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Warrior Reference Guide - European

By:Agnesha

I myself am not lvl 60 for very long, so there are quite some points in this guide that could use improvement. I've taken the american guide as a guideline too, it can be found here:
http://www.worldofwarcraftgolds.net/world-of-warcraft-gold-22.htm

I encourage any and all of you to add your comments and questions to help to make this guide good and useful.

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Contents:

How does my warrior work?
- DW, 2h weapons, or 1h + shield?
- Tank or Damage Dealer?
- Rage Generation
- Stances
- Abilities
- What Stats are Important?
- Gear and Weapons
- Warriors and Races

Things That Help a Warrior
- Generic Interface
- What Plugins Should I use?
- Any Useful Macros?

Guide to Talent Points
- Default Templates
- The MS Build
- The Fury Build
- The Protection Build

FAQ

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How does my warrior work?

A warrior is quite different from most other classes. He's a pure melee class, while we do have ranged abilities, we mostly don't use them for dealing damage - since we hurt much more when in close quarters. We use ranged attacks mostly for pulling, and for the stats. The main thing that sets a warrior apart from other classes though is that he has all the abilities needed for a good tank. So, if you roll a warrior, be prepared to tank a lot.

Warriors have the widest choice of equipment, they can wear mail and later (with lvl 40) plate armor, and they can learn to use almost all weapons (with the exception of wands - ask your local weapon master for training). With lvl 20 they can learn dual wielding (DW). For plate and DW, you'll have to speak with your warrior trainer.

DW, 2h weapons, or 1h + shield?

The choice between these weapons is also a choice between talent trees, as further explained in the Talent Points section. DW is favored by the fury tree, while 2h weapons are favored by the arms tree and 1h+s is the protection tree's favourite - other combinations are perfectly reasonable too though.

1h+s is somewhat viable, but many warriors opt to go for more damage output instead of having a shield and thus taking less damage. If you like, you can of course quest with 1h+s, but it's not really recommended. So I'll mainly compare DW and 2h now.

According to a sticky here (http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior-en&t=625), both DW and 2h are intended to make about 20% more damage than 1h+s. This comes not only from the weapon damage - but 2 weaker weapons can hit as hard as 1 stronger weapon, eventhough there are some limitations on DW like a higher miss rate and reduced offhand damage. The remaining damage comes from the faster rage generation DW generally brings, especially when coupled with fury talents.

Keep in mind though that DW is generally less reliable, you miss around 24% with both hands - unless you have many +hit% items. See the FAQ for further details, the miss rate has a lower cap at 19%. OTOH, more attacks on casters mean that they can also cast less reliable - although every serious PvP mage will only use instant casts whenever a warrior is nearby anyway.

Some warriors like said fast rage generation with DW, while others like the burst damage and incredible crits (up to 3k and more) huge 2h weapons with mortal strike do. This burst damage is also what makes the MS build a bit better for PvP, since you won't have much time with your opponent. It's better to make those hits count.

Both options have goods and bads, find out for yourself which one fits you.

By the way - protection warriors often use DW to build up rage too, the 1h specialization helps there as well. And if you want to use 1h+shield mainly, you can, you'll have less downtime, but kill mobs much slower.

Tank or Damage Dealer?

The short answer: Both! The longer answer:

The warrior is primarily geared for tanking. He has quite some skills that generate much threat and secure aggro, be sure to read the stickied tanking guide in this forum before you get to tank your first instance dungeon. It can be found here:
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior-en&t=11832

A warrior has lots of HP, high armor, and he can glue the mobs to himself pretty well. So, since no other class is as good in tanking as a warrior, you'll be tanking most of the instances. Don't think that's not fun, actually, tanking is (together with healing) one of the two most important things a group member can do in an instance. It bears quite some responsibility.

But a warrior has all the skills he needs to dish out large amounts of damage as well. In Berserker Stance and with two weapons or a large 2h axe, you'll help a lot to drop the mobs. This is tremendous fun too, but you have to know that you'll do this less often. You'll also find that this is actually a lot easier than tanking...

