Hosho's Introductional Warrior Guide

Warrior is like any class in the game. Easy to play, but difficult to play well. A good warrior is a rare thing, but in my experience, the tank is the single most important role in turning a good run into a great run.

I have two warriors, a 60 tauren (who I haven't played since BC. :roll:) and a 62 night elf. I won't go into great detail, but here's some general advice.

Talents
For levelling, I have always used fury, simply because it is the best for grinding. Some prefer to level with arms, but fury is widely considered the "best" levelling spec. I recommend respeccing at 70 to something that better suits your endgame plans. (Arms for PvP, Fury for PvE DPS, or Prot for PvE Tanking.)

For levelling, I place my talents like this..
Example Fury build at level 50

Once that is done, I start placing point into Protection. The reason for this is that from 0-50, I don't do a great deal of instance runs. But from 50-60, and especially from 60-70, I do quite a lot. Also tanking is more difficult in 60-70 instances, and talent points in protection are helpful.

Same build at level 64

I finish off the build with more points in Fury.

Same build at 70

Then I respecc. Here are a few example builds to get you started. Mess around with them as you please.

Sample endgame PvE DPS build
Sample endgame PvP build (replace Poleaxe spec with whatever weapon you intend to use.)
Sample endgame PvE Tank build (What my warrior will use at 70.)

Soloing
Bring bandages, that's about all I can say. Playing a warrior is very aggressive. Your plan is always to kill them before they kill you, and that means you must have little or no regard for your own safety if you want to do it well. You can use Intimidating Shout to "stun" a target for a few seconds while you bandage, but other than that, 100% of your time should be spent dealing as much damage as possible.

Keep Battle Shout up at all times, and once you get to level 50, keep rampage up at all times. The increase in dps from that buff is astronomical. (Anyone else remember the bug with rampage on the PTR? )

The build I've recommended is for dual-weilding, so dual-weild with it! Any weapon will do, but ideally, a slow main hand and a quick offhand (ie: a dagger) works well. Try to keep your crit rating high with a fury build.

Instances
Basically, the most important thing to know about tanking is that it is a group effort. You cannot tank well if you have a mage throwing fireballs at one target while a rogue stabs away at another. Use raid target icons to show your group which target they are supposed to be attacking, then generate as much aggro on that target as you can. If your group are not dps'ing the correct target, your job is made twice as difficult, so make sure the others know what to do.

A tank has two jobs. 1, Mitigate damage. (mitigate means "to make less severe.") and 2, hold aggro. (Keep the mobs attacking you!)

Also, this seems obvious, but when tanking, 99% of your time should be spent in defensive stance, and 100% of your time should be spent wielding a shield. Without these two things, you're not a tank, you're just a walking hunk of metal. You might want to step out of defensive stance to charge a pack of mobs rather than using a gun to pull, or to cast Berserker Rage for fear immunity, but 99% of the time, you're in defensive stance.

Step 1 - The Pull.
Hit bloodrage, then pull with a bow or gun. You don't need a high gun/bow skill, it doesn't matter if you miss. You're just getting their attention. Once they get to you, you should have a little rage built up from bloodrage. Use this rage to cast Demoralizing Shout. This generates a little aggro on all the targets around you, and decreases the damage they deal to you. It also does no damage, and therefore will not break cc effects like sap or sheep. If you feel it is safe, you may also use Thunderclap to generate a little more aggro and mitigate a little more damage, but this ability is expensive, and can break cc, so be careful.

Pick up the mob that your group are attacking and start casting Sunder Armor on it. Once you have 3 stacks of sunder, you're relatively safe.

Step 2 - Tab!
Tab-tanking is a great way of holding aggro on small packs of mobs. (2-4 targets) All you do is cast Sunder Armor, hit Tab to target the next mob. Repeat the process until all the mobs around you have one sunder on them, then return to the main target of the group.

Do this, and not only will you have a head start on the dps'ers on the next target, but you're also working to keep aggro off the healer. Be aware that If you are not generating aggro on a mob that is attacking you, it will eventually run off to your healer. This means you need to hold a small amount of aggro on everything.

Step 3 - When things go wrong
Taunt is your friend. But if you don't treat it well, it might decide to bite you! Taunt works like this:

First of all, Taunt bumps you up to the top of a mob's aggro table. Then, it forces that mob to attack you (regardless of where you are on it's aggro table) for a short while. This means that if you are already on the top of a mob's aggro table, taunt will do nothing at all. Save it until you need it.

