Warrior One-on-One PVP Technique

A warrior in PVP is something that very few other classes want to deal with; their blend of versatility and huge HP make them very tough to take down.

If you expect to have to deal with PVP, you’ll likely want to be in your battle stance, which will give you the damage output required to take down enemies, but also let you use the critical Rend and Hamstring abilities, which will be your most important skills in most battles. To open up a battle, though, you always want to Charge, if possible, which will stun them for a few seconds and interrupt them if they were going to open up battle with a spell, as well as generate a bit of important Rage. Afterwards, you’ll want to Hamstring them, and make sure that they stay Hamstrung for the entire battle, to prevent them from running away.

One of the more difficult matchups for warriors is players who can fight from a distance, especially if you don’t manage to Charge + Hamstring them at the beginning of a fight, and even more so if they can snare or slow you, because you won’t have many ways of dealing damage to them. If you have the cash, try to keep your bow or gun up to snuff; this will let you at least deal a bit of damage while you’re rooted. If you’re free to move, but having trouble catching up to a enemy, you may want to keep Potions of Swiftness handy, which will let you cover any intervening distance quickly, but will prevent you from using health potions for a while.

Hunters can be the most problematic of these groups of enemies, since they have both pets and ranged weapons to deal damage with, and can kite you a bit by shooting and running. If you can land a Hamstring on a hunter, he or she is usually dead, but reaching them can be tough. If they use Aspect of the Cheetah to stay out of range, don’t hesitate to shoot them with your bow or gun, which will stun them long enough for you to close in. You can also try to use Intimidating Shout to remove their pet from the battle for a few seconds.

If you need to escape from battle, or don’t want an enemy to escape, re-apply Hamstring and use it in conjunction with Intimidating Shout. Intimidating Shout is obviously better to use before an escape rather than to kill an enemy before they run, since it’s broken when you hit your foe, but you can still use the time in which it stuns your enemies to reposition yourself in their escape path or to prime yourself for a Mortal Strike or other finishing blow.

Tips

• If you’re fighting casters, try to increase your resistances by switching out gear. A single resisted root or snare could turn the tide of a battle.
• DoT’s are every warrior’s best friend. Be sure to apply Rend often, especially if your enemy is almost dead or about to flee; even if they do manage to escape, the Rend will often finish them off, since they can’t regenerate health while in battle mode.

Group PVP

In most group PVP battles, it’ll be warriors that instigate fights with their Charge attack, unless you have a rogue or mage along that wants to start out with some crowd control. If one of your teammates does intend to start out with a sap or sheep, be sure to hold off on your charge, and coordinate targets so that everyone knows who you’re targeting. Generally speaking, it’s best to focus on one target at a time before moving on to the next, although a well-organized opposition will, of course, be doing precisely the same thing. Your initial targets should be priests, shamans, mages, and rogues, with priests probably being your best choice for an initial strike.

If your party is getting into trouble, let everyone know to stop dealing damage, then send out an Intimidating Shout. This will let your threatened teammates to put a little distance between themselves and whomever was hurting them, or will let them focus on whomever you target after the Shout goes off and get a headstart on at least one target.

Unfortunately, Taunt and other abilities designed to create threat for yourself in PVE will be ineffectual in PVP, meaning that you won’t be able to forcefully dissuade foes from focusing on your weaker teammates. The best you can do in many cases is to hamstring someone that’s fighting a friendly mage or priest, and tell your friend to run. A good player will instantly give up their pursuit when they’ve been hamstrung and focus on you, thus making this a quasi-Taunt, but even if they insist on giving chase, they’ll be out of the action for a few seconds, making it a win-win situation.

Equipment

A warrior’s going to need to get stamina, strength, and agility on their armor and equipment, with stamina likely being the most important of the three, as it directly ties in to how much health you have and thus how long you last in battle and how often you need to be healed. Agility will increase your armor as well as your chance to dodge and land critical hits, making it a good deal. Strength will increase the amount of damage that you deal, but this isn’t quite as important as making sure that you have a decent weapon in your hands.

So far as your armor goes, you’ll obviously want to have a ton of armor, but you’ll have to weigh the need for armor against stat increases. Some armor will have no stat bonuses, but will have more armor than most other comparable items, which can lead to some difficult decisions! Keep in mind that armor is useless when you’re taking magical damage, so you’ll probably want to sacrifice a bit of armor if you’re going to get more stamina. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for gear that adds to your defense, since this will make it harder for melee opponents to hit you, but gear of this nature is rare.