[ARCHIVED] Warrior Beginner Guide WoW – Overview & Builds for ALL Specs

[ARCHIVED]: This build has been archived, which means it is no longer being updated. However, this web-page will be left up for those who still would like to refer to it.

Guide Written By: Dottz Gaming

Table of Contents

1. Video
2. Introduction
3. Specializations
   1. Arms
   2. Fury
   3. Protection
4. Contact Info
5. Update Log

Video

Introduction

Welcome to DottzGaming.com’s beginner guide for the Warrior class in World of Warcraft! This guide will give you a brief overview to what the class has to offer, its specializations and new player focused talent setups to get you going on your adventures through Azeroth! If you are brand new to WoW and are reading this guide, I also recommend checking out my WoW Complete Beginner Guide, which will teach you all non-class specific things you need to know to get yourself started in WoW.

Warriors are melee fighters trained in the art of war. Wearing plate armor and wielding two-handed weapons in battle, they can deal large amounts of physical damage, while also being able to take tons of damage to protect their party members. Warriors are your stereotypical fighter/berserker class, charging and leaping across the battlefield with their big melee weapons and using shouts to rally their allies and intimidate their enemies.

The Warrior class has 2 damage dealing specializations and 1 tanking specialization. Arms plays more into the fighter role, wielding a single two-handed weapon with the ability to deal large amounts of sustained damage to their enemies. Arms Warriors also bring a ton of utility to a group, providing tons of defensive party bonuses and a strong healing debuff for enemies! Fury is the berserker playstyle, with the ability to dual wield one-handed or two-handed weapons. Fury Warriors throw caution to the wind, focusing on massive amounts of burst damage and self-healing to keep themselves in combat! Finally, Protection is the tank spec of the class, doubling down on the defensive properties that warriors inherently provide to protect their allies in the heat of battle while wielding a sword and shield!

The Warrior’s primary resource is Rage, building rage with certain abilities and then spending it on more powerful ones! Warriors wear plate armor, they utilize Strength as their primary stat, and they can wield all weapons except for wands.

Races that can play the Warrior class are as follows:

• Blood Elf (Horde)
• Dark Iron Dwarf (Alliance)
• Dwarf (Alliance)
• Draenei (Alliance)
• Gnome (Alliance)
• Goblin (Horde)
• Highmountain Tauren (Horde)
• Human (Alliance)
• Kul Tiran (Alliance)
• Lightforged Draenei (Alliance)
• Mag’har Orc (Horde)
• Mechagnome (Alliance)
• Night Elf (Alliance)
• Nightborne (Horde)
• Orc (Horde)
• Pandaren (Alliance/Horde)
• Tauren (Horde)
• Troll (Horde)
• Undead (Horde)
• Void Elf (Alliance)
• Vulpera (Horde)
• Worgen (Alliance)
• Zandalari Troll (Horde)

Now that we have a brief summary of the class out of the way, let’s get into the specs and what they have to offer. The following builds are going to be tailored to new players, looking to make your rotation as easy and straightforward while adding as few additional skills to your action bars as possible. If you’re looking for something more advanced and focused on dealing as much damage/healing as possible, I recommend checking out Icy-Veins or WoWhead for builds more tailored towards end game raids, mythic+ and rated PvP.

Specializations

Arms

Talents

NOTE: The following talent build focuses on bolstering the self-healing of the Arms Warrior, which is typically non-existent, to help newer players more easily quest, fight monsters in the open-world and level up their characters!

1. Sudden Death – This talent gives our attacks a chance to make our Execute (a strong attack that deals high damage to low health enemies) have no rage cost and be usable on any target regardless of health, giving us incredibly strong single target damage when this procs!
2. Impending Victory – This talent gives the Arms Warrior some better self-healing while questing, by giving us a skill that costs 10 rage and heals us for 30% of our maximum health! If we kill an enemy, the cooldown on this skill is reset, making it easier for us to stay in the fray longer!
3. Massacre – This passive talent buffs our execute by making it usable on targets below 35% HP, giving us earlier access to this hard-hitting ability when we are fighting an enemy!
4. Second Wind – Arms Warriors typically struggle with questing due to having very little self-healing, but this talent helps minimize your down-time while in the open world by having you restore 6% of your health every second after you’ve not taken damage for 5 seconds. This makes your HP regeneration skyrocket in between monster pulls, allowing you to take down enemies and quest faster!
5. Warbreaker – This talent gives us Warbreaker, which smashes the ground and hits all enemies within 8 yards, dealing massive damage and increasing damage we deal to those enemies by 30% for 10 seconds. You can follow this skill up with a strong AoE cooldown like Bladestorm to deal huge AoE burst damage!
6. In for the Kill – This talent makes Warbreaker increase our haste by 10% after we use it, or 20% if we hit a target below 20% health for 10 seconds, giving us a massive damage spike!
7. Anger Management – This talent ties together very well with In for the Kill and Warbreaker, making every 20 rage we spend reduce the remaining cooldown on Warbreaker and Bladestorm by 1 second. This gives us a much higher uptime on Warbreaker and In for the Kill, and allows us to combo Bladestorm with it more frequently for that massive burst AoE damage!
8. Shadow of the Colossus – This PvP talent makes it so that Charge (our primary gap closer), resets the cooldown on Overpower (our main rage generator), and makes Charge generates 15 more rage!
9. Storm of Destruction – This passive talent reduces the cooldown of Bladestorm by 33% and makes it apply Mortal Wounds to all targets hit, heavily reducing their healing received.
10. Master and Commander – This talent increases the strength of one of our defensive cooldowns, by reducing the cooldown of Rallying Cry by 2 minutes and having it grant us 15% additional health, greatly enhancing the power of this cooldown.