If a healer gets aggro, taunt the mob, generate a little more aggro on it for the sake of safety (one sunder should do) and then get back to what you were doing before.

Bosses
The techniques outlined above are enough to get you through trash mobs. But bosses are very different. Most DPS'ers in your group will be able to generate far more than your sunder can hold, and some bosses will hit you very hard indeed. Luckily, bosses rarely come in packs, so you'll only have one target to worry about.

Shield Block is one of your most useful abilities. It is practically a guaranteed block of the next attack (next 2 attacks when talented) and even more importantly, it lights up your Revenge ability. Revenge becomes available immediately after an attack is blocked. It deals next to no damage, but generates a LOT of aggro. Here's a list of the abilities you will use most while tanking a boss.

Bloodrage (If your rage bar is getting too low, 0-10)
Demoralizing Shout (aggro and mitigation)
Sunder Armor x5 (Lots of aggro, weakens the target)
Shield Block (mitigates damage)
Revenge (generates aggro)
Heroic Strike (If your rage bar is getting too high, 80-90)

In general, it is best to use as many of these abilities as often as your rage bar will allow.

That's about all I have time to write for now. Hope it's useful.

Toogie Teaches Tanking (focused toward lower levels)

I have played the warrior class way more than any other class in the game. I have leveled two to 60, one to 70, Bazti, my orc, is in her 40s and I have played many others up through 30 levels or so across many different servers and even have twinked a couple and played battegrounds heavily. I initially picked the warrior class to learn how to play the game. The straight forward style of play was appealing. I thought it no more than run up to something and hit it with your sword and hope it dies before you do. And at first that's very true. With Warcraft being my first MMORPG, I did not understand the complexities of grouping with other players. The first time I ran deadmines was a thirll. I found tanking in instances to be very enjoyable and it's one of my favorite parts of the game. For the most part sucessful grouping in an instance boils down to whether or not the group members know and understand their role. This guide I'm composing is hopefully going to explain the role of the tank and give some advice to from an experienced player. I'm sure I'm not the best tank out there, but I do feel like I know what I am talking about.

The first thing I want to discuss is gear. Warriors are a gear dependant class. Our damage output and survivability rely heavily on the bonuses from our gear. It's important to stay current on gear. If your gear is 10 levels behind you, you're essentially a few levels lower. If you want to be the best tank possible, the stats you should focus on are stamina then strength, then agility. The others hold no real value to the warrior class. If you are more of a solo player I'd flip flop strength and stamina. You'll be wearing a lot of "Of the bear" items. Also in upper levels gear will start having +dodge %, resilience, and + defense these are very good to get your hands on. Before going into an instance you should always make sure your armor is in good shape. I've ruined groups because I have had to leave to go repair in the middle of an instance. This is frustrating for everyone. So always make sure your armor is in good shape. When tanking you should always use a shield. It gives you access to a lot of great abilities like shield bash, which interrupts spell casters. It also increases your chance of blocking which means you can hit revenge more often, which is like aggro heaven. The downside of being the tank is that you will take a lot of the beating and will be repairing more frequently. Also, your chances of dieing are a lot higher than other members of your group.

