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ZilviS · 12-30-2008, 05:00 PM

Warrior Leveling guide

Introduction
Warriors are one of my favorite classes to level, at least under specific circumstances – they provide the fun gaming style of non-stop death dealing combined with a decent overall leveling speed that can come in narrowly behind rogues and hunters, if done correctly.

One slight catch, to do so you must be geared to the teeth, at all times, and at the very least updating your weaponry every 5 or 6 levels if not more. So have fun dropping your cash, or gold in this case, down the proverbial black hole known as the auction house.

Besides that small downer, warriors can provide a fun and engaging experience to level, especially with the somewhat recent increase to quested experience gain – this really helps make their, and any class's, leveling far easier. .

2.0 – Talents
0/53/8 Fury Build - This build leave 10 points left over for you to play with.
For talent builds we’ll be following the standard fury warrior build as outlined in our warrior class guide here – this allows you to pump out massive amounts of consistent damage combined with frequent critical strikes giving a near permanent flurry buff and maxing out white damage.

The build covers almost any need as far as talents go, picking up all the necessary ones and essentially going for maximum efficiency as far as a well geared fury warrior is concerned. However, that’s not to say it’s in any way perfect for your warrior, so feel free to experiment as you go and find your match.

Cruelty provides us with a staple damage increase, it also gives us the much needed critical strikes that become oh so very important at the later levels, largely due to flurry. It’s probably one of the best talents in the tree despite occupying the first tier.

Second tier we pick up unbridled wrath, this also helps greatly at all levels – Hilariously enough I skipped this my first time through the game, way back at release, and instead picked up booming voice as unbridled wrath seemed rather weak to me at a first glance.

Don’t make this same mistake, the talent is yet another must have as it really shows when you’ve maxed it out and proceed to fill your rage pool *while* fully spamming all abilities.

At one point in time I'd favored enrage over dual-wield specialization, however that time is simply no-longer present and for consistency I now pick up five points in Dual-wield spec as opposed to my prior builds - I'd recommend you do the same.

Flurry is the real killer however, it rounds out the builds damage abilities with a massive consistent increase of damage throughout practically every fight. Just one thing, you might not notice it being quite as good as I’m playing it up to be until you’ve A: maxed it out, 5/5 – and B: build up a decent critical rating.

Bloodthirst, rampage, improved berserker stance, etc. All these simply build upon already present damage dealing capabilities, learn to use them correctly and they truly become a boon, use them incorrectly and you’ll likely notice minimal effect.

Add glyphs to your character appropriate to your playstyle. Here's the glyph list.

10 – 14 Cruelty - Yes, we like crits.
15 – 19 Unbridled Wrath - More Rage
20 – 24 Commanding Presence - More damage and health
25 – 29 Dual Wield Specialization - 'nuff said
30 – Death Wish - more damage
31 – 33 Precision - Hit more often = more damage and more threat
34 - Weapon Mastery (1/2) - Especially useful Vs. a Rogue's Dismantle
35 – 39 Flurry - more attacks are also a good thing
40 – Blood Thirst - Instant attack and restores a bit of health
41 – Weapon Mastery (2/2) - Especially useful Vs. a Rogue's Dismantle
42 - 44 Intensify Rage - More damage
45 - 49 Improved Berserker Stance - More Attack Power, but less threat
50 - Rampage - Good with teams, this one buffs them.
51 - 53 Bloodsurge - Your next Slam is instant
54 - Improved Whirlwind (1/2) - more damage
55 - 59 Unending Fury - More damage
60 - Titan's Grip - Weild two 2-hand weapons. What's not to like?

61 – 70 Branch out into whatever your end-game build of choice is, likely picking up various talents in arms as well as more fury points.

3.0 – Gear & Progression
Fury warrior stats are quite simple. We want to maximize damage at all costs, this means picking up as much attack power, critical rating, hit rating, and strength as possible, with all other statistics taking a backseat in this regard, including stamina.

One practice that’s become prevalent at 70 is the usage of mail and/or leather armor that possesses the greater damage stats, however this shouldn’t become much of a factor along the road to your 60’s.

Strength is your first priority, it increases attack power, and in doing so, your base damage values. Stacking massive amounts of strength is most effective at lower levels and slowly erodes up until 70 whereupon it about evens out against critical rating.

Critical rating and raw attack power come at about an even par, however in the end I’d say critical rating edges out +attack power simply due to its effect on increasing how often flurry proc’s and therefore your white damage significantly.

4.0 -- 1-80 Automated Warrior Leveling Guide
Once you have the right build for your playstyle, consider a full blown Warrior leveling guide for your 1-80 blast. Zygor's Guide automates the whole thing, for any class, starting from any level. Pick your starting point and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot.
Grab your copy here or read the review.

