Playing tank/healer while leveling?

[Demonthese 0]

I leveled my warrior as dps spec, I always tanked 5 mans and for the most part, I had no reason to use shield. Any mail/plate wearer not fighting mobs several levels above, won't take any damage that a shadow priest cannot heal.

Even at 60, after a certain gear threshold, a healer rarely goes oom, so I had more success tanking as a fury warrior with pvp gear than as a protection warrior, in the sense that my damage output and my threat were so high, that I could just blast through dungeons. Hell, I even did some smooth baron 45 runs with a resto druid tanking in bear form.

Don't do this while leveling. Pretty much only time you can fury or arms tank without a shield is if you drastically out gear the instance.

For example having a bwl/AQ40 fury warrior DW tanking live strat with an equally gear healer. This btw is an amazing way to make money

Edited November 28, 2016 by Demonthese

[gotmilk0112 10]

I leveled my warrior as dps spec, I always tanked 5 mans and for the most part, I had no reason to use shield. Any mail/plate wearer not fighting mobs several levels above, won't take any damage that a shadow priest cannot heal.

Uh...maybe you can get away with tanking RFC with no shield, but even Deadmines, фекал in there will hit you pretty ваууing hard unless you're way over the dungeon's level.

[cryofsorrow 5]

Their damage reduction from armor increases by over 25% more even with a shotty green shield on.

I suggest this being pinned somewhere in the Warrior or PvE section. I've always told all warriors that all they need to tank is some armor and +def gear but mainly any shield would do the job even in end game 5mans. And 'tanking' in fury gear with no shield should be only comfortable if your party massively outgears the instance level, depending mainly on healer's gear. Just slap a shield on a warrior and you're good to go.

Edited November 28, 2016 by cryofsorrow

[grid_65 0]

If you are worried tanking as you level or want to make a name for yourself as a good tank to start getting your name in the community. (Your name and reputation means everything on a server that is not cross realm.)   A warrior you can do hybrid specs that allow you to solo dps and maximize your threat in tanking. I have linked below. 

This will give you some survivability with soloing and tanking and keep your dps high with a 2h wep to solo most of the quests you need. They are not min / max but will give you an edge when you put on a sword and board. I will get someone saying that it’s not the best because of x reason but it is a good leveling spec /tanking spec that you don’t have to respect tell you are 60.

If you want more info head to the warrior pages and they can give you a break down on math and other ideas.

 

fury

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LmZVVzu0voVoE00ox

arms

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LVhxdIio0zmZE00ox

[Zarant 2]

Like I said, for the most part you don't need a shield, you need to know when to swap gear sets, some bosses and trash packs hit hard, most of them don't.

[Undertanker 88]

...

[Zarant 2]

SMH, was waiting for this, always one person to do this bullshit.

Leave a group if somebody is doing this. Their damage reduction from armor increases by over 25% more even with a shotty green shield on.

A tanks job is to hold threat AND reduce incoming damage taken.

If a healer has plenty on mans, they can opt to dps SOME and will more than cover any extra "damage" your autos would have done with a 2h weapon over a 1h weapon. You will be spamming sunder armor and revenge, so a 2h ,doesn't help but with a little bit more rage rage, but your uptime on revenge will be out the window because you can't shield block.

Perhaps he thought the post was "how to get on people's ignore list.

The only time it is regularly helpful to swap to a 2h mid combat is if the only things alive are magic damage mobs ONLY, any other time you took more damage than you should have which is only used for an opening to a pull for some AoE pulls and are considered advanced tactics.

Edit:

>>>>> tanks with proper gear on, 45 min baron runs with 20 minutes left on the timer.

 

A shield will give you at best, 10~15% damage mitigation, and that is largely irrelevant since most of the low level content is a joke, there is no reason to reduce the damage taken if your healer can handle it. If you outgear/outlevel the content, there is no reason for using a shield at all, except for a few cases, l can recall from the top of my head King Gordok hitting harder than raid bosses, in this case you can't survive without a proper tank gear.

I'm not particularly saying that a resto druid tanking is better than a prot warrior, but with the proper gear they can do the job just fine. Most people still have the retail mindset where you cannot perform a certain role if you are not specd into it, gear is far more relevant than talents for most classes, specially for spell casters.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Zarant

[Faith 5]

Hi all!

 

As far as I have understood, there are no dual-spec, right? To respec, it costs a lot of money?

 

Anyway, if that is the case, then how do people level from 1-60 when they, i.e., want to play a healer and also do (low level) dungeons as a healer but I strongly assume that leveling a healer from scratch will take ages as you lack damage throughout the whole leveling process.

