Warrior Leveling Talent Builds

Glad that you decided to roll a warrior. Warrior class doesn’t suit everyone, because the first 40 levels are a little bit boring, you have to respec your talents often and we need very good gear, to be very good in something.
I’ve decided that this is a good thing, because a well geared warrior will by pass some classes in soloing for example with strong gear because all warrior’s damage in mana free, warrior’s have high armor and warriors can interupt spell casting. Caster classes have to balance their spell casting in order to stop themselves from using all their mana quickly while a warrior can keep on pushing forward, until bandaging. (Affiliction warlock? Yeah i know..)

GET STATS IN THIS ORDER: Strenght > Stamina > Agility. Easy, simple, and fun. Most of your damage comes from auto attack so strenght is the most important stat. Don’t be left on too low health either. Agility weights more with Deep arms build which i will talk a lot more soon, because your crits make your targets to bleed as well.

10-20:

Quests: Your defensive stance quest begings from the warrior trainer at once when you are level 10. You must complete it, and it’s not a long quest or even hard.

Talents: Depends on what is your style. 3 different types of specs i am using in this guide are: Deep arms, Dual Wied fury and 2-handed fury. With both deep arms and 2-handed fury look for yourself a fast 2-handed weapon. With DW, the weapon speed doesn’t matter much, but slow main-hander is better for whirlwind for example.
For start you will use what you got. You won’t learn DW until level 20, and DW isn’t a very good choise before you get it improve with talents. So stick with 2-handers for now.
DEEP ARMS: (You will repsec at level 40 for Mortal strike, so more crit is better for now)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LGZV
FURY (recommended):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVV
(Unbridled wrath can proc on heroic strikes and cleaves as well, making it the best of t2)

TIP: Collect intellect gear while you are questing, because you will face sitsuations when you’ll have to level your weapon skill. Intellect helps in this task, a lot. And if you have to level 2-handed mace skill for example, check AH for a faster 2-handed mace. If you have a one-handed weapon to level, use dual wield. Always spam hamstring.

20-30:

Talents:

Just a few words for those now.. Since this guide has been written long before 2.3 changed some parts of the talent trees some info here might sound a little bit odd. Speaking of level 10-60 levels in here: Arms is for those who don’t know nothing about anything, and that think it’s the best tree to pick.. They are wrong! 2-handed fury, with a very fast 2-hander is a lot better, but i do understand arms warriors because they maybe want to do some PvP every now and then. Deathwish and Mortal strike are in there.

What makes 2-handed fury so wonderful it’s the fact that your attacks usually also hit the target and you can have a stronger spec earlier on, before DW fury passes 2-handed fury at some point deep in the tree. But if you do spec DW now, you also have to fight against mobs 2-3 levels lower than you to make most attacks hit the target.

Deep Arms:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LAMZV

Improved charge is a filler, so you can put those points elsewhere if you want… I know that some low level warriors like rend, the downside is that you must use talents to buff it up, and even then rend damage stays too low. Avoid like plague! If you are a "cleaver grinder" imp. thunder clap is much better.

DW Fury:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzmx

Another alternative for Commanding presence is imp. Cleave. You can live without Piercing Howl too, but it gives a lot for only one talent point. Can be used as an escape tool for instance.

2-handed Fury:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzm0x

The idea on this 2-handed fury is, that you save points when you don’t have to take imp. dual wield. Besides you don’t need as much hit rating either.

30-40:

Time for berserker stance quest! Pick it up from the trainer and go to isles west of The Barrens. The quest is easy if you bring a potion and good bandages along. Renember to use your retallion. I won’t spoil the fun, by telling more details.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?wquest=1792

Here are 3 of the most famous weapons in our warrior community. This is going to take some time if you decide to solo. The trolls you have to kill are around 30-39 levelled in Stranglethorn Vale. The elementals you have to kill are around level 37-39. Liferoots can be bought from AH. When you have these, go back to Alterac and speak with the troll again. Now you have to face a level 40 elite mob, which can be killed by 2 people or you can ask some high levelled player. They will help for sure.
Pick the mace if, you you have followed my Deep arms talent spec. Axe, if you haven’t and you are poleaxe specced. Sword, if you are 2-handed fury. I chose the mace. Most people take the axe.

Talents:

Deep-arms:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LAM0dAroZV

DW-fury:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzmxxoV

2-handed-fury:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVdm0goV

40-50:

Quests: Well there isn’t any, which is nice for a change.

Talents:

Arms respec this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMcdAioz0dZVM

DW-Fury should look like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzmxxoVuV

2-handed Fury looks like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LZVVzV0gkquV

Around some level 50 or so you should drop 2-handed fury and spec either arms or DW_fury because those specs have more crit.