What's important to know though: You shouldn't tank and deal damage at the same time. Well, most of the time, except when you're tanking instances 10 lvls below yours. It's a common misconception that you can keep the mobs on you better when you deal more damage - threat is not the same as damage, and most of a warrior's most threat generating abilities cause very little damage.

Rage Generation

A warrior needs rage to use his abilities. Unlike with every other class, rage doesn't go down during a fight, it rather accumulates - the more you hit your enemies, the more rage you have available. Generating rage works through four ways:

- Hitting your enemy - the most obvious one. The more and harder you hit, the more rage you have.
- Being hit by your enemy. This means that if you tank and are hit by lots of mobs, you'll have more rage to glue them to you, too. Being hit also includes blocking attacks with a shield, parrying and dodging. BTW, that's the reason why most warriors don't like it when hunters have the autogrowl (taunt) of their pet on...
- Abilities. Charge, Bloodrage and Berserker Rage are abilities that generate rage you can immediately use.
- Potions. There are several kinds of rage potions an alchemist can make, they're also commonly sold in the Auction House.

Something also worth of note is a priests PW:S. According to their guide at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-priest&T=68148 their shield does hinder warrior rage generation when he's underneath it - so a priest should probably only shield a warrior when there's no other way out:

---

Q u o t e:

It has been reported and confirmed that somewhere around patch 1.4 Blizzard changed the behavior of PW:S with respect to Warrior Rage generation! While in the past Rage from damage continued to build through PW:S, THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE. It is quite possible that debuffs, kicks and other things PW:S doesn't block continue to generate Rage, but absorbed damage does not.

---

Stances

As a warrior, you get three stances (over time, and with quests from your trainer).

- You start with the Battle Stance, a bread-and-butter stance with nothing really special - normal damage, normal crit rate.
- At lvl 10, you can make a quest to get the Defensive Stance. That's your tanking stance: You'll generate around 30% more threat with it, but also deal 10% less damage.
- With lvl 30 then, you'll get your final stance, the Berserk Stance. This one lets you take 10% more damage, but raises your crit rate by 3% - thus letting you damage your enemies more. This is ideal for when you're damage dealer in a party, or, if you like it, for soloing.

All stances have useful abilities associated with them, so none of them are useless or minor in any way. Some people prefer to spend most time (outside instances) in Battle Stance, others prefer Berserk Stance.

Stances are a fundamental part of what defines a warrior. Quite a few skills are only useable in one or two stances, and thus you'll find yourself switching stances pretty often. You'll maybe already have heard the term "stance dance", that refers to exactly that switching of stances to use different abilities. Bear in mind though that changing stances lets your rage drop to zero, so you should use up quite a bit your rage before you change, or you'll have wasted it.

This changes once you get tactical mastery (a talent in the arms tree) though. It's generally seen as a necessity for proper stance dancing, and lets you retain up to 25 rage points when changing stance. That's quite a bit, and you'll have to be much less careful not to lose rage when you change stances.

Abilities

You'll learn your abilities over time, with the progression of the game. Be sure to always buy all abilities, there are none that make no sense (with some exceptions). However, some things are there that you should know:

- Slam only makes sense for 2h warriors, when they don't have aggro. Since slam can be interrupted, it will most probably take longer than a normal hit if a mob hits you, however, if somebody else tanks and you can spam it due to having much rage, you'll do lots of damage.
- Heroic Strike only makes really sense until lvl 40, and after that, only some sense for DW warriors. It has a hidden rage cost: You don't only use rage for your next hit, you also don't generate rage with it. DW warriors should do damage with Bloodthirst and Whirlwind and only revert to HS when they have too much rage (altough some of them prefer to spam HS instead, which works too), while 2h warriors hit their Mortal Strike button all the time anyway. For tanking though, HS is nice, since it causes quite some threat.

There is also quite a difference between instant and "on next swing" abilities. Instant abilities don't replace your normal hit, they happen in addition to it. So they give you a really nice damage burst. That doesn't mean that you should never use Cleave (an attack that hits two mobs at once), for instance, but you have to keep in mind that a Whirlwind (which damages all mobs around you) does more damage per rage, even if you're only fighting two mobs.

What Stats are Important?

