Play a Warrior in World of Warcraft
Are you finding it difficult to master your Warrior? You've come to the right place; Warriors are a very simple and yet complex class, and many do not know how to use them correctly. Warriors are best known for their tanking abilities, but should not be underestimated, for they can destroy their enemies in a few powerful strikes when you know what you're doing especially in PvP
Steps
- Choose a race. Honestly it doesn't matter much in the long run unless you are very serious about PvP/PvE, but there are some few abilities that aid warriors.
- Humans are excellent in PvP. They get a 10% to reputation gain they have a 3+ Expertise Rating for Swords and Maces, which helps you keep ahead of the gang, they have a passive ability called Perception that gives you a better chance of seeing hidden targets. It allows you to see the pesky rogues and druids before they can attack you. They also have one of the best racial abilities for PvP, Every Man for Himself. This move is identical to end game trinkets people use to get out of every crowd control move in the game.
- Dwarves have Stoneform which grants 8 second immunity to disease, bleed effects, and poison, it also increases armor by 10%. It gives a 10 to frost resistance, (kind of negligible).
- Draenei have a very strong raiding racial - a passive aura that increases other party members chance to hit by 1%. This 1% becomes essential in high-end raiding, as most casters factor this hit rating into their gear choices. Also, 1% hit rating is important for a warrior, as it opens up other gem / enchant choices such as stamina or strength. The other main racial they have is a heal over time(HoT). This HoT is pretty nice at low levels for soloing. At higher levels, the healing becomes marginal, but when combined with the heal granted by high-level Herbalism, it can suffice in a pinch or aid with rapid pulls while soloing as a non-healing class, if you haven't specced into Bloodthirst.
- Tauren are probably your second best choice, the 5% addition to base health is very useful, and their Warstomp ability (stun targets in an area) can get you out of some sticky situations, a much overlooked ability is the {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} melee range, this can be CLUTCH in PvP.
- Trolls are good if you want to be a fury warrior. Trolls receive a health regeneration bonus - at higher levels this regeneration becomes marginal. However, Trolls also receive an attack speed increase which is very useful.
- Undead characters start with Will of the Forsaken ability, which is handy in many later boss encounters. Warriors innately get Death Wish, however, which can be used in any stance. Will of the Forsaken has certain advantages, but largely is case-by-case for an Undead Warrior. Cannibalize is pretty useful when questing, because you don't need to bring as much food to recover lost health(though funny when used on other players!), and underwater breathing can be useful on particular quests - where you need to kill mobs underwater - and the +200% time to breathe under water will save you rest time.
- Select a Talent Tree to specialise in:
- Arms is generally for PvP, but can also be used for PvE very effectively with the right talent choices and a coupling with fury. At the lower levels, characters with heirloom items (BOAs), especially the two-handed weapons, may wish to spec into Arms because of the large number of instant attacks based on weapon damage - Overpower and Rend being your two staple moves. At 15, characters should immediately pick up the "Overpower" glyph that allows the use of Overpower if an attack is parried. That, coupled with the Rend talent in arms, will ensure that Overpower is up nearly 100% of the time - other talents will ensure it has a 50% crit chance. Armor Penetration and Strength are tied as the most important stats for this spec, with haste not being quite as important.
- Fury is the de facto "dps" spec for PvE, but miles worse in PvP. Titan's Grip is a powerful ability that allows the Warrior to dual wield two-handed weapons, at the cost of a 10% damage reduction. However, all of the game's highest top-end weapons are two-handed, making Titan's Grip a powerful ability in combination with abilities like Whirlwind, which hits up to 4 nearby targets with both weapons. In this spec, hit and expertise become important stats to focus on, but strength should still be your primary concern.
- Protection warriors are tanks. They take damage in, and protect the party from taking the damage instead. Tanks are needed for every instance. For tanking purposes, Protection is the sole spec. Warrior tanks are still the most solid single target tanks in the game, as they are capable of generating threat quite easily, and can manage incoming damage more easily than most other classes. Where Paladins tend to suffer the longer a fight goes on, Warriors tend to generate more threat as the fight progresses thanks to their "procs" and constant Rage generation.
- Keep that rage up! All a warrior needs is health and he's good-to-go. You build rage by taking Damage, giving damage, and using rage-giving abilities such as Blood rage. You can use all offensive (damage causing) abilities to gain rage, as well as Charge at the beginning of a fight to generate a good amount of rage to start off with.
- ...But not too up! While having your rage up is an obvious must, being rage-capped (especially Fury and Arms) isn't really a good thing. Example: If your white melee auto-attack would grant you 30 rage, but you are at 95 rage, you only gain 5 and miss out the other 25. While being rage starved puts your abilities to a halt, being rage capped wastes your potential resources. To dump your rage, there are options: Refresh your shout buff, Cleave, and most commonly, Heroic Strike. Heroic Strike is usually spammed while tanking to keep threat and dump rage (as the constant damage being done to you keeps you rage capped), but in a DPS tree, it can be a good idea to hit Heroic Strike when you see your rage about to cap. Just remember that HS generates a healthy amount of threat, so be careful to not pull mobs from the tank.