ZilviS · 12-30-2008, 05:03 PM

The Arms Warrior Guide

1.0 - Introduction
For more general Warrior info, check out our Warrior Class Guide or here for the Warrior Leveling Guide.

I find arms warriors to incredibly enjoyable simply as a breath of fresh air from playing dedicated fury for more than two years, it's always nice to switch around attack rotations and see something different for once.

Additionally the improvements an MS warrior can bring via Blood Frenzy and slam DPS recently caught my attention and led to the creation of a build based around this ability usage.

The intended effect is to surpass two-handed fury/dual-wield fury DPS wise by providing the entire raids melee with a 4% increase including our own personal damage output.

All in all it's fairly meh at first but dramatically improves as you hit the higher raiding zones, however if you're interested in testing it out in Karazhan, Gruul, etc. check out the bottom gear list.

This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the Arms Warrior. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource, check out the Killer Guides' Warrior guide, here.

2.0 - Talents

53/8/0 Arms Build

Mortal Strike is an odd spec for raiding, one once considered rather pathetic in comparison to fury warriors and thus left behind for the PvP fanatics. Things have changed, and with that Arms warriors have once again become viable for endgame raids due to a number of factors.

The increase in damage becomes apparent the further you go into raiding, the raid-wide damage improvement from Blood Frenzy shifting it entirely in the Arms warriors favor, more so given the generally limited slots DPS warriors are allowed if any.

However, this build is far more attention and skill intensive, requiring you to maximize every hit in-order to achieve the true DPS potential of the build. A single miss is far more devastating with Arms due to the slow hit rate as opposed to fury where this can generally be ignored.

Additionally, being slow on the draw for slam or Mortal strike can terribly gimp your DPS, this will likely happen more than a few times when first raiding as MS, but you’ll either eventually get the hang of it or switch to fury.

The Weapon specialization can be within either Sword or Axe, I prefer sword personally but the differences are miniscule and you should switch depending on what weapons are immediately available to you.

Not all points in this build are infallible, but it’s pretty close to the best you’re going to get.

Note: Mods can enlisted to aid in your timing, such as Quartz Combat Bar

2.1 - Attack Rotation

The Quartz attack bar can be used to maximise your DPS via triggering the next attack seemingly before the current begins, however in reality this is done via latency allowing you to queue an ability immediately as the current action is dealt.

Unfotunately triggering this too early cancels the current attack thus gimping your DPS rotation temporarily, leading to far more damage lost for Arms than faster attack based builds.

Additionally, the maximum speed possible before it no-longer aids you is 2.5 attack speed, anything beyond this point has no effect in the rotation and is thus a waste.

The attack rotation will be as follows:

Auto Attack - Slam - Mortal Strike
Auto Attack - Slam - Whirlwind
Auto Attack - Slam - Mortal Strike
Auto Attack - Slam - Demoralizing Shout/Battle Shout Refresh

Should you find yourself lacking enough rage to finish each rotation try working in a bloodrage to allow the mortal strike/whirlwind to be used the next rotation period. Slam however should take absolute priority and thus come first even if this consumes the remaining rage.

2.2 - Leveling Arms Build

42/18/1 Arms Warrior Leveling Build

10 – 14 Cruelty
15 – 17 Improved Heroic Strike
18 – 19 Deflection (2/5)
20 – 21 Improved Charge
22 – 24 Deflection (5/5)
25 - Anger Management
26 - 28 Deep Wounds
29 - Improved Overpower (1/2)
30 - 31 Impale
32 - 34 Two-Handed Specialization (3/5)
35 - 39 Poleaxe Specialization
40 - Death Wish
41 - 42 Two-Handed Specialization (5/5)
43 - Improved Overpower (2/2)
44 - Improved Intercept (1/2)
45 - Mortal Strike
46 - 47 Second Wind
48 - 49 Blood Frenzy
50 - 54 Improved Mortal Strike
55 - Endless Rage
56 - 70 Branch out into whatever your end-game build of choice is, likely picking up various talents in Fury as well as more arms points.

3.0 - Arms PvP Build
35/23/3 Hybrid Arms Arena Build

4.0 - Gear, Skills, and Stats
This section is dedicated to covering the numerous different stats you may wish to stack, hit rating, STR, crit, weapon expertise, etc.

