The warrior is usually dubbed the easy class in the World of Warcraft (WOW). Many think that you take a warrior and ram through, killing everything in sight without worrying about things like crit points and spells.
Creating a successful warrior takes thought and preparation from the very beginning all the way to the end game. Unlike other games, the WOW warrior needs to do more than equip a random sword and run in slashing. Here are some things to consider.
Types of Warrior
In WOW there are 2 main types of warriors, the tank and the powerhouse (damage).
Many think of the warrior as a powerhouse, slashing everything in sight and dealing high amounts of damage to everything in its path. In reality, the warrior is not the best damage dealer in the game. True, with the proper planning, a powerhouse trained warrior can be great at soloing, but it is nearly useless in groups.
The tank is the more useful of the two because a warrior is designed to take more damage than any other character in the game. So, of course, it is best at tanking through a mob, aggroing the creatures, and letting the damage dealers in a group handle the bulk of the killing.
Using Abilities
Abilities are how you make your warrior into a tank or a powerhouse. While other classes use combo points or mana for their abilities, warriors use rage as their source of power. As a warrior receives damage, their rage points build. Rage points allow you to use your attacks and abilities that need rage to be activated. Rage can be greatly affected by your choice of talents and abilities.
There are 3 branches of abilities that a warrior can use: protection, arms, and fury. These branches are subdivided into the categories of passive defenses, special attacks, and shouts. These abilities are further categorized by what stances you can perform them in.
The first stance a warrior is able to do is the battle stance. Battle stance is mostly an arms stance including both offensive and defensive abilities. This stance does well with a two-handed weapon to get the most damage possible.
The next two stances, berserker and defensive stance, are acquired only by doing warrior quests that can be found within the game.
Defensive stance is used when tanking. Many abilities in this stance requires a shield. A fast, hard hitting one handed weapon is perfect for this stance.
The berserker stance is a powerhouse stance that is most useful for killing monsters. Why? You take on more damage, but you are able to attack faster and hit more opponents at once. You will not use it very often, but when you do it will pack a powerful punch. With this stance it is best to use duel-wield to get the most crits, i.e., damage.
As a warrior, the stance that you will be working with the most is the defensive stance. Remember that warriors are tanks, right? Well this is how they get to be that way. Building a solid defensive stance is essential to playing a warrior. Just by activating the defensive stance you add 10 points to your defense.
One downside (or maybe upside, depending how you look at it) is that this stance almost requires you to use a shield. Many abilities in this stance just won’t work without one.
There are other things to consider when using your warrior, but these are the most important to get the most bang for your gold.
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