Warrior Abilities Guide

Warriors are in the possessions of numerous ability choices, sectioned off into three distinct tree’s much like other classes, each with potential benefits and drawbacks based upon your desired style of play and generally lined up to focus on synergy with a specific talent tree.

However, above all Warriors ability usage and capabilities are both improved and hindered based upon the current stance they utilize, those being Battle, Defensive, and Berserker stance.  Each is focused upon a specific forte of the warrior, General Combat, Tanking, and Damage output respectively.

Depending on which stance you currently use your selection as to which abilities to use will be noticeably hindered with the sole exception of battle stance, which allow the usage of almost all attack types, although this too is with a few exceptions.

Defensive Stance

Defensive stance is the first stance warrior’s gain, starting battle stance aside, and is the cornerstone of all tanking from levels 10, when you first receive it via quest, up to 70 and beyond.  This stance gives you a solid 10% decrease in all damage, increase in aggro generated, and an equal 10% decrease in damage dealt

This stance requires you do a short and usually easily completed solo-quest given by the class trainer in either the second town you encounter (EX: Goldshire) or from your trainer in a primary city, such as Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

All in all defensive stance is useful more so to those intending to team up or instance early on, anyone planning to put those pursuits on hold until reaching maximum level will rarely find it helpful nor required.

Berserker Stance

Berserker stance is a notably more difficult to complete quest reward, first available at level 30, although many hold off on this to make things notably easier by putting on three or four levels.  This will likely be determined by your gearing level, desire for the stance, and whether you can call in any outside help.

This starts from your respective warrior trainer in a primary city such as Orgrimmar and Stormwind, sending you off to Fray Island, located southeast off the coast of ratchet.  Upon arrival you’ll face an extended and quite difficult gladiatorial fight sequence ending with a boss fight before receiving the stance.

Berserker stance opens up a lot of new options when fighting, make certain to give your new abilities a workout along with the stance, this’ll allow you to determine which of the three you favor most for leveling, although berserker is an obvious choice for fury warriors.

The Whirlwind Weaponry

Although this is technically not an ability, this quest is the follow-up to completing your berserker stance quest line.  The whirlwind weapon quest chain, despite the level you pick it up at (30,) is not for anyone expecting to complete it as this level without lots of help.

I personally have run many a warrior through this quest chain, just try and find a helpful guild member or even just another high level warrior, they’re more likely to be understanding to your request of help than those of another class.

My personal favorite happens to be the whirlwind sword, however for DPS purposes most will find the axe more to their desire, it does actually do slightly more, especially for Mortal strike/arms talent specialized warriors.

Hitting the big 40

Hitting Level 40 was once impressive due to the sudden increase in travel speed from a mount should you be capable of affording one.  However, that’s no longer the case as mounts were moved to level 30 for ease of use and generally making leveling a whole lot easier at an earlier stage of the game.

Despite this, level 40 remains an important milestone on any warriors path due to the addition of plate mail as well as a large amount of new weaponry available from 40+ dungeons and quests.  Additionally, we gain access to Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst should you have placed 30 points in any sole talent tree up to this point.

Mortal strike remains an impressive PvP ability not to mention its large PvE presence as a staple move for Arms DPS.  An instantaneous amount of damage plus a large (50%) decrease in healing effectiveness will never get old – Never.

Blood thirst on the other hand is valued for, although somewhat similar, slightly different reasons.  Fury warriors utilize this attack to fill a swift attack rotation combined with its admittedly small healing effect (more health never hurts right?) and the ability to pump out large numbers with its newly improved attack power to damage values.

Shield slam is a rather unimpressive attack in comparison I must admit, but it remains a staple of any protection warriors tanking and damage rotations.  Large amounts of threat and instant damage are yet again as useful as ever.

Core Abilities

When talking about core warrior abilities, one specifically comes first to mind, Heroic Strike, the equivalent of a warriors old-faithful, our starting special attack and useful all the way up to and beyond 70.

Heroic strike is one of the greatest usages for those with excess rage when grinding and even tanking, dealing a good amount of damage combined with improved threat comparative to our normal white damage strikes.

Next would be either thunderclap or cleave, although both are generally utilized in similar scenarios, notably those when tanking or simply grinding through groups of mobs.  Cleave is an easy aggro puller for those desiring to pick up 2-3 mobs, thunderclap augments this with an additional amount of threat combined with lowered enemy damage output for the duration.

The biggest complaint would be the breaking of crowd control in tight situations where every mob possible needs to be locked down, this is where many new tanks make mistakes that possibly wipe the group and give both abilities a bad reputation in some cases.

Use caution when firing off your multiple-target attacks and you should never have a problem taking multiple mobs every pull of your tanking career.

Taunt

Taunt, is definitely a core ability, but is complicated enough as to deserve its own section.  Taunt is one of the tank's greatest aids when dealing with either higher level party members pulling aggro or a few trigger happy hunters/mages.

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.

Charge & Intercept.

These two serve a dual-purpose for both grinding and tanking, with charge being a staple rage-builder when mowing down mob after mob as well as reducing travel time slightly.  Charge also aids tanks in building the rage required to hold aggro on multiple mobs early into the fight.

Interception is much more of use in PvP for the most part, however when a mob starts chasing your healer, this ability can be easily used to catch up and either taunt or blast a shield slam onto the offending mob before they can catch their own target.

Other similar abilities include Intervene and Victory Rush, however these are covered later on.