What Kind of Warrior Shall I be? (3.0)

What Kind of Warrior Shall I Be?
for WoW 3.x (Wrath of the Lich King)

Revised 4/16/09, 5/2/09

Intro: What Kind of Warrior Shall I Be?
Part 1. Arms, Lord and Ladies of the Battlefield
Part 2. Fury, The Fast and the Furyious
Part 3. Protection, The Rock and the Hard Place


I don't know why, but I get asked this question a lot. Usually by newer players, of course, so maybe that says something. We won't go there. It probably has to do with my hot and frequently changing hair style choices. Yup.

I do get asked "What kind of warrior should I be," or "What warrior spec is best," frequently enough that, awhile back, I started a post on the subject that turned into an unintentional series, with the Protection Warrior version never getting published. (It was Blizzards fault for changing everything in 3.0, I swear!) Now that I've been a-warriorin' in Wrath for a bit, I felt it was time to update it. Mainly because I still can't walk through Stormwind without the "can i ask u a ?" tell at least once or twice.

I still get a lot of "whar u get blak hors?" as well, but that's a totally different post.

Anyhoo, while a lot of the information in those original posts still works, what follows is the updated versions, including this introduction. I hope someone finds it useful, and welcome comments, corrections and enhancements on these thoughts.

Picking your Talent Specialization is very important for any class. You'll even get familiar with several different specs. I'll letcha in on a little secret... /whisper If you're just playin' WoW and having fun, with specific exceptions aside, it really doesn't matter. ;)

Of course it matters for those specific exceptions. If you're gonna do one thing primarily, then yes, you need to spec for that one thing. If you're going to tank raids, you need to spec Protection and you need to do it properly. If you're going to DPS instances you need to spec Fury or Arms. If you're going to fight in PvP then you'll probably seriously consider a spec that optimizes survivability and fast, hard damage.

That's what you'll read about most when you go to research "Warrior Theory." It's called min/max'ing. Which means minimizing bad stuff that can happen to your toon, while maximizing the bad stuff you can do to other toons. If you're creating a Warrior for one of those things, then you really need to read the spec guides and practice, practice, practice. The very high end of the game is unforgiving of mistakes in these roles. Perhaps a little less so in Wrath, but that will change as the expansion grows. So get that practice in now while you can.

The number of players that actually need one of the optimized specs and gear lists, however, are in the minority. Heavy, hardcore raiders need to spec appropriately. Arena fighters need to spec and gear to min/max. That's, what? Probably less than 10% of WoW's 11 million plus player-base?

In one play session I do a quest or two, farm for mats, run dailies, make a quick instance run, help guildies, play a few BGs, do a little world PvP, tank a wild boss, etc. Most players are like that and most players will have neither the resources nor patience to respec every other night. even with dual specs. You don't have to do that. When to respec is another discussion entirely, but for the time being, pick a Warrior spec that appeals to you and enjoy.

That's what this guide is about. It's not a How-To Warrior guide. This is intended to give you a rough idea of what to expect when you choose a particular Warrior talent specialization. The goal here is to give you a feel for each spec, rather than tell you which spec you need to take. Then you can make your own decision, based on what appeals to you as a player!

With the release of World of Warcraft 3.0, and Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard made Warriors fun again. By the end of The Burning Crusade, being a "good" warrior revolved around having precisely the right spec, exactly the same gear as every other Warrior, and using the correct and same ability rotation. While that is certainly emerging again, the gap between being a Good Player and a Rock Star has narrowed a little. You can literally now play whichever type of Warrior you like, how you like, and get good results . . . as long as you play well. There's still plenty of room to be a "bad" player. But it does come down to the player and (slightly) less about gear and talent spec.

That does not mean the gear and talents aren't important! You do need to carefully consider your talent build, and work hard to acquire good items that enhance that build. You can not spend your talent points willy-nilly on stuff that just looks good, crossing multiple trees on a whim. The talent trees are intentionally built to create a certain flavor of Warrior, with each Talent enhancing previous talents or trainable skills that type of Warrior is most likely to use. Without those talent trees, all Warriors would be bland carbon copies of each other. Blah!

There is a certain amount of "less about what you have and more about how you use it" in WoW these days. I think a lot of players, many Warriors included, got a shock when they entered WoW 3 and suddenly their gear no longer compensated for their inadequacies as players. They got mad about it, too. Fury Warriors who didn't understand threat and aggro. Arms Warriors who relied on their resilience and couldn't fight multiple targets at once effectively (guilty here, learned fast). Protection Warriors who thought all they needed was a little more AoE threat to be great.

Doesn't work that way. Just cause ya got it, doesn't mean you're good. There's still plenty of room for Blizzard to improve that concept, but the game is definitely heading that way. Getting great gear and sexy new items should be a reward because it's fun. It should not be a task, something you have to plod through to get to the fun part.

If you keep that mentality, you'll enjoy your play time as a Warrior regardless of what talent spec you're playing and what gear you're toting around. On the other hand, if you're only interested in toting around imaginary armor to enhance an imaginary epeen, this guide probably isn't for you. If you're interested in playing a Warrior and want to know what it's like, read on.