Hit Rating – 15.8 rating = 1% Increase
Critical Rating – 22.1 rating = 1% Increase
Weapon Expertise – 1 point = .25% lower chance for enemy to dodge/parry
Haste – 15.7 = 1%
Armor Penetration – This improves the more you get, stack as much as possible
Statistic wise you'll want to first aim for a decent +hit rating, all the +hit talents in the warrior talent tree's are unavaliable and thus leaves you entirely at the mercy of what equipment you currently possess to improve this stat.

The hit cap is 142/9%, and since missing attacks as an arms warrior is so effective at ruining our DPS you'll want to reach this regardless what must be sacrificed, working the rest of your gear in after reaching this limit.

Armor penetration is a massive boost to damage and you can never go wrong with getting more, each 100 improves damage by almost .80% on a fully debuffed boss and a slightly lesser 0.70 or so with only sunder armor.

You'll likely find it difficult to achieve reasonable levels of critical rating what with the emphasis on gaining +hit, however it's also not recommended to sacrifice any strength gem slots for improved critical and instead to wait on the gear.

4.1 - Weaponry

Weapon wise you'll definitely want to choose from either sword or axe, this is due to the weapon specializations dictating that maces are essentially only for PvP and lose all effectiveness in PvE comparative to axes 5% crtiical or swords extra attacks.

4.2 - Gems

Gemming armor is a fairly simple process, for pure DPS you’ll find that you need only pick and choose from a small selections of gems depending on the items set bonuses and whether you truly need them.

As for set bonuses, they’ll likely only be worthwhile should they increase one of your specific damage stats such as STR or +crit rating, otherwise it’s often better to skip them entirely.

Red Gem: 8 STR – This also serves as your general socket gem of choice when skipping set bonuses entirely.

Yellow: 4 STR/ 4 +crit

Blue 4 STR/ 6 Stam

And finally as far as meta-slot gems go, only the relentless earthstorm diamond will prove worthwhile, anything else isn’t worth the sacrificed slots to achieve and you’d be better off with +8 str gem(s) instead.

4.3 - Gear Guide

This is strictly pre-karazhan to get you started on your way, past that I expect you'll begin instinctively finding the proper synergy of stats to maximise your damage.

Note: Many pieces of armor as well as potentially weaponry can be substituted by Gladiator/Honor gear.

Helm:

Overlord's Helm of the Second Sight - Quest Reward
Savage Plate Helm - Reputation Reward(Thrallmar Honored)
Hope Bearer Helm - Drop(Auchenai Crypts)
Ragesteel Helm - Crafted

Neck:

Choker of vile Intent - Vendor(25 Badges of Justice)
Necklace of Trophies - World Drop BoE
Natasha's Choker- Quest Reward

Back:

Dory's Embrace - Vendor(60 Badges of Justice)
Vengeance Wrap - Crafted(Tailoring)
Cloak of the Inciter - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Auchenai Death Shroud - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)
Blood Knight War Cloak - Vendor(25 Badges of Justice)

Shoulders:

Shoulderplates of Everlasting Pain - Drop(Heroic Magisters Terrace)
Doomplate Shoulderguards - Drop(Heroic Underbog)
Savage Plate Shoulders - Reputation Reward(Lower City Honored)

Chest:

Chestplate of A'dal - Quest Reward
Ragesteel Breastplate - Crafted
Doomplate Chestguard - Drop(Arcatraz)
Durotan's Battle Harness - Drop(Normal Hillsbrad Foothills)

Wrist:

Eternium Rage-shackles - Vendor(35 Badges of Justice)
Black Felsteel Bracers - Crafted
Bracers of Slaughter - Drop(Normal Magister's Terrace)
Bands of Syth - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Nexus-Bracers of Vigor - Drop(Mana Tombs)

Hands:

Furious Deathgrips - Vendor(60 Badges of Justice)
Gauntlets of the Skullsplitter - World Drop BoE
Doomplate Gauntlets - Drop(Heroic Blood Furnace)
Ragesteel Gloves - Crafted

Belt:

Chain of Unleashed Rage - Vendor(60 Badges of Justice)
Deathforge Girdle - Drop(Talon King Ikiss)
Rubium War Girdle - Drop(Arcatraz)
Girdle of Siege - BoE World Drop

Legs:

Legguard's of the Shattered Hand - BoE World Drop
Vanquisher's Legplates - Drop(Heroic Mechanar)
Doomplate Legguards - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)
Savage Plate Legguards - Reputation Reward(Keepers of Time Honored)

Boots:

Sha'tari Wrought Greaves - Quest Reward
Obsidian Clodstompers - Drop(Botanica)
Bloodsworn Warboots - Drop(Heroic Blood Furnace)

Rings:

Angelista's Revenge - Vendor(60 Badges of Justice)
Overseer's Signet - Quest Reward
Kaylann's Signet - Quest Reward
Band of Anguish - Quest Reward