That depends on your current role. Of course, armor is about the most important stat, but that comes all by itself. An item seldom has way more armor than other items of similar level, if it has, it's up to you to decide if it's worth it (since that item will most probably have no other stats at all). While Stamina is important all the time, since you'll get bashed on a lot, it's not your primary stat, neither for soloing nor for tanking. Always true is: Intellect is the least important stat (it only helps you level your weapons faster, that's not really necessary since you'll level fast enough anyway, and when you've just got a new kind of weapon, a mage can help you with a buff), shortly followed by spirit. Regenerating HP is nice, but since you'll have first aid anyway, you should not have an all too long downtime between fights.

A nice overview about what the stats actually do can be found here: http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-blizzard-archive-en&t=7

For soloing, you should focus on strength, stamina and agility. The exact order is a matter of preference, although most agree that either strenght or agility should be the most important one. Strength raises your attack power by 2 points per strength point, which in turn raises your damage. Agility raises your crit rate. Later in the game, when you get +crit% items, agility becomes less and less important. Something else that becomes available nearing endgame are +hit% items, they're really useful for DW warriors (and somewhat useful for 2h warriors, too). Some warriors even focus on agility and strength for when they're damage dealer, although the lacking HP can get in your way quite a lot.

For tanking, it's stamina all the way up to lvl 50 or so, and then defense becomes more and more important. Defense raises your dodge, block and parry rates by 0.04% per point, and makes your enemies hit and crit you less by that same amount. With 425 defense, virtually no mob can crit you anymore - which is really important when they hit you for 1000+ HP. Secondary attribute before lvl 50 should be either agility (raises your armor rate and dodge rate) or strength (raises the amount you can block with a shield, although that's not that much, only 1 HP per 20 str). In the endgame, there are quite some +block and +dodge% items. And fire resistance becomes important in MC and for Onyxia. But I'm not even there myself :)

Keep in mind though that defense is gonna be severely nerfed with patch 1.7 (all items, including epics, will, by the looks of it, have 33% less defense on them, making items such as the stockade pauldrons all the more worthwhile). Some research is needed to show if defense will still be the primary stat for endgame tanks, or if the tradeoff for having 425 defense in terms of stamina and other stats is just too much.

Gear and Weapons

A warrior is among the most gear-dependant classes out there. Make sure your gear is always up to date. While most other classes can easily wait for drops (although most don't do either), a warrior has to check the AH every level or so after lvl 10 to see if there's new gear. Most warriors also start pretty early (around lvl 30) to keep more than one set of gear, one for tanking and one for soloing, since these two have so different stats requirements.

The most important part of your equipment is a decent weapon. Having a blue weapon with you starting with lvl 30 or so should be mandatory, and you'll have to keep a current green one on you from as early on as possible. Luckily, many quests give you quite good weapons, even for the later stages of the game, so it's not like you'd have to spend horrendous amounts for weapons in the AH. Crafted weapons are not bad either, but even as a blacksmith you'll have trouble doing these yourself (most blacksmiths don't max out their skill until lvl 60, it starts lagging behind around lvl 40), but you should be able to find nice people who will craft your items for you for free or a small fee if you supply the ingredients.

It's also important that you always carry your offensive weaponry of choice, but also a decent 1h weapon and a good shield. Shields give you lots of armor and have nice stats on them, so it's no waste buying a new one from time to time (or grinding for a nice drop).

Thanks to Bloodax for pointing this out: Be advised that against casters, your armor won't help you, and you can't dodge or parry spells. The only thing that helps you here is having high stamina, pummeling and shield bashing to stop their spells, and spell resist gear.

Warriors and Races

Is there a "best" race for a warrior? Sure, some racials help. Tauren get warstomp and more health, gnomes get escape artist, trolls get berserking, humans get better sword skill and orcs can handle axes better. But overall, it's not the race that makes a good warrior but the player - every race has its advantages. So you should go mainly for the look and feel, choose whichever race suits you most.

Things That Help a Warrior

There are quite some things that can make your life as a warrior much easier. This is just a small list, be sure to explore the mods you hear others talk about...

Generic Interface

The standard UI is pretty good for a warrior, especially if you use the keyboard for abilities and moving, and the mouse for looking around. Be sure to individualize your key bindings whenever necessary, many warriors use the keys around wasd for abilities for faster access.

