Leveling a Warrior...

[Aquamaria 1]

The damage dealt is quite good too.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Aquamaria

[gotmilk0112 10]

I'm mainly focusing on that ridiculous health regen, though. Is that really accurate? I don't remember any class regening 4% of their health every 2 seconds.

 

That's what is confusing me here. Health regen is not that high in vanilla, except for at really low levels.

[Aquamaria 1]

It might be bugged on Kronos. I don't really know. But even if health regen is bugged on that server, it doesn't make the setup less approachable, rather the contrary.

[Undertanker 88]

I believe you are thinking of base HP.   When you have +stam gear on, it slows down visually, relative to your total HP amount with gear.

[grid_65 0]

Undertanker is right.

 

HP regen was crap on retail. 

Edited November 29, 2016 by grid_65

[KonigsTiger 2]

On 6/11/2016 at 11:22 PM, Undertanker said:

If Warrior will be your main:

 

Professions:

 

Pick up cooking and first aid.   Fishing can help level your cooking up to 100 pretty easily as rate of catch is high and many cooking items at low level call for fish.  Fishing after 85 skill starts to slow and will slow down your leveling.   At this point, when you are grinding, kill beast for what is gonna level your cooking and humanoid for cloth.   DO NOT SELL YOUR CLOTH.   Cooking will allow you to always have the "well fed" buff to give your warrior more stamina and some spirit (helps hp regen between mobs, minor but it comes with the buff so w/e)

All cloth should be made into bandages.  Even when you get the next level bandages, if you already made lesser ones, still use those first, don't vendor them.  You WILL use them all. If you're mid HP after a fight, use a lesser bandage for a few sec, if you fought 2 things and are low, use your best bandage.

Alch/Herb:

Herbing is annoying to level at the start, so fight through it, especially on a new server roll-out.  Fight through it and while you hunt forever you can still grind the mobs lower level than you, get used to this practice (see lack of hit above) it will give you the extra early exp needed so you can complete your quest in the next zone without crying due to "the struggle".  Pick up alchemy as well to pair with it.  HP potions are easy to make and will save you SOOOOOOO many times from death.  Keep about 20 on you and stash the rest in the bank.   Make the agility and str potions as well, and fort pots for more stam (it isn't a lot but when paired with well fed buff, you are in good shape) the str and agil pots make up for having gray/green gear.   Use these buff potions when you grind in safe zones or away from high traffic areas when in contested zones.   You will get pissed off if you pop 4 1-hour potions to get ganked right after.   I usually kept 1 stack of mana pots which I would give to the healer if I do an instance, most times they don't have them and it can save a wipe = less down time.   Until your guild is ready to raid and you can afford a Force Reactive Disk, stay with these at 60 and farm up as many raid consumables as you can yourself.  Stash these on an alt bank.

 

Spec:

 

You will find a lot of controversy on this.  I've leveled 8 warriors on this patch and finally got it down (IMO) with the 8th one.  Only 2 respecs from lvl 1 to lvl 59.  Here it goes.  DO NOT DUEL WIELD!

 

Level 1 - 39:

 

Get 5% Crit, Unbridled Wrath, Blood Craze - This will increase your damage, rage gain rate, and help you stay alive.  Keep a 1h and sword with you and a weapon swap from your 2H for fighting a caster/healer.  You will not access to pummel pre 30, and it will make these low armor mobs better exp and not make your life hell due to their high magic damage/OP heal.  Swap back mid fight when you get the hang of this.