Trinkets:

Hourglass of the Unraveller - Drop(Black Morass)
Abacus of Violent Odds - Drop(Mechanar)
Bladefists's Breadth - Quest Reward
Core of Ar'kelos - Quest Reward

Weapons:

Lionheart Blade/Lionheart Champion/Lionheart Executioner - Crafted
Lunar Crescent/Mooncleaver/Bloodmoom - Crafted
Quantum Blade - Drop(Heroic Black Morass)
Legionfoe - Reputation Reward(Shattered Sun Offensive Revered)
Axe of Shattered Dreams - Drop(Magister's Terrace)
Apexis Cleaver - World Drop BoE

Ranged Weapon:

Felsteel Whisper Knives - Crafted
Wrathfire Hand-Cannon - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Veteran's Musket/Marksman's Bow - Reputation Reward(Honor Hold/Thrallmar)

5.0 - 1-80 Arms Warrior Leveling Guide
Once you have the right set-up for your playstyle, consider a full blown Warrior leveling guide for your 1-80 blast. Zygor's Guide automates the whole path, from start to finish for your Warrior. Pick your starting point and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot. Grab your copy here or read the review.

ZilviS · 12-30-2008, 05:04 PM

Fury Warrior Guide

1.0 - The Fury Warrior
Fury warriors rank amongst my top three in terms of favored class and build, combining the awesome looks of plate armored warriors with the berserk fast-paced damage dealing capabilities of a true death-dealer.

Dual-wield is a large part of both the fury warriors image as well as general style of play, leading a role of primarily raid DPS and, should you choose to endure the pains, PvP or even arena play.

Unfortunately the role of fury warriors has somewhat diminished from previous good times, however, it still remains an entirely viable raging whirlwind of destruction.

2.0 - Talents
15/46/0 fury build

A large part of what makes your fury warrior viable, having made the decision to properly gear/learn the correct rotations and so on, is his talents.

As always you can pick and choose which talents you agree with taking and perhaps drop a few points in more than a couple to pick up your own preferences, the pre-made build is only intended to provide a guide-line to establishing your own personalized style and build.

Many of the choices you make can be altered dependant on your level of gear. Decked out DPS warriors from black temple and sunwell will require less of the rage generation talents and generally shoot for purely increased damage, lesser geared warriors may need more +hit and so on.

Try the traditional build and work out whatever your missing/need to boost, move from there.

2.1 - Attack Rotation
Auto-Attack - Bloodthirst - Whirlwind - Heroic Strike(Excess Rage Only
Refresh rampage as is required, try and wait unitl the last moment to do so rather than interrupt the attack rotation in favor of resetting the buff.

2.2 - Leveling Fury Build
0/53/8 Fury build

Check out the Warrior Leveling Guide for more info

10 – 14 Cruelty
15 – 19 Unbridled Wrath
20 – 24 Commanding Presence
25 – 29 Dual Wield Specialization
30 – Death Wish
31 – 33 Precision
34 - Weapon Mastery (1/2)
35 – 39 Flurry
40 – Blood Thirst
41 – Weapon Mastery (2/2)
42 - 44 Intensify Rage
45 - 49 Improved Berserker Stance
50 - Rampage
51 - 53 Bloodsurge
54 - Improved Whirlwind (1/2)
55 - 59 Unending Fury
60 - Titan's Grip
61 – 70 Branch out into whatever your end-game build of choice is, likely picking up various talents in arms as well as more fury points.

2.3 - PvP Fury Build
15/46/0 OR 0/53/8 Fury

I won't recommend fury warriors in any PvP past battlegrounds, we simply lose to much ground to mortal strike/arms hybrids, however for some fun in the BG's fighting where it matters less try out this build.

3.0 - Skills and Stats
This section is dedicated to covering the numerous different stats you may wish to stack, hit rating, STR, crit, weapon expertise, etc.

Hit Rating – 15.8 rating = 1% Increase
Critical Rating – 22.1 rating = 1% Increase
Weapon Expertise – 1 point = .25% lower chance for enemy to dodge/parry
Haste –15.7 = 1%
Now, using the first two numbers we’ll work out what you want to pick up first, and what can be maximized after you’ve achieved the essentials for DPS’ing.

First things first you’ll want a minimum of around 6 – 7% hit rating, that’s for bottom rank DPS even, more is always welcome beyond this point, however if you’re just pushing to make it into Karazhan or an equivalent dungeon then you’ll barely make it by with that amount.

Another point is about a common misconception surrounding +hit. The more you hit does not magically = more criticals, instead +hit simply increases your white damage and +crit will always aid even at 0 hit rating.

