Contents

The Warrior

So, you've decided to join the ranks of the tough, battle-hardened, and bloodthirsty killing machines known as the Warrior, or perhaps you’re simply checking in to see if this is the class for you.

Either way, I personally recommend the warrior class to all those who thrive off ripping apart opponents with a combination of personal skills and overpowering damage – But take note, this class is not for those who want the easy road.

The warrior class is for those who want to be the first target in every battle, PvE or PvP, and are willing to bear the brunt of punishment to reach and annihilate the opposition with a combination of devastating abilities such as Mortal Strike and Blood Thirst.

However, first things first, and before you’ve even entered the game world you’ll be forced to choose amongst the numerous races of world of warcraft, and choose wisely, many players find this descision almost as important as what class to play.

Notes

With 4.0 & Cataclysm the biggest changes are the talent system, shuffling of abilities, and Mastery. Warrior mechanics were tweaked, but not changed (as they were for Paladins.) As far as the value Warriors bring to PvP or PvE in Cataclysm, well, see "Buffage" below.

With the talents you now have a total of 41 talent points at level 85. Once you pick your first taltent, at level 10, you will be locked into that "specialization" until you have spent 31 talent points (at level 69.) After that you will be free to buy talents from the other trees.

Buffage and Nerfage:

With any new patch or expansion comes the inevitable period of time afterwards when characters are gods one day and doormats the next. This is true for any class and Warriors are no exception.

With the builds and notes on these pages we will not be looking at the "flavor of the minute" topics.

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Warrior Races

Cataclysm raiding will require a lot more in the way of rating points (eg: crit rating) to get 1% in that ability than it did before. Therefore any points in Expertise or whatever that one gets from a racial abilitiy at level 85 is a much bigger thing than at 80.

Also, with Cataclysm, any race can be a Warrior. Even Goblins.

Now that that's out of the way... the only real choices for Warrior are Human, Night Elf, Orc, and Undead. The rest are...just the rest. ;)

Alliance

Humans

Humans and Diplomacy.  The ability Diplomacy grants you a solid 10% increase to all faction reputation gains.  Initially you might scoff at this being a useful Warrior racial, but quite honestly since WoW incorporates so many faction grinds with each new expansion this ability’s been elevated to almost a ‘must have’ status.

• Diplomacy - great for leveling faction. Adds to the guild diplomacy bous.
• Escape - Very nice in PvP, occasionally useful otherwise.
• Spirit increase- Low wut? Warrior have no spirit and need none.
• Increased Expertise with swords and maces. Nice for the end-game, if a sword or mace is the best weapon (and it probably is.)

Night Elves

Next, Night Elves gain both Shadowmeld and Quickness as far as effective abilities go.

• Quickness is a 2% increase to dodge, seemingly worthless initially, but this 2% easily counts for multiple pieces of gear bonuses (especially useful for tanking) at level 85, take note of it. It's very nice to have if you're a Warrior tank.
• Secondly, Shadowmeld gives you a stealth of sorts, allowing you to wait and ambush others in PvP, or even just avoid being targeted while AFK or resting.

Dwarves

Shortness is a virtue? Is a digging tool your favorite weapon? Do you live for the smell of baking ore in the morning?

• Stoneform removes bleeds, poisons, and diseases which gives Dwarves much needed PvP utility against Rogues, Death Knights, and other bleed using classes. It also reduces damage by 10% which has PvP use and is nice at times in PvE.
• Mace Expertise is useful if you're looking for every last point of expertise on your gear and if the best weapon is a mace, which it probably isn't. Expertise is a very good threat stat, so a few extra points here are good.
• Crit chance with guns - You're a Warrior, you don't need guns.
• Increased Archeology Skill - Nothing useful for Warriors.

Draenei

Why???

Draenei present probably the most contestable rank amongst warrior race choices, some say the HoT(Heal over time) is easily worth it, acting as a secondary bandage. Some disagree. I think the any Warrior heal is a good thing.

