f13.net

OK, I got envious of the rogue's spec talk thread and decided to make one for us.  I know there are a few other warriors who frequent this board.

The conventional wisdom seems to be (leaving aside the cookie-cutter 31 arms/20 fury, which I'm sure is the pwnzor) that arms/fury is for leveling and PvP and protection spec is for instances etc.

I'm trying to come up with something remotely innovative, so I respecced to the following last night:  31 arms including 5 mace specialization (~10% chance to stun for 3 seconds) and 4 axe spec.  That gives me around (I think) 9% chance to crit with my axe given my current agi and items.  The rest is in protection since I'm still only 51 and will need to instance my way to 60 I think, given the current climate (PvP server).  That is in toughness (+10% to armor from items) and sheild spec. I got all enamored of shield spec after hearing one guy say he sometimes took 5-10 damage with shield block up from 60 elite mobs.

Am I insane?  What are your favorite specs?  Is there room for innovation in the system at all?  Discuss?

31 arms/ 15 protection/5 fury builds and minor variations thereof are very popular and flexible.  You get Mortal Strike (which is pretty much a must have, sadly enough) and the +5% to crit in fury.  You have 15 points to play with in Protection.  For example, you can get improved block 1, improved bloodrage 2, last stand, toughness 3 and defiance 3.  Or grab som eimproved revenge, or max toughness & defiance or whatever.  I am of two minds on defiance (every bit of aggro helps vs almost none of my aggro comes from the damage I do and 1.15 times zero is still zero--I have speced in and out of it a few times and am not sure I've seen anything more than a placebo effect).

The main problem is that the protection tree is not very good.  Not very good at protecting (the best defensive skill bar none is deflection, at the base of teh Arms tree), and not very good at much else.  The last patch made protection even weaker by castrating the one testicle shield block had left.

I am not so sure that spending points on 2 weapon specializations is a good idea, especially if you skip Cruelty (which gives you +5% to crit with every weapon) to do so.  I am not a fan of mace specialization, because of diminishing returns on stuns.  But beating things with maces is cool.  Cruelty + axe/pole spec + using an axe/pole gives you  +10% crits, which has nice synergy with deep wounds and impale.  Axe is better because its placement (at 20 rather than 25) lets you get improved hamstring without spending more than 31 in Arms and because there are 1 handed axes and no 1 handed poles.  This is why the arcanite reaper costs eleven jillion gold pieces.

Improved hamstring is much better than it seems for PvP.  As is piercing howl, but then you are in 31/20 territory.

I'm 31/20. It sucks in instances when I have to use my shield, but frankly when I was full protection specced, the pallys still drew more aggro than me. It's a borked line IMO. The problem with the warrior is that the talent lines are horribly useless outside of the cookie cutter, plus going without mortal strike is a death warrant.

I really only got the axe spec because I needed the points to get to MS.  I didn't think much of improved hamstring, but next time I respec I will definitely look at that.

The main reason I went with maces as my primary weapon spec is that it seemed like a good compromise between arms and protection.  A stunned mob is not doing any damage, and that can save quite a bit of DPS depending on how hard and fast it hits.  The stun effect in PvP is just gravy (but not very yummy gravy, I'll admit).

I do really want cruelty, but I hadn't found room in the build.  I could shoehorn it in but I would shortchange my protection tree, which I'm starting to think wouldn't be that bad.  With Cruelty I'd be at about 14% crit, which isn't bad for someone not really building for crit.

Oooooh, Warrior.  Now you're in my wheelhouse:

31/20 arms/fury is indeed the most popular build.  I hesitate to call it cookie cutter because it's effectiveness isn't an accident.  Most people base their "effectiveness" of a build by how well they do in duels, and that sort of build gives you high crit chances (with axe/polearm spec and cruelty) as well as high burst damage from stacking Deep Woulds, Impale, and Mortal Strike altogether with a crit.  The fact that it halves healing effectiveness is great vs Healer classes too.

However, I'd argue that dueling really teaches you aspects of how to be better at PvP. For instance, dueling is a purely one on one exercise, with pre-set rules.  The opponent on the other side may have a friend hanging out with him, or may choose to use whatever potions he wishes. In those situations, some of your dueling strategies may not work so well. It also allows you to be a bit "lazier" with your spec.  I don't have a 31/20 spec, and I seem to do fairly well in PVP.  Not dominant, but enough to feel credible.

Jayce: the main concern with your initial build is that generally speaking, going mace and going axe is considered inefficient, because you're generally only using one weapon at a time; those 4 or 5 points you're giving up could of been plowed back into something else, like improved hamstring (more of a pvp skill, but has some PvE applications, if you're willing to stance twist), Sweeping Strikes, or more Two handed weapon specialization. One generally accepted way to do things is to take stock of what your best weapon is, and build your weapon spec points towards that weapon.  If you find a better weapon, respec as necessary.  This is costly, but as you get deeper into the high level territory, you're less likely to test and play with various weapons, and will eventually stick with the one big weapon you like the most.  As for one handed weapons, one could argue that aggro control isn't totally based on damage dealt, but let's talk about that later on. I would take Axe over Mace specialization, all things being equal, for these reasons:

1. Stuns have diminishing returns; after about your 3rd, 4th stun, you should start seeing "immune" messages popping up. When you couple this with skills like the stun chance with improved revenge, and you may hit the cap very early in the fight, meaning subsequent stuns won't apply.  Whereas there's no diminishing returns on criticals. In addition, may end game bosses are immune to stun.

2. The Arms tree arguably is build around burst damage.  Overpower, Mortal Strike, and Impale all are build on weapon damage done instantly.  This means that you want the highest maximum damage value possible on the weapon.  And with two weapons with comparable DPS, this usually means that you want the slowest weapon possible.  This tends to play well into Axes.  The Mace Specialization however, is built around getting more hits in, to get more chances to land a stun.  This plays better towards faster weapons, which get in more swings over time.

- The knock on shield spec is that when you reach the high level bosses and enemies in the hardest of instances, the amount blocked is negliable compared to the damage that the enemy actually deals, because it's a flat value, not a %. That being said, I took Shield specialization, and for the instances I do, it works just fine.

Here's one way to do the Arms/Cruelty/Protection build (not in any order):

5 points Cruelty.
2 points Deflection, 3 points Improved Rend
5 points Tactical Mastery
2 points Overpower, 3 points Deep Wounds
3 points 2 Handed weapon spec, 2 points Impale
5 points Axe Specialization
1 point Sweeping strike, 4 points free (suggested places include Improved Hamstring for heavy PVP use, Deflection for better defense, Anger Management for a boost to rage, 2 Handed weapon specialization for even more damage)
1 point in Mortal Strike
5 points Shield Specialization
5 points Toughness
1 point Improved Shield block
3 points Improved Revenge
1 point goes into whatever.

Where this build shines is that you're able to do fairly big damage.  You're looking at +10% base crit ability with just Axe spec and Cruelty.  In addition, you have 6% extra damage whenever you're using a 2h weapon. Deep Wounds and Overpower will serve you well versus Rogues, and if you have Hamstring, you can slow down many classes, especially those without blink. Toughness should help you vs melee classes, and Tactical Mastery is very useful.  Here are a few situations where I'm glad I have tactical mastery:

1. Start in battle stance, swap to defensive stance to disarm an opponent.
2. Swapping from Battle stance to Berzerker stance to use pummel to stop a mage from casting a spell.
3. Charge a flee opponent.  Opponent takes a hit or two, starts running. Change stance to berzerker, use Intercept to stun again, and finish your opponent off.

With regards to aggro control, I like the shield blocking because it automatically leads us to Revenge, which can't be triggered unless you block, dodge, or parry an attack.  With the extra 5% block chance that improved shield spec gives you, that gives you an 80% chance to block an attack, driving up the chances that you're able to block an attack to 4 out of 5, pretty good odds. Revenge, plus the revenge stun do wonders for tanking, and with the stun, give you some free damage mitigation. If you don't really see the value in stunning things, I'd instead go with anticipation, toughness, and probably defiance.

As for aggro control, I've found that a few skills really seem to help.  Shield Block/Revenge combo as a base ability to work with, Taunt in emergencies, and Sunder Armor. Those three skills tend to do a fairly solid of pulling aggro off most players in emergencies.  If things are really dire, I'll swap stances and use Mocking Blow, but that's very rare.  For the sake of brevity, I'm going to post my build in a future post.

Edit: Or hey, I can just post this link instead: http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?102483 and click the Talents tab. If you have any questions about the build, just ask.  And yes, that's on a PvE server.  I don't know if it does enough front-loaded damage to be a safe build on a ganktastic PvP server.

Protection tank here level 34 (10 points in fury balance in protection).

I've taken Defiance to increase the threat of my attacks (pve) but I am wondering about how aggro is elicited in wow (outside taunt):

1.  Attack rate?
2.  Attack power? (damage)
3.  Same attack power, but dual wield or go for 2 hander?

Views on any of these variables in affecting threat level? 

#3 I mean if the attack power is the same, which might be better 1 or 2 handed?

Thanks in advance.

I was going to talk about my spec, but heh, I guess it's the cookie cutter.

5 points in cruelty, some points in protection for improved blocking/iron will/toughness, and everything else in arms. I'm going sword spec though.

I missed how the block rate can be 80%.  At the start of the protection tree you can increase your block rate by 5% - what am I missing - where does 80% come from?

Also, I understand strength affects the amount of damage you block with - but how does this work mechanically? e.g.  shield has a block rating, but how much is that really modified by strength?

Jpark: My general understanding on Aggro is that it's generally based off pure damage.  This would explain mages overpulling with their spells, I suppose. Healing also can draw attention (note: apparently Paladin healing doesn't have aggro though). Because of the notion that damage builds aggro, you may be tempted to use either 2 weapons or a large 2H weapon to maximize damage. However, keep in mind that it's not just damage that gets warriors aggro. Here are some basic tools that will also help:

1.Sunder Armor: tends to build a decent amount of aggro. It's effectiveness has gone down a bit because of the redone block/miss/parry rates, since recalculations have improved everyone's to-hit, and by extention, damage rates.

2. Shield Block/Revenge: Probably the best way to get aggro if you have some points in the defensive tree, and it's not bad even if you don't. Revenge generates a lot more aggro than the raw damage it deals.