However, given that white damage is quite a bit of help, especially in long battles as well as building rage, +hit is still a very valuable tool of guaranteed DPS increase given the high miss chance of dual-wielding.

In general stacking up on STR is most effective at lower gear levels and becomes less so as your average abilities increase. +crit will eventually surpass str by a slight amount at the highest levels of gear/buffs.

Always try and increase damage stats along with +hit, never focus singularly on one stat to the exclusion of others as this will inevitably result in reducing your damage capabilities.

Finally, armor penetration, it rocks, especially once you have a lot of it. Armor penetrations has a lot of math behind how it functions and such, however suffice to say that the more the merrier, just don’t gimp straight damage stats to obtain it.

4.0 - Off-hand Weaponry
Another question I encounter frequently is that of whether to pick up a slower or faster off-hand, fortunately this is a fairly easy issue to ignore entirely given minute differences either way. Still, the basic issue is generally about flurry charges and other such procs/abilities.

Slow off-hands are technically better, however the improvement is slight enough to make it worthwhile to simply equip whatever weapon has the best stats on it as opposed to factoring in weapon speed.

Don’t drop a fast-offhand simply because it’s fast, only do so should you find an available slower off-hand with equal or greater stats, doing otherwise will simply reduced your effectiveness.

Furthermore, as your crit rating climbs the less of effect slow vs fast becomes as all benefits of a slow off-hand are based upon yellow(special attack) criticals, not white damage.

5.0 - Enchants
For anything below the 80-90 DPS range, basically prior to picking up your real epics, either a crusader or potency enchantment will do, whichever comes cheaper honestly. Still, you should be picking up some high damage weaponry quite easily given the increased access to gladiator gear nowadays.

Beyond blues and greens it’s a general rule of thumb to throw Executioner on main hand and either mongoose or potency off-hand, never use executioner on both as so far as I can tell the enchantments effects will *not* stack.

6.0 - Gems
Gemming armor is a fairly simple process, for pure DPS you’ll find that you need only pick and choose from a small selections of gems depending on the items set bonuses and whether you truly need them.

As for set bonuses, they’ll likely only be worthwhile should they increase one of your specific damage stats such as STR or +crit rating, otherwise it’s often better to skip them entirely.

Red Gem: 8 STR – This also serves as your general socket gem of choice when skipping set bonuses entirely.

Yellow: 4 STR/ 4 +crit

Blue 4 STR/ 6 Stam

And finally as far as meta-slot gems go, only the relentless earthstorm diamond will prove worthwhile, anything else isn’t worth the sacrificed slots to achieve and you’d be better off with +8 str gem(s) instead.

7.0 - Gear Guide
This is strictly pre-karazhan to get you started on your way, past that I expect you'll begin instinctively finding the proper synergy of stats to maximise your damage.

Note: Many pieces of armor as well as potentially weaponry can be substituted by Gladiator/Honor gear.

Helm:

Overlord's Helm of the Second Sight - Quest Reward
Hope Bearer Helm - Drop(Auchenai Crypts)
Ragesteel Helm - Crafted

Neck:

Choker of vile Intent - Vendor(25 Badges of Justice)
Natasha's Choker- Quest Reward

Back:

Cloak of the Inciter - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Blood Knight War Cloak - Vendor(25 Badges of Justice)
Auchenai Death Shroud - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)

Shoulders:

Slyvannar Champion's Shoulders - Quest Reward
Doomplate Shoulderguards - Drop(Heroic Underbog)

Chest:

Ragesteel Breastplate - Crafted
Doomplate Chestguard - Drop(Arcatraz)
The Exarch's Protector - Quest Reward

Wrist:

Black Felsteel Bracers - Crafted
Bands of Syth - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Demolisher's Bracers - Quest Reward

Hands:

Doomplate Gauntlets - Drop(Heroic Blood Furnace)
Ragesteel Gloves - Crafted

Belt:

Deathforge Girdle - Drop(Talon King Ikiss)
Rubium War Girdle - Drop(Arcatraz)
Girdle of Siege - BoE World Drop

Legs:

Vanquisher's Legplates - Drop(Heroic Mechanar)
Legguard's of the Shattered Hand - BoE World Drop

Boots:

Sha'tari Wrought Greaves - Quest Reward
Obsidian Clodstompers - Drop(Botanica)

Rings:

Overseer's Signet - Quest Reward
Kaylann's Signet - Quest Reward
Band of Anguish - Quest Reward

Trinkets:

Bladefists's Breadth - Quest Reward
Core of Ar'kelos - Quest Reward

Weapons:

Latro's Shifting Sword - Drop(Black Morass)
Twin-Blade Ripper - Quest Reward

Ranged Weapon:

Wrathfire Hand-Cannon - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Veteran's Musket/Marksman's Bow - Reputation Reward(Honor Hold/Thrallmar)

1-80 Warrior Leveling Guide
Once you have the right set-up for your playstyle, consider a full blown Warrior leveling guide for your 1-80 blast. Zygor's Guide automates the whole path, from start to finish for your Warrior. Pick your starting point and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot. Grab your copy here or read the review.