Draenei also gain a 1% +hit aura that, with 4.0, is self-only. Nice to have, especially for level 85 raiding, where it's just thatmuch less that you have to reforge/gem for.

Gnomes

Finally, Gnomes... Too short, the butt of too many jokes, and punted by everyone except Goblins. While a useful race in general, and a solid PvP race, they bring nothing special to Warriors.

• A nice escape ability is great for PvP and is useful every now and then otherwise
• Their small size is a benefit in PvP where many people click on targets.
• Increased mana pool? Zzzzz....
• Increased Engineering skill is interesting since there are several widgets created by Engies that are useful to Warriors, particulary Synapse Springs.
• Expertise with small swords might be useful in raids where those expertise points free up points to put somewhere else. Actually, with this ability, you should have been a Rogue.

Worgen

Cataclysm brings with it the smelly, snuffling, flea ridden Worgen as a playable race.

1. Worgen can periodically move more quickly, much like the Rogue's Sprint, which is a generally useful ability.
2. They have an increased crit chance which is an overall DPS gain.
3. Increased skill and speed with Skinning is ncie enough is you're a skinner...
   
   

The Horde

Orcs

On the flipside, there is the Horde and the Orcs: Orcs are the race most consider the deadliest warrior race at 85. 

• Orcs possess an interesting racial ability called Bloodfury, which increases their attack power by a significant amount. Add this to a macro, along with certain trinkets, and use it to really smash face when you need to.
• Additionally, Orcs possess Hardiness, a 15% resistance to all stuns and knockout effects. What with Warriors already having an anti-rogue arsenal, Orcs stand as the greatest rogue slayers of all.
• The Orc Expertise with Axes is a useful raid DPS ability, if an exe is the best weapon availalbe.

Tauren

• A 5% increase to base health seems amazingly useful at high levels for any prospective tank, especially with Cataclysm raiding, except that it doesn't scale well at high level, giving far less than 5%. Perhaps this will be changed in a later patch.

Also useful is war stomp, an almost strictly a PvP ability, but also useful for leveling, that gives them a crucial short range AoE stun. This can also interrupt trash mobs when dungeoning/raiding.

Trolls

Trolls are something gain innumerable points for style and uniqueness. There just aren't too many of them around. For PvE their Berserkingputs them ahead of the Undead as DPS or Tanks.

• Berserking increases attack speed by a decent amount.
• Increased damage Vs beasts is useful for leveling and some PvE content.
• Regeneration - Very little help in combat and your bandages will probably take care of the out of combat part. So while any regen is nice, it's hardly significant.
• Increased crit with throwing and bows - nice for Hunters, but since you're only using thrown wpns and bows for pulling it's not very interesting.
• Do Voodoo Shuffle reduces movement altering effects, such as from Slow spells.

Undead

Finally, Undead, another race with no PvE abilities and one great PvP abilitiy.  Will of the Forsaken is a solid racial, PvP wise, granting a free break from fear, sleep, and charm effects every 2 minutes, yet in PvE wise it’s almost useless, aside from specific boss fights.

Cannibalize grants undead great post-fight regeneration ability, making them faster than other warrior races in long-term grinding.  Finally, underwater breathing has helped in the odd-scenario of being rooted underwater by an enterprising alliance druid, not to mention being handy for the various underwater quests from 60+.

Golbins

Coming with Cataclysm we have the Goblins.

• Rocket Jump is usable once per 2 minutes and can be a nice gap closer or escape.
• Haste is increased for the Goblins, which is nice for the end-game.
• Vendor Discounts and a Personal Bank have little combat use, as does their increased Alchemy skill.

Blood Elves

With Cataclysm the Blood Elves became Warriors

• Arcane Torrent restores some rage and silences nearby opponents for 3 seconds, players for 2. This makes it a pretty useful ability every 2 min.
• Increased enchanting skill

Overall

All in all I’d recommend you consider whether you value looks or maximized power first, and then take your pick of either Tauren for tanking, Gnome or Human for PvP, although admittedly Orcs also have a strong case for being PvP champions as well. Then, of course, we have the Squids... er... Draenei for their not insignificant +1% hit.