 

Continue down until you get Enrage and Deathwish - 1/3 imp cleave over 1/5 imp Battle shout so you can kill more than 1 mob w/o having to drink when you pair with deathwish. Piercing Howl will save your life a lot when you pull too much, and help you in some world pvp if you rolled that server.  The important thing here is Enrage talent and understanding the synergy with Blood Craze.  You will want to make a macro for "/sit" and put it on your action bar.  Reason being, when you are sitting, you have a 100% chance to be crit, and you will automatically stand up after being hit.  So you can manually trigger this extra 25% damage for 100% uptime!!!  You may think, "OMG a crit, will lower my HP too much adding down time".   Not at all, because of Blood Craze.  (remember you should be grinding mobs 2-3 levels lower than you) If you compare a normal hit, vs a crit - the amount Blood Craze will heal you for, on most mobs you actually take LESS damage.  It is a small difference, but usually is less. Unless you get crit again while standing up and don't get full use out to Blood Craze from the first crit taken.   Take this to the bank.

 

Finish up with maxing out Cleave, then getting Flurry and Imp Bezerker Rage - Once you get the 3/3 Imp cleave, paired with keeping Enrage up, you can now grind 2 mobs at once VERY quickly.  The damage output far exceeds 3/5 imp battle shout.  Furry and Imp Rage is self explanatory.  Grats on reaching level 39.

*Note no weapon dependency.  Equip what you can find, but keep it a 2H - weapon speed does not matter here.  Only the DPS of the weapon.  Duel Wield gives you a large chance to miss penalty that isn't worth it until raiding. Rend is good at the start of a pull on high armor targets pre-lvl 40**

 

Level 40-60

 

TIME TO RESPEC:

 

Time to get Mortal Strike and Axe Specialization - by level 40 you should have already completed your WW axe quest.  If you are alliance, you can also get the SM Axe quest, slightly better.  Focus on Mortal Strike on single targets, and on multiple targets, use Sweeping Strikes > Whirl Wind.  If you get Stoneslayer from Uldaman or Warmonger from luck/AH, you can respec to sword specialization.  Otherwise stay with your slow 2H for Mortal Strike.  (Top end damage is what matters on your weapon).

 

Start down the Fury Tree for more crit and rage gains - You'll notice the specialization is now Polearm.  This is for when AV is released, jump into one at lvl 51 and go the struggle for a Korrak kill for your Ice Barbed Spear.  This will be your last weapon until 60.  Not sure when it will release, but eventually it will and this is your best weapon when it does.

 

Finish the way you started in the fury tree, getting Enrage and Blood Craze - Time to bring that /sit macro back out.  You can stay this spec until you get better fury duel wield gear, since Sweeping strikes is really good for 5 mans.

 

Note you only respec 2 times, unless you got a good sword mid 40s, then it is 3 times total.  Killing 2 mobs becomes much easier mid to late 20s.  By the time you got 3/3 imp cleave, you should aim to grind 2 at once when you can.

When you have the choice of what type of human, kill lower armor targets.  Beast typically have higher armor so only grind on them when you need the meat for cooking.

 

While people advocate just run instances, it is by far the worst EXP per hour thing to do in Vanilla.  Run an instance only when you have the quest and get your blue item from it.  Otherwise the long time investment for a CHANCE at an upgrade that you may lose a roll on, will not increase your leveling time vs grinding lower lvl mobs. 

 

I hope this helps anybody who has never done the Warrior Grind, or has done it, and felt is was painfully unbearable.  It is tough, don't let anybody lie to you.  I didn't have such a guide during my day and did the all types of leveling, including protection tree in 2005, duel wield, mix between the 3.   Learn from my mistakes and growing pains and enjoy the journey.

 

Outstanding guide.

A few questions,

Why do you spend so many points in Stance mastery as arms? do we need it? why? Isn´t it better to invest those points in improved parry? It would give us a little bit of survival plus dps (since parry resets swing timers) Same happened with mining, couldn´t level it past 50 or so. 

Also, I didn´t continue to level my herbalism because I got frustrated, since I couldn´t find more than 1 or 2 herbs every half an hour, specially in Elwyn forest. Same happened with mining, couldn´t level it past 50 or so. I picked up skinning to make some extra money. It´s kinda poor, but it´s better than nothing.

I will follow your advice and level cooking assap, I forgot how much the well fed status helps.  