Rotation

Dealing Damage

The rotation for Arms Warrior, especially with our chosen talent build, is incredibly straightforward. You want to open with Warbreaker to benefit from In for the Kill, get your bonus damage from Warbreaker and apply our bleed from our mastery passive. Then, you want to use Overpower to generate rage and buff the damage of your next Mortal Strike, and then use Mortal Strike. With your Warbreaker buff up, you want to use Bladestorm to maximize its damage. Afterwards, you’ll be using Execute any time you get a Sudden Death proc or if the enemy is below 35% health. Otherwise, youll just be using Overpower followed by Mortal Strike (Mortal Strike maintains our mastery bleed). If Mortal Strike is on cooldown, spend your rage on Slam (single target) or Whirlwind (AoE) on any excess rage. Whenever you get a tactician proc, which resets overpower’s cooldown, use Overpower, and whenever you get a crushing assault proc, use Slam. When in an AoE fight, use Sweeping Strikes to make you attacks hit an additional target, but the rotation can otherwise stay about the same.

Offense

• It is important to use Bladestorm during your Warbreaker damage increase window, or you’ll be losing out on a lot of potential damage.
• Make sure to maintain Battle Shout on you and your allies at all times for the extra attack power!
• Use Hamstring to keep enemies slowed and close by, making it easier for you to hit them! If you need an AoE slow, use Piercing Howl!
• Use Charge to gap close to enemies and generate rage. If you need to get in or out of a situation in a pinch or just need to re-position, use Heroic Leap.
• Use Shattering Throw to remove magical immunities your opponent has. Very useful in PvP to remove things like Divine Shield and Ice Block.

Defense

• If you need a heal in a pinch, use Impending Victory to give yourself a nice 30% heal! If you don’t use Impending Victory, using Victory Rush after you kill an enemy will help restore some of your lost HP from fighting.
• When you are taking a ton of damage, pop Die by the Sword! This reduces your damage taken by 30% and increases your parry chance by 100%, making it so that you parry all frontal melee attacks.
• Rallying Cry is a great tool for if you and your group mates are going to take a big hit, giving you a ton of bonus maximum health for 10 seconds!
• If you need some extra defense but don’t want to burn one of your major defensive cooldowns, use Ignore Pain to help reduce the damage you take by 50% up to a flat amount of damage ignored.
• If you see an ally about to take damage and saving them is important (like a healer), use Intervene on them to intercept all melee and ranged attacks for 6 seconds while you stand near them.
• Use Berserker Rage to break out of Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects!
• Intimidating Shout is a great way to shake enemies off of you and your group, causing your primary target to cower in fear, while up to 5 enemies nearby flee disoriented.
• If you see a potentially scary spell heading you way, use Spell Reflect to reflect it back at your enemy.

Secondary Stat Priority

1. Haste
2. Critical Strike
3. Mastery
4. Versatility

Shadowlands Specific Information

Recommended Covenant: Venthyr (Kyrian is also a good option)