Something that really helps for tanking are the health bars for mobs you can display (in the default setup) with your "v" key. You can target these health bars, and you'll see where the enemies are in the tightest mess. Also nice, be sure to target your enemies with the "tab" key from time to time and get a feel for when that's faster than using your mouse to click them.

What Plugins Should I Use?

There are a few must-have plugins for a warrior. Actually, more so than for many other classes. These include:
- StanceSets lets you select which weapons you want to use in what stance and also lets you quickly switch between 3 weapon configurations per stance (like DW, 2h and 1h+s). The one mod every warrior should have. Gets somewhat less useful with patch 1.7, since weapons now have a 1.5s cooldown when being swapped, but it's still essential.
http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=151
- SunderThis displays a small number above the mob's health bar, showing how many sunders the mob already has.
http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=205
- CT_RaidAssist, everybody should have this after lvl 50 (not only warriors)
http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=694

I personally also like SeeAllTargetInfo (http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=804) and FastQuest (http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=812), along with quite some others, while many people use premade collections like Cosmos (http://www.cosmosui.org/).

Any Useful Macros?

No, there are none.

Just kidding. There's an excellent macro guide on the american forums, link:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=74295

It's important that you begin every line of your macros with /script, and have every macro on a single line (so, no line breaks). Commands are separated by a colon (;). Otherwise it won't work.

The two really essential macro commands for a warrior:

PickupContainerItem(4,1) picks up the 1st item (from top left) of the 4th bag (let's say, item X). Pickup works like a mouse left click: If you don't have anything on your mouse pointer, it picks up X, if you have anything (Y), Y replaces X and you get to have Y stuck to your mouse pointer. Fiddle around with it a bit, you'll find out how it works.

PickupInventoryItem(17) picks up the offhand item. Inventory items are numbered too, 16 is the main hand, 17 the off hand.

UseContainerItem and UseInventoryItem have the same parameters as the pickup commands, and do the same as a right click on the corresponding item.

A complete useful macro: Switch stance or use an ability. (Found in a post by Dracule)

/script
isActive=GetShapeshiftFormInfo(x);if isActive then CastSpellByName("x1(x2)");else CastSpellByName("x3()");
end;

x= Stance number 1= Battle Stance 2=Defensive Stance 3=Beserker Stance

x1 = Name of the ability you want to use
x2 = the level number of the ability you want to use (very important to fill in right lvl else it wont work - this will change with 1.7, no level number will just take the highest level)
x3 = The stance to which you have to change to order to use the ability

this is an example for Charge

/script
isActive=GetShapeshiftFormInfo(1);if isActive then CastSpellByName("Charge(3)");else CastSpellByName("Battle Stance()");
end;

Guide to Talent Points

The american post (again a link: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-warrior&t=155290) lists every talent and shows advantages and disadvantages. Apart from the few talents where it's out of date, it's pretty accurrate. The new bloodthirst in fury, DW specialization in fury, and shield slam in protection are the most noteable differences. The fury talents make this tree even more tempting for DW warriors, while shield slam makes the protection tree more viable for PvP, but is actually a step back in making it fit for tanking - currently, it doesn't seem to make real sense to put more than 20 points into protection for endgame instances, since mobs in MC are immune to stuns anyway.

Generally, it's recommended that you put your first few points into cruelty, and then go after tactical mastery in the arms tree. If you want to be a MS warrior (that's the cookie cutter build, the first template below), you can still get cruelty first - you can respec to full arms at lvl 40 without much ado and rebuild your fury tree afterwards.

Which tree is best for what? Obviously, the protection tree is the tanking tree, and it's pretty good at that. Despite the changed end tree talent in 1.6, which actually is a step back for pure tank builds.

Generally, the MS build is better for PvP. Why, you ask? It's better at delivering much damage over a short time period (so-called burst damage). A fury DW build seems to have a slightly higher damage output over time. Fury 2h warriors exist, but they are far more seldom. Flurry and enrage favor DW, so 2 weapons are a more obvious choice.

