, prot seems like a good alternative, especially with the new skills (shield slam!) at level 10.

edit2: I heard that since they might be reducing the level req of dual spec, they'd be reducing the cost as well. if prot somehow doesn't work well outside of instances, you'll probably be able to afford dual spec to go arms/prot.

[Deleted]

bump

[Freedom]

As prot, wear all DPS gear for dungeons even and as long as you have decent armor and health for low level stuff (15-40 or 50 even) you should be just fine and do a ridiculous amount of damage for being a tank. AoE grinding is ridiculous with this setup but make sure to bring food.

[Shelly]

I think it really depends on what levels you're talking about.

Levels up to 50 or so could be painful as prot with the removal of unbridled assault and revenge spamming and since you're locked into a single tree for 31 points.

For just leveling from 80 to 85, it should work just fine. AoE grinding/kill questing will be extremely easy as well, especially with the vengeance buff. I don't know how long the buff stays on you but if you can maintain getting just a light amount of damage in you'll be fine.

For prior to 50 I'd probably still go with either arms or fury, you can still tank as either just fine in the lowbie dungeons and I think bloodthirst will take some of the pain off lowbie healers.

[Myrlae]

Hey guys, like many others I'll come back to WoW in Cataclysm and plan to level with a group of friends. I've chosen to be a Warrior and am unsure about what specc to chose for leveling. Now I know anything will work alright, but since I enjoy every aspect of the game I just wanted to hear your thought.

As said, I'll be leveling with a group of roughly 4-8 friends. I think at least one of them will be playing another tank class. While we'll probably level together at the beginning, I imagine people will progress at different rates resulting in less grouping together as we head towards level 85.

I expect to be doing:
-30% instances, probably mostly as the tank. This might decrease slightly at higher levels.
-60% solo or small group questing. I'm a bit of a perfectionist as I like to finish EVERY zone completely before I move on to the next.
-10% PvP, I'll be leveling on a PvP server for the first time and expect quite a few random skirmishes. I don't think I'll be doing more than an occasional BG while leveling, but I don't want to play a gimped specc.

As far as I see it:
Prot: Good for the dungeons, probably ok in PvP, slow killing speed when solo but good survivability still allows to solo big mobs.
Fury: Not so good at tanking, but can also go as DPS, PvP power difficult to access but probably a little meh, high killing speed when solo, but also takes a lot of damage,
Arms: Slightly better at tanking than Fury, but not much, probably quite good in PvP, good solo killing speed and takes slightly less damage than fury,

So, what would your assessment be?

Currently I'm tending towards Prot, but only if it isn't too gimped in PvP. I hate loosing to equally geared/leveled players, since I consider myself quite a good player.


Edit: Since I'll be leveling on a new server I have no access to Heirloom items or additional resources.

When i leveled as prot i had quite a high killing speed. Just AoE everything down, in dungeons i was almost everytime nr.1 in damage done.

[Muffy.]

When i leveled as prot i had quite a high killing speed. Just AoE everything down, in dungeons i was almost everytime nr.1 in damage done.

^This. Was leveling as Prot to and the killing-speed is great! Just gather a couple of mobs and AoE them.

[Twoflower]

Last time i checked, there was this nifty dual spec feature...

[zacell]

i lvled my warrior from 1-80 as prot and my main spec is still prot, when i was lvling i usually did something like pull 5-10 mobs kill eat next again and again and this was before remove of revenge stun and +dmg but what i have experienced as prot lvling it kills fast and takes very less dmg so go for it, i have lvled dk, warrior and paladin as tank druid was tank until 70. even now as 80 on my warrior i kill as fast prot as fury and they have about same lvl of gear

[xebtria]

Last time i checked, there was this nifty dual spec feature...

no need for this when you're first as tank and also pretty decent soloing.

I'd rather say, have two tankspecs, one for the big guys and one for the trash/solo part of it.
and two gear sets, one for max threat/dmg and one for max Survival/EH

and maybe a macro/addon to equip either one depending on spec.

other than that, you're right.