3. Taunt: Taunt's the easiest one to use, and also one of the weirdest. Keep in mind that Taunt only focuses the attention of the monster on you temporarily; it doesn't actually give you any "aggro points". So you will have to work to build aggro on you while the enemy is still hitting you (this is where shield block/revenge comes in handy). In much smaller, casual encounters, usually getting the attention of the monster on you is enough, because the enemy will fall fast to concentrated combat.  However in higher level instances/boss fights, this probably won't cut it.

4. Mocking Blow: See Taunt, same idea.  It comes in handy for Defensive Spec Warriors who are in emergency mode, or as a comfortable skill to use for Warriors who desire to stay in the Battle Stance.

The main problem with Dual Wield is the built in miss rate with using 2 weapons.  It's somewhere on the order of 25%. However, it's probably the most consistant, smooth gain of rage out of the 2H/Dual Wield/1h and Shield mentality. 2 Handed weapon is quasi-viable.  Basically you're using high damage with normal attacks, Sweeping Strikes/Cleave (does that still work now, or did that get nerfed?), and Mortal Strike, coupled with sunder armor to build aggro. Use Mocking Blow if things get dicey.  Healers aren't crazy about this setup generally because you're forsaking a fair chunk of armor in your shield, coupled with the chance of a block rate, which means on paper more healing required.  On the other hand, with the extra damage you're dealing, proponents of this style of tanking say that stuff dies fast enough that it mitigates the need for more healing.  Your Mileage May Vary, I didn't explore the Arms/Fury path all that much, to be honest. You probably will get funny looks or yelled at if you tank with a 2H weapon in pickup/public instance runs though.

And on a side note, Shield Block increases chance to block by 75% for 5 sec, but will only block 1 attack. Toss in Shield Specialization, and you're looking at around 80% block rate, minimum. Shield Specialization also comes in handy because 5 points are the pre-req to improved shield block, which can block an extra attack. As to the amount that shield block actually mitigates, it appears to be some flat integer value.  As a result, it scales very poorly when you're fighting something that deals insane melee damage.

Fabricated: Actually, I'm pretty interested in how Arms/Protection works in the field. I went Hybrid because I thought it would give me just enough damage dealing options to be fun, with a heavy listing of points in protection to be marginally more effective in Instances. I've promised myself that if I ever got one uber 2 handed weapon, I would consider respeccing and moving towards a more offensive build, like probably Arms/Protection, with Cruelty for damage. I'm curious if in instances, how things would run if I didn't have the ability to spam sunders quicker, or without the shorter cooldown for Taunt.  To be honest, I think those are the most useful skills in the Protection Tree when you get that far in. You end up taking the rest because you've dumped in so many points, that the top end Arms/Fury stuff is out of reach anyways.

For level 1-60 I was Arms/Fury (31/20) which was defintely the best spec for PvP and for doing damage.  However once I started going into MC/Onyxia I've went 31/5/15 and now I'm 13/5/33 Protection now since I'm the main tank in most of the raids.  Basically being full protection blows ass except for MC/Onxyia because you don't need it for anything else and I hate it for PvP cause it nerfs any real burst dmg I have (I miss Mortal Strike).  I know that some people will say you don't need to be full protection spec for MC or Onyxia but I find that having shield discipline + defiance helps a lot with the aggro.  But if you're not MT in MC or Onyxia I'd probably go the typical Arms/Fury build although I've never tried a full fury build...

So far this is what I have at level 44.

Fury:
Cruelty - 5 Points

There's some cool looking stuff in the Fury line, but I just didn't feel like investing the points for Piercing Howl or Improved Intercept.

Arms:
Deflection - 5 Points
Improved Rend - 3 Points
Deep Wounds - 3 Points
Impale - 2 Points
Improved Overpower - 2 Points
Improved Charge - 2 Points
Anger Management - 4 Points (I had an irrational desire to put a point in Sword Specialization instead of maxing this out)
Sword Specialization - 1 Point (Should've waited, but again, irrational desire)
Sweeping Strikes - 1 Point

Protection:
Shield Specialization - 5 Points
Toughness - 2 Points

Note that I didn't sit down and carefully plan this out before starting my character.

It's worked pretty well for me so far. I can tank pretty well and do decent damage. As for PvP, I dunno, and I don't really care since I couldn't give 3/5ths of a shit about PvP.

That's similar to what I'm doing.  My philosophy is to be a worthy tank in instances (but I may never see MC or Onyxia, so not the really top-end instances), but as I'm on a PvP server, I regard 31 arms as pretty much non-negotiable.

I have my 31 and the rest in protection. I'm now at the point where I have to decide whether to take cruelty for 5% more crit, or just dump it into shield spec.  I used to have Iron Will, but I specced away from it because as far as I can tell, I never resisted any fears, so I think it's broken.  So I put it into toughness and I will probably just go with shield spec and maybe improved revenge.  I had IR but I dropped it, and now I'm starting to miss it a little, but I may still not take it since my mace spec gives me a stun from time to time anyway.

I find the extra 5% to crit insanely useful. Against monsters my level and slightly below, I've gotten as many as 5 critical hits in a row, combine that with impale and deep wounds and it rocks. I dueled a mage yesterday and kicked his ass because I critted him 4 times in a row.

Fabricated: I only went up to Overpower/Anger Management on the Arms side, so I'm Theorycrafting here. I'd suggest getting Protection Tree stuff around the mid-50s, really. It's around the mid-50s that the demand for a warrior who can hold aggro really starts to shine through in instances like Scholomance, and Stratholme, and Blackrock Depths. Generally speaking, you will be soloing with a 2H weapon anyways unless you're in a situation where you're facing a lot of enemies at once. I used to solo in 1h/Shield for a very long time in my 30s, 40s, until I got a Whirlwind Hammer pretty late and realized with a big enough 2h weapon, it's usually better to solo with for the way I grind. Maybe fill out the Sword Spec tree, then you'll have to figure out what to do with your last 3 points.  You could go with one final point in Tactical Mastery and then Anger Management.

It turns out that Anger Management actually gives warriors free rage during combat, on top of just increasing the time required for rage to decay while out of combat. For instance, there's a bug in Zul'Farrak that keeps characters in combat; warriors actually like that to happen, because with Anger Management one can max out their rage waiting for the next fight. Some people consider that free rage gain a must have skill to pick up.  With the easier rage gain after the last major warrior facelift patch, that's a bit debatable now.

I'd go with Cruelty on a PvP server Jayce. To beat a dead horse, that 5% extra crit, when coupled with something like an Axe specialization, as well as berserker stance, then you're talking about some real crit power. With a human's +5 to maces, a 2% crit trinket, and around 100 agility, I'm looking at around 14% criticals in battle stance. With a pretty protection-heavy build. I figure if I was in Berserker stance (+3% crit chance), and was wielding axes with the right spec, I'd be looking at around a 22% critical rate. When you start building around a crit build, 25% crit rates aren't unheard of. When you start taking it to extremes, you get characters like this: http://www.wowrankings.com/viewb.htm?id=18664 Of course, if you're running around in Berserker stance, having a wingman with healing is virtually required. The lack of a stun hurts, but I find mitigating that with hamstring and other movement speed decrease tricks helps if your main concern is having them not run away. And yeah, Iron Will seems broken. Orcs are complaining that their orcish racial stun resistance is broken too, so it makes sense. If/when I respec, I'll probably move the points I put in Iron Will, and drop them into Toughness.

Lantien - thanks for your comments.  I use revenge all the time and had no idea that generated aggro.

I went with 11 Fury; 5 Arms, and 35 Protection

Arms

Deflection 5/5 [5% Parry]

Fury

Cruelty 5/5 - I think these points are invaluable.

Improved Demoralizing Shout 5/5

Piercing Howl 1/1 - 6 second daze.  Great for runners, great for running away.

Protection

Shield Specialization 5/5 [5% Block]

Anticipation 5/5 [+10 Defence]

Toughness 5/5 [10% more armor from items/equipment]

Improved Revenge 3/3

Improved Shield Block 3/3

Improved Disarm 3/3

Improved Shield Wall 2/2

Improved Shield Bash 2/2 [3 second complete silence]

Concussion Blow 1/1 [Weapon damage + 5 second stun]

One-Handed Weapon Spec 5/5 [10% more damage with 1-handers]

Shield Discipline 1/1 - Great skill, 50% more damage absorbed on blocks, 20 seconds, 45 second cooldown though.  With Thorium shield spikes, I nail casters for 200-300 with a Shield Bash, and silence them as well. 

I do end up chugging a lot of Rage potions, because I dropped Tactical Mastery.  But I am a stunning, aggro holding, damage absorbing juggernaut.  Piercing Howl and Hamstring make sure things don't get far.  When a mob is running, and you hit Piercing Howl, usually it will change directions and come back at you (still in fleeing mode) as well.  Revenge goes off very often.  I do miss Mortal Strike for its instant damage, but I think the stuns tradeoff was worth it.

I am toying with taking my level 34 warrior down the agility path.  When I can, rather than choose gear for Stamina or Strength, I am considering agility.

Agility factors into Armor value, which is most unusual in a game from my experience.  Increasing AG seems to:

Increase Armor
Increase Dodge
Increase critical rate.

I have a DW attack mode with fast attack weapons as a warrior.

I realize the standard logic here is to boost stamina and then strength.  Stamina seems less relevant to me in the game since there are no complete heals - so maximal hitpoints is not as critical as it was in EQ compared to increased Armor.  Strength increases the block damage value of a shield - how much I am unsure, and it also contributes to melee damage. 

Still toying with the build - but for now I am considering focusing on agility.  Don't crazy on me here guys - the gear in the game is not that flexible e.g. any gear acquired for a warrior will still make Stamina or strength my best stat - it is just a matter of how much.

I realize Amor provides no protection against spells.  But I don't see this as a basis for focusing on stamina but rather swapping the "swappable" gear that confers agility for resist gear.

I am 10 points Fury (criticals, 40% rage generation) and balance into Protection.  I dual wield 2 fast attack daggers to get aggro then switch to shield + dagger to tank.  To perform cleave I swap to a 2 hander when possible.

We have a lot that is similar.  Can you comment on:

1.  Defence.  At first I frowned on this but recently I see the +10 points as making a warrior have the DEF of a warrior 2 levels higher which is significant.  Do you notice this ability?  How significant do you find it?