Recommended Legendary: Memory of a Seismic Reverberation

Fury

Talents

1. Sudden Death – This talent gives our attacks a chance to make our Execute (a strong attack that deals high damage to low health enemies) have no rage cost and be usable on any target regardless of health, giving us incredibly strong single target damage when this procs!
2. Double Time – This talent gives us another charge of Charge, and reduces the skill’s cooldown by 3 seconds, giving us significantly higher uptime by giving us another use of our primary gap closer!
3. Massacre – This passive talent buffs our execute by making it usable on targets below 35% HP, giving us earlier access to this hard-hitting ability when we are fighting an enemy!
4. Warpaint – This talent gives us 10% reduced damage while Enrage is active, which is a passive bonus that Fury Warrior is heavily built around (will discuss more in the rotation section).
5. Frothing Berserker – This talent makes it so that Rampage (a high rage costing skill that gives us Enrage) has a 20% chance to refund 20 rage, helping to lower the effective cost of the skill!
6. Dragon Roar – This talent gives us a strong active rage generating skill that deals physical damage to enemies within 12 yards, but deals less damage to secondary targets. This skill can critically strike 3 times normal damage, making it a nice burst skill to use on our enemies!
7. Anger Management – This passive talent makes it so that every 20 rage we spend reduces to remaining cooldown on Recklessness (our main offensive cooldown) by 1 second, helping us gain access to this important cooldown more frequently!
8. Battle Trance – A PvP talent that helps us effectively tunnel down 1 target, by making us regenerate 3% of our health and 5 rage every 3 seconds for 18 seconds after we use Raging Blow twice on one target. If we do swap targets with Raging Blow, however, this bonus will disappear until we hit twice in a row again.
9. Enduring Rage – This makes our Enrage last longer, giving it an addition 1 second on its duration and our Raging Blows now extend the duration of Enrage by 1.5 seconds.
10. Barbarian – This gives us a massive mobility increase, by making it so that for 3 seconds after casting Heroic Leap (a skill which lets us jump long distances), we can use the skill for a second time with no regard for its cooldown. In addition, this increases the damage we deal when we land with heroic leap by 200%!

Rotation

Dealing Damage

The rotation for Fury Warrior is straightforward and plays like a checklist. One of the most important things is making sure you stay Enraged, so you want to charge in using charge, and then use Bloodthirst and Raging Blow to generate rage until you hit 80. Once you have enough rage for Rampage, you’re going to want to use it to get your Enrage up. Once enraged, use Dragon Roar. From there, you’ll be using Execute whenever you get a sudden death proc or when an enemy is below 35% health, and using Bloodthirst/Raging Blow to generate rage on cooldown while spending it on Rampage. When Bloodthirst & Raging Blow are on cooldown, you’ll be using Whirlwind as a filler (in both AoE and single target situations).

Offense

• When you want to deal a big burst of damage, use Recklessness! This increases your rage generation by 100% and gives your abilities an additional 20% critical strike chance!
• Make sure to maintain Battle Shout on you and your allies at all times for the extra attack power!
• Use Hamstring to keep enemies slowed and close by, making it easier for you to hit them! If you need an AoE slow, use Piercing Howl!
• Use Charge to gap close to enemies and generate rage. If you need to get in or out of a situation in a pinch or just need to re-position, use Heroic Leap.
• Use Shattering Throw to remove magical immunities your opponent has. Very useful in PvP to remove things like Divine Shield and Ice Block.

Defense

• Use Victory Rush after you kill an enemy to help restore some of your lost HP from fighting!
• When you are taking a ton of damage, pop Enraged Regeneration! This reduces damage taken by 30% and makes your Bloodthirst heal for 20% more! This skill is also usable while stunned!
• Rallying Cry is a great tool for if you and your group mates are going to take a big hit, giving you a ton of bonus maximum health for 10 seconds!
• If you need some extra defense but don’t want to burn one of your major defensive cooldowns, use Ignore Pain to help reduce the damage you take by 50% up to a flat amount of damage ignored.
• If you see an ally about to take damage and saving them is important (like a healer), use Intervene on them to intercept all melee and ranged attacks for 6 seconds while you stand near them.
• Use Berserker Rage to break out of Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects!
• Intimidating Shout is a great way to shake enemies off of you and your group, causing your primary target to cower in fear, while up to 5 enemies nearby flee disoriented.
• If you see a potentially scary spell heading you way, use Spell Reflect to reflect it back at your enemy.