In the end, it's a matter of taste. Some prefer the "fast and furious" approach, wreaking havoc with a fury build and 2 weapons - and couldn't wait for that looong 3.5s swing. Others like the huge crits and hard hits of a MS build. And some like standing there as a solid wall of steel and flesh, and protecting squishy clothies. It's up to you, choose what fits you best.

Default Templates

Whatever people tell you, there are some good templates that are tried out and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be the best for you. Try out your own builds, it might cost you a little, but IMHO it's worth it (BTW, I use a fury/prot build and I'm happy with it).

You can use the Blizzard talent calculator for trying out builds and fiddling with points:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html

If you use a Mac, as long as Blizzard doesn't fix their calculator, use this one:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Talents.View&category_select_id=5

The MS Build (or cookie cutter build)

The MS build goes something like this:

Arms Talents - 31 points

# Deflection - rank 5/5
# Improved Rend - rank 3/3
# Improved Charge - rank 2/2
# Tactical Mastery - rank 5/5
# Improved Overpower - rank 2/2
# Anger Management - rank 1/1
# Deep Wounds - rank 3/3
# Impale - rank 2/2
# Axe Specialization - rank 5/5
# Sweeping Strikes - rank 1/1
# Improved Hamstring - rank 1/3
# Mortal Strike - rank 1/1

Fury Talents - 20 points

# Cruelty - rank 5/5
# Improved Demoralizing Shout - rank 5/5
# Piercing Howl - rank 1/1
# Improved Battle Shout - rank 4/5
# Enrage - rank 5/5

Link: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?0532502130251
000110550010400500000000000000000000000

Important cornerstones are the mortal strike (of course - and this is not a pure PvP hit, instant attacks are always nice), impale, axe spec (or sword spec, which is actually better, but there are better axes around so most people choose axe spec) and enrage. Piercing howl is a nice bonus. The cookie cutter weapon to go along with this is the AR: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=14268

The Fury Build

There are two kinds of fury builds, the 2h one and the DW one. However, DW is much more common for fury warriors, so here we go:

Arms Talents - 13 points

# Deflection - rank 5/5
# Tactical Mastery - rank 5/5
# Improved Overpower - rank 2/2
# Anger Management - rank 1/1

Fury Talents - 38 points

# Cruelty - rank 5/5
# Unbridled Wrath - rank 5/5
# Piercing Howl - rank 1/1
# Improved Battle Shout - rank 4/5
# Dual Wield Specialization - rank 5/5
# Improved Execute - rank 2/2
# Enrage - rank 5/5
# Death Wish - rank 1/1
# Improved Intercept - rank 2/2
# Improved Berserker Rage - rank 2/2
# Flurry - rank 5/5
# Bloodthirst - rank 1/1

Link: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?0500502100
000000000505010452501225100000000000000000
Or, an alternative build with deep wounds and impale:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?023050203020000
0000505010450501205100000000000000000

Feel free to twiddle around with your points though.

A fifth point in imp. battle shout would help bloodthirst (and your consistent damage output). You might get imp. cleave and no imp. battle shout, or imp. demo shout instead of unbrindled wrath. Blood craze instead of imp. battle shout regenerates quite a bit of health from time to time.

Fact is, most fury talents make sense :)

The second linked build makes less sense, since those 7 points to get impale can be used better in other places, especially further down in the fury tree. And deep wounds makes less sense for DW warriors than for 2h warriors too.

Cornerstones here are flurry, bloodthirst (an instant attack), and enrage. Nice things you get for free are the piercing howl and death wish (which is great vs. casters).

A 2h fury warrior would probably take imp. slam instead of DW spec, and get imp. demo shout instead of UW.

The Protection Build

People who take protection builds are usually the most creative, but there are some common standards as well. Talents from fury and arms can supplement the protection ones pretty good.

Keep in mind that the protection build is the one with which you'll level the slowest, but you'll be best in instances. Many warriors don't have many protection talents until they reach the higher levels, although you'll be a really successful tank in lower levels if you have prot talents there already.

