If I was to re-level as a warrior, I would go 2h with Imp Thunderclap (very worth it) and most importantly Deep Wounds at low levels, and switch to DW Bloodthirst as soon as you can get precision, too (at 43). That bit of healing really adds up after awhile. Two points in Demoralizing Shout are also worth it--you want to minimize the ratio of damage taken to damage done. Stay in battle stance always.

And contrary to what a previous poster said--I would actually prefer Mace Spec over Axe/Sword for leveling. First of all Mace Stun procs a lot more...and you're far more likely to end up taking less overall damage due to Mace Stun than you are due to SwordSpec/AxeSpec killing a mob faster.

Weapon specs are a mixed bag, however. Often the best weapon you have is not the spec you chose. Another reason why DW fury is a good idea for leveling--maces, swords, axes, even daggers. They're all viable and you can upgrade at any time for no cost.

10-25: Parry, TClap, Imp Charge, Deep Wounds, Imp Overpower
25-40: 2H Spec, Deathwish, Weapon Spec, Cruelty
40-45: Respec to full Fury. Cruelty, 2/5 Imp Demo, Commanding Prescense, DW Spec, Enrage, Flurry, Bloodthirst, Precision
45+: Fill out Arms tree. getting Deep Wounds, Imp Overpower, etc.
60+: Once you're in BC, you actually get enough reasonable stats to finish Fury tree and stay in berserker stance while grinding. Rampage is actually decent, if aggravating, to keep up.

When using Blizzard, Frostbite is actually a detrimental talent since it separates the mobs you're AoEing. You could take Frostbite over Permafrost for a full Frostbolt spam type build, but early on I find the extra duration and snare to beat out a small chance to proc Frostbite. You also have to remember that if you don't pick either Permafrost and Frostbite, you'll still need to be level 30 to max out Shatter and Ice Shards. There's no arguing that Frostbite gets a whole lot better with those 2 talents than without.


To put it in a different perspective: while spamming Frostbolt, a Frostbite proc will increase the chance you'll kill the mob a bit quicker. The damage increase depends on Shatter and Ice Shards, both of which are very poor at lower levels since your crit rate will be abyssmal and using a Frost Nova to proc a Shatter is a waste of DPS/Mana. Once you get to 50 (Water Elemental), you'll want Shatter and Ice Shards maxed with both pure Frostbolt and AoE specs.

The problem with switching weapons around is that your DPS and XP/H will suffer immensely when you have to level up a new weapon type.

For alliance warriors, I'd thusly recommend taking Axe spec for arms for the [Bonebiter] which can be acquired if boosted at level 34. It is a great axe and will last well into the 40s.

This is of course, if the player wishes to play as Arms for that period of time. My warrior respecced to fury at 42, due to a lucky blue 1h that dropped for me, along with Vanquisher's Sword from RFD.

That's about right. You can do it a little earlier if, like me, you get impatient, but the general build to start prot grinding fills out at 35, as shown here.

Wrong. The kicker for Prot grinding isn't Holy Shield, it's Reckoning. Reckoning is the key talent for prot grinding because the extra swings let you juggle Light and Wisdom procs to keep your health/mana in the face of 10 mob pulls.

It only takes like 10mins to level weapons skills as a warrior. Spamming hamstring or rend will boost the skill gains, you find a lower level mob so you don't take too much damage and it's rather fast. In comparison doing it with a paladin was like gouging your own eyes out with a spoon. I always found it better to just level whatever you have and use the most powerful weapon for this level range, than keep leveling using subpar weapon choices. 10mins every 7levels are easily gained when using dps blue/purple weaps instead of crappy green quest rewards. I ended up leveling in outlands with like fist(nagrand ring blood) and dagger(terrokar worm), after the initial green quest rewards, for example.

Echoing Pyros and tying it up with the Prot Paladin discussion, weapon skills are no big deal for a Prot Paladin, since Reckoning lets you get lots of swings very quickly.

It really is just a matter of personal taste. Protection is fun because it's different than just about anything else, while Retribution can feel similar to other melee classes (especially before Crusader Strike). Luckily there's a fairly steady progression of Ret friendly weapons throughout Azeroth.