Of course, study and practice are the cornerstones of becoming truly great at any profession! With that in mind, take a look at the links on the right. These are starting places, but they'll lead you to all sort of information about being a Warrior in WoW. More importantly, though, as you browse through some of the sites (specially the blogs), you'll discover there are many different types of Warriors. Even if they have the same talents, in many respects they are very different from each other. Read what these players have to say about playing a Warrior. Take what works for you and leave what doesn't. You'll get the idea.

Most importantly, make being a Warrior fun... for YOU!


-Fri

Fun with Warriors: Heroic Strike

In the Warrior world of late, there's been a lot of chattin' about Heroic Strike. Namely, that's it is a necessary pain in the ass. It is.

So, for our occasional look at Warrior abilities and how to use 'em (from a "casual" perspective?), I figured that it was a timely and useful topic to hit tonight.

I also retitled this "series" to Fun with Warriors . . . There's an excellent blog that now uses the Dummies moniker, so jump over there and check it out. My prattle will wait.

K.

The very first ability a Warrior gets to hit stuffs with is Heroic Strike. I remember my first time playing Friday, my pinky finger hovering over the HS key like I was drinking tea from a posh China cup, and waiting and waiting for the perfect time to smash it. Oh look, my rage bar is full now! I should be safe to sneak in at least one HS. Smack. Better wait for the next one, though. Might need it in an emergency! Them kobalds look nasty!

Nope. Once you've got the Rage, go nuts on it.

This is one of the things that made me love the way Friday fights. Smack it and she jumps up in the air, spins around, and brings her sword down on some poor freak's head. Whap! Love it!

This is an ability you'll use from Level 1 to Level 80 pretty much FOR.EV.ER. Once your rage gets up, just tap HS every swing.

What it does is something every Warrior already knows, since we grow up with it. It hits the bad guy really, really hard. It scales up to Rank 13. Tanks love it because it also piles on a respectable amount of Threat. At Rank 10 (Level 66) it also does extra damage to dazed targets.

Wait? Every Swing?

Yup.

'Spose I should explain a little better than that, eh?

First, in low Rage situations, you won't be using HS much. It overrides the normal damage from your swing (the stuff that shows up white, AKA a "white hit") and converts it into a special attack (the yellow damage). White = more rage. Yellow = no rage.

So when you use HS, you're burning rage and you're burning off your normal regular swing and converting it to a special attack. Hitting HS at the wrong time is the fastest way to Rage Starve yourself.

Example.

You have 20 Rage. You HS, which takes 15 (you can lower this but it's just an example.... sheesh!). You now have 5 Rage, your swing meter has reset and your Global Cooldown is ready. You can't Shield Slam! It needs 20 rage. So you have to wait for that next white hit to come in and give you more rage. Ooops. It only gave you 10 Rage. 'Nother wait. You're now 3 or more seconds in and you still haven't hit with your biggest shot. Your dps and threat are dropping like a stone as everyone around you is smashing bad guys with big hitting instant attacks! Threat WARNING! You look like a twit on Recount! Oh noes!

Rage starvation sucks. Misuse of HS is one of the ways to get there fast.

In my experience, I don't even start until around 50. Probably too conservative, but I despise it when Friday QQs "Not enough Rage!" She'll be bitchin' about being outta mana next... sheesh!

After you've hit your Rage sweet spot, though, you can't hit HS frequently enough. Watch your swing timer and keep HS lit at all times.

Won't that wear out my fingers?

Yes, it will. If you're not replacing your keyboard every few months because you've worn out your HS key, YNDIR. A warrior will usually come out of a dungeon physically exhausted. Or at the very least, with a hand cramp. It's one of the joys and pains of playing this class. :)

It's also the point of contention running among the WoW Warrior community at the moment. Namely that HS is a clunky mechanic that needs some Blizzard love. I disagree that HS is the problem, but the issue itself is certainly valid. One of the things that makes playing a warrior so interesting and entertaining is that you're managing a ton of abilities that have to be executed at just the right time to get good results. The problem is that, of late, it's a bit much. Adding in Heroic Strike makes it a lot much.

To manage it better, most Warriors use macros. You can find many useful ones at Tankspot and WoWwiki's Warrior macros pages.

A simple way is to either hot key HS conveniently, which is a lot of work hitting it every time, or macro it in combo with your basic rotation. For example, most Warriors tanks use Glyph of Revenge, which gives ya a Rage free HS after each Revenge strike. So we use a macro like this:

#showtooltip HeroicRevenge
/cast Heroic Strike
/cast Revenge

As long as you have 15+ rage (sans Improved Heroic Strike), you'll do Revenge and then Heroic Strike back-to-back. Nice and simple, lots of threat, lots of damages. Fun!

Well, because I hate doing macros on account I'm kinda lazy that way...

When I need to start the HS spam I just keep taping Revenge.

The trick is that when Revenge is not up, the macro just lights up HS. When Revenge is up, it does both. Since I'm hitting that key on my swing timer every 1.6 seconds, I don't even have to monitor Revenge. It's gonna go if it's up, it won't if it's not. Either way I get my HS in.

It simplifies things a bit. You do have to put up with your toon whining "That's not ready yet!" constantly, but you can turn that off. :)

There's probably more efficient ways to do it, of course. With this one simple trick, though, I literally more than doubled the number of Heroic Strikes I get in during a fight. I'm sure there's ways to do even better. (See macro sites above.)

Regardless of how you go about it, learn to use HS in high Rage situations. It's your Heroic friend!

-Fri