- Get the right gear. Gear is to a warrior as spells are to a mage. You want to look for gear that gives you + to strength (str) + to Stamina (sta) + to Defense rating (only tanks should really be looking for this at 80), + to Attack power, and + to hit rating, though agility can be very useful as well for +crit, but is not a priority stat. You don't have to worry about, defense, attack power, or hit rating until around lvl 60-80, however. Besides, Strength gives you attack power, attack power gives you more DPS (Damage per second). More stamina gives more health. Health is very important to warriors. Warriors wear mail until lvl 40, then they can wear plate. One piece of advice is to start looking for Plate armour early - plate begins to drop in level 35-40 instances, but can be found on the auction house much earlier. Armor is important to warriors too. More armor gives a higher reduction to physical damage, which prolongs your life. (edit: 14 attack power = 1 dps base white damage. For warrior, 1 strength grants 2 attack power. Therefore, 1 strength ~ 0.14 dps. 7 strength adds 1 dps. Though talent build and crit rate can increase the final dps output, (abilities included) it's nowhere near the values stated above.
- Always carry a Shield, and a 1h weapon. These can come in handy for hard-to-solo quests where you need to stay alive longer than if you had 2 1-handed weapons or a 2-handed weapon
Tips
- If you are the dps role with a party (PvE only) use heroic strike as much as other abilities; It adds a large amount of threat to the mob, and if the tank doesn't have that much aggro, you will be second on Threat meter so the focus is not on healers or other party/raid Squishies.
- Know when the enemy strikes, always look after where you enemy is attacking from and always look at your Health.
- If you are playing an Undead Warrior, remember that your cannibalism skill will allow you to quickly get to full health (or near) when used near Humanoid or Undead corpses.
- Warriors with not so great gear have creamed other classes with good blues or epics, it all about how well you know how to play your class.
- Fury warriors have an ability called Bloodthirst. (45*Attackpower/100) So 2000 attack power (45*2000 = 90,000/100 =900) That means each Bloodthirst deals 900 damage. It's an instant attack that heals you 3 hits later, not bad for 30 rage. Fury warriors can deal an insane amount of damage in PvE. The downside is that they don't get into instances so easily. Arms warriors are better at tanking if you want to maintain DPS (Arms Tanking will not get you very far end game unless maybe a back-up Off-tank)
- Learn from your mistakes, if you're not sure what to do in any situation ask someone who is more experienced beforehand.
- Remember when tanking that you are there to protect the rest of your group from taking the forefront of the damage. Holding aggro is a very difficult job. When tanking use Defensive stance. Use skills like sunder armor, heroic strike, revenge, and demoralizing shout. (Sunder 2-3 times, lay on a heroic strike, sunder 2-3 times, demo, and heroic strike, keep sundering every 10-20 seconds. This tactic will keep generating threat towards you, which keeps attention away from the casters.) If you have Devastate (>=41 points into Protection)use that to reset Sunder Armor timer. As of patch 2.3 Devastate stacks a new sunder up to the max of 5 - making sunder a lesser choice for the same amount of rage (due to the fact that you get weapon damage too from devastate - which can also crit). Use Shield Block every second it is available this will keep u from taking crushing blows and also keeps revenge in "q" to be used.(Don't forget Shield Slam)
- You can also go to Black Fathom deeps and quest for the Outlaw Sabre. The Outlaw Sabre is a one-handed 19.0 dps sword, that probably will outclass a 2hander at the same level.
- Try assigning your hot-keys to keys on the keyboard. While this may not benefit you that much while tanking, PvP situations are made a lot easier if you know that pushing 3 will hamstring that rogue who is sprinting.
- When you are still in the low levels, there are two instances that can help you gear your warrior for tanking. If you run Shadowfang Keep, you have the chance to get the Commander's Shield, and that may last you to the mid 30s - where you would upgrade to the aegis of the scarlet commander at the Scarlet Monastery.
Warnings
- Only ever tank in Protection spec. The other specs, at the 80 Heroic level, simply will not generate enough threat to be competitive and keep the mobs trained on you instead of the DPS classes.
- Remember when tanking that you are there to protect the rest of your group from taking the forefront of the damage. Holding aggro is a very difficult job. When tanking use Defensive stance. Use skills like sunder armor, heroic strike, revenge, and demoralizing shout. (Sunder 2-3 times, lay on a Heroic Strike, sunder 2-3 times, demo, and heroic strike, keep sundering every 10-20 seconds. This tactic will keep generating threat towards you, which keeps attention away from the casters.) If you have Devastate (>=41 points into Protection)use that to reset Sunder Armor timer. As of patch 2.3 Devastate stacks a new Sunder up to the max of 5 - making Sunder a lesser choice for the same amount of rage (due to the fact that you get weapon damage too from Devastate - which can also crit). Use Shield Block every second it is available this will keep you from taking crushing blows and also keeps Revenge queued up to be used.(Don't forget Shield Slam). Before obtaining Devastate, invest a few gold into the Sunder Armour Glyph. This glyph allows Sunder Armour to strike an additional nearby target. This gives you a "2 for 1" effect on your Sunders, effectively halving the cost of the ability.
- Use Arms for PvE if your gear is not that great. Once you have better gear, however, it is OK to change to Fury due to the increased DPS your gear will give you later in the tree.
- Use Arms for PvP due to its instant-cast abilities you can use to debuff players. Fury works well but not as well as arms.
- If you are playing an Undead Warrior, remember that your cannibalism skill will allow you to quickly get to full health (or near) when used near Humanoid or Undead corpses.
