starting a prot warrior. very new to warriorFollow

Hi. I am extremely new to warrior and I am curious as to what build to start with for a prot warrior. also should I be going with 1h or 2h weapon. also a good rotation for leveling would be great. thanks so much and sorry for the noob questions.

PS right now I am level 15 and have not allocated any talent points. really need to know where to put em.

I disagree with the build you linked at 60, and that's mostly due to the points in Incite and Focused Rage, but it's probably because I've had bad experiences with healers, rather than bad experiences with dps while leveling my first warrior to 80. At 40, I would go for this. This, at level 60, and finally finishing up at 80 with this. This is purely my opinion though, and based on my experiences, healers are more likely to let you die, than they are to let a dps die.

I'm going to have to take your word for it, since it's been so long since I've leveled (but I'm now leveling again /cry) but given how hard Revenge hits for in comparison to the mobs health that you're beating on, dps in between dungeon runs isn't much of a problem, especially once you get an extra button to hit in the form of Shield Slam.

Kanngarnix, I like your level 60 build overall, but I disagree with the points in Puncture. The rage savings on it are pretty minimal. You'd get a lot more bang out of Improved Shield Block (both for DR, and for 30% additional block value on Shield Slams) and Last Stand.

Personally, at 60, I'd go with something like this build.

Yeah, the WG heirlooms are much better if you're into tanking. Not only more stamina, but also resilience on it. Now this of course isn't exactly a PVE tanking stat, but since the amount increases as you level, it sure helps keeping those nasty crits to a minimum. I'd also pick Trash Blade over anything else for the same reason. Until you do Ragemane's Flipper in Zul'Drak you're not even getting a "real" tanking weapon.

Nothing is worse than seeing all the painfully gathered Defense Rating being worth less and less as you level.

As things stand right now, you're better off leveling as Arms until after 40 in my opinion. Personally, I'd respec to Prot no sooner than 50. At the lower levels the talents in Arms are more directly helpful. You'll be using Rend, Heroic Strike, Overpower and Victory Rush until later and the defensive talents simply do not mean that much in the current, heavily nerfed vanilla content. It's not until Burning Crusade content that you'll even notice the added armor etc.

And be sure to learn stance-dancing. Start with this macro:

/cast [stance:1] Defensive Stance
/cast [stance:2] Battle Stance

Start in Battle, charge in and while you're in motion hit the macro to swap to defensive. As soon as you're at the mob slap down thunder clap and start tab-rending everything.

With that said, a lot of people are going full-on Prot from the start and it's certainly not a bad way to go. But with 2 warriors under my belt (an 80 and a currently 35ish) and after trying loads of respecs while leveling, Arms early was overall more efficient for both solo questing and tanking instances at the low levels.

Also note that this only holds true for the current version of the game. After Caty it's a whole new can of beans.

just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the help. i took it to the dungeons and it was awesome. I tanked for the first time and it was AWESOME! I got a lot of compliments but, I will be honest, I didn't do much. it's super easy. just run in, grab a bunch of baddies, and alternate thunderclap and taunt. the healer kept me full and we just raked. it is a little monotonous but you can't argue with results. I made a few dungeon runs and people were asking me to go on other runs with them. thanks again for the help. i am at 24 now and i love it. should have made a tank long ago. I never even play my 80 rogue anymore.

Yeah well, the repeated trips to UK can get quite boring after a while, but it's perfect practice for somebody still trying to grasp the whole tanking thing. You have large packs, casters that won't move, and mobs that require extra care when positioning. No nasty or annoying surprises like runners and whatnot.

When I leveled my Protadin recently, it was always interesting to see what new places I had unlocked with each level gained.

But I don't know if I just have higher standards or whatever, but what I got to see from other tanks while running as healer was quite discouraging. Quite a few of them barely had more health than me, and assortments of gear that made me shudder. If you're halfway through Northrend and still run into people who have no freaking clue, you just quickly realize that you're far better off just doing the tanking yourself. This is where you just want people to go back to UK and practice...