 

Tradeskills

Another large consideration when beginning your warrior is what tradeskills to pick up, and making this decision will seriously affect the future of how you obtain both gear and cash for the grinds to 80..

Epic flying mounts require over 5000 gold, for mount and training, your ground epic mount a much smaller, yet still high amount.  To reach these requires often dedicated gold making, and for that pursuit I’d recommend picking up a combination of harvesting skills such as Herbalism, Skinning, or Mining. (Also see our gold guide for more tips.)

The crafting professions are all very expensive to level up and you should probably wait until 80+ to seriously level any of them since that's when the cash comes a little more freely. Of course, that's not such an issue if you farm all your mats (ugh.)

If you have to work on a crafting skill as you level... Either Engineering, or much more likely Blacksmithing, come to mind.  Engineering provides both enjoyment and PvP effectiveness in the form of numerous trinkets and utilities.

Blacksmithing allows you to craft powerful endgame armor or weapons with materials gathered personally and on the auction house/through raids.  Generally blacksmithing creations are more useful PvP wise than PvE, but this isn’t always the case.

Each of the professions offers self-only items or abilites. It's up to you to decide whether the self-only effects are worth the effort.

• Alchemy - in addition to creating all kinds of potions wil useful effects you will gain increased effects from your own potions. For example, youir Strength flasks gain an addition 80 points.
• Blacksmiths can add two gems sockets, one each to bracers and gloves. So that's two moire gems for Str or for your tanking stats
• Enchanting - Adds stats to your rings
• Engineering - Lots of nifty gadgets
• Inscription - 130 Str or 195 Stam to a shoulder slot
• Leatherworking has a bracer "enchant" which can increase your Stam by 195 or Str by 130.
• Jewelcrafting - You can use three gems that provide +67 stats instead of the usual +40.
• tailoring - For your cloak, does 1000 AP for 15 seconds, which sometimes procs on melee attacks, sound interesting?

4.2 Warrior Patch Notes

Some changes to class balance were made with 4.2. Here's an explanation of the thinking behind the changes. Here's the main 4.2 page.

Tanks, especially, will be interested in the 4.2 Crowd Control changes, here.

Warrior specific changes:

• Overpower now has a 1.5-second cooldown and global cooldown (Taste for Blood's Overpower cooldown has not changed).
• Recklessness and Deadly Calm can no longer be used at the same time. One cannot be used while the other is active, but using one does not put the other on its full cooldown.
• Retaliation, Recklessness and Shield Wall no longer have stance requirements.
• Talent Specializations
  • Arms: Two-Handed Weapon Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 12%, down from 20%.
  • Fury: Dual Wield Specialization weapon damage increase has been lowered to 5%, down from 10%.
• Warrior Bug Fixes: It is no longer possible in some encounters to use Charge when closer than its minimum range.

4.1 Warrior Patch Notes

You can see all of the 4.1 patch notes here.

• Charge and Intercept no longer have diminishing returns on their stun effects.
• Colossus Smash now ignores 50% of a hostile player's armor (PvP), but continues to ignore 100% of a non-player character's armor (PvE).
• Heroic Throw is now available from trainers at level 20.
• Heroic Leap is no longer on the global cooldown, similar to other warrior movement abilities.
• Inner Rage is now available at level 56.
• Intercept now has a 1.5-second stun, down from 3 seconds.
• Pummel is now usable in all stances.
• Rallying Cry (new ability) is available from trainers at level 83. It temporarily grants the warrior and all party or raid members within 30 yards 20% of maximum health for 10 seconds. After the effect expires, the health is lost. It has no cost, no stance requirements, and is not on the global cooldown. It has a 3-minute cooldown, but also shares a cooldown with Last Stand.
• Shield Bash has been removed from the game.
• Spell Reflection cooldown has been increased to 25 seconds, up from 10.
• Whirlwind now has its cooldown reduced by 6 seconds when it deals damage to 4 or more targets. The Whirlwind effect caused by Bladestorm remains unchanged.