2.  Parry.  Recently started to consider this as well - how limited is it? e.g. does it have a chance of working against all melee attack types?  what about ranged attacks (arrow) or elemental (melee) attacks?

I like defense because it raises my chance to Block, Dodge and Parry.  .2% per Defense point I think.  So Anticipation gives me 2% more damage avoidance, per type.  I could be wrong on the numbers, but it does directly influence you avoiding damage completely.  The 5% Parry I did simply to complement the +Defense items I've been collecting.  I'd rather avoid the damage than soak it, and getting to use Revenge pretty much as soon as it cools down is nice.

As far as what I can parry, pretty much every melee attack.  If a mob is swinging on you, it seems like you can parry it.  I will have to pay attention and see if I can parry non-magic ranged attacks.  I have deflected shots before, but I am not sure what deflection is.  Is it the attacker missing, or is it something my character did?  I dunno.

We've been trying to figure out a good Dual Wield build too.  The main advantage of it, seems to be massive rage generation.  But what's the best way to dump it all?  A lot of warriors, once they get their hands on an Arcanite Reaper or some other massive two-hand weapon, create Agility set-ups as well.  You can end up with massive 600-900 point criticals on Whirlwinds and Overpowers, and godly Executes.  Downside is who has time to get an Arcanite Reaper or its clones?  I would think you'd also be a healers nightmare in PVE.

Each point of defense increases your dodge, parry and block by .04%, so maxing out anticipation will increase your avoidance by a smidge under 0.8% and your mitigation by .4*[shield block value]%. 

However, +defense also reduces the chance of a mob to crit you by an undetermined amount.  Well-equipped warriors can sport +100 defense or more, and report suffering very, very few crits even in MC.  Defense does not appear to reduce PvP crits and some have suggested that defense has no effect at all in pvp.  In any event, if you have the resources or time, it behooves you to have a different set of gear for PvP (I don't, but I don't mind not being great in PvP, and I have a MS/Axe/Reaper build, so I am passable even with armor that is not great for pvp).

Considering that a lot of individual pieces of gear have +15 defense (some have more), anticipation used to be seen as a not-so-great investment.  That was back when shield block would mitigate 100% of a special attack, though, and everyone who spent 6+ points in protection wanted improved sheild block for the extra block.  That makes anticipation more attractive, as does the fact that dodges and parries now generate rage. 

Looking into my crystal ball, I see them seriously nerfing the crit-reduction aspect of +defense (they have already suggested they are looking at it) because I believe the WoW team wants semi-chaotic raids where damage spikes happen often and unpredictably, making healing more fun and getting tanks killed on a semi-regular basis to challenge the raid to react.

I also see them changing the way +attack power damage is calculated so that it no longer benefits slow weapons so much.  This will be a solid nerf to MS/reaper guys but will make many more weapons useful.

They may just go nuclear and change instant attack specials to base on weapon DPS rather than weapon damage, but there would be much howling and gnashing of teeth from warriors and rogues that I have trouble seeing them do this.
   

Warrior builds really aren't too difficult. NinjaSteve is on the money when he says that the only real gain for protection++ is MC/Onyxia MT. Keep that for somebody who is bored playing their warrior and who will log it on when you do those raids.

MS is vital, and nothing in any talent tree can undo its godliness. +crit is also a no brainer. PvP works best 31/20, and instance tank works best 31/5/15 pretty much as Lantien described. Iron will is worthless, just as the Orc racial ability is. Until somebody fixes the % improvement to make it additive instead of a multiplier of the base percentage, it isn't worth five talent points for 0.75% improvement.

There really is no alternative to a slow axe. Arcanite Reaper is the holy grail for good reason, but if you are prepared to do the maths and can live with a proc instead of +attack, The Nicker actually averages out at fractionally more damage per hit than the Reaper. You can get this from a rare spawn by the name of Blackstone Battle Lord in Blackrock Spire. Until then, Dreadforge Retaliator is very farmable if you have a competant mage to deal with the Lyceum. Rivenspike and Serathil are two of the better tanking axes. You can get >20% critical on a 2H axe without zerk stance and without sacrificing much +Str and +Sta if you are careful about what you pick armor wise - however, this gear will take some cash or collecting. Some +def stuff and revenge will let an MS warrior be a perfectly good main tank for everything barring the uber raids.

Thanks.

I missed your point in this part of your post.  hehe obviously I am missing something - if two weapons have the same dps - and assuming your are not swapping weapons for a single attack - the power of all weapons with the same dps should be the same, regardless their attack speed?  Correct?

Currently, it works like this:

Attack DPS = Attack / 14

Damage = ( DPS from weapon +  Attack DPS ) * Weapon Delay

Assume a warrior with 700 Attack, simply because it makes for easy math. 700/14 = 50, so we add that to the base DPS and multiply by the speed.

Arcanite Reaper: (53.8 + 50) * 3.8 = 394.44

The Nicker: (49.8 + 50) * 4 = 399.2

The AR has +62 Attack as a passive benefit, so it adds (62/14) * 3.8 = 16.83 damage for a total of 411.27. The Nicker adds a 5% proc of 50-150 damage, for 5 damage per swing average, plus a DoT of 6 damage per second for 25s, which equates to a further average of 7.5 (based on the standard proc being 5%). Therefore the average from The Nicker becomes 399.2 + 12.5 = 411.7.

These two weapons are at the extreme. Lets look at a higher DPS 2H axe with faster swing:

Brain Hacker: (56.7 + 50) * 2.1 = 224.07

Add in its proc of average 250 damage (250/20) = 224.07 + 12.5 = 236.57

Ever six seconds you should be able to use the instant "mortal strike": 411.27 - 236.57 = 174.7. The AR is doing that much more damage on each hit. From the mortal strike alone, that's another 29.12 DPS, so the Brain Hacker, despite its neat purple color and impressive DPS, doesn't come close to the AR.

What will change in the future if anything to make faster weapons more palatable for warriors (and rogues) is anybody's guess.

It took me a while to understand too, because it is counterintuitive.  Attack power adds +dps.  When auto-attacking, + attack power increases the damage of fast weapons and slow weapons equally (so a 10 dps 2.0 speed sword and a 10 dps 4.0 speed sword gain the same amount of damage from autoattacks over time from, say, your battle shout).

However, instant attacks with slow weapons gain more increased damage from attack power than instant attacks with faster weapons.  This is because + attack adds dps rather than damage.  With the 4.0 speed weapon, your MS (or overpower, or sinister strike, or whatever) gets 4.0 seconds worth of + attack power bonus added to the MS.  With the fast weapon, you only get 2.0 seconds worth of + attack power bonus added to the MS.

e.g.: you have +100 damage per second from attack power.  With a 2.0 speed weapon you get +200 damage bonus per swing from that.  With a 4.0 speed weapon you get a + 400 damage bonus per swing from that.

So, considering a MS warrior will use instants as well as autoattacks, attack power adds more to their total damage with a slow weapon than a fast weapon, even if dps is the same (indeed, even if the fast weapon has a somewhat higher listed dps).

(This is in addition to the fact that the slow weapon does twice the damage on every swing as the twice-as-fast weapon with the same dps, which obviously benefits slow weapons with instant attacks.  Deep wounds favors slow weapons for the same reason.  But the + attack power issue makes this disparity even greater, and most people don't realize it exists.  In fact, the Arc Reaper, which does 153-256 base damage per hit (53.8 dps/3.8 speed) would actually do more damage PER HIT than the Spinal Reaper, which does base 203-305 damage per hit (74.7 dps, 3.4 speed), if you had 1500 attack power just because of the attack power bonus--of course that won't make the arcanite reaper a better weapon unless you almost never use autoattack, but it is a pretty striking example.)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=236847&p=1&tmp=1#post236847

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=236544&p=1&tmp=1#post236544

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=233011&p=1&tmp=1#post233011

edit: beaten like a rented mule

Scrolling Up, Righ and Gallo in a few lines of text explain what I've been struggling to say for multiple posts now.  Thank you for explaining it in simple terms and examples. This is why the Axe/slow weapon Builds are so dominant on the warrior(combat with respect to instant attacks, really) landscape, and why there's been some talk about modifying things.

jpark, The traditional argument against the pure agility build is that while damage is fine, a warrior in an instance's two primary duties are to hold aggro, and stay alive. Holding aggro via pure damage is doable, but it's hardly required.  Competant weapons and those aggro tricks discussed earlier go a long way towards holding aggro in an acceptable manner, I've found. Staying alive is primarily done through Stamina.  I've found in limited PVP that having a gross amount of stamina tends to help even against magical attacks which bypass armor, better than going with a boatload of resistance gear.  The argument goes that with stamina loaded up, you can take melee hits really well with armor mitigation, and you'll have enough HP to survive difficult magical attacks well enough to run away. I'll look up the Crit rate with respect to agi points later; as I recall it's not really pretty, when you realize how much Stamina you'd have to forsake. It's doable, just probably more difficult.

Righ pretty much nails it with respect to warrior builds. I have a moderately heavy protection build precisely because I instance more than I can expect to PvP on an PvE server. On the other hand, The big things I like about the protection build that I can really justify are Improved Taunt, the silence associated with Improved Shield Bash, and Improved Revenge/Shield Block.  The rest are pretty much gravy, or because I put in so many points in the tree anyways, that the marginally useful skills become worth it.

I'm pretty much one legit 2 handed weapon away from going 31/5/15. Currently, I have a Green Hammer that's around 47 DPS, and a Truesilver Champion, around 45 DPS.  Probably a bit too low to honestly muck around with Mortal Strike for my tastes.  However, I will say that I'll be missing Piercing Howl the most, with that setup.  Piercing Howl in Group vs Group combat is insanely useful; it also does a good job of helping others run away from NPC guards far enough to where the guards stop chasing, or decide to chase someone else. If you manage to break the opponent's morale, Piercing Howl does a great job of slowing guys down enough for Paladins to catch up and stun them, or other sort of root attacks to kick in.

As for fearless predictions...

