What are a Warriors strengths?

JackieChan

Guys, I'm only a WOW player for 3 weeks and have one character(currently lvl 21 human warrior) that I'm plugging away with.
I find that he is very weak in comparison to the other classes that I have seen. Other classes appear to have very strong strengths(eg Hunters can have pets) what are the big strengths of Warriors.

carpenoctem

I've never played a warrior myself (I just prefer ranged combat) but in my view the biggest strength of the class is that they can use all the best armour - a properly equipped warrior is not an easy target to kill! As for their damage-dealing strengths I will leave that to someone that actually played one.

Here's a guide you might find helpful though, about halfway down the page it discusses strengths and weaknesses:

http://www.worldofwar.net/characters/warrior/index.php

rainbow kirby

Warrior is incredibly gear-dependent, for one to perform to the best of his/her ability they need to have the absolute best gear for their level. Their main strengths lie in their tanking - they are the best class at holding aggro and can wear the best tanking gear in the game. Another strength they have is their DPS - properly specced in the fury tree and with 2 good 1H weapons a warrior can come close to the DPS of a rogue while wearing the heaviest armour in the game.

Dcully

A well geared and specced in arms warrior with a 2 handed axe in particular can be awesome in pvp,huge crits and burst damage which is great for pvp.
My first ever class was a human warrior,at about lvl 30 i took a long break from him and sampled the horde and got a an undead rogue and priest to 60 then went back and got the human warrior to 60.
I rarely partake in endgame content due to time constraints but what ive done recently is got an Orc warrior to lvl 38 soon 39 where he will stay purely for battlegrounds fun in arathis basin.
He is very well equipped with mostly gear from SM and since lvl 30 got that whirlwind axe from the warrior quest [great axe for 30 to 40 and above btw] stuck the crusader enchant on it and can beat pretty much anything in BG from 30-40 that includes warlocks which is saying something.
He has even taken down a 45 paladin outside SM

As the guys have said they are very gear dependant and will seem weak until you get nice gear then you will be amazed at the difference.
Do some instance runs to try get good gear.
If your finding it frustrating ,maybe try rolling a mage or something that does good damage without a huge need for gear.

What realm are you on btw?

Coyler

If you want to play as a warrior, get used to dying. A lot. No heals and no escape method mean if you find yourself in an "Uh-oh" situation there isnt a lot you can do. The warrior comes into his own in a group but then you have to hope your group know what they are doing. Bloody frustrating tanking for a group who don't know how to control there aggro or a tank that can't aggro either.
My experience was nice due to the fact that I grouped with guys from these forums on my way to 60 and then had a pretty good guild to rely on and tank for. If you can't get any of those things, the warrior class could be a nightmare.
If you are going solo most of the time, I'd recommend something like Druid, Rogue, Hunter, Mage or Warlock.

BKtje

I've been playing a warrior for about 6 months now and am as far as Naxx.
Playing a warrior aint easy tbh, most classes can defeat you (a 60 mage in greens can kill me ffs!). Rogues it depends if you can break their stunlock, Warlocks i can kill but then die to their dots, good hunters just kite ya, shamans windfury proc + frostshock + healing doesnt leave ya with much of a chance , Priests ya cant build rage against due to shield, other warriors it comes down to spec and gear.
Believe it or not the easiest class i find are druids as long as they dont try to run too early.

That said i do sorta suck at PvP, im PvE specced fury. Ontop of all that intercept and charge are still bugged when movement is impaired.

In PvE you'll over pull a lot since most of your abilities are close range whcih means you'll die as you'll have no escape skills bar running away (until u get the gear to take the hits or the dps to kill em fast).

All the above said i love my warrior to bits in PvE, huge damage output and good survivability but in PvP without some backup you'll generally die. As Dcully said, very very gear dependant.

DRakE

The thing about being a warrior is trusting others who you dont know to keep you alive..

Thats what putting me off levelling one

JackieChan

Thanks for your replies guys.
I'm currently on the Lightbringer realm.
I like my warrior and I will persevere with him. I do a lot of solo but do lots of the quests with makeshift groups.
What pissed me off was that a Hunter 3 levels below me made bits of me. I only took about 25-30% of his health when he won!
The only instances I've done are the Dungeons(In Moonbrook). I've found that my guys attack rates are slow as up to now I have been using an axe(2.5 speed, 12dps-How does stack up for a lvl 21?) and shield. The shield is currently 30% of my armour but maybe I should trying to build up the other areas and go two handed.
Something to experiment with over the weekend.
One last thing for with regards to weapons, there is a damage figure given(currently for me its 15-30) and a dps, currently 11.8. What is the meaning of the former?

