Arms or Fury for leveling to 70?Follow

This is largely an opinion question, but from a personal view (have a 61 warrior currently and a 64 before)I'd level with arms until late 40's. The miss rate you'll have at a lower lever will be high so you'll want to wait until you can get some + hit gear. For outlands you'll want fury because of the gear and because you'll be much more practical for tanking than an arms warrior would be (flurry, increased shouts etc). Thats my stance, but in the end it is personal preference.

There are a ton of questions on this subject, but since I didn't find this covered in the sticky, I didn't rate you down.

If you're level 25, I'd strongly suggest you respec to fury. In 5 levels you get Slam, and at level 31 you could have 2/2 in Imp. Slam. After that it's an easy walk up to BT. When you hit 40 some people argue that you should respec MS. I advise you not to. I strongly believe that Imp. Slam + Flurry with the occational BT weaved in is alot better DPS than MS + Impale + Weapon spec.

After you get BT you can easily walk up the arms tree and get Imp. TC for easier instancing, but if you're more of a solo kinda guy it's better to go for Rampage. Note that 2h Arms doesn't come close to being as good as 2h Fury until level 64, when you get MS AND Imp. Slam. However, even then it's agruable that Flurry makes up for the damage gap from BT to MS.



To all of you who assume fury = dual wield: STAND CORRECTED! THIS IS NOT THE CASE!

I believe you learn to tank better as fury or arms than you do with prot, simply because it's so bloody easy tanking prot. You can basicly just auto attack and hold aggro.

I'd recommend getting tanking experience while not specced for it. If you can hold aggro as arms or fury, you can hold aggro as prot. And people WILL want to have you in their raids etc.

I agree to an extent, but I do have to argue a bit here.

Tanking in arms or fury is a lot more challenging than tanking in prot [especially post 60] and requires you to be on top of your game. An example I can make about the whole situation is this - my RL friend asked me to xfer servers [bad idea =/] to dps for his guild that he was mt'ing for. After him claiming he never had aggro issues EVER, I thought he'd be able to handle me not having salv [pre imp. zerker stance threat redux] and asked for might instead. Strangely, I pulled aggro every single pull even AFTER the paladin gave me salv if I chose to try and go all out.

On the flip side we had another warrior who was dps specced like me, but tanked heroics and such with the guild quite frequently. When he respecced prot he was able to do roughly 300 more TPS than my friend.

Tanking isn't just about 'surviving'. While that is a big thing, that just means that if you're trying to tank with fury or arms specs you have to work a bit harder on your gear. Stamina and armor comes with gear. TPS doesn't. If your dps is pulling aggro from you in raids you're hindering progression.

Yes, if you suck at tanking it won't matter if you're prot or not, but if you are able to do very well while tanking in fury or arms (post 60 because anything before then is a joke to tank anyways) you will generally be a better tank.

Edited, Dec 27th 2007 2:46pm by russki

Yes, I was over exaggerating... well spotted.

However, to be honest with you I rarely have to do much while tanking lowbie instances. I can actually manage most fights in the levels 0-30 with mostly auto attacking. In fact, that's what I do when I want to build up rage for the next pull I'm gonna make.

I have tanked instances with around 90% threat being from white damage. Doesn't take a genious to find out players weren't the skill fullest, but that's exactly what you get in lowbie instances anyway.

My normal routine is to spam Revenge and TC, sunder and taunt if needed. This usually makes me end up at the top of the damage list though, so if I'm ONLY gonna do my job (ie. tank, hold aggro) I can do it without any abilities.

Now, I don't know if you've aimed somethings said in here towards Russ or me, but to clarify: I only ever said tanking as fury or arms is harder. This means you'll probably be doing the job better than if you're used to EZ-mode tankage pre-outlands. Even if the method's slightly different, you'll have to weave in sunders in between SS's, Revenge's and TC's, it doesn't really take an idiot to figure out how to do it, just like it doesn't take an idiot to figure out he should start using MS to do more damage.

What you'll be used to in 60+ instances, that's needed, if you're fury or arms that you haven't been used to if you're prot; is to go all-out on the threat. Most lowbie prot tanks never have to do that, ofc those who like to test themselves or otherwise want to achieve something do. This is what makes me say you're, by default, going to end up a better tank leveling and tanking instances fury or arms than prot.

And for that last remark: There are frighteningly few tanks who actually know anything about threat or TPS. Spamming high threat abilities and optimizing your rotation is what tanking's all about. Whether you know what you're doing or not. Most people just go "oh lol i hitt u with big shild slam! big numbers ftw!" (yes, you might once again want to notice the over exaggeration and the sarcasm)...