Tank like a girl

Attention: this is a pre-WotLK level guide and does NOT reflect current leveling. I will revise this guide completely and re-post a new guide tailored towards WoW post 3.0. Sorry if you’ve come to look for an updated WotLK guide

The premise: you want to level a warrior. Your endgame goal might be tanking or DPS or PvP, but you want to reach 70 the fastest you can.

A problem: warriors aren’t that easy to level. They have very few skills that make soloing easier. They have no pet, no stealth, no heals, no totems, nothing to drop aggro once they have it. All a warrior has is a weapon (or two), a relatively large health pool and bandages.

Tradeskills: First Aid is a no-brainer, you have to be on your road to trauma surgeon right from the start. Same for cooking. As warrior, you go through food like crazy, and you will appreciate buff-food from the get-go. As leveling cooking is easiest when combined with fishing, another no-brainer. Yes, I know, fishing is kinda dull, but it’s good free food. Okay, we’ve covered the secondary skills.

Primary trade skills are a bit tougher. At the moment I would totally recommend alchemy as the trade that has to offer a warrior the most. Health pots, guardian and battle elixirs, later flasks. Easy to max, invaluable while leveling. Blacksmithing might seem the logical choice, but in reality, you will not really use much of the gear BS can make until Outland. The top of the line weapons that axe/sword/hammer smiths get are awesome, as is the top-armor that armorsmiths can make (though totally not worth it for tanks). It’s excruciating and expensive to level past 350. If your endgame goal as warrior is DPS, being a weaponsmith can be beneficial. If you intend to be a tank, not worth it. Your mileage may vary.

Another option would be engineering. Free ammo, bombs, explosive sheep, and goggles. Everyone loves goggles. Also, at level 70 you get a roflcopter + ezmode mote farming. Not a bad option.

You start as a piddly level 1 warrior with your bread and butter skills: auto-attack and Heroic Strike. Until you get more interesting options, Heroic Strike will be your ‘yellow’ main attack form. It’s not too exciting, but also not too bad. It costs quite a bit of rage, and rage will be your most precious commodity. While leveling we will focus on getting very rage-friendly talents.

At level 2, you learn your first new skill, your first shout: Battle Shout. More attack power means more damage means mobs dead faster. Throughout your warrior career, keep Battle Shout up at all times. Level 4 finds you with one of the most defining warrior skills: Charge! This is usually the point where you first say ‘Zomg, this is awesome!’ At least I hope you do. Your playstyle will change from body-pulling to charging into mobs, for extra-rage. Be careful when you charge though, multiple mobs standing closely together make for a very dead promising warrior. You also get Rend, a very underwhelming DoT effect, but because you have nothing else, you’ll want to use it.

At level 6 you get Thunderclap, at level 8 Hamstring. Basic play-style at that point will be to Charge, Rend, Heroic Strike and if it’s a runner Hamstring. Use excess rage for refreshing Battle Shout after the mob is dead to keep it up on you. If you fight more than one mob, use Thunderclap to slow their pummeling of you down a bit.

At level 10, a new chapter in the life of your warrior begins: you will receive Defensive Stance, and all the tanking skills that come with it. It also means that at this time, you will be able to slap sword and board on and tank in groups. For solo-utility, you will continue to use Battle Stance, and the biggest 2-H weapon you can find. Warriors are very gear-dependent, so try to have max-damage weapons appropriate to your level. While you’re in the capital city of your choice, make sure to visit the weapon trainers and learn all weapons. You can learn all of them, and there will be a time you will find a use for them. Make sure that you know Thrown/Bows/Guns and get ammo if necessary, you will need to be able to pull. As much fun as Charge is, it can get lethal charging into groups.

Talents from 10-19:

10-14 Cruelty - the one talent that warriors of all specs have maxed. More crit = more damage = dead mobs.
15-19 Unbridled Wrath - A chance to get extra rage when hitting a mob. Every little point of rage matters.

While you will still learn a lot of new abilities on your road to 20, few of them have real solo-utility while leveling. Overpower can only be used when your mob dodges. If you miss too many Overpower situations, try using something like Scrolling Combat Text, which will pop up an Overpower message on your screen when it’s available. Use it, it’s nice when you get the opportunity to use it. You also learn Shield Bash. When fighting caster mobs, slap on a shield and bash them to interrupt casting. Every warrior should own Sword&Board, despite leveling Arms or Fury. Get used to lugging different sets of gear around. Demoralizing Shout is a helpful debuff, just like Thunderclap apply it in situations when you are facing multiple mobs, otherwise, save the rage for more offensive skills.