ZilviS · 12-30-2008, 05:10 PM

The Protection Warrior Guide

1.0 - The Protection Warrior
Protection warriors are the defnitive tanks of World of Warcraft, representing the original meatshields from the old times as well as remaining premier tanks for almost all top raiding guilds. However warriors have been surpassed in situational circumtances by the other two tanks, Paladins and Druids.

Still, Warriors represent to many the cutting-edge of meat-shields, and in many ways they are, so if you're looking for the required threat mechanics, gear basics, and everything required to start tanking your first raid, look no further.

Note: This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the Protection Warrior. For a more in-depth and highly detailed Warrior resource check out the Killer Guides' Warrior guide, here.

2.0 - Talents
5/3/53 OR 5/0/56
Either or these builds will deliver all the necessary talents and set-up to tank almost any raid boss, cutomizing either one should wait until you find your own specific style or find a boss requring some sort of variation.

The first build is something of a standardized pick of all the optimal protection warrior talents, the second picks up a few more less utilized talents for defeating bosses that actually use those mechanics, decide which one you like and run with it.

2.1 - Attack Rotation

Note: All values are those with defiance, defensive stance, and other modififers applied

Full Rotation: 12443 threat or 1036 threat per second
Devastate - Devastate - Devastate - Shield Slam - Revenge

Burst Threat Rotation: 6457 threat or 1075 Threat per second
Shield Slam - Devastate - Devastate - Devastate - Shield Slam

3.0 - Defensive Ratings/Conversions
Defense Rating – 2.4 = 1 Defense
Dodge – 18.9 = 1% Increase
Parry – 22.4 = 1%
Block – 7.9 = 1%
Resilience – 39.4 = 1%

Hit – 15.8 = 1%
Critical – 23.6 = 1%
Haste – 10.5 = 1%
Weapon Expertise – 3.9 = 1% lower chance for enemy to dodge/parry

Defense – 1 Point = +0.04% Parry, Dodge, block, Miss Chance, -Critical Chance
The reason for aiming for a defense rating of at least 490 is this. Creatures have an effective 5% critical rating, meaning that to effectively remove critical strikes from a level 73 (boss level) monster you need to achieve enough defense to reduce their chance to critically hit you by 5%

490 Defense is the magic number for entirely eliminating critical strikes from the enemies attack pool, thusly making it that much more impossible to be one/two shot by a boss.

3.1 Armor

Armor follows a tricky formula of dimishing returns, eventually leading to the favoritism of dodge, parry, etc. over a straight increase of armor for a warrior. Often times warriors will gain a large amount of evasion stats by around Mount Hyjal, leading to possible miss streaks followed by what seems to be a damage spike.

The bonus of evasion over armor is that by evading you reduce the requirements on everyone healing, leading to them doing less healing and therefore building less threat while you continue to beat on the mob in question.

Druids on the other hand maximise armor due to die bear forms massive increase % and thus are still capable of stacking enough to make them better candidates for specific high-damage boss fights.

Armor Vs. Level 70:

10,000 = 48.64%
12,000 = 53.20%
13,000 = 55.18%
14,000 = 57.01%
15,000 = 58.69%
16,000 = 50.25%
20,000 = 65.45%
25,000 = 70.31%
3.1 - Avoidance

Avoidance is one of our most helpful tanking attributes due to being capable of significantly reducing healing far below that of armors capabiltiies, allowing for even chunks of time passing without the tank taking a single hit and thusly saving vast amounts of mana over time.

Dodge

Dodge allows you to evade practically frontal melee attacks, including bosses cleaves, whirlwinds, etc. Dodge also can be used to avoid some magic/elemental based attacks but cannot allow you to evade critical strikes or crushing blows.

Parry

Parry is yet another 100% reduction of a frontal melee attack, and functions much like dodge in the avoidance of elemental and other such special damage/attack types. Additionally, when parry is activated it reduces the attack speed of the next attack by 50%, this also applies to bosses parrying players.

Due to the frequency of boss parries it's almost always beneficial to place all DPS directly behind the boss so as to avoid triggering the capability of parrying.