You should probably something like these talents (thanks to Inv for this build):

Arms Talents - 9 points

# Deflection - rank 5/5
# Tactical Mastery - rank 4/5

Fury Talents - 10 points

# Cruelty - rank 5/5
# Improved Demoralizing Shout - rank 5/5

Protection Talents - 32 points

# Shield Specialization - rank 5/5
# Anticipation - rank 5/5
# Improved Bloodrage - rank 2/2
# Toughness - rank 5/5
# Last Stand - rank 1/1
# Improved Shield Block - rank 1/3
# Defiance - rank 5/5
# Improved Taunt - rank 2/2
# Improved Shield Wall - rank 2/2
# Improved Shield Bash - rank 2/2
# Concussion Blow - rank 1/1
# Shield Slam - rank 1/1

Link: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/warrior/talents.html?0500400000
000000000550000000000000055250110500222101

Many warriors also choose protection as their secondary talent tree, with 12-20 talent points. 20 and not 21 in order to get the other end-tree talents :) Depending on whether they want to focus on using a shield in instances or not, they get anticipation or shield spec. A shield 20 point defense distribution could go something like this:

Protection Talents - 20 points

# Shield Specialization - rank 5/5
# Improved Bloodrage - rank 2/2
# Toughness - rank 5/5
# Last Stand - rank 1/1
# Improved Shield Block - rank 1/3
# Improved Revenge - rank 1/3
# Defiance - rank 5/5

Nice talents include last stand (for when your healer is a little overwhelmed), imp. shield block, concussion blow, and shield slam (which does quite some damage).

FAQ

If I want to DW, is it better to have fast or slow weapons?

There are points that speak for both of these. There are actually 4 possible configurations...

- Slow main, slow off: Not really any good - not incredibly much rage, the offhand does as many flurry hits as the main hand, but much less damage with them. However, with good weapons, this can work.
- Slow main, fast off: Generates more rage with the offhand (with unbrindled wrath) and triggers flurry pretty often (although quite a few flurry and enrage hits get "lost" to the off hand). And weapon-based attacks like cleave, whirlwind and overpower do quite good damage. Choice of many.
- Fast main, slow off: Your flurry streaks and enrages will make the main hand hit much more often than the off hand (thus you don't lose any of them to the low-damaging offhand), and you can spam cleave and HS much faster when you want to dump rage. Probably the best choice.
- Fast main, fast off: Generates lots of rage, and triggers flurry often. High spammability of HS and cleave if you don't. And since you'll do lots of attacks, your enemy will dodge often, thus you can overpower a lot.

Keep in mind as well that your offhand does only 50% of its damage (up to 67.5% with talents - 50% * 125%), so you should probably have the higher DPS weapon in the main hand if they're not equally good.

And: Starting with 1.7, fast-fast is less attractive, since you can't just switch to a 2h weapon for whirlwinds and cleaves and thus your main attack will be HS (which is actually better with fast weapons).

Is it better to concentrate on one talent tree or to spread out my points?

Concentration is a good thing here, since the endtree talents are pretty much worth it. More bang for the buck, so to say :)

Warriors who don't have any endtree talents do pretty fine in PvE, but have quite some troubles in PvP. To put it in the words of Roda:

---

Q u o t e:
To say again, PvP without a end-tier talent is bad.

---

Should DW warriors roll on daggers?

Seeing how DW warriors really benefit from fast weapons (given the right build and all), there's no real reason why they shouldn't.

Be sure you know what you do though. On one hand, there are skills for rogues that really require a dagger. They don't have any other option than using a dagger for these. Thanks to Roda for bringing this up.

Warriors on the other hand have skills like unbrindled wrath, which really benefits from fast weapons - and since there are really few fist weapons available, fast weapons pretty much equals daggers. Other skills like enrage and flurry have recently (with patch 1.6) been tweaked so faster weapons benefit more from them than slower weapons.

So, in the end, a rogue will most probably benefit a bit more from a good dagger than any warrior. But a DW warrior will benefit almost as much.

It's best to discuss this in your group and either agree with the rogues or let the group leader decide. Myself, I'd let warriors roll on them, just as I let hunters roll on good melee weapons (this happened, and the hunter won :)). But that's really up to the group.

What about professions? Should I learn first aid?

Many warriors choose mining / blacksmithing as their primary professions. However, mining / engineering gives you nice trinkets for PvP, while herbalism / alchemy lets you produce your own rage potions and quite some other buffs. If you're afraid you won't have enough money, take two gathering professions and sell the goods in the auction house.