1) The Community Managers have gone on record saying they are going to re-evaluate the other trees besides Arms, basically signaling that they've botched them.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=218885&p=1&tmp=1#post218885

2) Rumors are around that weapon speeds will be rebalanced. The cynic in me says they'll do it by nerfing slow speed weapons, not by giving fast weapon speed abilities a leg up.

http://n3rfed.blogs.com/n3rfed/2005/05/no_wow_patch_no.html

In general I wish just one major MMOG dev house would not worry about fine-point balancing their game, because usually they end up breaking it.  Having slow weapons as king might be an unintended effect, it's the way the game is.  Everyone knows it and everyone is playing the same game.

Mucking around is SO much more likely to cause damage to the class than to make it better.  I hope they just leave well enough alone.

In most games the point of a faster wep speed is to disrupt the finger wagglers and to even out the dps to a more predictable rate.  Bringing down damage on slower weps seems a safer bet to avoid unintended consequences than enhancing the faster ones.

Okay there is a lot for me to think about there.  Thanks for the detailed examples Righ and El Gallo.

Lantien -  I bring up agility not just for damage - as I am well aware that the function of a warrior is to survive - but to also increase his armor and dodge.

That's my thinking - but maybe stamina over rules this.

Does weapon damage even interrupt in WoW? As I remember, it will Delay the spell a bit, but not truly interrupt it (burning the mana cost, forcing the skill to recharge).

Yes it does based on my 29 Priest.  However, there are talents the priest can take to address this problem (focused casting - 8 second uniterruptable cast), in addition to some casts that will prevent interruption for a period of time (e.g. power word shield).

So .... melee interruption of casting is more of an issue for lower level casters - and less of an issue once they gain some abilities on a timer and slot some talents.  This same phoneomona played out in EQ.

I'm afraid you are wrong. Normal melee attacks never fully interrupt a spell, only cause it to be delayed by knocking the timer bar back a fraction. The only way to have a spell fully interrupted is by a special attack that specifically does an interrupt, like sheild bash, rogue kick, etc. Mobs, even low level mobs, have a lot of special attacks not available to players to do this. Maybe you're missing them in the combat spam if you think normal melee attacks are completely interrupting your casting.

True.  That's what I meant - thanks for the correction.

Question about strength.  How important is this attribute?  It helps block for more damage and does add to melee damage.  Anyone have any idea how numerically meaningful these effects are?

I'm 11/5/rest. I would happily dump shield specialization but it's a pre-requisite for putting a point in shield block. I'd love to have anticipation but I'm short on talent points as it is so would rather leave that for gear to add. I can also say that protection spec reduces in effectiveness in MC. Your only ever tanking one mob there and they are all stun / silence immune. Shield block also becomes meaningless (even with shield discipline) but avoidance becomes more powerful the harder the mobs hit for. As for gear you need to balance out AC, HP and +defence for tanking. Resists would be nice too but you can only really get that on raid gear without crippling yourself.

I'm resigned to sucking in PvP =)

I am coming to the conclusion that stamina is over rated for warriors.

I was a 62 warrior in EQ - which was not bad - so take my comments in context.

1.  There are no complete heals in WoW.  Max hp were key in games like EQ due to the Complete heal.

2.  Stamina does not scale with multiple attackers.  With each extra mob high stamina diminishes quickly.  However, Def, Armor, Agility benefits are fully applied to each extra attacker for dodge/mitigation.

3.  Gear choices for WoW warriors are limited.  You are going to have a lot of Str and Stam regardless which warrior gear you choose.  This is based on what I have been told - I am only level 34. So... when you do have a "choice" going for gear other than stamina in my mind makes sense.

My current thinking:  Armor, Defense and Agility.   All of these either contribute to damage mitigation or dodge.

High stamina helps to avoid the "OHH FUCK THE BOSS MOB JUST CRITTED ME FOR 3K THEN CLEAVED FOR ANOTHER 2k".  In essence, the more wiggle room you have, the more chance your raid isn't going to die because of bad luck and timing.   In PVP, I can't count how many times I've healed a warrior from the point of near death to keep them alive.  Heh, 1000 less max HP and they'd be licking dirt. 

There are no diminishing returns on HP. 

I found this link:

http://evilempireguild.org/misc/acstamina.html

The author has spent a fair bit of time in the analytics.  Basically he seems to argue for balanced approach to Stamina  and armor.  There appears to be a cap on armor, which gets higher with the level of the opponent you are fighting.

I am not sure I agree with his conclusion - but I am still going over his numbers.

This amount of analysis makes me physically ill.

I think you just found your muse.

Since folks are talking warriors, I've got a question.


I've got a 36 warrior who dual wields almost exclusivly.  Even with a blue 2h axe I'm finding it's just a more efficient way of fighting for both rage generation and damage.  I'm killing things 2 levels above me on a regular basis, despite always hearing "Oh no way, I can't do that alone those mobs are even con" from other warriors. I've always been told "go 2hd for soloing" but I get pwned soloing with 2h and only use it to keep my skills up. I don't understand the love 2hders get over dual wielding.  Is it just a love of bigger numbers, the 'metagame' stuff that you all were discussing earlier, or Is there something that changes later on that I'm missing here?

Talents (if that makes a difference) are Cruelty 5, Imp. rend 3, Imp. HS2, Anger Management, Imp. charge 2, Imp. overpower 2, Impale 2, Sweeping Strikes and Axe Spec 1.

The primary thing with dual wield vs 2hander is your talents cruelty and improved overpower (and impale I guess). With two one-handers, anytime you get a crit, you crit for roughly half of what you'd crit with for with a comparable damage 2hander (all the damage is in one place).  Also, since overpower is an instant (happens in addition to your normal strikes) the same thing applies when the target dodges - you overpower-instant-hit with only one of your two weapons instead of having all your damage packed into one.

Actually what I just wrote is a little bit of a lie, because your main hand does its full damage, but your offhand does some percentage (I think roughly half). This, in addition to an improved miss chance, is supposed to balance the damage between two-handers and dual wielding, and (I will assume) it does.  But when you factor in talents like those above, an imbalance shows up.  I'm not sure if you perform all specials with your main hand or whether it's luck of the draw.  But if you did perform a special with your offhand, that would reduce the damage even further given its damage reduction.  But if you hit wiith your main hand, it's a little bigger than half.

One last thing - on your next respec I would dump heroic strike 2.  That's a fairly useless skill after level 5.

Sure, you can do that. At level 40 you can get mortal strike by putting all 31 talent points earned into arms and picking up 2H spec and axe spec. Do so, grab a slow axe, and never look at dual wield again. I destroy things only two levels above me at level 57. Mortal strike and a slow two handed axe is the most offensive warrior build at present. Dual wield got some serious love in 1.5, but I'm still not convinced it will beat MS and an appropriate 2H axe. However, DW and IW are the two things I'm fiddling with on test.

Ah, so it *IS* that things change later. Cool, when I've got MS finally I'll take a look at it again.  I know things change as you advance just from getting the Hunter to 60 and fiddling into the 20s with a priest and rogue so I thought I might be missing something.

  It was useless when I took it, and I knew that. But you need those first 5 points and at the time it was better to save 2 rage than to just get 2% to parry, particularly when planning to respec at a later date.

As for the crits of 1h vs 2h.. I always view crits as "bonus" damage.  Relying on them is great on paper, but if you hit an odd streak in practice you're screwed.  Right now the dual wielding, although less damage through crits, is more consistant and works things faster in practice than the 2hder.  I'm still low level with the warrior, though, and can still enjoy conversations scrolling by in Stranglethorn like "I don't know why pallys whine so much, they pwn over warriors" and "OMG who says Hunters aren't uber, I always want one in my instance groups!" and "Mages are useless they get killed so often."  (All from last night)

NECRO!

Having started to play again, and thinking about my talents long-term for PVP, what's changed since 1.6 gave us warriors a respec? Is Iron Will still considered useless? What changes were made?

/second

My new char of choice is a gnomer warrior.

I have a friend who is going gnome warrior with a full dual wielding fury spec. So far he is kicking much booty and its really hilarious to see what he does to people in pvp. People see dual wielding gnome and think oh look a rogue hehe the results of that miscalculation are pretty funny.

Most of the people playing with the new fury stuff say its pretty tasty but the final power still I think needs a bit of upping. It also could be people just havn't found the right combo of stats to really unlock the total power of bloodthirst.

kaid

Prot/ Fury spec with a good shield and the new 31pt shield bash also appears to do a damn good job.  I'll try and hunt-down the post I saw about it.. (warning in advance, it's on the vault)

I'm going the DW fury route right now, myself.  I tried Arms and it was just tooooo damn slow and generated only a 'meh' amount of hate.  I was having to tap bloodrage too often for my own liking.  With the fury spec I'm not having any problems with rage when I need it, however the stats you go after are completly different.  You want +crit, +atk and +agi/str above the traditional +stam.  The idea being you kill shit quick and move on.

I'd stick with the tried and true 31 arms/20 fury for PvP and 31 arms/5 fury/15 protection for PvE.  They still pwnz0r all.  Max fury is probably the best for solo PvE grinding though.

Solo pve is what I'm all about at level 52 on the second character that's (again) higher level than all my friends.

Here's (http://vnboards.ign.com/WoW_Warrior_Class/b22785/89258665/p1) the link to the guy talking about his shield slam spec, and how it compares to the tried-and-true MS-spec.

This post got bloated fast.  I'm breaking this down into easy to read chunks. Scroll down and read what tickles your fancy.
Disclaimers: I'm purely a PVP dabbler.  I'm on a PVE server, so the bulk of my PVP comes from Warsong (CTF). I have above average gear, but nothing too mind blowing.

I. Patch Notes from 1.4-1.6
II.PVP vs PVE
III. Suggested Builds

I. Patch Notes from 1.4-1.6

Assuming you quit somewhere around March, here are some of the warrior-specific changes that have happened.

1.4: Thunder Clap - Visual and animation changed.

1.5:
- Overpower - Fixed a bug where the ability was sometimes blocked.
- Improved Cleave - Now increases damage bonus by 40/80/120%.
- Blood Craze - Talent design changed. It now regenerates 1/2/3% of the warrior's total health over 6 seconds after being the victim of a critical strike.
- New Fury Talent: Dual Wield Specialization - Increases damage with the off-hand weapon by 5/10/15/20/25%. Note: the additional damage also increases rage generation significantly.
- Iron Will - Fixed a bug that caused many abilities to ignore the additional resistance.
- Enrage - Increased the number of charges to 12. Decreased the duration to 12 seconds. The new duration is the limiting factor for slower weapons (e.g. Arcanite Reaper will typically get one less swing), while dual wielding and faster weapons will make better use of all of the charges over the duration of the ability.
- Concussion Blow - Changed to an instant, stunning attack and removed the damage portion.
- Shield Specialization - In addition to increasing % chance to block, it now gives the warrior a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to generate 1 rage on a successful block.