Miss Chance

Miss chance is when the target misses you, allowing you to force an attacker to miss attacks from all possible directions and applies to nigh all attacks/special attack types possible. The lower your +hit the higher the chance to miss the target as well.

All creatures you encounter will have a base 5% miss chance that is effectively added to your own increase to this factor via defense, creating greater avoidance than stated on the profile menu.

Shield Block

Shield block, much like parry and dodge, is only effective on frontal attacks - yet again shield block effects all physical attacks including ranged strikes however this does not mitigate most special attack types such as elemental.

Shield block allows the player to boost avoidance levels above 100% thus effectively granting the blocking skill priority over any attacks including critical strike/crushing blows. The result is that whenever shield block is active the player can not be hit with crusing blow.

3.2 - The Combat Table, Becoming Uncrushable

Miss:
Dodge:
Parry:
Block:
Critical:
Crushing Blow
Normal Hit:

What this table does is outline the possible resutls of an attempted attack upon a player, namely us - the tank. Now, look at the second chart to get a better understanding of the attack table.

Miss: 0.1 - 5.00 (5%)
Dodge: 5.01 - 20.00 (15%)
Parry: 20.01 - 38.25 (18.25%)
Block: 38.26 - 70.25 (31.99%)
Critical: 70.26 - 80.26 (10%)
Crushing Blow: 80.27 - 90.27 (10%)
Hit: 90.28 - 100 (9.72%)

Obviously this attack table is merely an example, nevertheless it properly illustrates the RNG(Random Number Generator) method of determining attacks sucess, failure, and resulting damage if succesful.

The way that we become uncrushable, a necessary trait for beginning the job of tank in any raid dungeon such as the beginner's Karazhan, is to literally shove crushing blows off the table, removing them from the equation entirely.

How is this done you ask? well let's take a look at one final chart:

Miss: 0.01 - 10.00 (10%)
Dodge: 10.01 - 20.00 (10%)
Parry: 20.01 - 30.00 (10%)
Block: 30.01 - 100.00 (70%)
Critical: 0%
Crushing Blow: 0%
Normal Hit: 0%

How does this work exactly? Well look at the table, by massively increasing the chance to block we successively fill the attack table, forcing the values of critical, crushing blows, and even normal hits off the chart.

However, to truly factor this against level 73 Bosses, as all raid bosses are 3 levels higher than the maximum player level, we'll have to factor for reduced chance of block/parry/dodge against higher levels. An decrease of 2.4% total.

Thusly, to achieve absolute un-crushable nor crittable status we'll require a total of 102.4% mitigation when combining the values of Miss, Dodge, Block, and Parry.

For us warriors we have shield block to boost our block rating massively and thusly make it a far easier to reach mititgation number as oppose to druids who are unable to or paladins who simply have difficulty reaching the magic number.

4.0 - Threat Mechanics
Threat is a number whereby you gain a certain amount for almost every action while in combat, special abilities often have staple threat amounts attachted whereas variable numbers such as white damage/healing can generate everywhere from 1 to 100.

Another factor to holding aggro is the positioning of other players comparable to the current highest aggro holder/hopefully the tank.

Primary Target = 100%
Melee Range Targets = 110%
Ranged Targets = 130%

This means that the tank himself suffers no penalty to threat generation so long as he is target, however melee players beside/nearby him will need to generate whatever his threat value is plus 10% above. This additionally applies to ranged targets at 130% of the tanks threat value.

4.1 - Taunt

What this ability does is not pull aggro for a set duration before releasing the mob, rather it brings your threat levels to an exact equal to whoever is currently holding the mobs attention, meaning that by following up taunt with revenge, shield slam, or a sunder, you solidify your hold on its aggro so long as you continue to output more threat than the other player.

This can be used to your advantage by waiting to taunt until the offending mage, warlock, or hunter has unloaded with all cooldowns and major damage abilities, building up his threat as much as possible within the space of a few seconds. By taunting immediately afterwards, you effectively gain all of the threat they just built up plus your own after the taunt.

However, taunt does not gain any threat beyond the initial 100% for the tank, meaning that a mage who requires 130% threat to pull aggro will not automatically grant the tank the exact value of threat he has generated, only as much is required to hold aggro.