Secondary Stat Priority

1. Haste
2. Mastery
3. Critical Strike
4. Versatility

Shadowlands Specific Information

Recommended Covenant: Venthyr (Kyrian is also a good option)

Recommended Legendary: Memory of the Deathmaker

Protection

Talents

1. Punish – This skill makes it so that shield slam (an instant attack that generates rage) deals 20% increased damage and makes it so that enemies’ damage against you is reduced by 3% for 9 seconds. You may also have multiple overlaps on this passive.
2. Rumbling Earth – This talent makes it so that shockwave, an AoE stun that Protection Warriors have, has its cooldown reduce by 15 seconds if it hits at least 3 targets!
3. Booming Voice – This passive talent empowers Demoralizing Shout (which reduces damage we take from enemies within 10 yards by 20%) by making it generate 40 rage and increase the damage we deal to the targets within range by 20%!
4. Crackling Thunder – This talent makes Thunderclap (an instant AoE attack that generates rage) stronger by increasing its radius by 50% and making it slow enemies by an additional 10%.
5. Indomitable – This talent gives us some strong passive bonuses by increasing our maximum health by 10% and making it so that every 10 rage we spend heals us for 1% of our maximum health!
6. Unstoppable Force – This talent makes it so that Avatar, our main offensive cooldown, increases the damage of Thunder Clap by 30% and reducing its cooldown by 50%, combining well with Crackling Thunder.
7. Anger Management – This passive talent makes it so that every 10 rage we spend, the remaining cooldown on Avatar and Shield Wall – our main offensive and defensive cooldowns – are reduced by 1 second, giving us higher uptime on these very important skills!
8. Oppressor – This gives your taunt some use in PvP, make it increase the damage your target takes by 3% for each person (up to 5) that attacks the taunted player! As you attack the player effected by Oppressor, this debuff that is placed on them is refreshed!
9. Morale Killer – This further empowers Demoralizing Shout by reducing its cooldown by 15%, and makes it so that the shout reduces the damage enemies deal to all targets, not just you!
10. Thunderstruck – This talent gives Thunderclap some extra functionality by making it root targets in place for 1 second!

Rotation

How to Play Protection

If you don’t know how threat works, I recommend checking out my complete beginner guide, as understanding threat is essential for playing a tank properly. Tanks also play a bit more dynamically than damage dealers, responding to what is happening in any given instance. Here are some things to keep in mind when tanking as a Protection Warrior!

The actual rotation for protection warrior is incredibly easy. Simply put, you want to use Shield Slam on cooldown, Thunder Clap on cooldown and use Revenge any time it procs to be free of cost. Otherwise, use Devastate. You can also use Execute on an enemy who is below 20% HP if you don’t need the rage for survivability. Your primary rage dump against melee enemies is going to be shield block, which has you block all melee attacks for 6 seconds and increases the damage of your shield slam by 30% for the duration. Another good rage dump and a strong one against magical users is Ignore Pain, which will reduce the damage you take by 50% up to a flat amount of damage ignored. You also want to use Taunt on enemies to make sure you are always have aggro, and if for some reason you drop threat on multiple enemies, use Challenging Shout instead to get all enemies focused back on you! Heroic throw is also a good way to generate some high threat on enemies who are at range.

Offensive Notes

• When you want to deal a big burst of damage, use Avatar to increase your damage by 20%!
• Make sure to maintain Battle Shout on you and your allies at all times for the extra attack power!
• Use Hamstring to keep enemies slowed and close by, making it easier for you to hit them! If you need an AoE slow, use Piercing Howl!
• Use Charge to gap close to enemies and generate rage. If you need to get in or out of a situation in a pinch or just need to re-position, use Heroic Leap.
• Use Shattering Throw to remove magical immunities your opponent has. Very useful in PvP to remove things like Divine Shield and Ice Block.

Defensive Notes

• You can use Demoralizing Shout liberally, since it has a low cooldown, generates rage and gives us additional damage on enemies nearby!
• Use Shockwave on groups of enemies to stun them, allowing your groupmates to chop them down with ease!
• Use Victory Rush after you kill an enemy to help restore some of your lost HP from fighting!
• When you are taking a ton of damage, pop Shield Wall! This reduces damage taken by 40% for 8 seconds!
• Rallying Cry is a great tool for if you and your group mates are going to take a big hit, giving you a ton of bonus maximum health for 10 seconds! If you only need this benefit yourself and your group members don’t need it, use Last Stand instead!
• If you see an ally about to take damage and saving them is important (like a healer), use Intervene on them to intercept all melee and ranged attacks for 6 seconds while you stand near them.
• Use Berserker Rage to break out of Fear, Sap and Incapacitate effects!
• Intimidating Shout is a great way to shake enemies off of you and your group, causing your primary target to cower in fear, while up to 5 enemies nearby flee disoriented.
• If you see a potentially scary spell heading you way, use Spell Reflect to reflect it back at your enemy.

Secondary Stat Priority

1. Haste
2. Versatility
3. Mastery
4. Critical Strike

Shadowlands Specific Information

Recommended Covenant: Kyrian

Recommended Legendary: Memory of the Thunderlord

Contact

If you have any questions about the build, join our discord server and ask @Dottz about the build in the #wow-general channel!

Update Log

1/6/2021 – Guide created