1.6: # Due to significant talent changes, Warriors will have all talent points refunded and can be respent.
# Hamstring - Will now cause damage to targets immune to movement slowing effects. Movement slowing effect improved.
# Improved Hamstring - Design changed. No longer improves the movement slowing effect. It is now a 3 point talent that gives a 5/10/15% chance to immobilize the target for 5 seconds.
# Booming Voice - In addition to increasing duration, this talent will now increase the area of effect of Battle Shout and Demoralizing Shout by 10/20/30/40/50%.
# Battle Shout - Tooltip updated to display area of effect (in yards).
# Demoralizing Shout - Tooltip updated to display area of effect (in yards).
# Improved Berserker Rage - No longer increases the duration of the effect. The talent will now generate 5/10 rage when Berserker Rage is used.
# Improved Demoralizing Shout - Effectiveness increase from talent increased to 8/16/24/32/40%.
# Piercing Howl - No longer has a prerequisite (Improved Demoralizing Shout).
# Deathwish - Is now usable while under a Fear effect, which will also remove the Fear effect.
# Bloodthirst - Design changed. Bloodthirst is now an instant melee attack that causes damage equal to 30% of the warrior's attack power. In addition, the next 5 successful melee attacks will restore health.
# Concussion Blow - No longer requires purchase of the Improved Revenge talent.
# Shield Discipline - Removed and replaced by the new talent Shield Slam.
# New Talent: Shield Slam - Slam the target with your shield, causing damage and has a 50% chance to dispel 1 magic effect on the target. Also causes a moderate amount of threat. Requires the purchase of the Concussion Blow talent.
# Heroic Strike/Sunder Armor/Revenge/Mocking Blow - Tooltips updated to indicate the additional threat caused by these abilities. There have been no changes to the amount of threat caused.

For the most part, the changes are as good or bad as they sound. If you want more details, go ahead and ask; Merusk knows the Fury/Dual Wield system pretty well, and I dumped 31 points into arms after the free respec.

II. PVE vs PVP

Blizzard is now trying a new sort of philosophy with respect to the warrior: All warriors now have burst damage (think like mortal strike). The use of this burst damage should allow you to be quasi-competant in PVP. As it stands, the burst damage is the largest for Mortal Strike, then depending on the weapon used, Bloodthirst, and the new Shield Slam. The jury is still out if this philosophy of "PVP for everyone" actually works. In actuality, this cheesed off some of the hardcores, because they had no intention of doing PVP with their tanks, and thus came up with hilarious, although truthful critiques like this one: http://www.vaevictushorde.com/images/protectiontree.JPG

As a side effect, it's worth noting how damage is derived:
Mortal Strike is Weapon Damage + 160 at max rank. So to maximize its effectiveness, you want the weapon with the highest average max damage, which generally comes from the slowest weapons.

The healing debuff, if used smartly, can totally mess up a small group's attempt to heal. Assign Rogues to kill the lightest armored healer first, and you can help bring down high value targets fast.

Bloodthirst at max rank gives you damage relative to 30% Attack Power.  To put things in perspective, I have roughly 600-odd Attack Power at 60, although I haven't tried to maximize my attack power. With my current gear, the Mortal Strike comes out ahead, unless I'm doing around 20 weapon damage. However, it's interesting to note that because it ties to AP as opposed to weapon damage, you can generate the same damage if you went with 2H weapons or daggers, if the example holds up. This furthur legitimizes the dual wielder as a viable build, which is always a good thing.

On paper, the HP gained upon use sucks. 100 HP over 5 blows is pretty terrible when you factor in a 6 second cooldown. Blizzard has hinted that they wanted to not make this skill overpowered out of the blocks so they can incrementally boost it over time.  They sure accomplished that part.

Shield Slam at max rank is 450-550 max damage. This one is the most interesting, because it's not tied to any gear, it's a flat amount. While an investment into Protection generally means fewer perks to DPS, it's arguable that comparing the top 31 skills against each other, that Shield Slam gets very attractive when you start working with lower-tiered gear. And don't forget, you're using a 1h Weapon if you're using a shield anyways. And, what you trade off in losing in DPS, you gain in damage mitigation from a potential 2000+ Armor boost. Granted, that doesn't mean a whole lot against say, a mage.

The jury is out on the debuff. Most people think of it as a somewhat useful carrot. There are some situational uses, like trying to knock the Power Word Shield or the Mage shield off someone, I really don't know how well it works in practice.

As for PVE, you're going to have to consider what exactly your end game role plans on being. If you expect to not volunteer very often for instance tanking, then you can move away from the Protection tree. However, if you wish to keep such abilities in mind, then playing with some points in Protection is a good idea. One nice thing about the Protection Tree, is that the early half of the tree is great for universal tanking, while the later half of the tree is more situational and built around the 5-15 man instance, where things like Stun and Silence still work on mobs.

III. Suggested Builds
With respect to PVP, there tends to be a few major builds developing:

1. 31 Arms, 20 Fury: The most classic build, it's been buffed with a few changes. First off, Hamstring now does as much slowing as it did when you dumped all your talent points into it. In return, putting points into improved hamstring now offers a low (15%ish) chance to immobilize. Note that this doesn't have diminishing returns, due to it not being a stun. Drives Rogues CRAZY, btw.

Secondly, Piercing Howl, the AoE Daze. A quick way to get every opponent trying to run away in a group on group engagement to slow down, allowing some AoEs, or for teammates to properly run away for Capture the Flag.

Third Mortal Strike, but you knew that.

2. 31 Fury, 20 Arms: the major drawback of this is that Bloodthirst damage and its buff (100HP healed over time) is inferior to Mortal Strike. However, Blizzard has hinted they'd tweak it upwards. With Flurry and instant damage, and the new dual-wield talent introduced in 1.5(?), which allows the offhand to do more damage than before, as well as Enrage length now being time-dependant, making it more attractive for faster weapons, Fury is now considered the dual wield tree, if not the faster weapon tree. No Improved hamstring, which is a bit of a draw back.

3. 31 Arms, 0-5 points Fury, 15-20 Protection: This one is built more for the casual tanker. You get the high burst damage power of arms, with just enough damage mitigation in Protection to make tanking easier. Fury points go straight into Cruelty, which ups your chance to Crit.

The major drawback is the lack of Piercing Howl, which you will notice in Capture the Flag.

4. 31 Prot, 20 Arms or Fury: I'll let Merusk talk the most about this build, since I never tried it. But pre-patch I was using a 12 arms, 11 fury, everything else-point Protection build. With that sort of build, my main tactics were to use my Protection skills to take away from my opponents, to make them easier targets, with the trade off being much less burst damage.

When I used to PVP with that build, I'd use disarm liberally, shield block if I was stalling for time waiting for others to show up, and use Shield Block (with silence), and Concussion Blow to disable casters, and high value targets. Since the only ways to dump rage into instant damage were Overpower, Whirlwind and Slam, I'd actually use Sunder Armor from time to time.

The biggest problem if you do consider a 0 Arms build, is catching up to opponents. Traditionally you have 2 "schools" of catching up.  The first is from short distance to hamstring or use Piercing Howl to slow the opponent down just long enough to get on top of them and start wailing away.  From longer distance, you'll have to use Charge and Intercept. The major problem is, usually you'll need both charge and intercept to get someone perma slowed via piercing howl or hamstring, because the enemy may use some sort of disorient, or blink. Because of this, it's a good idea to charge, then swap to intercept, and with your free rage built up from charge, be able to intercept your opponent too. However, you can't do that with 0 points in Tactical Mastery. Stance dancing in general is a no-go, which makes things like Disarm, and taking advantage of Overpower when you're in Berserker, that much harder.

Oh, as for soloing, here are some data points for things I used to do with my warrior when I solo-farmed. Some huge caveats:

A) I went from an Ice barbed Spear, to an Arcanite Reaper. My DPS shot through the roof.

B) I started acquiring more crit gear. At this time, I probably have around 23-24% crit. Pre-patch, I was probably around 15. Most of the crit came from Axe spec, the rest came from acquiring around 3% crit flat out from gear.

1) 13 Arms, 11 Fury, 27 Prot
Charge with 2 hander, then either Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout, or Battle Shout, depending on my mood. Begin to liberally apply sunders in Battle stance.  Overpower if the chance presents itself, save up enough rage for a large execute, execute in the 700s or higher. Sometimes disarm against mobs with insane weapon damage/skills. Sometimes hamstring the runners.

I had improved sunder, so I was able to stack sunders on pretty fast, getting usually 3-4 minimum on a normal monster. Bursting is nigh unheard of, but still able to do quality damage.

2) 31 Arms, 5 Fury, 9 Prot (should be 15, I'm just wishy washy on the last 6 points.)
Charge with 2 hander, save up for Mortal Strike. Land mortal strike. Maybe a battle shout to maximize damage. Land another mortal strike. repeat. Overpower if the chance presents itself. Depending on rage left, if I have 30 or more, do an Mortal strike to have rage carry over to my next fight.  If I between 15-30, do an execute.

Not surprisingly, because I'm only holding using execute when I have between 15-30 rage, plus the fact that I'm eschewing sunder, I'm now doing very small damage executes in the 300-400 range(the Reaper doesn't really factor in all that much, since Execute damage supposedly is only tied to your crit rate, your rank of execute, and your leftover rage). It felt like sunders got much harder to throw out after I respecced; it feels like those 3 points really do affect things. Either that, or I'm holding out so much more for Mortal Strike.

I've also noticed that I'm farming longer with my gear/build too. I'm probably less armor than before, and definitely less HP.  However, with more reliable crit bursting, I'm less skittish about getting in a large group of enemies and activating Sweeping Swipes and trying to get enough rage for Cleave (a very lovely combo, btw).