Does the cost of constantly reapplying shield spikes to shield upgrades become a problem at any point? For whatever reason all the guides I've seen about leveling protection seem to include a fairly high amount of twinking, but that is probably more due to maximizing speed over absolute necessity.

Not really - I leveled Prinsesa as Prot, and I totally mean never doing any quests between 35 and 60, and never really had issues with shield spikes.

The lower grade ones (up to Mithril) you can pick up for chump change, and even a Thorium shield spike is worth like one daily's worth of gold if you have a 70 to feed you some cash. It was actually harder actually finding a Blacksmith who knew how to make them, especially that rare Warrior who's exalted with Thrallmar.

I disagree with leveling Arms as a Warrior. While Imp Tclap is nice, I'm of the opinion that leveling Fury, 2H or DW, is the most appropriate. A lot of early Arms talents (for leveling) are throw away, other than Imp Overpower. Cruelty, Unbridled Wrath, DW Spec/Enrage are much more useful leading up to what I believe to be the biggest argument for leveling Fury: Imp Slam. The importance of Imp Slam is huge since it gives you an extra attack in your cycle well before level 40 when you'd get Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst. Otherwise you're pretty much relegated to Thunderclapping for extra damage.

Not only will a budding Warrior get experience in timing Slam with the swing timer, but it works if you're dual wielding or using a 2H. Imp Slam allows for versatility as well since you can easily switch between a 2H and two 1H weapons if you happen across a really good item (Whirlwind Axe, for example) in one style or the other (weapon skill not withstanding).

Upon obtaining level 40, you can easily respec and lose Slam in favor of Bloodthirst and put more points into Dual Wield Specialization. Given all the XP quests throw at you now, 3/3 Precision will come fast after the watershed 40 ding.

People level characters without Minor Run Speed on their boots? I sure as hell don't, and even if you do go ret, you can put those 3 points to WAY better use in Conviction at that level and just get a speed enchant. 3%crit > 7% speed at level 25. Don't get me wrong, I like PoJ, and I've actually worked it into my Prot build starting at level 61, but it's still just fluff and doesn't really account for the massive kill rate difference between ret and prot. I can kill about 5-6 in the time it takes ret to kill 2-3, and I don't need to heal when I'm done doing it.

Exactly. It's because they either haven't tried it, or haven't really TRIED it wholeheartedly. Last night I was doing the mushroom sample collection quest in Zangar for Leesa'oh...I'd round up about 4 melee ogres and one shaman, and just kill the shaman first. He dies in no time flat, and when he's dead all the other ogres are between 60-75% life. It's not inefficient at all, people just look for excuses to defend their "ZOMG HUGE NUMBERS" Ret stuff. The downfall of the prot pally is other classes ruining all your fun. Pretty much all day long you have people stumbling upon you and hustling to help you in the face of what they see as an insurmountable pull...and it's stuff you do all day every day.

A thorium shield spike (20-30) is 4 thorium bars, 8 dense stones and 2 Essence of Earth. EoE is dirt cheap on the AH, and we've got a couple stacks in the guild bank anyway. 4 thorium takes about 3 minutes in EPL to get, and stones are inconsequential. It's a pretty minor expense considering my paladin was never without a BoE epic shield leveling from 31-62. I think I only made 3 anyway...one for [The Green Tower], one for the [Wall of the Dead] and one for [Skullflame Shield].

Imp Revive Pet 2/2 is more favorable than Thick Hide 3/3 (vs your 1/3)?
How useful is Bestial Swiftness when the pet is ultimately limited by how fast you are?
Is Catlike Reflexes a wash, then? It seems like reducing damage your pet takes by 9% would be pretty noticable vs 2% extra damage.

I'll put my oar in as a hunter here too.
While mine hit 60 back in 2005, I still have some points to make.
Bestial Swiftness is a wasted talent, there is no need for your pet to move that much faster for one reason:
You have a boar. Charge is THE best ability for holding aggro, as it adds the attack power bonus to Growl and then their next physical attack. Just make sure you keep charge at max rank and everything is sunshine and daisies.

You also only need 4/5 Frenzy, as any raider will tell you, the 80% is enough to keep near 100% uptime, especially after you get Kill Command combined with Focus Fire. This frees up a point for either 2/2 Animal Handler which is highly recommended and 3/3 Ferocious Inspiration, the tree's group viability, as you really should be doing instances.