Talents from 20-29:

20-24 Commanding Presence - You want this for its AP boost for Battle Shout. Of course that’s only useful if you keep Battle Shout up at all times. You know you want to.
25-29 Enrage - A must talent as pre-req for Flurry. Again, it boosts your damage, because mobs will crit you while you’re on your own.

Level 20 is a real landmark for the leveling warrior. Dual-wield will become available! Toss out the slow 2-H weapon and get two weapons. Slow speed works better for one-hand weapons for fury warriors, but anything will do to start out with. Don’t be discouraged when DW doesn’t seem like a huge damage-boost right from the start, your miss rate will be fairly high. You will push the DPS once you get to the appropriate talent in the fury tree. More offensive goodies are Cleave, which replaces Heroic Strike when you’re fighting multiple mobs, Retaliation for those moments when you’re really desperate (30 minute cooldown). Intimidating Shout is another useful solo-skill for desperate moments. Got jumped by four mobs? Fear three of them, kill one, run away. Last but not least, you get Execute at 24, another of those skills you never want to be without again. Once the mob is under 20% health, you get to use all of your current rage in a very powerful attack that’s often enough to kill the mob.

Talents from 30-39:

30-34 - Dual Wield Specialization for a major boost of your offhand damage, a no-brainer for fury warriors
35-39 - Flurry is often considered the defining skill of a fury warrior. You will be very crit-heavy (even my prot warrior has over 30% crit), and crits will make you attack faster. Snag it!

Once you’ve made it through the dark and death-heavy 20s, a new dawn is ahead of you, the age of the berserker. At level 30 you will receive a fun quest that sends you to Fray Island off the Ratchet coast, where you will have to best a few fighters in a fight club style setting. As reward you will receive berserker stance. Also, you will receive the Whirlwind warrior weapon quest, which disappointingly favors the 2H weapon warriors, which if you use this leveling guide won’t be of any use to you.

All the new abilities you receive in your 30s are berserker stance abilities. Along with the stance you will receive Slam, the only warrior ability with a cast time. There are some powerful Arms/Fury builds out there that utilize a mix of Mortal Strike and Slam, but for DW-warriors, Slam is less interesting. I might be wrong on that account, I just never played around with it. You will also receive Intercept. Think of Charge but mid-fight, that’s what Intercept does. At level 32, you will learn Berserker Rage. It will make you generate more rage from damage, and you’re immune to fear et al. More rage is a good thing, and the fear immunity makes this very powerful for PvP. At level 36 you will receive Whirlwind, another bread and butter skill for any fury warrior. At level 38 you will receive Pummel which finally means you won’t need a shield for interrupts any longer.

Basic playstyle in your 30s: Charge, Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout if necessary. Then you switch to Berserker Stance, Heroic Strike, Whirlwind whenever it’s up, all the good offensive abilities. This will get even easier in the 40s, but for now, it’s already quite the nice boost. Combat will feel more fast-paced. Just be careful. Fighting in berserker stance also means you take more damage.

Once you hit 40, one of the big changes in the life of a warrior is about to happen! You get to replace all your precious mail gear with even more precious plate gear. Huzzah! Armor will increase drastically, which will of course assist with survivability. The first pieces of blue instance gear that are plate drop in Razorfen Downs, one of those instances people often forget about. It’s got great gear for its level though, so it gets my thumbs up. Gear-wise, you will still want to focus on the big two: strength and stamina. Agility is nice to have, but strength and stamina are superior for leveling.

From now on you will get very few new abilities. You get zero new abilities between 40-49, aside from being able to wear plate armor and the 31 point ability from your chosen talent tree.

Talents from 40-49:

40: Sweeping Strikes - Sweeping Strikes + Cleave make for a very powerful combo. You no longer need to worry about pulling two mobs, because with those two abilities you can quickly kill mobs. As guideline, if it’s more than one mob, save up the rage and use Sweeping Strikes. It’s fun!
41: Bloodthirst - the 31 point talent will be your major attack as fury warrior. It’s an instant attack, scales with attack power, and restores you minuscule amounts of health. The healing part is really sort of a joke, even at level 70 you only get 35 health back, but hey, better than no healing.
42-44: Precision - increases your chance to hit by 3%. Less misses make for higher DPS, so we want that.
45-49: Improved Berserker Stance - more damage in berserker stance is awesome, as that is the stance we should now be in most of the time. The less threat component is very handy if you’re in a group and you’re not tanking.

Your basic ability rotation would now be

for single mob pulls: Charge - TC - switch to Berserker Stance - Bloodthirst - Whirlwind - alternate between BT and WW until you can begin Executing.

for several mobs: Charge - TC+Demo Shout - switch to Berserker Stance - Sweeping Strikes - Whirlwind - Cleave - BT if there’s enough rage.