I've found the biggest problem with the reaper is when you hit a cold streak, and if you fight an opponent that bursts, you're very quickly in the hole in a fight. Doing more damage is so tied into having the rage to do them, that a cold streak pretty much is like a double penalty; you did no damage to your opponent, and you've generated no rage to do additional damage. The flip side is pretty nice though.


My feelings on Bloodthirst is that they're walking a fine line.  If they make it so that percentage of AP% begins to approach the equivalent of Reaper + MS bonus damage, then it will make dual wield warriors become potentially less gear dependant to doing some serious damage. As opposed to Shield Slam, which doesn't require uber gear to do its damage, but it tends to do less damage in dps than the other builds. If you instead boost the AP on gear, the problem is for weapons, you're generally looking at somewhere between 10-60 AP bonus maximum tied to most weapons. It doesn't look that much better when you look at Armor either. Making +AP gear isn't necessarily going to solve the problem either anyways, since +AP also factors into raw damage, which benefits the MS/burst crit crowd also.

Merusk, it's too bad that the build proved itself after I respecced.. I was a tank build for a long time, but I wanted some PVP viability too. After a while however, it became obvious that there was no good way to channel rage into instant damage for Protection, and the top skills in Prot tended to not do a lot to actually migitate damage against immune to stun monsters, so I respecced.

Looking at that build, I'd probably move points away from Shield Wall and put them into Iron Will.  Immunity to stun is pretty nice to have, even if it is very rare. Revenge is a matter of taste, Even with what I said about immune to stun monsters notwithstanding, I really enjoyed having Revenge proc when I was tanking in Stratholme or UBRS. In fact, those 6 points I'm thinking over, I may go Iron Will, 3 points in Improved Revenge, 2 points in Defiance.

The main problem that I have with that build is the lack of tactical mastery. He also brings up the fact that Improved Overpower now makes you much less deadly to Rogues. I figure that your crit rate with no mastery is probably around 18-20 with decent gear, and the fact you're probably dual wielding or sword and board means lower damage crits when it DOES proc.

Actually, he brings up some excellent points, and it's fascinating to see how the build mirrors the classic MS build with channel rage to instant damage, but differs in how you use your skills and talents for maximum efficiency.

Later in the thread, there's some talk about tweaks to the build, which gives a player some tactical mastery points to actually play with.  I'm not really crazy about anyone who dumps points into a skill you can only use every 30 minutes though in Improved Shield Wall. Come to think of it, I could nerd very very heavily over how to invest the leftover 20 points you didn't spend on Protection, so I'm going to stop here.

.....Okay, I can't stop. The choice is AoE Daze, The ability to Stance Dance, Anti-Rogue, or a DPS boost after a critical.  You get to pick A and B, A and D, or B and C. Helping your teammates bring down a flag carrier, as well as help your flag carrier run away that much easier? The ability to whip out a Shield Bash, a Whirlwind, a Rend, or a Disarm that much faster? Making Rogues cry? Doing more DPS?

THE POWER IS YOURS!  :hulk_rock:

I see you talk about Iron Will, but has anyone yet seen it be effective? I hate getting stunned more than just about anything, but those points I might spend in IW would look mighty nice in some burst damage capacity.

My feelings on Iron Will is that it's probably not worth putting points into the Prot tree just to get Iron Will.

You have to remember, in the end it's a whopping 3% Stun/Charm protection per point, so if you go all out, that's still only a 15% chance, or roughly blocking out less than 1 out of 5 (really, 3/20) stun/charms. Considering that you're going to be targeted for stun and charms quite a few times, the odds are not in your favor that investing so many points is going to net you reliable results. Also keep in mind, a smart rogue also has blind and kidney punch, which as I recall are disorient/knock out effects, and won't be factored into this.

If I had nothing else to dump the points into, I'd say go for it. However, if you are thinking of being a decent tank, you've turned down 5 points in Toughness, which could next you around 400-550 in Armor, which is enough if you're a dedicated tanker, to get to 6000 Armor fairly quickly. If you aren't you've spent 5 points in Anticipation, which somewhat helps your block/dodge/parry rates, but it also lowers your odds of getting Critted, which go against fury tree skills like Blood Craze and Enrage. If you're not interested in tanking, that's 10 points that could of gone towards piercing howl and enrage if you're an MS build, or Overpower if you're a Bloodthirst/Fury build.

There are two situations where I personally would consider putting points in Iron Will:

1) Kick in one point, if you were planning on putting in 15-31 points into Protection anyways. It's a near negliable 3% resistance, but compared to putting in say, another 2% armor bonus to your worn items, it's a trade off worth thinking about, in my humble opinion.  Just hope for the 3% kicking in at goofy times to throw a Warlock/Rogue/Paladin off their game.

2) Go Orc.  Orcs get a 25% resistance to stun/knockout out of the box.  Throw on top of it 15% to stun/charm, and now you're talking some real resistances. Right after they fixed stun resistances, but before I respecced, I did notice that Orcs did shrug off Concussive Blow from time to time.  Enough times that I usually blew my concussive blow on the other races first, or only used it on an Orc in a last-ditch situation.

BTW Haemish, what's going to be your race and build?  I'm curious after getting this much info, what your intentions originally were for your character. Being that you're talking about PVP, Stuns, and a character name of Haemcow, I'm assuming some sort of Tauren PVP Warrior?

The "Arms" spec warrior seems to be the optimal one but I've run into an interesting issue.  On my server when parties are forming for high-end content they want not just warriors but "Protection" speced warriors.

Has anyone else run into this before?  And does this make sense?

At the risk of monopolizing the thread, here's my reply Brolan:

I can't speak too definitely on end game content.  All I've really done is a few runs in Molten Core, and the farthest I've ever gotten was to Magdamar. However, in rounding up warriors and evaluating them, there's a general desire for Protection Warriors than Arms warriors for these instances, I agree.

There are 4 main issues that come up when talking about why the non-warrior population doesn't like Arms warriors for tanking. A few are legitimate, a few aren't.

1) Psychology. People who maximize their solo-PVP ability with 2h weapons are loathe to move away from that notion when they do anything else. However, tanking is a totally different system. To hold aggro as a warrior you don't necessarily need to do the most damage. There are at least 2 moves that help build aggro in such a way that it sticks to you, while doing very little actual damage to the mob. Knowing to use your shield vs boss mobs or usually all mobs, even if that means a drop on DPS. Knowing how to chain the shield block into revenge, and squeeze out enough rage to stack sunders. Knowing how to properly use Taunt and Mocking Blow.

(Oh, and in case someone chimes in, you can tank as a warrior with a 2h.  Generally you need pretty solid gear, a better than average healing stragety & healers, and again, pretty solid gear.)

If you're a protection warrior, these are your tools.  If you're an arms warrior, you can still learn how to, but it takes a bit more time to learn, just because it's easier to solo with a 2H.

2) Expectations. This works like Psychology, except this is from the perpective of the recruiting guild, as opposed to the Warrior. If someone has a lot of points in Protection, they probably became a warrior to tank, as opposed to deal burst damage like a rogue. Therefore, if you're recruiting warriors, someone who's already geared up for Protection Spec probably knows the basics of how to hold aggro, as opposed to the Arms/Fury Warrior, who you may have to teach. If you're in a position where you're just trying to enhance your guild, there's no real desire to waste time "training" a warrior on how to hold aggro if you can find someone who already knows how to do so, and just could use at most a few extra pieces of gear to be that much better.

3) Deep wounds.  As a burst damage warrior, you want to maximize your burst DPS.  One way to do this is to put points into Impale, which adds bonus damage to your critical stikes.

However, to get points into Impale, you have to drop 3 points into Deep Wounds, which is an DOT that's based on the damage done by your melee weapon.  The problem is that all mobs have a debuff limit of 8.  When you have a lot of Warlocks and other high damage DOTs in your party, you want to make sure that said DOTs stay on the mob for maximum effect. A tanking warrior by nature will take up 2 debuff slots automatically with Sunder Armor, and Taunt. This leaves 6 slots.  However, if you include Deep Wounds, which you can't turn off, now you're down to 5 slots to work with. If a Warrior tries to lower attack speed of the mob with Thunderclap (some warriors swear by this, others don't), 4.

While most guilds hate Deep Wounds because of the low damage DOT, most won't get too flustered about it if a Warrior choose not to go full protection. The idea being that if a debuff slot was the key between winning and losing an encounter, you probably weren't ready for the encounter in the first place. In the old days, Warriors especially on PVP servers pointed out that as tanks, they weren't able to adequately protect themselves from gankings to dungeons, and since the protection tree isn't that hot (more on that later), they could usually persuade a guild that it was okay for them to persue a bunch of points in Arms to compensate, while retaining their tanking flavor. I see a lot of dichonomy about this on various guild's boards.  Some consider it a sin to have deep wounds, some could care less. The fact it doesn't seem to be any correlation between a successful guild and a bad guild advocating these things is a good sign for Arms Warriors.

4) The Protection Tree was made for tanking: Yes and no. I'd argue that only a few skills are truly useful for Tanking end game instances.

Those are:
Shield Spec and/or Anticipation
Toughness
Defiance
Improved Taunt
1h weapon spec

There are a few that are somewhat useful:
Last Stand
Improved Sunder Armor (useful to build aggro fast, but if you're fighting nd game stuff, you're getting hit for so much damage you'll have mrage left over to play with.
Shield Slam (hey, channel rage into instant damage.  I will always beat the drump on this one)

In MC, most, if not all mobs are immune to Concussion Blow, Shield Slam' Dispel ability, disarm, Silence on shield bash, and improved revenge. I'm not crazy about putting points into a skill I can only use once every 30 minutes in Improved Shield Wall either.

As a result, one school of thought is to go 15 points into Protection, and dump  5 points into Anticipation (lowers chances you'll get critte too), 5 ponts into Toughness for damage mitigation, and 5 points into Defiance for increased Threat.

Heck, if you were crafty, you could build a 31/5/15 warrior, not put points into Deep Wounds/Impale, and unless you used the Mortal Strike attack, I would bet that no one would know the difference in Molten Core. Maybe the 2 seconds to wait for Taunt to cooldown would be noticible.
-------

The conclusion?

Yeah, I've run into this before. Yes, it makes sense when people who don't know a class too well work on generalities. It also doesn't help that their perceptions are being fed by the fact that arms/fury warriors with below average gear seems a bit harder to heal haphazardly than the average protection warrior with below average gear.