4.2 - Threat Values

Defensive Stance = 130% (1.3) Threat Multiplier
Defiance = 115% (1.15) Threat Multiplier

Shield Slam = 307
Revenge = 200
Devastate = 176, (119, 134, 148, 162) Improves with each stack of sunder armor
Sunder Armor = 301
Mocking Blow = 290
Heroic Strike = 196
Cleave = 130

Commanding Shout = 68 (Split Between Targets)
Battleshout = 69 (Split Between Targets)
Demoralizing Shout = 56 (Split Between Targets)

Disarm = 104
Hamstring = 181
Whirlwind = 100% of Damage
Execute = 100% of Damage
Thunderclap = 175% of Damage
Spell Reflect = 100% of Damage

4.3 - Stat Goals

Minimum Health = 12,000
Minimum Armor = 12,000 - 13,000
Minimum Dodge/Parry Total = 30% or 15% each
Mininmum Defense = 490

This list is not exhaustive nor does it include anything that I may have missed in my own travels/searching for viable tanking gear, feel free to pick up whatever you feel could equally replace a given piece of gear so long as you reach the numbers above.

4.4 - Gems

Green:

Thick Golden Draenite
Solid Azure Moonstone

Blue:

Solid Star of Elune
Enduring Talasite
Thick Dawnstone

4.4 Enchantments

Head: Glyph of the Defender
Shoulders: Aldor/Scryer Inscription
Back: Dodge
Chest: Exceptional Health
Wrist: Fortitude
Hands: Superior Agility
Legs: Clefthide Leg Armor OR Nethercleft Leg Armor
Feet: Fortitude OR Boar's Speed
Weapon: Mongoose
Shield: Major Stamina

5.0 Gear List
Helm:

[Tankatronic Goggles] - Crafted
[Faceguard of Determination] - (50) Badges of Justice
[Helm of the Stalwart Defender] - Crafted
[Felsteel Helm] - Crafted

Neck:

[Mark of the Ravenguard] - Quest Reward
[Strength of the Untamed] - Reputation Reward
[Steam-hinge Chain of Valor] - Steamvault

Shoulders:

[Fanblade Pauldrons] - Heroic Auchenai Crypts
[Shoulderguards of the Bold] - Shadow Laybrinth
[Warchief's Mantle] - Quest Reward

Back:

[Devilshark Cape] - Steamvault
[Cloak of Eternity] - Crafted
[Burnoose of Shifting Ages] - Black Morass

Chest:

[Vindicator's Hauberk] - Reputation Reward
[Jade-Skull Breastplate] - Mechanar
[Breastplate of the Warbringer] - Quest Reward

Wrist:

[Bracers of the Green Fortress] - Crafted
[Vambraces of Daring] - Heroic Hellfire Ramparts
[Sha'tari Wrought Armguards] - Quest Reward

Hands:

[Felsteel Gloves] - Crafted
[Gauntlets of the Bold] - Steamvault
[Thatia's Self-Correcting Gauntlets] - Arcatraz

Belt:

[Girdle of the Lost Vindicator] - Quest Reward(Aldor Only)
[Girdle of the Immovable] - Heroic Slave Pens
[Sha'tari Vindicator's Waistguard] - Quest Reward

Legs:

[Timewarden's Leggings] - Reputation Reward
[Legguards of the Resolute Defender] - Quest Reward
[Felsteel Leggings] - Crafted

Boots:

[Sha'tari Wrought Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Flesh Beast's Metal Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Bloodguard's Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Red Havoc Boots] - Crafted

Rings:

[Protector's Mark of the Redemption] - Quest Reward
[Wind Trader's Band] - Quest Reward
[Iron Band of the Unbreakable] - Old Hillsbrad

Trinkets:

[Figurine of the Colossus] - Shattered Halls
[Dabiri's Enigma] - Quest Reward
[Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] - Darkmoon Faire Deck
[Argussian Compass] - Heroic Underbog
[Adamantine Figurine] - Shadow Laybrinth
[Regal Protectorate] - Quest Reward

Weapons:

[Grom'tor's Charge] - Quest Reward
[Honor's Call] OR [Warbringer] - Reputation Reward
[The Sun Eater] - Heroic Mechanar

Shield:

[Netherwing Protector's Shield] - Quest Reward
[Aegis of the Sunbird] - Botanica
[Platinum Shield of the Valorous] - Shadow Laybrinth

Ranged Weapon:

[Zerid's Vintage Musket] - Quest Reward
[Scout's Throwing Knives] - Quest Reward

1-80 Warrior Leveling Guide
Protection is a tanking setup, not a leveling setup. You can level with a protection build, if you like pain, but it's not recommended. Check our Warrior Leveling Guide for recommended leveling builds, and also the Arms and Fury pages.

Then , once you have the right set-up for your leveling playstyle, consider a full blown Warrior leveling guide for your 1-80 blast. Zygor's Guide automates the whole path, from start to finish for your Warrior. Pick your starting point and the guide automatically updates and advances as you complete quests, sets a waypoint arrow automatically, and includes the important quest info. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again, much less browse Thottbot. Grab your copy here or read the review.