 

Same maybe applies to tanks? How is this best managed?

 

Thanks,

Ray

You should just google "leveling a priest / druid / shaman healer in vanilla". There are a lot of good guides out there.

 

Having said that leveling a healer isn't as bad as you think. Getting into groups as a healer, or tank for that matter, is very easy. Everyone will want you for their group. Best advice I can give is get yourself in a good guild that wants to level together. Group up with guildies and do quests together and dungeons together. Leveling will not only be fun but it will go by pretty quickly. If you solo as a healer just group up a lot up to around level 40. Then you will need to do some questing. Tanaris, STV, get yourself to 50 and then the fun begins!!! At this point BRD full clear runs are amazing xp. They can be frustrating as most players don't have the heart or stamina to full clear BRD. I do!! "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME!". Once you get to 53 .. LBRS .. 55 UBRS.... DUNGEONS DUNGEONS. You can also, if you get tired of that.. clear winterspring it's great for quests. Keep leveling your professions vendor all your greys and try to sell greens on the ah. 

 

It's all fun! That is why Vanilla is so much fun. You can plan.. ahead.. or just.. walk off into the wild and do your own thing. Don't rush yourself. Just enjoy the game.

 

~ Faith ~

[Undertanker 88]

You are just making up random numbers for your damage reduction.

No need to quote my correct information and tag on bad advice.

[MisterRay 0]

You should just google "leveling a priest / druid / shaman healer in vanilla". There are a lot of good guides out there.

 

Having said that leveling a healer isn't as bad as you think. Getting into groups as a healer, or tank for that matter, is very easy. Everyone will want you for their group. Best advice I can give is get yourself in a good guild that wants to level together. Group up with guildies and do quests together and dungeons together. Leveling will not only be fun but it will go by pretty quickly. If you solo as a healer just group up a lot up to around level 40. Then you will need to do some questing. Tanaris, STV, get yourself to 50 and then the fun begins!!! At this point BRD full clear runs are amazing xp. They can be frustrating as most players don't have the heart or stamina to full clear BRD. I do!! "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME!". Once you get to 53 .. LBRS .. 55 UBRS.... DUNGEONS DUNGEONS. You can also, if you get tired of that.. clear winterspring it's great for quests. Keep leveling your professions vendor all your greys and try to sell greens on the ah. 

 

It's all fun! That is why Vanilla is so much fun. You can plan.. ahead.. or just.. walk off into the wild and do your own thing. Don't rush yourself. Just enjoy the game.

 

~ Faith ~

 

Hi Faith, thank you for this. By "grouping" you mean to look for players and meet together in order to do dungeons as much as possible?

I'd love to start with healing spec and just heal everyone, but then I am not sure if I will always find groups therefore I might just go dps spec and heal in dungeons.

 

Will see ...

[Pottu 290]

For an example: The Deadmines.

Defias Pirate hits for 121-145. You will usually encounter at least two of them, alongside Defias Wizards, who melee for 113-135 and also cast fireballs.

Not counting the fireball damage, which cannot be reduced by armour, the tank will take from 234 (best case scenario) to 560 (worst case scenario) of damage every 2 seconds or so. That's without talents or armour reducing incoming damage but also without criticals and the fireball damage.

A lvl 18 warrior will not have above 1k armour and likely less than 1k HP unless the players has really geared them well. Let's use ~800 armour for ease of calculation - that would give 29% damage reduction against lvl 18 mobs. I'm not counting defensive stance since the point Zarant is making is to deal maximum damage to clear the dungeon quickly. So we now have incoming damage from the range of 164 (best case) to 392 (worst case), still every 2 seconds or so. Meaning that our battle stance warrior with no prot talents and no shield, will die anywhere from 6 seconds (worst case) to 10 seconds (best case). Again, super rough napkin math, not counting misses nor crits here. The elite mobs have from 1k to 1.4k health, so they aren't dying in less than six seconds either.

So I would say that it's pretty foolish to go into an instance and tank with a 2-hander while relying on your healer. Remember that it doesn't matter how fast the packs die, if you have to wait 20-30 seconds after each one for your healer to drink up. And that kind of incoming damage will stress out a priest, not to mention the hybrid healers. Yes, you can do it if the tank and healer are higher than usual for that dungeon, especially if the are nicely geared as well, especially if you have good CC in the party.

But it should not be given out as advice, especially for newcomers to vanilla.