Can I level as prot warrior?

[C0ldness]

Hey guys! I've just found this server and planning on making it my new home! I've been reading a lot about the changes made on this server and I really like what they have done here! I'm leaning towards prot warrior as a main and I was wondering if I can also level as prot warrior? I love doing quest/grind mobs and some dungeons as well.

[Mcnair]

Welcome!
Of course you can. And people will love you for it, there is always a shortage of tanks and healers, so these are always welcome in both questing and instancing groups. On a side note, you can tank any instance and elite group content as any spec as a warrior, you do not have to be prot for them. So play prot if you want to be prot, it will be great either way.
In general: WoW is out for ages already. Play the game as you like for the sake of liking it. You can level as whatever you wish, as long as you have fun doing it. Do not ever play a given class or play-style for the sake of it being 'meta' or 'fast', if you are not having fun what is the point of it?

[Redmagejoe]

I am going to do you a huge favor for your sanity: Do not level as a Prot Warrior.

Can you do it? Of course. You can also level without talent points, with all greys, or with one arm tied behind your back. Should you? Debatable.

Here's the dirty little secret about Warriors that I try to reveal to people as a lifetime Warrior player myself: Prior to raids, you do not need to be Prot in order to tank well. Warrior as a class has a kit that's built so fundamentally well for threat generation baseline that it's no wonder it is the de facto tank. A near infinite resource, a stance that mitigates damage and generates bonus threat just by existing, a wide variety of threat generation abilities.

It is so adept at tanking, in fact, that Protection does not facilitate it, it simply reinforces it. For good players, it's practically redundant, and for newer players, it is an unnecessary crutch. The problem with this crutch is that it is going to make your solo experience very painful. The amount of mitigation you get from the build does not offset the extra time you will spend per fight, resulting in you taking MORE damage than if you were, say, Arms, and more downtime while leveling and thus less efficiency.

I would recommend, personally, leveling as Arms (which itself has some good tanking-supplementing talents) and keeping your gear filled with Stamina, and having a good one-handed weapon and shield in your bags while you level so that you can tank. As for the actual means to tank well, there's a thread with some good information, including some of my own that I will edit into this post once I find it.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4874

[Bloodline1x9]

Hey guys! I've just found this server and planning on making it my new home! I've been reading a lot about the changes made on this server and I really like what they have done here! I'm leaning towards prot warrior as a main and I was wondering if I can also level as prot warrior? I love doing quest/grind mobs and some dungeons as well.

Yes, you can. I'm prot lvling warrior. This is best spec to level warri if you wanna go dungeons.
1. It will be easy for you to find a group
2. You will have Shield Wall and Last Stand for a critical situation when you can die. It helps me. I play with a turtle glyph and for every death I lose experience. That is why it is important for me to have a save ability.
3. The Revenge stuns every 5 seconds and rage cheap
4. You will be a better tank than tanking Furies or Arms. Including threat generation.
5. You can easily pick up a two-handed or off-hand weapon and become dps with almost no damage drop because Flyrry and Sweeping strikes are late talents

[C0ldness]

I do understand that prot spec will be slower than arms but I really wanna try it :)
Do you guys think I should put some points in arms spec 1st to get the extra dmg on thundrclap (some good AoE dmg, possible bigger pulls) or just invest all early points in prot tree until I get all key talents?

[Zhilo]

Having leveled a warrior to 60 on vanilla and to 52 in Turtle, I pretty much agree with Redmagejoe. I respecd to prot to level for a while around lvl 30 to test it myself because i was curious. And it was just painful. Taking 2 times as long to do quests as i was doing on arms was not fun at all. Lacking reflective damage outside of a 30 mins cooldown, there really is little point to being more survivable on 3+ mobs scenarios. And tanking in dungeons was never a factor. I tanked dungeons to get all the blues I wanted just fine as arms, so being prot never appealed to me for tanking, ironically enough.

By all means give it a go and experiment. The respec cap is pretty cheap on Turtle so its ok If you decide to try something different 20 levels later.

[Kobemaru]

if you want to level as prot, do yourself a favor and start out with putting points into Arms first, then around 25 you can put some points into Prot for the +15% threat talent and defensive talents. All good defensive talents in the prot tree are early on, there's absolutely no point in going deep prot while leveling.
You will have the same threat generation and better this way, while being able to stance dance with Sweeping Strikes and swapping to a 2hander when the situation allows for it.

[Bloodline1x9]

I do understand that prot spec will be slower than arms

All who says it's much longer doesn't take into account the time Arms or Fury spends regenerating health.
While I was playing as a warrior I very rarely ate or used a bandage (relative to them). Because I'm durable and revenge stuns.

But in general, leveling as a prot warrior it's not solo leveling, but dungeons. In fact, you always have somewhere to go, one by one dungeons are painted by level. It's not about trying to get to 60 as fast as possible.
You enjoy the game, сollecting blue things. You are not tied to a sword and shield. You can go into battle like a tank, and if you get tired of it, like a dps.