Avian Gamers Network

I've made several in-depth posts over at the Outcasts forums on Warrior stuff (tanking, fury, arms, gear, etc.). Reposting here to share


Alright, if you're reading this post you've either rolled a warrior, or are interested in how this class works. The warrior may just be one of the most complex classes in the game... not just in playing the toon, but also in figuring out what gear you want.

First question I ask is, are you still leveling? If so, then Fury, fury, fury. Otherwise, I need to ask a second question: DPS or Tank ?


I. Damage warrior

Damage Warrior: Just because you are a damage warrior, don't expect to never be called upon to tank! You wear plate and have aggro pulling techniques that no other class has. This section will focus on how to best be a dps warrior, but I urge you to still read the tanking section.

How to spec? Obviously, you aren't going to be putting any talent into the protection page, so the question that remains is... Arms or Fury? They each have their respective benefits. Those of you who've known me long enough, may recall the days when I was almost always top5 on the damage meters in MC & ZG. I was 20 Arms 31 Fury. Fury does the most damage if you prefer to dual wield. If you're more interested in wielding a big-ass 2-hander, then go arms. I will always recommend Dual Wield fury for the damage warrior for 2 reasons:

1) 2 weapons = 2 enchants = more procs.
2) 2 weapons = more swings = more rage.

As a Dual Wield warrior, your main-hand weapon is the most important. If you're a human, try to go w/swords when you have the choice... but obviously, if a sweet epic axe drops you're gonna go for it . What you need to balance is speed vs damage. A weapon that swings more often will generate more rage. A weapon that does more damage per swing will generate bigger crits. You will need to find a balance that works best for your play style & stats. If you have a large crit% I would suggest the slower & bigger hitting weapon. If you don't have much crit% then I would recommend a faster weapon that will hit/proc more often & generate rage faster. Your off hand weapon (unless you've spent the points on the fury page) will only be about 25% as effective as the weapons stats. Your off-hand is mainly there for the extra enchant/proc, and to help (significantly) generate more rage. A DW Fury warrior w/pts in DW will do some serious damage. You also heal yourself quite a bite when spec'ing Fury, via your talent tree. As far as your gear goes, you are looking for Strength & Agility mainly... rarely found together on 1 piece, you will need to do some mixing & matching.


II. Tank

So, you wanna tank. Most people think this just means dumping all your points into the protection tree & going toe-toe w/the mob in defensive stance. Most of your really good tanks however, are hybrid tanks... meaning they've got points in arms &/or fury as well as protection. Whether you decide to put the other points in Fury or Arms is up to you. I've tried both, and currently I'm Arms. If you're fury you do some self-healing, which is a nice bonus. If you're Arms, your Mortal Strike will reduce the effectiveness of your Mob's healing (if they are capable of healing themselves). I like the MS skill... I'm in his face & preventing max self-heals in the process.. I rely on my healers to keep me up more than the BS/BC warrior does though. The protection tree has diminishing returns, and putting more than 25 or so points in it is a bad idea. Let's start with this page though, as some of the talents are absolutely necessary to be an effective tank. Your gear will be focusing on Strength & Stamina.

Protection Skills:
Shield or anticipation? This is a matter of personal preference, and benefits of each can be argued. Both? .... only if you are not going to go all the way on either arms or fury (a valid build imho). If you go shield, then do put the 3 points into Improved Shield Block.

Toughness: Put 4 in here.

Iron Will: I re-spec'd points out of here and didn't notice a terribly big difference.

Defiance: Absolutely, all 5!

Improved Blood Rage: Are you nuts? Of course, max it out!

Last Stand: a real life-saver... get it.

Everything else isn't all that great, the points are better spent on other pages.


Fury Skillz (if going Arms, skip this section)
Cruelty: All 5
Booming Voice: Not a good idea imo, if you have no pts here, you never have to worry if you'll pull another mob when you use your demoralizing shout.
Unbridled Wrath: 5, it's all about the rage!
Improved Cleave: All 3, greatly helps hold aggro when tanking multiple mobs at once.
Blood Craze: All 3, nice self-heal that procs often, until you have uber gear anyway.
Dual Wield: Yes, all 5
Improved Execute: NONE. Why would you want to spend 2 points to save 5 rage, when you're going to blow all your rage on this shot anyway?
Enrage: All 5
Flurry: Unfortunately, you can only afford 3 points here
Bloodthirst: yes please! use it often

Arms Talents
I've sacrificed some damage going arms, but not alot. Like I said earlier, I really wanted to reduce the mob's healing... that's why I went arms instead of fury.. I may switch back
Improved Heroic Strike: all 3. It's a nice ability when you're having trouble generating some rage, and once rolling, it's a nice rage-dump skilll
Deflection: 3 damage mitigation ftw
Rend: 3 we're trying to do max dps & also build rage, right?
Improved Charge: 2 rage ftw
Tactical Mastery: Do you really want to be STUCK in 1 stance (i didn't mind, as a fury tank, but it IS a restriction)
Improved Overpower: 2 (do i even need to explain why?! +50% crit on overpower!)
Anger Management: 1 save the rage
Deep Wounds: 3 More DoTs !!
Impale: 2 +20% dmge on a crit!
Sweeping strikes: 1 i never use it, but u need it to get Mortal Strike
Sword Specialization: 5 6% chance to get an extra sword swing in! Procs more than you'd think.
Mortal Strike: 1 aah... our goal for this page


SUPER HYBRID TANK 17 / 17 / 17 ( I'm still experimenting here, in my spare time .... and you people wonder I how spend 200g in a weekend & have no new items... lol)

arms
IHS 3, IR 3
TM 5
IO 2, DW 3
Impale 1

Fury
Cruelty 5
U Wraith 5
IC 2, BC 3
DW 2

Protection
Shield 5 OR Anticipation 5
IBR 2, Toughness 4
Last Stand 1, Defiance 5





Those horribly wonderful +stats ie... what the heck does it all mean?!