If you want to be cynical and anti-guild, you can also say that a warrior who chooses to go full protection isn't all that great out of raid/instance situations (farming speed, PVP), and must rely on the guild for power, which is just the way guilds like it. To be fair, it seems like the new Shield Slam is helping that factor out a bit.

How you duel a mage with a warrior?

I have all the tools ready but I don't seem to be able to do anything. I can charge and harmstring but then the mage blinks away or freezes me. The two skills are enough to defuse both my charge and intercept and even if I'm still near I get slowed down with an ice spell.

So I'm basically sitting and staring the mage while he kills me.

Don't hamstring the mage, it's not worth it since you can still swing/ special as you run and he can't cast much if he runs.  You need to pummel/ imp. shield bash him as he's blinking so he's unable to cast spells for a few secs. Otherwise, pray you get some good crits, since Casters are supposed to be the paper to warrior's rock.

Use your pvp trinket that breaks the stun once. Then, as usual during duels or pvp, have free action potions on your bar. Then intercept to your hearts content and own his paper ass.

My belief has always been that if you're the only warrior in a group and you aren't sword&boarding it you're doing your group a disservice.

One of my best friends is in the same guild as me and has a level 60 pally, and we wince whenever him and the rest of my guildmates have to take on a warrior to do Dire Maul/Strat/Scholo/whatever because now it's always some chucklehead fury-spec with a polearm or duel-wield (which I still insist is a waste of time for warriors) that nearly dies every pull.

Edit: Mages are always going to be a tough fight one-on-one at equal levels. If you have the PVP trinket or Free Action Potions it's easier but still tough since you can only intercept as much as your cooldown allows. Use a two-hander, Berserker Stance, intercept, pummel when you see a good opportunity, and recklessness if you really really want to win since mages go down quick when critted with huge DPS two-handers.

I don't think anyone's arguing otherwise.  We're talking soloing/ PvPing, in those cases sword & board usually gets you killed. (Unless that spec I linked to above works out well. I haven't tried it.)

The only character I've played past level ten is a paladin, so I guess my perspective is skewed, but... huh?  Running solo at level 39 I've killed elites of my own level and non-elites up to level 43.  Something with two levels on me isn't a threat unless there are three of them.  I know pallies take forever to kill shit and are supposed to suck at PVP, so it's not like they're uber-leet, but still.  How the hell do you get anything done?  I usually NEED to kill higher-level shit in pursuit of my quests.

Paladins are one of the best classes for taking on mobs others couldn't at that level. The other ones are hunters, and fear-kiting warlocks. So yes, your perspective is skewed. :P

Also the perspective that warriors can't take on things +2 over their level was grounded in truth. Back when warriors were "gimped" they had a couple factors going against them for this. The first being that you didn't generate rage of a parry/dodge, which happens more frequently as the mob gets higher than you. Also not as many warriors were twinked or took the time to make sure their gear was good back then. Fighting higher conn stuff back in the day for warriors was possible, but it was not a good idea cause just a couple dodges/parries/misses and you were fucked cause you not only lost the hit, but the rage as well.

It's funny how warriors were saying they needed a MASSIVE overhaul and one little change fixed most of their problems.

Cal said what I was going to about paladins and their survivability.   Before they fixed seal of command it was even worse.  A paladin in my original guild (who outleveled me, and I was 60 before February on my Hunter) was taking on Elites 2 levels above him.  :-o   

Try playing a priest for a bit.. it's an exercise in frustration after you've played a Pally or Hunter to high levels.

Before I stopped playing them (and before the 'nerfs' to them) for Hunters 2 levels above is a cakewalk. 3 levels gets to be risky and 4 is if you feel like pushing it and are sure you won't get any adds.    With my priest I cringe at even-cons, not because I won't live, but because the fights take forever, and then I have to wait for mana to come back.  I don't even bother with mobs more than a level above me, because the resists to my spells mean I'm expending so much mana I'm actually losing time killing that +2 mob instead of killing 2 evens.

Now, as to 'how do you get things done'  you wind up waiting longer to do quests (My hunter did quests at orange, the warrior waits until yellow and the priest I get groups or I struggle through.)  Some of this might be playstyle, but I know some of it is the mechanics and classes.  WoW is a much more melee-driven game than most MMOs.. much to my delight, but to the utter frustration of those folks so used to the traditional D&D "mages r ubar" mindset.

All true.  Let me add one more thing.  Looking back, my rogue was easy as shit to level up.  You can kill anything 2 levels above you.  You can kill mages 3-4 levels above you simply because of Kidney Shot, Kick, and blind in certain situations.

A note to warriors:  I'm finding it harder and harder to play my warrior.  It seems to be completely gear related, and the lack of any tricks other than 'bash you dead'.  But god damn, it's fun.  I actually like saving peeps in my group with taunt.

I think I pretty much soloed my warrior up to 60 in a shade under 400 hours. That was pretty conservative, too. After 30 if I had grouped more it would have been much faster. Plus I skipped most of the middle instances because of the grouping factor. I'm leveling a priest now, and it's NOT possible to solo that bitch at all. However, I do enjoy the healing. If I can get it to 60, I'll have cornered 2 of the 3 most desirable group classes. I don't know if I can handle doing a mage though. I'm not a caster fan.

Get one of your L60 priest/druid guildies to follow you around, and just AoE shit for 24 hours.  I made L40 in like 30 hours like that.

Bah, priests are soloable. :P

First thing I'd say is grab the talent "Spirit Tap", "Improved Shadow Ward: Pain" is also tasty. What I do then is Mindblast->SW:P->Renew->Wand. Change to suit the situation and you'll be fine. Using the above I can chain mobs pretty easy. It's not very fast, but not too slow either and you don't have to drink so I love it.

It's HELL to level up til around 10-12 (after the easy levels of 1-6) because you just don't have the spells you need, or they are not powerful enough. I also lacked a wand (buy one on the AH and update often) and a decent weapon until that point so it sucked royally. Once you 5/5 Spirit Tap and a decent wand you will be fine.

Shadow Priest is one of the best solo'ers in the game.  My priest was so much easier to level then my mage.  Beg/buy stacks of water from a mage and make liberal use of every nuke in your arsenal.  Once u have alot of points in shadow you can take smite off your skillbar.

Battles go basically like:  Mind blast, SW:P, Mind Flay, Level 1 fear, Mind Flay, Mind Flay (usually u can get off 2 of these while feared).  Wand/melee the rest of the way down.  Use VE somewhere in thier if you took damage (which u shouldnt take much but it happens).  Once u get shadowform you are a MONSTER, i seriously felt like a god once i got this ability.  Not only do u look omgwtfpwn badass but it makes a huge difference in your killing.

I can assure you that shadow priests level faster then mages.  Also, 2 of the priests in my guild are re-rolled from other classes, 1 a former hunter the other a former rogue.  Both say that shadow priests level faster then either of those.  Thier is NO reason you should be disc/holy before 56th level or so, i didnt make the switch till 59.

Only thing i would caution you about priest:  Then fun goes away once u hit 60 (it did for me at least).  Due to the debuff limit, thier is no room for a shadow priest in a raid, and healing any of 40 people efficiently involves CTRaid (or using blizzards now built-in version of it).  This means the majority of your UI being eaten by 40 different healthbars, thier associated names, and debuffs.  After my first raid as a priest i was ready to quit the game, it was the most profoundly un-fun experience i have had playing this game so far.  Its like  you're basically not even playing the game.

Don't get me wrong, i wasn't one of those "shadow priests who don't heal".  I healed and did it well in 5 and 10-15 man instances, and it was quite fun, but the 40-man version of healing necessitates a radical (and unwelcome, unfun) alteration in the way you play.

Rogues level faster than anything.

Paladins are forum warriors, you hit attack, and browse forums.

Warriors die to damn much.

Agreed.  My list from fastest to slowest (that I've played.)

Rogue (fast but easy to screw up if you aren't prepared or have a good series of powers designed.  Can always survive though.)
Warlock (Fast and fairly safe with a tanking pet, but if you screw up you die fast.)
Priest (Shadow)
Paladin (slower but easy as anything.  You have enough powers to gain back health and mana at any time...just over a very long period, which is why it is sooooo boring.  Even to +2 fights take 1-3 minutes a piece. *Yawn*)
Warrior (I can never keep interested past level 10.)

See.. and that's the problem.  All the other classes are viable to a greater or lesser degree in more than one spec.  Priests it's, be a shadow priest or stfu.

I'd rather see them give a wee bit more soloing offense to Holy or Disc, because while I recently respecced to shadow, I really preferred Holy for my playstyle.

 
Then they were a lousy hunter. (I can't speak for the rogue, mine's only level 22.)  Hunter has been the fastest class at all levels once I got my pet. (meaning after level 10)  I was also able to survive more and take-on more mobs at one time as my hunter than I have been as a priest, rogue, or warrior.  Some of the classes it's definatly the player not fitting the classes (which, I freely admit I don't fit ofensive casters well, I'm melee as offense or healer as defense).


This is the biggest problem in WOW, IMO.  You're playing a fundimentaly different game at level 60 in all classes than you were all the previous levels where you could solo and do just about anything.  It's not a gradual change, it's a 'you hit level 60' *brick wall* kind of change, which is bad.

Level 60 content is all about grouping in one form or another.  Class dynamics in a group really change and without prior experience you: 1) find a lot of folks who can't/ won't adjust to the new roles 2) discover you have leveled a class to 60 that is nothing like what was advertised the previous 300+ hours 3) don't care because you hit 60, 'won' and are now working on your new alt.

The game you describe is the exact purpose I rolled-up a priest for.  After playing a druid (when they got to be decent healers) in EQ I found I really liked it.  It's less intensive than having to worry about timing nukes, who debuffed what when and all the other nonsense that gets thrown into raiding.  You toss a few heals, buff some folks and make sure you keep your aggro low.

For me it just felt like wack-a-mole.  I never even saw the action for watching all the health bars.  The whole skill of timin greater heals and prayer of healing was just gone... flash heal, flash heal, ad nauseum.

I'm going back to my warrior.

I think once I get some good equip, and some bandages, I could solo pretty well, as good, if not faster than the rogue.

But, then again, there's about 90% of quests that will take me forever to do.