Every warrior should learn first aid. It reduces downtime a lot, and there are enough cloth drops to keep it up to date. Most warriors do have to wait for lvl 40 before they can improve their first aid skill beyond lvl 225 - simply because they use it that much.

Cooking is also nice, but a little more time-consuming. Fishing goes nicely with alchemy and cooking, and can make you some money. But the latter two are not mandatory.

What are the best grinding spots for a warrior?

None. Don't grind your way to 60, you'll be expected to tank in endgame instances, and if you can't do that, you won't make many friends. And if you don't do instances, you can't learn.

Oh, and quests are fun anyway. If you grind your way from 1 to 60, you'll miss most of the game's content, the developers put really much work into making the quests enjoyable, and the stories behind them interesting. If you just grind, you have a rather dull game experience, and a game should be about fun, no?

If you still want to grind, or just want to grind to make some money, go find yourself some Ogres. They have nice caves (where you can mine, too), they drop cloth for your bandages, and they're all over the place. Nice and squishy, you'll just slice through them.

I have to add that this is my own point of view, and some warriors might disagree here.

I charged, and my WoW broke, I'm always "out of range" when I try to attack now. What happened?

This is a well-known bug in the community. Sometimes when you charge a mob, your client will somehow be out of sync with the game server. Other players see you stand still, while you freely move around (if you don't see any mobs anywhere, this has most probably happened). This can be really annoying at times.

Charging another mob (or even a critter, thanks Grimmog) will put you back in sync, but that mob will have to be in front of your "server position" and within range. If you can't charge another mob, there's no other solution than logging out and back in. Or dying, whichever happens first.

Swordswing points out that the mob doesn't necessarily have to be in front of you, if you have a ranged weapon and ammo. If you are not facing the correct direction, but still try to shoot the mob, your character will (unless this has changed from last time I did it) turn towards the mob (though you will see yourself already facing it, but the server will think you are turning). You may have to click the shoot button a few times before having it in front of you, but once you no longer get interrupted for facing the wrong direction, cancel the shot and charge the mob instead..

What does the "block" value of my shield mean?

This is not the block proc rate, as most young warriors tend to think. It's how much damage your shield blocks. In addition to that, every 20 points of strength let you block an additional point.

Do you have an item list for warriors?

There's a really good list at http://69.41.171.36:1000/ - compiled by Kaliban, it includes all 1.6 loot up to (and not including) Onyxia.

What is it with that DW miss rate? It's higher, right? How about +hit% items?

This has been extensively tested by rogues. And thanks to Gur for the inspiration!

If you use a 1h or a 2h weapon, your base hit rate is 95% - you'll miss 5%. If you DW, this miss rate (with both hands) goes up to 24%. With +hit% items, you can bring this down to 19%, but not lower.

The hit rate goes down if you hit higher-lvl mobs, up if you fight lower levels. And you can still have 19% misses vs. higher levels and not more if you have more than +5% hit, but it makes less sense, since you'll more seldom fight higher levels and those additional +hit% items will do nothing otherwise.

More info in this rogue FAQ on the american forums, in the part "4.0 To-Hit FAQ":
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-rogue&t=518864

How does taunt work?

The easy version: It causes just enough threat to place you on top of the damage list for a short time. What happens after that though?

This is from Smickle, he did quite some research with multiple test cases, and here is his conclusion:

Taunt is ... weird. First, it appears to only work on things targeting other people, on mobs you already have threat with and it appears to cause about 1000 damage worth of immediate threat under these conditions. All well and good. However, there's more than an instant effect at work as threat does not work as we expect it to after Warrior regains aggro.

My best bet is that a part of the debuff effect is, in fact, a lowering of threat over time effect for other players, but that the wonkyness of mob threat list updating makes it not realise that everyone else is to have their threat diminished until the other players do something themselves to update their threat list position. Compare with how mobs you lose aggro from due to knockback or crowd control will ignore you until you hit them again, at which point they suddenly remember all your previous threat and stick to you like glue once more.

I am pretty sure that whatever Taunt does, it's more than just focus a mob on you for a few seconds and less than put you at equal threat with whoever has the most.

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