Arms

• Improved Hamstring now reduces the global cooldown on Hamstring by 0.5/1 seconds in addition to its current effects.
• Juggernaut no longer adds 2 seconds to the Charge stun, but instead lowers the cooldown of Charge by 2 seconds (to 13 seconds total without the glyph).
• Lambs to the Slaughter now causes Mortal Strike to refresh Rend in addition to its current effects.
• Strikes of Opportunity value per point of mastery has been increased by 10%.

Fury

• Precision (passive) now increase auto-attack damage by 40%, in addition to the 3% hit it offers currently.
• Unshackled Fury now only grants 2 base points of mastery, down from 8.

Protection

• Shield Mastery no longer affects the cooldown of Spell Reflection, however, it now allows Shield Block to proc a second aura that reduces magic damage by 7/14/20% for 6 seconds.
• Gag Order now applies to Pummel and Heroic Throw, giving these abilities a 100% chance to silence the target for 3 seconds. In addition, Gag Order lowers the cooldown of Heroic Throw by 30 seconds.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Spell Reflection reduces the cooldown of Spell Reflection by 5 seconds, up from 1 second.

Warrior Abilities

Warriors are in the possessions of numerous ability choices, sectioned off into three distinct tree’s much like other classes, each with potential benefits and drawbacks based upon your desired style of play and generally lined up to focus on synergy with a specific talent tree.

However, above all, Warriors ability usage and capabilities are both improved and hindered based upon the current stance they utilize, those being: Battle, Defensive, and Berserker stance.  Each is focused upon a specific forte of the warrior, General Combat, Tanking, and Damage output respectively.

Depending on which stance you currently use your selection as to which abilities to use will be noticeably hindered with the sole exception of battle stance, which allow the usage of almost all attack types, although this too is with a few exceptions.

Battle Stance

This is your first and most basic stance. It increases your damage done by a small amount and decreases your damage taken by the same amount.

Defensive Stance

Defensive stance is the first stance warrior’s gain after battle stance, and is the cornerstone of all tanking from levels 10 up to the level cap   This stance gives you a solid 10% decrease in all damage and increase in aggro (threat) generated.

All in all defensive stance is useful more so to those intending to tank for teams or instances. Anyone planning to put those pursuits on hold until reaching maximum level will rarely find Defensive Stance helpful, much less required.

Berserker Stance

The stance is a 10% increase to damage and no longer increases damage taken. It used to require a quest, but that is no longer the case. You simple learn the stance from your trainer.

Berserker stance opens up a lot of new options when fighting, make certain to give your new abilities a workout along with the stance, this’ll allow you to determine which of the three you favor most for leveling, although berserker is an obvious choice for fury warriors.

The Whirlwind Weaponry

This quest, like the berserker stance quest, is now obsolete and is no longer available.

Core Abilities

With the release or WoW 4.0 all specializations of all classes received a set of unique abilities.

Fury: With 4.0 and Cataclysm you get certain Fury specific abilities. Whereas Arms is the two handed weapon expert, Fury is the berserking engine of destruction:

1. Bloodthirst hits your opponent for high damage and heals you slightly. This is your initial Fury ability.
2. Dual Weild Specialization: Increases overall damage by 10% and increases the off-hand damage by 25%
3. Precision: Increases your chance to hit by 3%
4. Mastery: Unshackled Fury - Various enraged/berserker abilities provide a benefit and this increases that benefit by 25%. Additional Mastery Rating increases that percentage.

Arms: With 4.0 (and Cataclysm) your Arms Specific abilities are:

• At level 10 you'll get Mortal Strike as your main attack
• You also get Two Handed Wepaon Specialization, for 10% more damage with the things.
• Anger Management is another specialization ability which allows for greater rage generation
• Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity: Obtained from your trainer at level 80) Each melee attack has a chance to trigger an additional swing for 75% damage. Additional Mastery rating will increase this chance.