Nah that's not what I said at all. I hate shadow priests with a passion. I rolled a priest to be a healer class, and I'd like THREE talent trees to make that happen, not the 2 they leave me with. If I wanted to be a hybrid I'd have rolled a hybrid. If I wanted an offencive caster I'd have rolled a mage/warlock. What I was saying is grab "Spirit Tap" and "Improved Shadow Word: Pain". The spirit tap is IMO a "must have" for leveling a priest. Out of all the trees in all the classes, only warlocks have a better grinding talent in "Dark Pact". Then I also suggested IMP SW:P because it means I usually don't have to reapply it all the time when I do my usual sequence.

7 talent points does not a shadowpriest make. Shadow would be wasteful to me because I don't do a whole lot of shadow damage with my sequence. Don't put words into my mouth. :P

I'll be trying mine again once I get my other alts up higher.  I started a war with alchemy and will work hard on first aid and cooking.  I figure that will give enough buffing and emergency healing to keep him alive longer than my previous attempts at the class.

Until I started playing my human rogue this weekend, it was a Tauren Warrior. I really don't think of template type builds, or purposes, I just take what is interesting until I get my ass handed to me. I would be a roleplayer, if RP in MMOG's wasn't ghey to the extreme. I definitely was going to be a PVP character, because uber raids are fucking stupid. I hate being a tank. I'm a goddamn warrior, a bitchslapper extraordinaire. I should not be expected to be bitchslapped as a profession.

You should like the rogue then.  In my opinion, Blizzard needs to look to the rogue as the fun template and change the other classes accordingly.  Try to get your character to at least level 32 before making any final decisions though.  The fun really begins when you have so many different tricks to pull during combat, you rarely lose to any mobs in any situation other than 5 on 1.  With every failure to land a finishing move, you have 3 others to try behind it if you are fast enough on the keyboard. (Little bit of twitch involved.)  If all else fails, dissappear or run like hell.

Fun.  (This class alone has kept me playing for the last 3 weeks.)

Damn you got me thinking more about the rogue class and what other classes, like Warrior, could learn from it.  Essentially, they have made enough powers with diverse effects for the rogue class, that you are basically playing a minigame while combat is occuring.  Take in stark contrast the Paladin class (I have a 60 paladin.)

With the Pally you initiate combat hit a few keys and then sit back for 2-3 minutes, hit a few more keys, repeat.  Sucks.  With the Rogue, you are constantly hitting different buttons depending on what happens in combat, what enemy you are facing, etc.  Why couldn't it be the same for the Pally or Warrior?

It would be nice to see some powers that build upon themselves to make you more of a tank or more offensive during combat.  The "mini-game" would be similar to the rogue's combat in that you would have to time actions right and they would have different results on different types of creatures, etc.

Warrior is almost there with the building of rage thing, but it is so dependent on how well you hit, damage, parry, etc. that some fights will cause you to just stare at that rage meter for what seems like forever and doing nothing in the mean time.  Warriors should be about all out nonstop brutal fighting.  It should feel that way at all times throughout the whole fight.  To me, it currently doesn't and certainly not for the Pally, which feels like a nap that gets disturbed every 3 minutes.

Well I think Warriors are actually a ton of fun if you have a lot of rage... you're constantly mashing buttons, switching stances to do things... the only problem is of course getting the rage to do these things.  Its sort of a big uphill or downhill thing that is especially evident when you're fighting other warriors.  If you happen to get a few good hits in with crits you've now got the rage to easily kill the opponent... now if you happen to miss a few times... you're probably gonna be dead.
Its sort of an hit or miss thing with warriors... always has been.  Its probably why you hear a lot of complaining because of the new weapons as one or two hits will give us the rage needed to finish anyone off quickly and easily.   

Yeah, I'd rather see them build up rage regarldess of hit or miss or how much damage they do or take.  While actively fighting, they should build up rage.  This would be much like Rogues except that it is still tied to the actual combat.  You wouldn't be walking around in rage all the time for instance.

That is why I just can't get into the warrior character though.  You got it right.  It is too hit or miss.

Posts here got me thinking:  The 'Mini-game' idea in the Rogue combat is exactly right.  That's why it's the most fun to play for me and why levelling my Warrior is painful.

Also, someone posted that they hated being a healing spec priest in a group since you're basically looking at bars and healing (a la tetris).  This totally crystallised why my wife plays the priest and why she LOVES this role with a passion.  It also explains why she's NEVER zoomed the camera out from default in her life.  When she's being a priest, she's playing a wee Tetris game with the healthbars.

It's strange how sometimes these games bring things into focus.

You're right, I was.  I'm just so used to seeing people say, "OMGFTFBBQ play shadow noobler!" that I misread.
The problem with warriors constantly generating rage is you'll have to adjust their entire skill & talent tree, or they become too predictable and easily botted.  (Start fight, wait 1.5 seconds, do an intimidating, wait 2 seconds do a rend, 3 seconds then sunde)

 Rogues are very similar to warriors, despite the constant energy increase, because of combo points. Skills that generate combo points can miss and you'll be short of the needed points to do a move right when you need it. Yeah, you've got more choices but your potency is reduced. 

True there is a lot of hit or miss for Rogues, but the other options is the key.  If you miss with one finishing move, you just wait a split second and try a different one while the other timer is counting down.  You have options other than just sitting and waiting for the damned bar to fill up again (or not in some cases ---> death.)

Perhaps they could just tweak what the warrior is now and add more powers for more options and make it so a miss on a move is not so devastating to their rage.  In fact, I would think that (ok, now I'm going to attempt my concept of roleplaying) a warrior would become more enraged if they missed a finishing move.  I know it pisses me off.

My point really was that you were comparing the wrong two components of the class.  Finishing moves and rage.  You should be comparing rogue combo points to warrior rage, because those are what's used by both classes to power their options.

Warriors and Rogues should be on-par here. Losing all your rage when an ability misses is no different than a rogue losing all combo points if their ability misses.  You're out of rage and they're out of combo points, they just have better escape options. However, I can't remember if  combo points go away or not if the abilities miss.  I haven't played my rogue since about January.

Blizzard's stance is that they do not want to create efficient rage to damage conversions for warriors. (Execute being the one 'exception' and that's not really efficent.)  This seems to be what really causes the problems people have with the class.  You can do a lot with rage, but you just can't hurt people with it when that's all you really want to do.  I like all the debuff stuff my warrior has, (armor, attack power, run speed, bleeds, attack speed) but I'd like a few more offensive buffs, other than battle shout. 

As for warrior deaths vs rogue deaths, most rogues I know flee a LOT earlier than warriors.  It's all the HPs and armor.. gives you a false sense of security so you don't flee when you really should.  I know I play that way myself.  Rogue gets an add, it's "whoopsie time to run."  Warrior gets an add, "hm I'm at 75% health I bet I can finsih them both" instead of hamstringing them and running.

No.  Combo points stay when you miss.  Cold Blood, however, vanishes like the morning dew.  Which they really, really, really need to fix, just to make us more overpowered.

Mortal Strike doesn't fit this criteria?  With the exception of our main tank, every single warrior in my guild has this.

That is what I was comparing just in an indirect way.  Rogues do not lose their combo points on a missed finishing move which is what I was talking about.  I wasn't talking about energy, which they do lose some of when they attempt a finishing move, hit or miss.

I'm saying I'd like to see that there both be more powers for Warriors to choose from and that they do not lose rage when they miss an attempt on a power.  It should only be used on a hit.

I'm not saying those additional powers should be damage in nature either.  They could get creative with all types of moves with other benefits in mind.  Several of which would be beneficial for groups since, in my mind, Warriors are more of a group character than a Rogue just by definition.

They could add a lot more options for Warriors to make them as interesting as Rogues, IMO. Things like knockback moves, more disarm types, grapple moves, hell even the rogue's kick would help. The rage mechanic is decent, and I like that warriors get things like debuffs but really, compared to a rogue, a warrior is just slow combat that's mostly about the same combos.

Shield bash is just kick.

Tho you're fucked without a shield.  Just as Rogues are fucked. . . er. . . If you cut off our legs...

I don't know, I am suffering carpal tunnel from my warrior and would not welcome any more button-mashing.  At least when tanking an instance, I am hitting a button almost every time the universal 1-second refresh is up and sometimes more (not all skills are on the universal refresh, which I guess makes it not so universal, but whatever).  Solo is less mashing, but not overwhelmingly so.  At least if I am being a micromanaging whore, dual wielding while swapping to the reaper for MS and OP and the shield for bash or dancing to fury for pummel.  PvP is all that and more (lotta stance dancing).

How you swap stances quickly and reach quickeys away from 'wasd'? Mouse? Default Alt+# ?

I really need help speccing/playing my war. I can't for the life of me figure out what to stick to. Right now I'm running around with a 2H mace that's 18.2 DPS (I just hit level 29.) I'm beginning to think it's time to move back to sword/shield. Or is it? Bleh, I don't know. Right now I'm specced Fury/Arms for talents. MS is a must have and I know that, but beyond all of that I have no idea what I'm supposed to be hitting for. When it comes down to PvP I'll switch to whatever fits that, but right now I want to be made out for Soloing and instances.

Also, equipment. What's best at 30? Should I shoot for a certain type of armor? Certain stat above others? Right now my Stam/Str are around 100. Everything else lingers randomly under 100. I've noticed I need a bit more spirit because I'm regening really slow (31/tick roughly) and it's causing me to have to pause sometimes.

Think it's all immaterial till you hit 41.  Then get the biggest slowest 2 hander you can find, and spam MS.

You get plate at 40 too.

I usually try to keep both hands on the keyboard.  I think I have the stances bound to [, ]. and \  If I was a more serious PvPer I'd move them to e,r,t or something probably.

There's some folks who do use mousewheel, but I don't see how it's anywhere near as efficient as just keybinding them.

I use 12345 for common things, then rebind shift- 2345 (who swaps toolbars anyway, when they can all be on your screen) and the right side toolbar to ctrl-qwert and put once in a while things like Battleshout there.   I bind numpad - to the shift-1 position for emergency OMG I NEED THIS NOW stuff like potions.  I find it's easier to lift my hand off the mouse and slap the - than it is to hit shift-1 in those situations.  Plus, the beautiful thing about the non-numbers on the numpad is that numlock doesn't affect them the way it does the numbers/ arrows.