[gotmilk0112 10]

Tactical Mastery is insanely more useful than some extra Parry. Being able to stancedance without losing rage is so ridiculously good that it boggles the mind why this talent is a talent and not a passive.

 

And yes, Herb/Mining are rough at the start since so many people have it at low level, but once you get past the starting herbs, it becomes much easier. Trust me, Herb/Alch is a very nice choice for Warrior (or any other class, for that matter) since you can make tons of useful elixirs, as well as stock yourself up with potions, which are invaluable for Warriors.

Edited January 18, 2017 by gotmilk0112

[KonigsTiger 2]

47 minutes ago, gotmilk0112 said:

Tactical Mastery is insanely more useful than some extra Parry. Being able to stancedance without losing rage is so ridiculously good that it boggles the mind why this talent is a talent and not a passive.

 

And yes, Herb/Mining are rough at the start since so many people have it at low level, but once you get past the starting herbs, it becomes much easier. Trust me, Herb/Alch is a very nice choice for Warrior (or any other class, for that matter) since you can make tons of useful elixirs, as well as stock yourself up with potions, which are invaluable for Warriors.

Thanks for the answer,

I might start herb again, once and if I get a mount at llv 40.

In which case would I use stance dancing while leveling?

I have only played warrior in WOD, so you know, this is all pretty new for me.

Also, from what I ve seen, it seems to be better to do Uldaman a few times before res-specting at lvl 40, since we could get the Stoneslayer or Rockpounder, and go for Sword Specialization.  

Edited January 18, 2017 by KonigsTiger

[gotmilk0112 10]

35 minutes ago, KonigsTiger said:

In which case would I use stance dancing while leveling?

https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic/23625-list-of-abilities-by-stance/

 

Lots of abilities can only be used in a certain stance.

 

Being able to change stance without losing rage can let you go from Battle Stance to Berserker Stance and then use Pummel, or Intercept. Or go from Defensive to Berserker and use Berserker Rage, then go back to Defensive. Or use Charge then switch to Defensive, without losing rage. Tactical Mastery is without a doubt the single best Warrior talent.

 

And yeah, that's what I ended up doing, just running Uldaman a bunch of times at 43/44 until I got Stoneslayer. I would not recommend Rockpounder, as mace spec is really crap for leveling. The stun is random and useless, whereas axe spec gives 5% crit and sword spec gives 5% chance for extra attack.

Edited January 18, 2017 by gotmilk0112

[Undertanker 88]

Once you get whirl wind, tactical mastery is used a lot more.

Fight a single mob and pool rage while in battle stance.   Top yourself off quickly with a bandage after the kill.  Then charge into your next grinding mob, pull another as well.  Pop sweeping strikes, then stance dance to zerker stance with this excess rage you pooled previously and do a whirlwind to consume your sweeping strikes charges, then a cleave.  Both mobs should be less than 35%.  1 or two hits each and you can execute.   Eat food, and repeat, 1 mob, rage pool in battle stance to setup a 2 mob pull with sweeping strike + WW > cleave combo.

[villur 0]

Is fury 2h still the way to go if I'm leveling with a healer buddy(probably all the way to 60)?

[Wirago 8]

2 hours ago, villur said:

Is fury 2h still the way to go if I'm leveling with a healer buddy(probably all the way to 60)?

Yes, it is. 

[KonigsTiger 2]

8 hours ago, villur said:

Is fury 2h still the way to go if I'm leveling with a healer buddy(probably all the way to 60)?

You got a pocket healer?

The dream is real. I would gather 3 mobs all the time and cleave the hell out of them. 

[villur 0]

13 hours ago, KonigsTiger said:

You got a pocket healer?

The dream is real. I would gather 3 mobs all the time and cleave the hell out of them. 

Yeah, I have a friend who likes vanilla and healing :P

We're already doing that pretty much, aggroing whole camps and going ham.

[KonigsTiger 2]

On 18/1/2017 at 2:27 PM, gotmilk0112 said:

https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic/23625-list-of-abilities-by-stance/

 

Lots of abilities can only be used in a certain stance.