Coyler

Your weapon is swinging at 15-30 damage. Each swing will do an average damage which is 22.5. I'm guessing the swing speed of your weapon is 1.9. So 22.5/1.9=11.84 damage per second (dps).

rainbow kirby

1H + shield is slow going, but offers the best survivability. This is what you'll mainly be using while tanking. For soloing - you should be getting dual wield in or around now, so either get 2 good 1H weapons or a nice 2-hander (something like this from Deadmines would be good) and you'll kill stuff a lot quicker, but not have *quite* as much survivability. Then again, I have a slight bias towards 2-handed weapons having levelled as a retri-spec paladin!
WoW-Loot.com Warrior Loot List

NeoSlicerZ

Coyler wrote:

If you want to play as a warrior, get used to dying. A lot. No heals and no escape method mean if you find yourself in an "Uh-oh" situation there isnt a lot you can do. The warrior comes into his own in a group but then you have to hope your group know what they are doing. Bloody frustrating tanking for a group who don't know how to control there aggro or a tank that can't aggro either.
My experience was nice due to the fact that I grouped with guys from these forums on my way to 60 and then had a pretty good guild to rely on and tank for. If you can't get any of those things, the warrior class could be a nightmare.
If you are going solo most of the time, I'd recommend something like Druid, Rogue, Hunter, Mage or Warlock.

Weren't you raging about how blizzard shafted the warrior class? Oh and I resembled the aggro thing.

Mr. CooL ICE

My first 60 character was a warrior, and I didn't know enough about playing him until I hit 60. But when I was leveling my priest to 60, I came across some warriors who knew their class, and others that didn't. Heres a guideline with some points, that seem pretty obvious, but in case you didn't know them already, should be invaluable. Bear in mind, this is how I play/played my warrior, and other peoples methods are going to be different, so please feel free to add.

For soloing, don't bother using 1h+shield. I levelled using a 2-hander all the time, but never duel-wielded until 60 so I can't comment on which is better.

Get used to stances. I never actually changed stances properly until a friend caught me tanking in Gnomeregan in battle stance. Battle stance is a good 'default' stance for soloing (and a small part of tanking), defensive stance should never be used when soloing (unless you need to use disarm) and used mostly in tanking, whereas berserker stance is used for both soloing and PVP (and maybe tanking if youre feeling cocky and want to use execute). When I was levelling, the tactical mastery talent was in the arms tree, but now its in the defensive tree. Max out this talent so that you can keep as much of your rage as you can when changing stances. Also, I don't know about other warriors, but I set up my action bar so that moves which were available to all 3 stances above the action bar, but moves that were stance-specific were in their appropriate bars.

Tanking... This is something that I found hard to get used to. I had to accept that my role in a group was not to deal damage, but to take damage. Every tanks job is to be the groups bitch and take a beating, and make sure no mobs attack anybody else in the group. I won't bother explaining aggro management here, but the deal is this...

In a boss fight, allow yourself to get aggro from the boss. First task is to build up rage. How you do this is up to you, but where possible, I used to charge in, bchange to defensive stance, use bloodrage and sunder the boss 3 times before anyone else attacked him. At this stage, I sundered until it capped at 5 sunders, and used my rage to shield block, revenge, and renew sunder every 5 seconds or so. When I had extensive rage, I used to throw in a heroic strike to keep the aggro.

In thrash mob fights, where tanking multiple mobs, you will need to aggro every single mob that is in combat. You need to understand that if you walk into a group (lets say 4 elite mobs) which subsequently attack you and you only attack one back, that the dps can only attack that one single mob without getting aggro themselves. Even then, if a healer throws a heal on you, all the remaining (unaggroed) mobs will immediately go for the healer. IMO, the best thing to do here is charge in, def stance, bloodrage, and throw a sunder on each mob as quick as your rage allows you. Tab-switching between mobs can be useful here. If you're in a place like gnomeregan, where there are groups mixed with elites and non-elites, don't worry too much about the non-elites, as they deal less damage. using something like demoralizing shout or thunderclap to gain a small amount of aggro (use piercing howl to slow them if you have the talent) will do but after that, concentrate aggroing the elites and let the dps to take care of the non-elites.

