Warrior Classic Guide

Here is the deal nobody sugarcoats for you. Levelling a Warrior in Classic is a slog. You have no self healing worth mentioning, you eat food and slap on bandages between every other pull, and a bad pull means a corpse run. You will look at Hunters and Mages mowing down packs and quietly hate them.

Then you hit 60, pick up a fast offhand and a slow two hander, and everything flips. The Warrior is the only class that tanks Molten Core and BWL properly, and Fury Warriors top the damage meters once they are geared. Threat, mitigation, raid utility, the meters, all of it runs through the Warrior. You are the spine of the raid. People who quit at level 30 never find that out.

This is a gear and rage class. Naked, you are useless. Decked out with a Mighty Rage Potion, full world buffs and a Flask of the Titans, you are a problem for the entire enemy faction. The skill ceiling is high because so much of the class is about weapon swap timing, stance dancing, and reading rage.

Spec Arms while levelling, not Fury. This sounds wrong because Fury is the raid DPS tree, but at low levels you have no rage and Fury does nothing for you. Arms gives you Deep Wounds, Impale, and the rage you actually need from a slow two hander that hits hard per swing. Get to Mortal Strike eventually if you want, but really you just want big white hits and Heroic Strike.

Use a slow two handed weapon. The whole game with a Warrior is "rage per hit," and a slow weapon means each Heroic Strike and each crit is huge. Keep a fast weapon in the bags for when you need to proc things, but for grinding, slow and heavy wins.

The survival kit

• Always carry food and stacks of bandages. Bloodrage to start fights with rage already up.
• Fight one mob at a time until you have Sweeping Strikes or Cleave gear. Two mobs can kill you.
• Tab target and Hamstring runners. Nothing wastes more time than chasing a fleeing mob to half a zone away.
• Get First Aid leveled. It is your only real healing for forty plus levels.

It gets much better around 40 when you get your mount and Berserker Stance, and again at 60 when gear starts flowing. Grit your teeth through the 30s. The class is worth it.

Tanking

Your job is threat and not dying. Open with Bloodrage on the pull, Shield Slam the instant you have the rage, then build Sunder Armor to five stacks as fast as possible while keeping Heroic Strike queued. Revenge whenever it lights up. The DPS will pull off you if you slack for even a few globals, so the cardinal rule is: never stop pressing buttons. Watch your rage, and if you are flush, you are not Heroic Striking enough.

Defensively, you want to reach the point where boss melee swings can never crush you. That is 102.4 percent combined miss, dodge, parry, and block against a raid boss. Until you are there, crushing blows for thirty percent extra damage will scare your healers. Shield Block covers two swings, so chain it.

DPS

In Berserker Stance you Whirlwind on cooldown, Bloodthirst or Mortal Strike on cooldown depending on spec, and dump spare rage into Heroic Strike or Cleave. The trick most people miss is queueing Heroic Strike so it rides on your next white swing without clipping it. With a fast offhand you get more Flurry and Windfury procs (if a Shaman is in your group, beg for Windfury Totem, it is the single biggest DPS boost a melee group can get). Pop Death Wish, trinkets, and a Mighty Rage Potion together for burst.

For DPS the priority is roughly: hit rating up to the cap, then crit, attack power, strength, and agility. Hit is king because a missed special is a missed Bloodthirst or a missed Heroic Strike, and Flurry uptime lives and dies on landing crits. You want 9 percent hit if dual wielding to soft cap your specials, plus the dual wield miss penalty makes early hit even more valuable.

Weapons matter more than anything else on a Warrior. A slow, hard hitting main hand for Heroic Strike and Windfury, paired with a fast offhand for more swings, is the classic setup. Chase weapon upgrades above almost any armor piece.

For tanking, stack defense to remove crits (you want enough to not be crit by raid bosses), then stamina, then avoidance and block value. Threat gear is a separate set: hit, crit, and strength so your Sunders and Shield Slams land and hit hard. Good tanks carry multiple gear sets and swap per fight.

Do not skip enchants and consumables. Crusader on your weapons, Elixir of the Mongoose, Juju Power, Juju Might, Mighty Rage Potions, and the Dire Maul and world buffs (Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, Songflower, Warchief's Blessing) push your output through the roof. Geared Warriors are also buffed Warriors.

Warrior PvP is a feast or famine experience. Land a charge, stun, and your full burst, and most targets are dead before they react. Get kited by a Frost Mage or peeled off your target and you do nothing. The whole game is sticking to people.

Your toolkit for that is Charge, Intercept, Hamstring, Piercing Howl, and an engineering kit. Net o Matic, Goblin Sapper Charges, and bombs are not optional if you are serious. Stance dancing wins fights: Berserker Rage to break fear, Battle Stance to fish for Overpower after a dodge, Defensive Stance to Spell Reflect a Pyroblast back at the Mage who cast it.

Against healers, Mortal Strike is your friend. Against casters, Pummel and Spell Reflection. Against Rogues, trinket the stun, Retaliation or Death Wish, and pray. A Mighty Rage Potion turns a losing fight into a win more often than you would think.

Engineering is close to mandatory for any Warrior who PvPs. The grenades, the Net o Matic, Goblin Sapper Charges, and the trinkets give you the ranged control and burst the class otherwise lacks. It is a gold sink and a pain to level, but it is the difference maker.

For pure PvE, the usual money pairing is Mining plus Blacksmithing if you want to craft your own gear (Lionheart Helm, the Dark Iron set pieces, and various weapons are real upgrades), or just two gathering professions for gold so you can fund your consumables. A Warrior at the raiding level burns a fortune in flasks, elixirs, and Mighty Rage Potions every single night.

Whatever you pick, max First Aid. It is your only heal for most of the game and it saves runs.

• Queue Heroic Strike, do not spam it. It is an "on next swing" ability. Press it once when you have rage and let it ride your next white hit. Spamming it just wastes rage.
• Stance dancing has a cost. You lose most of your rage when you swap stances, but Tactical Mastery from the Arms tree lets you keep some. Plan your swaps around your big abilities.
• Overpower needs a dodge. It only lights up after the enemy dodges you, and it cannot be dodged or blocked. It is a Battle Stance ability, so this is a classic dance: get dodged, swap to Battle, Overpower, swap back.
• Slow main hand, fast offhand. The slow weapon carries Heroic Strike and Windfury, the fast one feeds Flurry and procs. This is the bread and butter melee setup.
• Sunder Armor threat is per cast, not per stack. Spamming Sunder builds threat fast even before all five stacks land, which is why it is your panic threat button.
• Run without Salvation. Tanks and DPS Warriors usually want Paladins to skip them on Blessing of Salvation so they keep full threat. Make sure your Paladin knows.