Warrior spec talk

[jpark]

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.

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.

[Fabricated]

This amount of analysis makes me physically ill.

[schild]

This amount of analysis makes me physically ill.

I think you just found your muse.

[Merusk]

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.

[Jayce]

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.

[Righ]

I've got a 36 warrior who dual wields almost exclusivly.

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.

[Merusk]

I've got a 36 warrior who dual wields almost exclusivly.

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.

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

  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)

[HaemishM]

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?

[MrHat]

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.

[kaid]

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

[Merusk]

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.

[El Gallo]

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.

[Merusk]

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 the link to the guy talking about his shield slam spec, and how it compares to the tried-and-true MS-spec.

[Lantien]

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.

[Lantien]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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! 

[HaemishM]

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.

[Lantien]

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.

[Lantien]

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?

[Brolan]

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?

[Lantien]

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.

[HRose]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[Fabricated]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

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.)

[WindupAtheist]

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"

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.

[Calantus]

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"

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.

[Merusk]

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.     

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.

[MrHat]

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.     

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[MrHat]

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.

[Calantus]

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.

[Sogrinaugh]

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.

[MrHat]

Rogues level faster than anything.

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

Warriors die to damn much.

[Dren]

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.)