At level 50, you will receive the 41 point talent and you can start thinking about the direction you want to go in for leveling to 70: more damage or tanking ability. As this is a tanking blog, I am of course leaning towards a hybrid build that will let you tank all Outland instances while still being able to have superb solo capabilities.

Talents from 50-59:

50: Rampage - increases your attack power once activated, with every attack giving you more AP for a stack of 5. As this can only be activated after a critical hit of yours, you’ll have to keep your eyes open to use it. Since the rage cost for activation was reduced, it’s pretty awesome.

51-53: Tactical Mastery - this will allow you to carry over 15 rage, for a total of 30 rage, when you switch stances. As you’re doing that a lot anyway, it’s definitely very useful while leveling.

54-55: Anticipation - increases your defense. Not that exciting while leveling, but defense always means more avoidance, so it’ll be useful for tanking.

56-59: Shield Specialization - essential for added rage generation while tanking and pre-req for Improved Shield Block, so it’s good to have in a hybrid build.

At level 50 you will learn one new ability, one of the abilities that shares its cooldown with Retaliation and Shield Wall: Recklessness. I haven’t used it much at all while leveling, due to the increased damage you will take. Try at your own risk.

Your ability rotation will basically be the same, you will simply add Rampage to the mix when you can activate it.

Talents from 60-70:

60: Shield Specialization - one last missing point to max it out

61: Last Stand - the survivor ability. It’s saved my butt innumerable times. You’re almost dead, but think you can kill this last pesky mob within 20 seconds? Pop Last Stand, get 30% of your max health for 20 seconds, finish off your mob and quickly bandage and eat. Should you not be able to kill the mob within 20 seconds, then you’re dead, as you’ll lose all the extra health, but then it was worth a shot, wasn’t it? Also extremely useful while tanking when your health is low. This buys your healer(s) extra time in landing that essential heal.

62-64: Defiance - at least as long as we still have it. Defensive Stance will absorb this talent in WotLK, but if you’re leveling right now, it’s really a must-talent in the protection tree for tanking. More threat is extra-awesome. More expertise is as well.

65-69: Deflection - we’re moving to the first tier of the Arms tree, for Deflection. 5% extra parry is a lot.

70: Improved Shield Block - our last point goes to the protection tree again, for Improved Shield Block. Lets you block one extra attack when you use Shield Block and the buff lasts longer.

In the 60s, you will learn a few more new abilities. The first one you will receive at 62, Victory Rush. You will learn to love it while soloing. If the mob is not grey to you and you land the killing blow, you will get an extra attack that costs no rage, within 20 seconds. The damage is based on your AP. It can crit quite nicely, for a big chunk of damage. Make it a habit to use Victory Rush whenever available.

At 64 you will receive an ability that is extremely handy while tanking, not so handy while soloing: Spell Reflection. Lets you reflect a spell back at the caster. It has a high rage cost, but if you’re tanking a caster, pop it up to drastically reduce damage you’re taking and increase damage you’re doing. If a spell can be reflected, you should rather reflect it than interrupt it. A good example would be the Charged Fist of the Mechanar Tempest Keep Destroyers, that’s a lot of damage you will reflect back at them. Solo utility is minimal, as you really don’t want to wear a shield for casters at that level.

At 68 you get Commanding Shout. Again, solo utility isn’t that great as you would always prefer Battle Shout to Commanding Shout. In groups, your group will likely benefit more from increased health for everyone, unless you’re in a very melee heavy group.

The final ability you learn at 70 is Intervene, sort of like Intercept for tanking. The use of it is a bit quirky, I am still using my old macro, though I hear you no longer need one for it to work. No solo utility at all, but by 70, you will likely solo less, group more.

Your final build would be this. It’s a full-fledged fury/protection hybrid which will maximize rage generation. You should be able to tank all pre-70s instances with ease. At 70 you can then decide where you want to go: continue fury for raid DPS, go arms for PvP or go protection to be able to tank even better.

Tanking while not protection spec:

Especially in Outland, remind your group you’re not a protection warrior, you will need to land a couple Sunder Armor before DPS can go crazy. With Tactical Mastery in your spec, you can actually use Charge to carry the rage over into Defensive Stance, but if there’s any risk of adds, it’s safer to pull.

If you’re dealing with multiple mobs to tank, definitely use TC and Demo Shout. Start laying on the Sunders and keep them up as full stack. Use Shield Block to trigger Revenge, use it whenever available. If you have high rage, use Heroic Strike. In really hairy situations, don’t be shy, use Last Stand and Shield Wall. These are your Oh Shit buttons and it’s better to use them than not.

And that concludes this guide. Ultimately, this will all be obsolete soon, and I’ll then try to work on a revised edition. As always, comments, critical observations and adoration are welcome.