I actually preferred starting with 21 points in Marks than moving over to beasts. Lethal Shots, Go for the Throat and Rapid Killing are absolutely delicious talents, far more satisfying than anything in beasts until much deeper talents. After Scatter Shot the tree gets very weak, very fast, but you can start building up Beastmastery at that point. I never had aggro issues using a Boar (even with the massive gap in Boar skills throughout the 40-50 range).

The pet's gonna die a lot. A lot. And then it'll die some more. Adds, elites, instances, lag, not paying attention, lvl 70 gankers, etc. Those are all causes for pet deaths.

Bestial Swiftness makes your pet get to your target faster, thus get aggro quicker. It really makes the difference between pulling aggro and the mob dying before it reaches you and pulling aggro and having to spend mana kiting/FDing the mob or waste time (and take damage) in melee. The best way to see the difference it makes is to have your pet run to a target inside a cave.


Catlike Reflexes won't reduce the damage your pet takes by 9%, but it'll be a decent reduction. Basically the idea is this: if a mob can't kill your pet with melee hits, it doesn't matter how much survivability your pet has. If it can, odds are that having a bit more dodge and armor won't matter either. And while on the subject of pets, Hunters leveling up should spend a good portion ofpet points into the different resist trainings available (Nature, Shadow and Fire being priority). Caster mobs will destroy your pet, not melee types.

PoJ is approximately the same speed increase over minor run speed as minor run speed is over no enchant. Implying that it's absurd to level a character without minor run speed while at the same time poo-pooing Pursuit of Justice seems a little weird to me.

Basically, until you hit 40, any runspeed increase you can get is likely to be the biggest available improvement to your XP/hour, and even after 40, PoJ gives a benefit to mounted speed until 62 when you get Crusader Aura. Personally I'd take PoJ over crit, but it's not an either/or choice. The next tier up in the retribution tree is pretty craptacular for levelling purposes, and you're effectively looking at sacrificing 1 point of Crusade for a 7% movement speed increase.

I leveled my paladin as Protection, AOE grinding from 35-62, but with the change to quest XP 20-60, I can't really see Protadin grinding being advantageous over mashing things with a giant mallet and picking up 5-7k quest XP for every 10-20 kills.

A couple of things I've noted as I've leveled my horde Paladin:

1. Spiritual Focus is less helpful to protection paladins than you'd think. Paladins can't block/parry/dodge while casting spells, so even with no pushback there's 2.5 seconds of increased incoming damage and no outgoing damage. Paladins have enough other survival tricks that in-combat healing is rarely required.

2. I leveled 1-35 as ret, then switched to prot at 36 (mainly because I had a Green Tower sitting in my bank). Prot really improves at level 40 with holy shield, however, and without twinkage 36-40 may have been faster as ret.

3. If you're thinking of switching to prot around this timeframe, there's a quest in Dustwallow Marsh for a fast one-handed axe that works extremely well for prot paladins.

4. I've leveled almost exclusively through quests. Most of the quests I've done require either a certain number of kills, or a certain number of drops off those kills. I believe prot has been more efficient than ret, since I can gather large numbers of kills or drops at a time. Moreover, the type of targeted assassination quests where ret would be more efficient than prot take a very short time as either spec, while getting 50 of various varieties of bear ass takes significantly longer.

5. The more mobs you have attacking you at a time, the more efficient protection is. Get used to zooming out your camera view and backing up while attacking to agro other mobs or packs of mobs.

6. I believe protection leveling is much less gear-dependent than ret, since most of the damage you do is passive, coming from talents and spells. The only real requirements are a decent shield with a spike, and a one-handed weapon with a speed faster than 2.0. Beyond that, there aren't really any requirements, though items like the truesilver bp (or other similar items with proc effects) are helpful. It's true that there's a definite lack of itemization diversity in early plate, but honestly just stacking stamina works surprisingly well.

7. The bane of protection spec are chain casters, but I've found them to be extremely rare so far. Most mobs tend to forget about casting once you interrupt them once (arcane torrent is vastly underrated), and will thereafter happily beat themselves into submission. The few that violate this rule can be reckoning slaughtered using tips outlined upthread.