Next I wish to discuss pulling. As the tank many times you'll get to be the group's puller. I prefer to pull for my group because it ensures I have all the initial aggro. Also, I'm a smart puller. When pulling the main thing you want to focus on is shooting the mob that will bring the fewest friends with it. It's also important to watch for patrols and make sure that your group will have enough time to kill what your pulling before the patrols come back. I have a "bad pull" macro. I can't remember when I used it last but it was helpful when I was learning the ropes. Essentially, if you go and shoot something and then you notice he is bringing a lot of friends with him you can hit the macro. What mine says, actually yells, is "Don't attack! Let me die and come rez after." If you are the only one that has a mob's aggro and then you die, the mob will reset. Sacrificing yourself is a lot faster and less frustrating than causing a wipe. This is also why it's important that your group stays back from you. If you die right next to your party the mobs will attack other people if they are close enough. Another important method of pulling is "line of sight" pulling. If you have a caster mob and you shoot it, it's going to stay in place and start casting spells at you. Most the time if you run up to it your going to aggro more mobs and potentially cause a wipe. The way you deal with this is by running behind an obstruction. This breaks the line of sight required for the mob to cast spells at you. They will stop casting and then move toward you in order to get that line of sight back. Once they are in close proximity to you, they can be safely dispatched. I've noticed that some objects don't break line of sight. For example: I've tried running behind big trees and they were still able to hit me with spells. I've never had a wall fail me yet though. Also you need to be careful of the pacing when you pull. If you're slow it will annoy people. But if you are going to fast you'll pull before people are ready and this can potentially cause a wipe. My normal method here is to check the mana bars of the main healer and then the dps casters. If they are 3/4 or above I move on to next pull. Unless they are drinking. If they are drinking I let them finish. If I look at mana bars and they are low, I'll call for a mana break myself. I sometimes forget to look though and am often guilty of pulling when the healer doesn't have much mana. The only thing left to mention about pulling is what to do when your not pulling. Usually what I do is let the other person pull, then I shoot one of the adds so I get that aggro for sure. Then I taunt whatever the other person actually hit. I find that's to be most effective way to get the aggro away from the puller. I don't have a problem when other people want to pull. Lots of classes have better ways to pull. Mages can sheep to pull. Rogues can sap. In instances like Strat, Scholo, or RFD priest's can use shackle undead to pull. This not only brings the mobs to the group but also takes one of the mobs out of combat for a while.

Now let's get to actually tanking. Basically, your job while in an instance group is to take the whipping while your group kills whatever you're fighting. In order to be the one taking the whipping you need to be at the top of the mob's aggro list. Warriors have many tactics to use to get to the top of the aggro list. The two best abilities so getting and staying at the top are Revenge and Sunder Armor. Revenge can only be used after you block an attack. Having a shield equipped will allow you to use the shield block skill. This gives you a 75% chance to block for 5 seconds using it will give you a lot of oppurtunity to use revenge. Also when sundering you can stack up to 5 on one mob. That doesn't mean that continuing to hit sunder is pointless. It will still generate the same amount of aggro, you just can't increase the amount of armor reduced by sunder. You also have emergency aggro control. Taunt is great. It forces you to the top of the mob's aggro for a few seconds. It's usually enough time for you to lay on a couple sunders so when taunt wears off you still are on top. You also will get Challenging Shout which is like Taunt but affects multiple targets. There is an option in the interface options menu that shows the target of your target. It's a tanks goal to keep the target of everything as themselves. I like to hit tab and switch through the targets. If I find something that does not have me as it's target, I taunt, hit sunder a couple times, revenge if it procs, and then starting going through and tabbing again. I have heard a lot of tanks like to turn around and fight facing the party. I don't like this way myself, but I do admit it helps keep an eye on things better. Above all else the tanks job is to protect the healer. The healer spends the whole battle watching over the tank that it shouldn't be hard for the tank to watch out for the healer. Also, sometimes you will have an off tank. People dedicated to taking some of the aggro on themselves. That is a simple concept to understand and makes your life a lot easier. Let them do their job and don't take aggro away from them.

Last thing I want to cover is dieing. Dieing is a simple fact of life for the tank. It's part of the job. Ideally, you'll be the first to die in your party. When you are about to die, die well. Make sure you give your party the best chance of survival you can before you go down. Hit any ability you can, burn up your rage bar. The rage won't do any good once you're dead so use it. Absolutely DO NOT TRY TO RUN! If you try to run away your wasting your time. The mobs in instances will follow you all the way to the front of the instance. Also, while your back is turned your no longer doing damage and the mob still is. Also, having your back exposed sets you up to be dazed which slows your movement and makes running away even more futile. Take it like a man and when you die, don't cuss at the healer or try to associate blame. 99% of the time the healer will be out of mana way before you go down. Usually, when I go down I turn into a cheerleader and route for the rest of the party to try and survive. Although if someone repeatedly is screwing up, do not feel obligated to stick around. The first time I ever went to Scholo, I died 7 times before we even hit the first boss. Each time I'd look and the priest would have 4-5k mana left. At first, I was like it happens, no big deal. She just wasn't watching closely. But after several full party wipes the whole party was cussing the priest out. I dropped the group and added the priest to my DO NOT GROUP list. I haven't grouped with her again. Even when we were trying to find a healer to run an instance and she was begging to come. Anyway, the simple fact is if you die well and try to give your party the best chance of survivng you can and don't get pissed about dieing things will go a lot smoother for you and your group.

Hope you enjoyed the guide. Thanks for reading.