Each build is designed to be the fastest spec available to level your character as quickly as possible (except the resto builds, they’re just making the best of an already bad situation!).

Hunters:

• Beast Mastery Leveling Spec
• Marksmanship Talent Build
• Survival Talent Build

Warriors:

• Arms Warrior Leveling Spec
• Protection Warrior Leveling Spec
• Dual Wield Leveling Build

Shamans:

• Resto Shaman Talent Build
• Elemental Shaman Talent Build
• Enhancement Shaman Talent Build

Mages:

• Mage Alternate Fire Spec

Priests:

• Shadow Priest Talent Build
• Holy Priest Spec

Druids

• WoW Druid Guide

More coming soon!

If you’d like to contribute to the talent builds on this site, let me know via my contact page!

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Protection Warrior Talent Spec Link

Building Towards 80 — A Fast Leveling Protection Warrior Spec

This is the last post in a series that explores the best talents to choose for leveling your Protection Warrior fast.

Today I’m going to finish up the series by examining the remaining talents on the Protection tree, as well as looking at your options from the Fury and Arms trees.

A good selection here can really help your leveling speed, or if you like to dabble in PvP, give you some options that will make you all the more competitive when you want to take a break from the grind.

The most important thing to remember as we proceed is that this spec is not for raiding warriors!

I heartily recommend that once you hit 70 or 80 you respec (or dual spec) a raid build Warrior from the ground up, because this build is utter crap for dungeons and raids.

So Protection Warriors, read on to find out how your class can level (almost) as fast as a Fury Warrior. Thank you Blizzard!

Protection Warrior Leveling Build: 50 to 80

If you’re not at level 50 yet, you’re about to start adding in some of the defining (and most enjoyable) talents for Warriors in World of Warcraft!

Row 9 (Warbringer, Devastate, Critical Block)

Starting off we have Warbringer – at first sight you know its not great for leveling, but unfortunately we need it to open up row 10 – but you’ll find it fun to use in PvP if you’re into it.

Second up, your new best friend in the whole wide world – Devastate. If you took my recommendation and went for Puncture, Devastate is now your staple damage causing talent, and should be spammed constantly whenever you have the rage, and whenever something more pressing (like interrupts) isn’t disrupting your attacks.

Critical Block is a nice talent too, giving your successful blocks a 30% chance to block double the damage (less downtime resting, thank you), and increases your chance to crit with your other best friend, Shield Slam.

Row 10 (Sword and Board, Damage Shield)

Sword and Board, that’s what we are, and this talent can’t be missed regardless of which build you take for a Protection Warrior. As its name suggests, this talent pairs up with a sword related talent, and a shield related talent – namely Devastate and Shield Slam.

Take 3 points in this talent and get ready to unleash a nice constant stream of high damage attacks at low cost – the essence of a good leveling build for warriors, and very handy in any other situation, too!

Plug in another 2 points into Damage Shield after you’ve spent up in Sword & Board to further increase your dps by causing 20% of your block value as damage whenever you take damage or block.

Row 11 (Shockwave)

The final ability in the Prot Warrior talent tree is Shockwave – an instant cast ability that damages everything in front of the Warrior causing damage based on attack power – but exact calculations aside, this skill is amazing for AoE attacks on groups of mobs (you can tank plenty of mobs at once while leveling as a Protection Warrior if you need to).

It can also come in very handy in PvP if you manage to run into an in-progress furball and unleash, stunning everyone for 4 seconds and no doubt giving your side the winning edge at the same time.

While its not exactly a staple leveling talent, Shockwave will be very handy when you need it.

Other Talent Trees:

On the way to 80 we’re left with 19 talent points. Where do we spend the rest? Fury? Or Arms?

I personally like Arms more for leveling, opting to build out the tree until Deep Wounds opens up, which is a nice extra damage causer without any extra micro needed on your part.

Improved charge is also nice, generating 10 extra rage points on the charge and ensuring your abilities are running 100% of the time.

What else is there to say? I hope you find this build useful for getting to 80 as fast as possible! I guarantee you’ll see when you employ it that it really does match up well against Fury as a leveling spec for Warriors.

The only thing left to do is race choice — and while I always advocate taking a race you simply like the look or history of, I like Trolls for leveling faster, and Tauren for end game main tank duties (See also: Trolls as a Warrior Race).

If all you have on your mind is leveling fast, check out my Horde Leveling Guide front page where I compare some commercial in-game leveling addons.

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2. Protection Warrior Leveling Spec: Mid Level Talents The Mid Range of Protection Leveling For Warriors (30-50) My...
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Level 30 Warrior

The Mid Range of Protection Leveling For Warriors (30-50)

My last post on protection leveling for low level warriors brought us up to level 30.