With the Protection spec you pick up the following abilities:

• Shield Slam: Whack the target with your shield, dispell a magic effect on the target, and add a lot of threat.
• Sentinel: 15% more Stamina, 15% higher chance to block, and 50% more rage from attacking targets that aren't attacking you. This should help in sweeping up loose adds.
• Vengence: Each time you're hit you take 5% of the damage taken as Attack Power up to a max of 10% of your health. A level 85 Prot Warrior can have over 105k health (heck, some 80s do) so that's quite a bit of added Attack Power
• Mastery: Critical Block: You get an additional chance block and to Critically Block. Additional Mastery Rating increases the chance to block.

Taunt Mechanics

Taunt is definitely a core ability, but is complicated enough as to deserve its own section.  Taunt is one of the tank's greatest aids when dealing with either higher level party members pulling aggro or a few trigger happy hunters or mages.

What this ability does is not pull aggro for a set duration before releasing the mob, rather it brings your threat levels to an exact equal to whoever is currently holding the mobs attention, meaning that by following up taunt with revenge, shield slam, or a sunder, you solidify your hold on its aggro so long as you continue to output more threat than the other player.

This can be used to your advantage by waiting to taunt until the offending mage, warlock, or hunter in your group has unloaded with all cooldowns and major damage abilities, building up major threat within the space of a few seconds.  By taunting immediately afterwards, you effectively gain all of the threat they just built up plus your own after the taunt.

With Cataclysm Taunt apparantly no longer can miss, which will make tanking more reliable.

Charge & Intercept

These two serve a dual-purpose for both grinding and tanking, with charge being a staple rage-builder when mowing down mob after mob as well as reducing travel time slightly.  Charge also aids tanks in building the rage required to hold aggro on multiple mobs early into the fight.

Interception is much more of use in PvP for the most part, however when a mob starts chasing your healer, this ability can be easily used to catch up and either taunt or blast a shield slam onto the offending mob before they can catch their own target.

Other similar abilities include Intervene and Victory Rush, however these are covered later on.

Warrior Leveling

Note: For more a more in-depth look at leveling a warrior, check out our Warrior Leveling Guide

Leveling a warrior has become more easily accomplished with almost every patch, leading to the current status of warrior leveling nigh matching that of all other quickly leveling classes, most likely due to the increased emphasis on questing as opposed to long-term grinding.

As far as speed and style, this will largely depend on which talent tree you choose to emphasize, Fury being first amongst leveling speeds, arms second, and protection a very distant third (unless you're tanking instances.)  However, all things considered, each suits a different variety of player definition of ‘fun.’

If you're just looking to blast to 85 ASAP then you need Zygor's guide.

Fury Warriors

Fury leveling is focused on killing quickly and effectively through extremely fast attack speeds combined with a high critical and +hit rate, if possible.  These stats combine to generate a blender-speed whirlwind of (insert two weapons of choice) when mowing down mobs. Bloodthirst becomes your basic attack at level 10 and it adds a very small heal, which reduces some downtime.

Downtime is probably least with this build as well, lending itself to taking down opposition with minimal time spent and thus lessening the time the enemy spends beating on you, always helpful.  When combined with bandaging, this reduces downtime to almost nil.

Although the traditional build of fury is indeed dual-wield, there is also the variant of two-handed fury that boasts a leveling speed somewhere between that of dual-wield and an arms build, yet for many this difference in play style is more interesting/more fun for leveling regardless.

With the DUal Weilding ability there is little point to using two handed weapons, before Titan's Grip, other than just for style. Fury really is designed around dual weilding, especially since 4.0.

Arms Warriors

The Arms build is the second fastest leveling style, barring "flavor of the minute" changes, however it also presents itself as the greatest PvP build for both leveling and battlegrounds/arena’s, making it one of the more viable choices for those playing on PvP servers.