Now for PVP - I hated using my warrior for pvp, as I had a hard time beating most other classes. One deciding factor when fighting other classes is who gets the first blow. Unless you attack first, you could almost always consider yourself dead, due to charge being a move that depends on being out of combat, and gets you up within melee range of the enemy while building rage. If possible generate a macro so you can quickly switch between weapons to allow for shield bash, which is useful against casters.

Hunters - Hunters are a mostly-ranged class. They have limited melee moves and their power lies in them being at range. To use ranged weapons, there is a maximum and minimum distance which they can use. The best way to beat them is to not get too far from them. If you're first to attack, charge in and hamstring straight away. If you charge a hunter, they will do their best to get out of range by using 'wing-clip' on you. Hack away at them but renew hamstring every 3-4 seconds. If they attack you first, change to ber stance (use bloodrage if necessary) and intercept them. Also, remember to ignore their pet.

Mages - Frost nova is a real killer with mages. You can charge in and attack, but they will frost nova you and run out of melee range to cast spells that slaughter you. Here, hamstringing might be useful because it could delay them running away from you and lessening the time they have to attack you at range. Use pummel or shield slam if you see them trying to sheep you and that may buy you some more time.

Warlocks - I never figured out a proper way of beating warlocks, but try the same tactics as a mage. Ignoring their pet may not be a good idea, as imps deal a lot of damage but have low hp, so maybe 2 heroic strikes spent on the pet could lower the rate at which your health is decreased. Warlocks have less evasion methods than mages, but they can chain fear. Try to be in ber stance so you can break their fear, but they can chain cast fear so try to be careful.

Priests - Their shield can be frustrating, as well as their fear. When you get close to a priest, make sure you enter ber stance asap, so that when they fear you, you can use ber rage to break fear and go back to attacking them. Once their shield is down, simply hack away at them, as fear and shields are their only methods of evasion. Try to reserve your pummel for when they cast a heal.

Rogues - They can kill easily if you don't detect their stealth. If you think one is nearby, use bloodrage and try to get as close as possible and thunderclap to unstealth them. Rogues dodge a lot, so use the overpower move, which is in battle stance. Improved overpower can be a deciding factor between you and a rogue.

Druids - Can be a bitch to fight, because they can heal themselves too. Druids usually attack in bear mode, and if losing, switch back to human form, heal themselves, and switch back to bear. In this scenario, just wait until they are in human form, and pummel.

Shamans - I never really figured out any way to get them even below 50% health, so I can't offer any advice.

Paladins - Although I beat some pallies in duels, I always put it down to them being crap Since they are plate, they take time to kill. They heal themselves too, but it's not going to be like a druid or priest, since they can concuss you for 5 seconds, meaning they could be back to full health in that space of time, or they could pop a bubble, meaning you can't do anything to them, except maybe bandaging yourself. But it is crucial to reserve your pummel for when they try to heal themselves when theyre below 50% health.

Warriors - Tricky fights these... Warriors often use retaliation when attacked by other warriors, which is stupid considering the cooldown time. If the two warriors know their class relatively well, the fight could be dependent on who has the better gear, etc. But these fights are simply a contest to see who can reduce the others' health in the shortest time possible.


Whew, long post! Please feel free to add any input to this, and correct mistakes and/or bad advice that I have given, because theres bound to be lots of them.

Coyler

NeoSlicerZ wrote:

Weren't you raging about how blizzard shafted the warrior class? Oh and I resembled the aggro thing.

Don't get me started. Bloody Warlocks.

randomchild

When levelling the first thing you must decide is if you want to pvp or not. If you want to do some pvp, go for arms spec. No class bar a paladin or mabey a rogue is going to try and go mano a mano with you, so you need to hit BIG when you finally catch that snivilling little mage... That why arms spec is good for pvp, you dont get as much hits as fury, but those hits HURT! Fury is the oppisite, you do much more damage, but you opponent needs to be standing still for you to do it. (In pvp you will probally get one or two swings at a time, but with a 1h weapon rather than a 2h one) In pve you are king. The mobs stand still so you can have a field day! Protection spec is best left out of the equation till the last levels, unless you are a paladin in disguise...