 

Being able to change stance without losing rage can let you go from Battle Stance to Berserker Stance and then use Pummel, or Intercept. Or go from Defensive to Berserker and use Berserker Rage, then go back to Defensive. Or use Charge then switch to Defensive, without losing rage. Tactical Mastery is without a doubt the single best Warrior talent.

 

And yeah, that's what I ended up doing, just running Uldaman a bunch of times at 43/44 until I got Stoneslayer. I would not recommend Rockpounder, as mace spec is really crap for leveling. The stun is random and useless, whereas axe spec gives 5% crit and sword spec gives 5% chance for extra attack.

Note that rockpounder has 2% crit chance, which is good. Of course its not as good as the 5% that we get from Ax specialization. It sounds nicer for 2h fury though.

 

I have done armory twice now, with no luck for the helm, feelsbadman. 

[gotmilk0112 10]

Rockpounder has 2% crit, yes, but 5% crit axe spec or 5% double-hit sword spec are infinitely better than a 5% chance to stun target for 3 seconds.

 

Plus, Stoneslayer's 3.9 speed gives it insane top-end damage.

Edited January 23, 2017 by gotmilk0112

[KonigsTiger 2]

21 hours ago, gotmilk0112 said:

Rockpounder has 2% crit, yes, but 5% crit axe spec or 5% double-hit sword spec are infinitely better than a 5% chance to stun target for 3 seconds.

 

Plus, Stoneslayer's 3.9 speed gives it insane top-end damage.

I didnt say that Rockpounder is better, im just saying that it´s not the end of the wolrd if you get it before Stoneslayer and you dont want to keep farming ulda. 

I know ppl that used WW axe up to lvl 50 haha. 

[KonigsTiger 2]

I have just reached lvl 40 and changed to arms. Im loving the stance dancing so far, makes my warr so versatile. Specially in world PVP. 

Im not sure about my rotation now. Should I use Slam, or just Mortal strike whenever its available, while keeping rend up?

[Asherdoom 5]

i dont wanna be the black sheep but i leveled entirely as prot and now (42) i find myself quite good. started with 2 handed and swapped dual wield once level 20.

concussive blow+last stand are lifesaver for me. dungeon tanking is  a joke when i unlocked at 40 shield slam.

 

for professions i did not pick alch+herb. i went mining and enchanting to toss up some golds. Ofc for me fishing+cooking are mandatory! :)

[YoungFreddy 4]

Stoneslayer vs the rockpounder?got them both.

[Adeline 2]

On ‎2017‎-‎01‎-‎25 at 2:05 PM, KonigsTiger said:

I have just reached lvl 40 and changed to arms. Im loving the stance dancing so far, makes my warr so versatile. Specially in world PVP. 

Im not sure about my rotation now. Should I use Slam, or just Mortal strike whenever its available, while keeping rend up?

Pull two mobs and kill them with sweeping strikes. Repeat.

[KonigsTiger 2]

5 hours ago, Adeline said:

Pull two mobs and kill them with sweeping strikes. Repeat.

Should slam be used in single target situations? or just mortal strike?

[Adeline 2]

1 minute ago, KonigsTiger said:

Should slam be used in single target situations? or just mortal strike?

No, ignore slam altogether. Use MS and WW with SS.

[KonigsTiger 2]

8 hours ago, YoungFreddy said:

Stoneslayer vs the rockpounder?got them both.

Damn, I surely envy you. I have done Uldaman 3 times and no luck for the Stoneslayer.

Rockpounder is fine, but Stoneslayer is much better. Having such a slow weapon is nice because our stuff scales with weapon damage.

Plus the sword specialization is better,

Edited January 27, 2017 by KonigsTiger

[Kodesterx 0]

I'm leveling as 2H Fury (using Nocturn's spec) level 50 atm.

I just got the 2H mace from Princess in Maraudon. Should I use it or stick with the Whirlwind axe? They seem to hit about the same.