All in all this is a good change of style/pace for those tired of dual-wield or being slaughtered by other players frequently. Still, for those seeking to maximize leveling speeds, go fury.

If you're PvP leveling then stick with Arms. You'll do fine in the quests and you'll do better on the battlefields.

Protection Warriors

Protection is by far the slowest solo-leveling specialization for any warrior, no matter the gear nor personal playing ability, protection is simply too low on the damage output and downtime management to be a viable solo-alternative to either fury or arms,

When teaming frequently (for instances and raids) this becomes an entirely different matter. Any warrior with some good friends, seeking to spend more time in instances than outside, will find protection suddenly that much more viable.

With the introduction of the Dungeon Finder tool the Protection Warrior can level quickly as tanks. Tanks also have very short wait times for the dungeon queues, this means that if you like to tank and you're fine with dungeons then that short queue time will make the Protection Warrior the fastest leveling warrior of them all.

Additionally, when questing, a tank can always come in handy for tougher/elite group quests, making protection ideal for someone with at least one or two buddies at all times.

I won’t recommend it for leveling solo, but it’s definitely the party-players build of choice should they desire to soak up damage. Then again, a damage build makes killing speeds that much faster, it’s all up to you.

What Gear and When

Gearing is fairly simple thankfully, our core statistics being those of strength and stamina, as everyone can use a little more health, tanks most of all.  I’ll cover the fundamental increases and priorities, but the more specific build guides flesh this out further.

The 4.0 patch streamlined a lot of gear. Various stats, such as Armor Penetration went away and primary stats, such as Strength, became more important.

Strength is easy, more strength means more attack power, and by connection more damage, and also adds to block value for the defensively minded.  More damage is faster killing, less damage taken, and overall increased leveling speed with less downtime. With Cataclysm Str is by far the most important damage stat, for Fury and Arms, though not the most important threat stat (see below)

Critical is a stat generally lacking in earlier levels, the first appearing somewhere in the 40’s and even then in low amounts.  This stat plays best when combined with large amounts of strength, preferably picking up gear that has both stats in high amounts if possible.


Stamina is obvious, more health is always better, especially in PvP or when tanking, and given our utter lack of healing aside from crusader enchants, bloodthirst, and bandaging. You’ll find that large amounts of stamina saves you a lot of corpse runs and thus time. For leveling, at low levels, we recommend stacking as much Stam as is possible.

Hit Rating isn't necessary while leveling (you'll have enough from your talents,) but is important for PvP and very important for raiding damage output. 5% is good for PvP and 8% is good for raids.

• Arms and Fury want 8% Hit total, before any other stats
• Prot doesn't need the Hit.

Intellect and Spirit have no business being on any piece of your gear, ever.

Agility Especially with 4.0 agility is less important than strength or +crit generally.

Mastery is a poor stat for Fury and Arms, though Prot Warriors, going for avoidance, value it highly.

Haste seems to be the least valuable stat for all Warriors.

For tanking duties:

• Mitigation: The idea is to maximize your avoidance & blocking. This evens out incomming damage and has the nice side-benefit of making things easier on your healer. Vengence and your other abilities should provide more than adequate threat.
  Go for: Stamina > Mastery > Parry > Dodge
• Threat: For whatever reason you feel it's necessary to maximize threat. Expertise negates the boss parries which not only means you hit more often, but it means the boss doesn't get an attack buff from a successful parry which means you live longer.
  go for: Expertise > Hit > Strength > Crit

Warrior PvP

This section covers some basics, check out our Warrior PvP Guide for more.

PvP as a warrior is probably one of the most enjoyable experiences in the game as far as I’m concerned. There is nothing better than baring down on an offending cloth wearing caster, busting out trinkets to break whatever roots and snares they possess, and dropping them in 2-3 hits with massive damage.

