There isn’t much to level up a wow warrior; all three specs (Prot, Arms, and Fury) are workable and fun. The difference between knowing what spec to be at and what level you can find below and is usually based on what you want to do, versus what you “should” do. Below is a review of each specialization and when and why you can level up your warrior in each specialization.
There are three things we need to keep in mind regarding warriors before we discuss leveling specs, as we will rate each spec based on these three things.
1. Survival – Your ability to take damage and not die.
2. Pew-pew-ability – Your ability to “pew pew”, that is, your ability to deal damage.
3.Downtime – The amount of time you will be self-healing before you can advance after a standard fight.
We will rate these things on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best and 1 is the worst. In the case of downtime, a rank of 10 means you won’t spend much time self-healing.
We will use the following format: 10s – 10p – 10D
The above shows a 10 survival rating, 10 bench rating, and 10 downtime rating.
Protection 10s – 3p – 6D
Protection will provide your warrior with 2 very important things, survivability and reduced downtime as a result of that survivability. Prot spec is best used for instantiating and gives you the ability to take on multiple groups of mobs without fear of dying. However, certain abilities allow you to attack multiple mobs at once; you won’t hit things as hard. You’re a tank with a medium sized gun, great for longevity, not so good at killing things quickly. However, the downtime isn’t very high, as he usually doesn’t take a lot of hits; It should be noted that he doesn’t have any real self-healing abilities beyond raging regeneration and ultimate support, which serve more as last resort abilities and less as constant sources of health. As a prot warrior, your mortality rate is very low, as you should never be in any real danger from large groups of mobs.
Arms – 7s – 8p – 5d
As a warrior of arms, your ability to destroy things should be your pride and joy. Generally wielding a large 2-handed weapon, this spec is designed around HUGE frontal damage as well as mobility. Great for leveling up as it provides the most comprehensive ratio of damage, survivability, and downtime. The idea behind being a gun warrior is that you take normal damage and deal abnormal damage, causing your enemy to die faster than they can afflict you with pain.
Fury – (6-7)s – 10p – 6d
Fury Warriors, like Weapon Warriors, rely on large two-handed weapons. The key here is weapons, not weapons. Fury warriors at higher levels can equip two 2-handed weapons; for the sake of leveling up, this isn’t an issue until level 60. Fury generally requires the warrior to be in a berserker stance, which unfortunately comes with a built-in debuff of 10% more damage taken; that is why there is a survival range. Fury warriors benefit from the only self-healing attack warriors have, Bloodthirst, however this is not possible until point 31 on the fury talent tree. If gun warriors are bullets, fury warriors are rockets. Fast and capable of dealing massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time, plus abilities that allow them to heal themselves once bloodlust is acquired, this is the optimal spec to level up as you go. quickly through missions and objectives while providing some healing.
In general, you can follow the following rules about what specs to be in.
1-15 – Weapons
15-40 – Weapons or Protection
40-60 – Fury, Protection, Weapons
60-80 – Fury, Protection, Weapons
Arms is great for early levels, as all the skills you can get in all skill trees are of little to no use until later in the game. At level 15 you can start entering dungeons where shielded warriors can be in high demand as they will be throughout the game as we are tanks. Rage becomes more viable as you can apply more talent points in the rage tree, for that reason it is suggested that you don’t go into rage until at least level 40 where you can get a berserker stance and can use specs. for bloodlust. At this point, all specs are viable for leveling purposes, with Fury being the optimal choice, especially if you’re going to be leveling up through quests. Arms would be the next logical choice for leveling missions as the speed almost parallels that of the Fury warriors.
Protection has a niche where they can tank and queue for dungeons. They are slow solo, which translates to slow solo missions; however, due to the amount of experience that can be gained from dungeons, they are viable.
Quests are the optimal way to level up and can be done faster with the right warrior spec and the right leveling tools. Additional tools for warrior leveling can be questheper, which is a great addon, or Zygor’s leveling guides, which is a professional leveling guide.