50-Outland:

What level do I have to be to enter the Outlands and when should I go there?

You need to be level 58 to enter the Outlands and should (IMO) go there pretty much as soon as possible. If you find mobs too difficult at 58, get to 60 in Azeroth before moving on.

How hard are the BC mobs?

The mobs you’ll encounter in the first zone, Hellfire Peninsula, are as hard as any lvl 60 mob in Azeroth. I’ve heard of people stacking up on healing potions - you won’t need that. But you should try to bring some food/bandages since you’ll see some downtime.

Thunderclap and demo shout are very useful here - a good idea would be to get imp. thunderclap if you’re arms-specced.

As you level up, you’ll start fighting mobs with more hp, armor and dps. Some of them also have pretty nasty special abilities, so always have a finger on the pummel/shield bash key. Well, maybe not always, but you get the idea.

How long will my current items last?

I’d say the magic number is level 65. At that point you might start seeing blue items of quality equal to or better than rank 14 weapons and similar gear. The rank 12-13 gear will last quite a while, mostly because it has high stamina which is a good thing, what with most upgrades in BC being stamina-related and all.

Some of your gear (tier 3 in particular) will last a bit into level 70 but you will obtain some very nice tank gear prior to that (legs with 60+ stamina, for instance). AQ-gear will last quite a long time as well - tier 2 less so, then tier 1 and least of all level 60 blue and green items. Scroll down a bit and you can see the kind of gear you can expect to get at lvl 60-62.

Can I grind XP or do I have to quest?

You can indeed grind XP but there are many reasons not to, especially if you’re a fresh 60. I will cover these a bit later. In short, there are three ways of getting XP:

Grinding
Questing
Instance grinding

How much XP do I need and how much do I get?

Assuming you have rested XP - you will start with no rested XP in BC but will aquire it normally from there on - you get roughly 1000 XP per mob (of equal level to yours) and 8000-12000 XP for most quests. To get a level up you will need several hundred thousand XP; I needed 680k from 64 to 65 and 710k from 65 to 66.

Grinding?

Grinding is a valid alternative to questing as long as you have rested XP, but I would really not recommend *only* grinding since you’ll lose out on a lot of items (and eventually, gold) this way. It gets boring fast and will not be very easy during the first week after release.

Is instance grinding OK?

Instance grinding is pretty rewarding, especially if you have rested XP. Even if you don’t, you get a good amount of XP per run. This will be one of the more popular ways of levelling up, especially for those with instance builds (prot, holy, resto etc), but also because the "beginner" zones will be overcrowded during the first few weeks, so questing might be a bit rough at times.

I will not list all the items you can get in instances but rest assured, there are a few nice things in the first two instances, Ramparts and Blood Furnace (plus all the instances in the other zones, obviously).

From what I’ve seen, most instances should take 1h 30 min to complete, longer if it’s your first run, shorter if it’s a farm run with a good group. This makes instance grinding an even better choice for many people.

How should I spec for fastest grinding/questing?

In my experience, a full DW fury build worked best. Even if you don’t have good DW weapons you will get a very nice pair once you become honored with Thrallmar/Honor Hold.

For that, I would recommend a build like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pZVVzVgxRiuVoc (0/48/3)

TM is not a must but I like it, so don’t get it if you want to spend points else where.

How should I spec if I want to do quests/instances/grinding?

I would suggest a DW build build with full deflection, like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TVZVVuVMxoiuVo (5/44/0)

Put the remaining 2 pts where you want.

How should I spec if I want to be a decent tank but still be able to do well solo?

You can get either a 31/5/15 or 5/31/15 build, depending on whether you prefer arms or fury:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVZVVzVRxoVzZcEzo (5/31/15)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pVMjdhbog0zZVZcEzo (31/5/15)

You can obviously change some talents, such as moving a few points from cruelty to second wind and defiance etc, but that’s up to you.

How should I spec if I want a good tank build?

I’d personally get something like this if you aim for high mitigation but also want some threat:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TVZZ0EpoIMzcest (5/0/46)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TVZVZ0EpoIMz0esu (5/5/41)

You can still tank instances without a tank spec, this is just for those who like prot and want to spec that way.

How should I spec if I want a good arms build?

Personally I’m considering speccing this, since I don’t like endless rage and consider piercing howl a must:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMsdAbog0dbZE0zZc (31/11/3)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMsdAbog0dioVZc (41/5/3)

Second build is for those who want endless rage.

Arms is VERY MUCH viable in BC, both for instances and grinding (and PvP, obviously). So if you’re arms now, there’s no need to go DW fury in BC. Just saying that if you want the fastest possible grinding, then you may want to consider DW fury.