My 2nd pally is still 66, leveled him entirely after the quest XP change. 10-20 kills? That's 3 pulls for a prot pally. That's 20 pulls for a ret pally. It's not even fair to compare the 2.

I dunno, there's definitely some difference of leveling ability and opinion. There are certain people who feel that they need a leveling guide in order to level efficiently. There are others of us that just go get all the quests from a town, do a big circle around said town, run back and turn them all in. I don't need a guide to tell me how to do that, I've been playing for 3 and a half years and done them all 5 times. If you're the kind of "milktoast bread and butter go here kill this then run over here and grab that" kind of guy, ret may in fact pay off better for you. If you're willing to push the limits of survivability and have some fun with what you're doing, I guarantee that Prot pays for itself so often. Not to mention the PvP aspect of it. I've got 2 pallies close to the level cap now, and I never lost in near level PvP on even numbers on either of them. I get ganked, sure, but anyone +4 or -4 that tries just fails miserably. They either beat themselves to death or just run out of mana trying to burn you down. Ret just can't make that claim, you're nowhere near as durable when you're at half health with 3 mobs on you. My friends and I have so many stories of doing an AE pull and getting jumped. We finish up the pull, and then turn on the ganker and kill him. You can't do that with literally any other class. You might get lucky once or twice and pull it off, but not with any kind of reliability like a Prot pally does.

And like has been mentioned several times, Ret really comes into it's own once you get some real gear. You need str, you need crit and you need stamina, and that stuff really doesn't all come together on gear until 70. For prot, you need a weapon, you need a good shield, and that's about it. Load up the rest on stamina and you're fine, defense when it becomes available.

Paladin:
I leveled my Paladin Ret until 47, where I abandoned him due to the horrible painstakingly boring leveling... I picked him back up when I saw what BC was going to be doing with actually paying attention to the Prot tree, and respecced him Prot. I haven't looked back, and will remain a Die Hard Prot till the game is so antiquated that it no longer runs on our supercomputer wristwatches. Even 70 to 80, I will remain prot the whole way, and solo or in group, I garuntee that I can grind through anything en-mass faster than most other classes. Grab a mage (my wife) or a lock (my best friend) and AoE grinding just skyrockets in efficiency and speed, and with the gear to back it up, I can currently grab 3-4 elites, 10-20 non elites (like over in SMV, Path of Conquest) and hold them while blizzard actually kills them, and they die before I need to pot/bubble/etc...

I will be able to grind instances and quests just as easy, and know that I will be in high demand for those levels. If I could re-level those first 47 levels, I would have done it prot. Slow solo killing per target, but en-mass, there is just no comparison, and there are TONS of ways to pull this off where most people don't think you otherwise could.

Pursuit of Justice is also now a permanent part of my talent spec, just as much as every other deep Prot talent. the 15% speed boost is massively noticable running around in instances, the normal world, and even in tanking, where I can pick up mobs that escaped way faster. On Illidian, it has clearly saved my hide half a dozen times when I just barely got out of the eye beam in time. That speed boost is way more than a gimick. Look at melee DPS threads... they include speed boosts as an increase in DPS, since it minimizing time between mobs. Paladins have the biggest passive speed boost in the game, ignoring this is stupid.

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Mage:
My original main was a mage, and I leveled to late 20s as fire, and nearly gave up when I would simply die every 3rd or 4th kill. Yeah, the kills were otherwise fast, but I spent so much time drinking and corpse running, it was much slower. I respecced frost, and have only dabbled in fire occasionally since. Frost's survivability alone makes it a faster leveling build, just in a drastic drop in deaths. Wear full Frozen Wrath gear and prepare to 2-3 shot stuff 2 levels higher than you, the whole way through your leveling.