However, this obviously isn’t the way all or even most battles go, otherwise we’d be seeing the nerfbat quite soon. Rrather, most fights head the opposite way quite quickly, especially when caught by surprise by anything from a mage to even rogues.

Perhaps the most key element to general warrior combat, which takes some work, is always being prepared for every single class and talent build. Preparation ahead of time gives us the ability to use our numerous counter-attacks and adjust ourselves to the opponent’s style of combat quickly enough to prevent being slaughtered by the opposition.

Muscle Memory

Of all the classes I’ve played in PvP, meaning every class in world of warcraft, warriors required the most instinctive play as opposed to actual well-thought out strategies, how much I played seemed to drastically improve my abilities as opposed to training myself for specific fights.

I sometimes use a Nostromo gaming pad, sometimes not, I've also experimented with special macro set-ups for specific classes, but either way I found that whether I could mash the required key before my opponent could react decided most fights before they even began.

Hitting charge before you’re forced into ‘combat’ status, mashing intercept to catch the sprinting rogue and following it up with hamstring, intervene a team-mate to gain ground or help them fight off another player, all these are determined by how well your hands know what you’re doing as opposed to conscious thought patterns.

Whether you’re Arms, Fury, or Protection, if you can master your keys and hit them in proper succession with your eyes closed, you’ve probably reached the level where you need to worry more about gear than experience.

Arms Warrior PvP

Arms and thus, Mortal Strike, is the PvP build of choice for 90% of the warriors you’ll see, likely 99% in the higher w brackets, and this comes with good reason as well.  Mortal strike, combined with big critical strikes, is the absolute greatest utility a warrior can bring to any PvP scenario, whether you’re playing solo, in the chaos of battlegrounds, or fighting alongside well-trained allies in Arena.

Warriors will always lead the assist-train death charge, Mortal strike exposes even the strongest and well-healed players to possible slaughter within those few seconds. Given that the attack gives you a healthy (although not for your opponent) burst of damage as well, it’s nigh-unthinkable not to open a fight with a Hamstring-Mortal Strike combo.

Arms warriors are essentially kill-captains, they point and everyone else jumps on the player with reduced healing, and slowed down by hamstring, to take them out before they react to their sudden lack of health.

Fury Warrior PvP

PvP as a fury warrior is considerably more difficult than that of Arms, mostly the fact that you no-longer bring a healing debuff and high instant damage to the table, instead replacing it with a consistently high DPS more apt for slaying mobs than players, especially those with healers.

To make up at least partially for your lack of utility, you’ll have to be geared to the teeth and possess amazing reflexes to bring the pain to opponents constantly moving, strafing, and generally making it a pain to keep up constant DPS throughout the fight.

There are high ranking PvPers who go with Fury, but they are few and it does take more work than Arms.

Protection Warrior PvP

Protection warrior PvP is, for the most part, a largely laughable enterprise, consisting of being kited by hunters and other such ranged classes as they constantly ignore your pitiful hits (of about 1/10 the damage of other warriors.)

On the flipside, you’ll be more than capable of deflecting high-damage spells such as pyroblast and other opener combo’s with more than a little luck combined with good reflexes.  Rogues will find you utterly infuriating to take down as you disarm them and slowly beat them into the ground.

Finally, you definitely have the element of surprise, 90% of warriors being Arms, 10% Fury, and that nonexistent 0% protection like yourself – Use this advantage well.

Check out our Protection Warrior Guide for more in-depth information on warrior tanking

Warrior Raiding

Raiding is probably warrior’s greatest point, whether you’re a fury warrior looking to bust out big numbers and hit the top 5 on DPS charts or a protection specced tank wanting to help others bring the beat down to all manner of boss fight.

These two roles, DPS and Tank, are the only ones Warriors are capable of fulfilling for obvious reasons.  Arms warriors previously had been left behind in PvE, but the 4.0+ patches seem to have brought that spec up to at least par with Fury.

Additionally for DPS warriors wanting to make their way into raid dungeons as well, check our Fury Warrior Guide or Arms Warrior Guide