Prot vs Fury Soloing - an interesting observation I madeFollow

I posted this on another forum, but the normal reaction there tend to the flamable.

You guys are used to (or should be) my rantings, so I felt I'd share it here too ... enjoy ;-D


Forever and a day (ok, since 3.0.2, but it feels like forever), it has been noted that if you compare prot and fury leveling (not sure there are ANY arms warriors around at this stage), you would see that while Fury killed quicker, the survivability that Prot provided you meant that your downtime was less (or non existent).

For this reason, prot has been promoted by many as being the better leveling spec, because let's be honest, who wants to stop and eat every 8 to 10 fights (or ever) if there's a possibility that you don't have to at all.

Now, let me clarify, I solo as fury, and ensure that, to the best of my soloing playstyle, I have the best or close to the best gear I can manage (crafted, quested and rep rewards). This means that, even as fury, going from mob to mob, I don't have downtime - bloodthirst glyph and (since level 75) enraged regen takes care of that. The only time when this changes is when I get more than 3 mobs at a time, then my regen can't keep us with the loss to ensure no downtime. In this instance, a quick 5-10 seconds (not the full 30 seconds - that's not needed) of eating is enough to keep me topped off. The upshot of my experiences is that I don't hold with the Prot > Fury theory for leveling ... but that's just my opinion.

Here's my discovery though. Last night, I decided to level my 1h sword skill, partly to get the Master of Arms achievement, and partly to ensure that, if I ever was asked to take an instance / encounter / whatever (and I, by some miracle, said yes), I would be able to actually hit whatever the target was.

So, still as fury spec, I equipped my sword and shield, and adopted defensive stance (still in full DPS gear, 3100 ap, 28% crit, unbuffed), and proceeded to do my dailies with this configuration. What did I discover:

1) The huge amounts of AP (mostly based on strength) was resulting in Shield Slams and Revenge crits of around 3k.
2) My bloodthirst crits were around 2.5-2.8k (curse def stance 10% damage penalty), and the heals from the next 3 strikes were sufficient to keep my hp topped up in one on one fights. In multi-mob fights, up to 3 and 4 mobs - the BT heals were enough to keep me always at minimum 90% hp, which was topped off almost immediately after my first BT on the next fight.
3) keeping Demo shout and TC up at all times minimised incoming damage to ridiculous levels.
4) fighting caters was a joke - spell reflect and shield bash prevented 95% of the damage they would have done, resulting in my BT heals always being overheals.

I had recount going, and my average dps over 10 quests (some dailies, some not) was around 800, in Def stance all the time.

Bloodthirst glyph is very important - you get 2% of your HP back every 5 seconds - that's quite substantial when you're taking 10% less damage, plus less damage through more mitigation (shield is around 6-7k armour), and less damage through keeping TC and Demo shout up all the time.

Example - I has mobs hitting me for 220-250 damage a pop (2 second swing timer if I got it right), while my BT heals were ticking at 360-400 each - that's around a 1100 health every 5 seconds, while they were doing ~750 damage to me every 6 seconds.

Another thing ... Commanding shout > battle shout with this setup - the BT heal (and the enraged regen heal for that matter) are based on total HP - which is always higher if you keep CS up.


Conculsion - unless you go rounding up groups of 8-10 mobs at a time (which full prot would probably handle with ease), a normal fury spec with a sword and shield in Def stance gives you very similar results in terms of survivability, not to mention better results in terms of kill time.

So my suggestion is ... Fury in zerker stance all the way, if you hit a situation where you pull too many mobs - go defensive (use a macro or gear changing addon to auto-equip you 1hander and shield), and last them out, hitting BT as a #1 priority.

Thanks for reading, just thought I'd share.

Please note, I'm not saying Sword and Shield Fury > Prot spec for survivability, that would be stupid of me. What I am saying is that for prot to truly shine, you need to be constantly pulling large amounts of mobs ... hell - then you're an unstoppable juggernaut - feared by all. That's just not my style though - which is why a frost mage or prot pally never appealed to me - AOE grinding is not for me

I absolutely loved leveling as prot.

Pull 5 or 6 mobs at once. No worries.

They're four levels above me. No worries.

One is an elite. No worries.

I don't think I died once leveling from 70 to 80 except in instances.

I'm not on a pvp server but have done some pvp on my prot warrior just messing around.... I do not normally pvp... The experience was quite funny. I was doing capture the flag and I would have the flag and be beaten on by multiple Players that at most heavy melee were criting me for like 700 and casters were seeing their own spells kill them. With 30000 health and being able to Thunder clap, turn and shockwave, and shield slaming them would kill most. Most had already taken a decent amount of damage just for touching me. Sheild Slam doing around 6k, And, Shock wave and Thunderclap doing a decent amount of damage and stunning them. Also with all the other stuns and spell interrupts, Gag order is great, a prot warrior can almost completely shutdown most classes. DK's are tough and pali's can be annoying but a one on one Fight I would put money on Prot warrior any day. Plus using last stand and Enraged Regen if you are low on health when you run across the encounter will boost your health back up pretty nicely. Of course this is just my opinion and I am a bit Partial as I leveled my warrior from 11-80 specing for prot and have almost completely stopped playing my original main and the rest of my alts.