1 str = 2 attack power
14 attack power = 1 dps
20 agility = 1% crit

found after lots of research & experimenting w/gear & a calculator


I highly recommend you download a mod called "Tank Points"
It takes your gear & gives you a value called your tank points. EXTREMELY useful if you're unsure between 2 items... swap gear & see how the number changes. If you click on the number, it brings up a window, you can input the stats of the item you're looking at but haven't bought... or haven't equipped & made soulbound yet... and tells you what the new tank points # will be if you wear that item. Excellent money saver / decision helper!!!!!!


Damage mitigation
If you're interested to see how much damage reduction you get as your armor increases, this is a very useful page:

http://www.worldofwar.net/guides/damagereduction.php



I've been trying to find an exact equation for defense vs armor. At what point are they equal (ie +1def = 50 armor .... this is a guess i invented to illustrate, not based at all on fact). I'm having trouble finding this equation, but I do have some info on +def. Based on this info, I would temporarily use the equation: 1 def = 15 armor to help decide between gear that has vastly different armor ratings but defensive attributes. The +def is unfortunately NOT a constant variable, as it is based on the ATTACKER, not you...



Defense
From WoWWiki
An armor attribute and modifying skill that allows a character to defend themselves by using armor effectively to reduce damage and avoiding or dodging attacks.

For an attack from an even level NPC, each point in defense will:

Increases the chance of being missed by an attack by .04%
Increases the chance to Dodge an attack by .04%
Increases the chance to Parry an attack by .04%
Increases the chance to Block an attack by .04%
Decreases the chance of being affected by a Crit or Critical Hit by .04%

This means that effectively, every 25 defense increases your chance to be missed, to dodge, block, parry by 1%, and reduces your chance to be crit by 1%. Because all NPCs have a 5% crit rate, at 425 defense, a level 60 NPC effectively will not crit you.


In addition, defense decreases the chance of being affected by a Crushing Blow. Each point of defense will decrease the chance of being affected by a Crushing Blow by 2%. The benefit that defense will have on a Crushing Blow is limited by your level. In other words, increasing your defense will only reduce the chance of being struck by a crushing blow if your current defense value is below your level’s maximum unbuffed value.


Vlad

Also, for Fury warriors you'll want to stack as much +% hit as possible, without severely gimping your other stats. You have a base miss rate of 24% when you DW. The more you miss the less damage you do, and the less rage you get.. it's as simple as that. The "holy trinity" of Fury is 1000 unbuffed AP, +10% hit, and 25% crit. Of course, to get that you'll need very good gears.

If you're solely focused on PvE DPS, then don't worry about your HP. There are exceptions where you will sustain a lot of AoE damage and high HP would be helpful, but for the most part you don't need a lot of HP.

Also, if you're dedicated to dealing damage as a warrior, then realize that you cannot switch from DPS to tanking mid-battle. With your DPS gear on you won't last that much longer than a rogue would. We can tank just fine if the situation arises, but we need to put on the tanking gears BEFORE the battle starts. This means that you should try not to pull aggro, thus ALWAYS get Blessing of Salvation on you at all times.

There are really good Fury guides written by well-respected Fury warriors in the community. Perhaps I will post some links later. You can also check out my CTProfile for some gear ideas. I have three wishlists, one is for short term goal, one long term, and one is a dream list of all the best items for Fury.

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Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... n=Thermoon

Ok, just messing around, I think I am gonna try this build:

0/16/35

While I know my dps is gonna be a joke, until I get more practice and better gear, I want to be able to take alot of dmg without driving my healers nuts, though Leanna and Laelith did not seem to be running too low on mana keeping me upright. Basically, thinking this might be a nice set of "training wheels" till I get more experience as a tank in groups, etc (spent most of lvl 1-59 solo). Also, I do not PVP, so no worries on that end.

Figure I can always go Arms or Fury once I feel more secure in my abilities, etc. And if the build sucks, I am still below the 50g mark on retrains, so I can always switch back to another build.

For damage mitigation, you'll need Deflection in the Arms tree and 5/5 Shield Spec -> 1/3 Imp Shield Block. Those are pretty much the best talents available to warriors for minimizing damage. Blood Craze does heal you when you get crit but it's not much, and with healers on you it'll be overhealing in a lot of the cases -- plus, you're trying to avoid critted.

This is the build I would go with: 13/5/31.

Arms
- 2/3 Imp HS for rage efficiency
- 5/5 Deflection for a 5% damage reduction
- 5/5 TM to retain rage while switching stances
- Anger Management for a free rage every 3 seconds

Fury
- +5% for more threat and rage

Prot
- Shield Spec for damage mitigation and rage
- 1/3 Imp Shield Block for more damage mitigation
- Imp Bloodrage for more rage and to lead to...
- Last Stand for emergency situations
- 5/5 Toughness for damage mitigation
- 5/5 Defiance for more threat
- Imp Sunder Armor for rage efficiency
- Imp Shield bash for those annoying casters
- 1-H Spec for more threat and rage
- Concussion Blow because it leads to...
- Shield Slam for very good threat generation, and it gets better the more block value your shield has

That's my 2 cents.

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Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... n=Thermoon