Today I’m going to talk about the next 20 levels – specifically:

• what talents should we be taking?
• some “old talents” I passed over in the early build
• explanations on some of the most important talents and why we need them

In case you missed my rant in the first post – if you’re under any illusion that protection warriors can’t be leveled fast, wake up!

That used to be the case, years ago, but today protection warriors can level with the best of them.

If you’re a pure meta-gaming, stat-hounding power gamer, I recommend you level with a Fury leveling build. You might save an hour or two…!

Ok so less ranting, more level building:

Protection Warrior Leveling Build: Levels 30 to 50

Click Here For the Exact Talent Build

Row 5: (Improved Disciplines, Concussion Blow, Gag Order)

We finished off the early level build with Concussion blow, and in the next few levels you should be placing points into Improved Disciplines as well as Gag Order.

Gag Order is important for its added silencing effect on shield bash and heroic throw, and gives shield slam an extra 10% buff on damage.

Improved Disciples is another easy “yes” — max it with 2 points and reduce your shield wall, retaliation and recklessness cooldowns by 30 secs, then spam retaliation as much as possible. Given we’re doing a block heavy build, retaliation will make up a lot of your DPS over time, making this one of the more important talents in the tree.

Row 6: (One Handed Weapon Specialization)

A simple and no nonsense talent – 5/5 points here to cause 10% more melee damage with 1h weapons and to open up the next row.

Row 7: (Improved Defensive Stance, Vigilance, Focused Rage)

IDS is a great easy to use talent which gives you a big reduction in spell damage, and 100% chance to increase your melee damage by 10% for 12 seconds after a block, parry or dodge, max it out with 2 points. If you dabble in PvP this can be good too, since spell casters trying to cast into combat can really ruin your day. Make at least 1 not count with this talent, and hopefully cause another to miss!

Vigilance is useless for our purposes for now – if we were doing dungeons or instances in order to level up then take it, but solo levelers can leave this talent.

Focused Rage is another simple pick which magifies the rage we’ve been cultivating with the early phase of this leveling build. 3 points here to reduce rage costs of all offensive abilities by 3 points.

Row 8: (Vitality, Safeguard)

Vitality is another easy choice, and requires no extra management on your part. Put all 3 points here and get your key stats of strength & stamina up by 6%, and expertise (that stops your opponent dodging and parrying your attacks) up by 6. Great for taking more damage and dishing out a little extra damage to make grinding mobs that much faster.

We leave Safeguard, which is another awesome warrior talent that just doesn’t come in handy for solo leveling builds!

Going back…

Row 4 gets some love with 2 points in Spell Reflection. We didn’t take this earlier because I feel DPS is more important than health, especially early on in a leveling warrior’s journey. Spell Reflection gives us a 2% reduction in chance for spells to hit us, and a guaranteed “reflection” of the first spell cast at us. Good for keeping health levels high especially fighting casters.

Shield Mastery also gets another point back in row 3. We only put one point here earlier to open up the next tree and get to concussion blow asap, but we can go back now and pick up the extra block value and cooldown reduction for Shield Block.

You might be considering (trying) to find players to group with for dungeons during this build. If you find you can actually get groups in low level dungeons to tank with, that’s great – you might consider looking more at the following abilities:

• Anticipation (dodge reduction)
• Toughness (armor increase)
• Vigilance (reduce damage taken and transfers threat from a party member)
• Safeguard (reduce damage taken by the target of your Intervene ability)

That’s it for the mid level! Hopefully soon you can find some groups and dungeons to get into and really put your class into its element.

But if not, don’t sweat… we’ll level you as fast as possible and burning crusade (60-70) and wrath (70-80) dungeons are relatively brimming with players begging for tanks to help them!

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Level 13 Undead Warrior

How To Spec a Protection Warrior For Fast Leveling (1-30)

Conventional wisdom surrounding prot warriors is that they simply can’t be used for leveling fast.

“Go fury or arms until level 70 then spec protection,” they’ll say.

You’ll hear this constantly from players that have never played a warrior, or that played a warrior years ago and haven’t touched them since.

This is 2009, and these days in post 3.1 WoW, the warrior class can be leveled fast regardless of the talent build.

The important thing to me is that you’re playing a build you like the theme of, that you enjoy playing, or that is effective for you.

The protection warrior can be all of those things!

*this build focuses on early leveling talents to get you off to a fast start*

Protection Warrior Leveling Build: Levels 1-30

Click here for the exact talent build.

Row 1: (Improved Blood Rage, Shield Specialization, Improved Thunder Clap)

The important thing with a protection build, when we’re talking leveling speed, is to ensure you’re generating high levels of rage.

High rage generation as a protection warrior will act as a substitute for “missing out” on the other two build’s higher damage output talents, so don’t forget that as you advance up the tree.