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Rogue:
Until level 52, I leveled my rogue Subltey, and have no regrets at all. Mainhanding a dagger, and offhanding a sword (to keep sword skill maxed for later on), then speccing out Ambush, until early 40s, I could 1 shot mobs that were still giving me XP, and did on a regular basis. Early 40s, the health of targets was increasing faster than my damage, but I could still generally get them at least 50% dead with an opening ambush.... and that is 50% of their health they have no chance to be swinging at me, and ghostly strike was gold for the last 50%. Until ZF, I soloed every single [Dungeon] quest I had while it was still yellow. Easily. I even farmed my own twink gear in several equal level instances. Early 50s however, Subltey simply wasn't nearly as good for the instance running I was doing, and I respecced into combat swords with [Thrash Blade], and the leveling speed wound back up again.

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Hunter:
My hunter is mid 50s, but has been Beast Mastery the whole way. The simple survivability of that spec in what you can take and what you can't keeps the xp flowing when you otherwise would be running back as a ghost. With mage and paladin habits under my belt, I frequently 'AoE grind' with my hunter, having my pet grab 4 or 5 targets, and I tag them all with a sting, and end up kiting 2 or 3 while my pet pounds them all dead.

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Warrior:
Re-roll something else IMO. I have deleted a warrior toon 6 different times with a combined level total around 150. It is just way too painful. The best warrior leveling specs are still akin to pasting your thumb with a hammer every few seconds for days on end. You can't aoe grind as prot, so you just have really slow damage without a purpose and only against 1 target, you could go arms or fury as 'better', but neither of them has the survivability that other dps classes have, even though you have plate. You just can't do damage from range, and no matter how much plate and health you have, you have next to nothing to stop that inexorable drop in health. And you HAVE to have a chunk of down-time after every fight. Bandages simply can't keep up with your health. Drenaei have this somewhat easier, but still painful. If you have, or are, leveling a warrior, my hat is off to you. You are a much better person than I.

Yeah I hear you. I am on my third warrior, I promised I would stick with it through the end as its the only class I haven't leveled to 70. I am dual boxing a 70 holy priest to take out the pain. I feel like Dr. Smith of old, "oh the pain, the pain".

Outside of the pocket priest I could find no way to reduce the downtime. Worse their escape options are much more limited than other classes. Leveling as Fury is the only method I found worth it on DPS but without backup your risking a lot when up against casters or multiple mobs. Perhaps mace spec'd arms? I hope to get further with this warrior, the highest previous delete was 55 and I haven't yet obtained that level again.

The real problem is that I don't find any talents that mitigate the classes shortcomings. If there are they are either too deep or spread between the trees.

This is more of a Twinking Tips topic however I'd like to point out, that you can get a swingtimer mod, a slow 2H weapon, hamstring the mob and only come near when your swing is ready (don't forget to burn your rage while you are near) to somewhat reduce damage taken/downtime. To make the process of "coming near" even better you can Intercept every once in a while and throw in a slam after your swing and while the mob is still stunned. It's still a pain, though.

When I leveled my warrior to 60 back in the days I used to just alt+tab after engaging an enemy if I was on one of those "kill 30 mobs" quests.

The class lacks tactical options. But hey, what did you expect when you picked warrior?

Well, my warrior was my first 60, my first 70, and will be my first 80. You just really need a good mindset to go with it. For example, I learned about level 25 that, since I'm on PvP, I need to instigate all encounters in order to increase my survivability. If I let someone else get the drop on me, good chance I'm gonna die. This lead to a very aggressive playstyle. That being said, yes, you die, a lot. Get used to it. About all you can do is throw on a shield and hope it leashes before you die.

Fast forward to 60, and with my PvP 4 piece and HWL Pig Sticker, leveling was awesome. Enough HP to take the beating and enough DPS to dish out the pain. Pick up the new skills from 60-70 that are extremely useful in certain situations and you've got a fantastic grinding setup. I'll never be fury, I just hate the tree, but as Arms, with a T2 2h and victory rush, in full PvP gear, you can be quite the machine. I look forward to heading to 80 on my warrior just because Stormherald + Vengeful/Brutal/whatever should be the best setup warriors will have so far for leveling. Crit immune, high DPS, high armor, High HP. Everything you need to be successful. I agree that leveling to 60 the first time is probably pretty terrible. I did it 3 and a half years ago because I knew that we were gonna need a warrior, and in my group of friends, it needed to be me. I've always thought about rolling up another one, but that idea never got off the ground. It got off the ground with the Prot pally tho...such fun.