Improved Blood Rage is great for just that – get more rage 50% more rage with each use for only 2 talent points. Sold!

Shield Specialization is another excellent rage builder prot warriors get early on. Max it out with 5/5 and increase your chance to block (lowering damage taken), and has a 100% chance to generate 2 rage when a block occurs (increasing damage output). Together, damage mitigation and increased damage output make this an excellent leveling talent that will serve you well.

Improved Thunder Clap further amplifies your ability to dish out a constant stream of rage based attacks, and cheaply. Max this out with 3/3 points and reduce the cost of Thunder Clap by 4 rage points, increase the damage by 30%, and the slowing effect by an extra 10%.

Row 2: (Incite, Anticipation)

Incite is another good early talent which while basic will keep your average dps high by increasing crit strike chance. Take points here, but leave Anticipation out for now. Its nice to dodge extra (and we’ll take this much later in the build), but for leveling we want to concentrate on rage and damage output.

Row 3: (Last Stand, Improved Revenge, Shield Mastery, Toughness)

This is a good row – starting with Last Stand, you might be tempted not to take it, but when I’m leveling I make mistakes… I accidentally pull extra mobs, or I make some other dumb error that sends me on a big boring corpse run. Avoid that if you like and take last stand – it temporarily increases your hitpoints by 30% for 20 seconds, making it a great panic button.

Improved Revenge is a no brainer – increased damage of revenge (20%) and a 50% chance to sun your target for 3 secs is great for leveling with a shield using protection build because you’re blocking plenty, and the stun will help keep damage down even more.

Stick just one point into Shield Mastery – its a great warrior talent, but as mentioned early, we’re already fine for defence and HP, we need to do damage. Take 1 point to open up the next row (leave the excellent Toughness talent for now too, same reasons).

Row 4: (Improved Spell Reflection, Improved Disarm, Puncture)

A pretty average row for the leveling warrior, we’re really just putting points here to open up row 5. Its a toss up here between Puncture, which gives you great damage when you choose devastate, and Improved Disarm which gives a good 5% boost to damage on disarmed enemies.

If you don’t mind respeccing when you open up Devastate, I’d go Improved Disarm now then change to Sunder.

Row 5 (Improved Disciplines, Concussion Blow, Gag Order)

To end this build we finish level 30 by placing a point in Concussion Blow – a cheap, high damage, easy to use ability (thanks to all our rage) that comes with a massive 5 second stun. Great for leveling since you’ll murder mobs fast, and prevent damage to yourself, reducing down time/chance of death.

I’ll speak more on Imp Disciplines & Gag Order next time… but this build will get you leveling fast with a protection warrior spec.

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Furious!

Looking for the perfect warrior leveling build? Look no further!

While you can tweak this build here and there to suit your own personal tastes, I suggest you follow this build if you want to level at an optimum rate.

Firstly, some might tell you there is a choice between fury and arms. I disagree.

Going dual wield with a fury spec is the most efficient way to level as a warrior (with a “but” that I’ll explain). Pumping out the most DPS as possible is key with classes like warriors. Being able to tank means little when you engage solo mobs over and over again.

We’re also going to keep in mind here your warrior needs to fight mobs at or below his level if dual wield is going to work its best.

If you find yourself doing quests and killing mobs at or above your level too often, this build becomes less useful due to missing constantly. So either get some really good to hit gear, or follow this build.

The warrior leveling build:

Level 10 to 20

Max out Cruelty, Unbridled Wrath, and Piercing Howl.

Level 21 to 30

Max out Commanding Presence for the attack power, and go 4/5 Enrage.Deathwish is a given at 20% extra dished out for only 5% extra damage taken.

Level 30 to 40

Get yourself Flurry and Bloodthirst, both are awesome for DPS which is essential for leveling against solos.

Onwards to 80

From here, just ensure you work your points in Fury to ensure you get Dual Weild maxed, Improved Beserker Stance, Rampage, Unending Fury and of course Titan’s grip.

Those are my picks for “must have’s” in the Fury tree, and I consider the rest of your picks optional, as long as they score you the points to get these final talents!

After you’ve maxed out on a good 52 points of Fury, begin putting points into Arms at your leisure.

I’d also tell you that for the optional picks, as always, choose a talent based on DPS over protection when possible.

Its also worth me reiterating the importance of your gear as a Fury warrior (to hit bonuses are best), and the mobs you fight.

My experience has always been that fighting mobs 2 levels below you (and even more) is the fastest way to progress in WoW, but this is especially true here.

It just happens that Fury is greatly benefitted by fighting weaker mobs because you won’t constantly miss your off hand strikes, and that means lots of dead mobs, and a very fast leveling warrior.

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