warrior leveling build 1-70Follow

i put the new build order in this post at the end of the thread.

i've seen this question come up a bit recently, so i figured i'd give this a dusting off... but i don't have the time now to properly edit this original post here....

i've got 70, 48, 35, and 16 warriors, at the moment, so leveling warriors is something i have a little experience with. however, i haven't played them since august. sooo, take this with a grain of salt...

some excellent leveling/ quest guides:

ravennus' quest guide for horde
azuarc's alliance leveling guides
zone guides, with super-detailed maps by azuarc
jame's leveling guides

and the definitive guide to leveling gear:

http://www.wow-loot.com/v1-warrior.htm

well, that's all the new stuff i have for now... i've left the (barely) edited original post below for posterity, because there's still some good info, but thinking about making it coherent and cohesive is giving me a headache.

****?

the twenties and low thirties are a fine time to try out dual wielding, especially if you get your mitts on a cruel barb. with the cruel barb, a shield, and the ony buff (lol) i was two-shotting same level mobs in redridge.

warrior leveling build:

<<<<--- snip --->>>>


at level 35 allies should head to nigel's point in desolace to pick up the quest down the scarlet path. after clearing scarlet monestary, you'll get to pick a very nice 2H axe, the bonebiter. it's got stats equivalent to a blue 39 weapon, so enjoy it.

sweeping strikes is an amazing grinding talent. with a 3.6 speed weapon, you get 17 autoattacks per minute. pop ss twice a minute and you're putting out 27 autoattacks worth of damage per minute for 1 measly rage per second.

<<<<---- snip ---->>>>

at level 51, suck it up, hit AV until you win a game, then go claim your reward, the ice noob spear. it's got stats that make it just a bit better than all the level 58 blue drops in the game. so in effect, it'll be your first epic-quality weapon, unless you got the ww weapon at 30-31.

at 51 you'll prolly want to respec to this:


then fill out blood frenzy, demo shout, ph, and commanding presence on your way to level 58 and the outlands.

at 61, you can take the following build, which has a lot of soloing ability, and some good tanking talents:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMcdNioM0dbZVZcizo

weapon mastery, blood frenzy, and second wind are all upper-tier arms talents that work well in a tanking role. you can finish up with defiance, toughness, and conc blow for a nice do-it-all 35-5-21 build.

if tanking ain't your thing and you want to focus on soloing to 70, starting from the above level 51 build you could finish like so:

<<<<<------ snip --------->>>>>>>>>

ending up with 35-23-3 at level 70. grats! now respec and drop blood frenzy hehhe hehehehhe. find the balance between tm, second wind, and flurry that you're comfortable with.

where to get gear:
head over to wow-loot.com for a list of the best instance drops. any slots not on that list you want to fill out with ah greens in this order of preference:

under level 58

1 - of the bear (str + stam)
2 - of strength/power
3 - of stamina
4 - of the tiger (str + agi)

tbc introduced new item stat budgets, stam is now 1.5x cheaper

level 58+

1 - of the soldier (str + stam + crit)
2 - of the bear (str + stam)
3 - of strength/power
4 - of the beast (str + agi + stam)
4 - of the bandit (agi + stam + ap)
4 - of the champion (str + stam + def)
5 - of stamina
5 - of the tiger (str + agi)

all the others are pretty worthless to warriors. if you stack str/ap on every slot available, all the other stats will fall in line. you really shouldn't have any trouble pulling two mobs at a time if you keep your gear up to date. green gear gets 'old' after about 5 levels, and blue gear after 7-8 levels. a couple old pieces won't hurt you though.

whenever you hit the ah, always search for gear 2-3 levels above you to maximize your chances of finding a good deal. having a couple nice pieces waiting in the bank can provide some motivation for levelling.



professions (i'll try to be brief here...)

you can make gold with any profession combo if you work at it long enough. you could take blacksmithing and enchanting, the two most notoriously expensive professions to level, and do just fine... if you spend 80% of your time sitting in sw or uc hocking spurs, spikes, and +3 stam to wrist.

but if you'd rather minimize the time dedicated to farming, skinning/mining is where it's at: you'll be able to skin half of what you kill, and mining is profitable right off the bat.

fishing is also very profitable, or was... not sure how it's faring since 2.0.

first aid is a must for warriors. cooking has good stam buffs while leveling, and above 300 skill you get some nice dps buffs from food.

v1.9999.18

Edited, Dec 16th 2007 7:25pm by axhed

Where did "Of The Champion" gear get lost in your post??? Definately a big help if you're looking for good stats and some help in your tanking 58+ if you're not planning on going full tank spec until 70.

Other than that, very nice post. I personally liked DW'ing Fury 40-58, but then again, I got lucky and had 2 Flurry Axes drop for me through my early 40's. Perhaps I'll take a toon down the arms tree this time...

Beast and Champion stuff is only the "Outland" type armor, so you wont be getting them until level 57-58 at the lowest.

ty for the feedback guys.

added in the outlands new random greens and the bit about professions.

disclaimer: i'll be taking my 42 warrior at least up to 50 to uncork 300+ alchemy. all you guys who are reading my "level up arms" mantra and gritting your teeth will be happy to know i'll be leveling her up as dw fury just to see how the other side lives :)

imho, imp ms is a raiding talent more than grinding or pvp. 5/5 imp ms pumps its output up by 26%, but only if you get it off 6 times every thirty seconds as opposed to 5 times.

come again?

which ms are you referring to?

ah, yes... so you use mortal strike when bloodthirst is on cooldown, eh?

how's level 71 treating you?

My apologies I ment to say heroic strike.

lol, well you made this post bump so thats a good thing.

:D i tried for the life of me to figure out what you were talking about... imp heroic never occured to me lol

20 agi = 1% crit at 60, and iirc

31 agi = 1% crit at 70.

it might be 33... there was a nice sticky with all teh conversions on the oboards which has since been unstickied :(

Well they don't use +% anymore just the whole +crit rating, thats why I was trying to figure it out, mainly b/c I am looking to replace my eskandalar's coller with the blue that drops in BF, but I am trying to see if its worth it.

@invictu
they wanted to avoid people running around at level 70 with 40-50% crit rates, so they made crit rating to scale down as you approached 70.

so half of gear progression is getting new gear with slightly better stats, and half of it is old gear getting slightly worse.

it also makes talents like cruelty, poleaxe spec, anticipation, and precision more valuable as you level, since the stats required to achieve the same effect increase as you level.

@tehOPE
i really tried to balance the talents with the gear and situations that are appropriate for the levels. some of them left me scratching my head... but, yeah the extra rage comes in real handy when you're tanking, and don't forget it slows down your rage decay when out of combat. over the course of a bandage it'll save you 3 rage between fights.

NOT EXECUTING and carrying over that rage to start the next fight is one secret to grinding more efficiently.

imp tclap is great for tanking multiple mobs; it reduces attack speed by 20%. when grinding, if you get some unexpected adds the debuff can be a life-saver and the damage it does per rage is decent when you've got 3-4 mobs on you.

heroic strike is a really inefficient attack to use with a 2H weapon because it eliminates the rage you would have gained from your next attack. this "hidden" rage cost is just too high.

imp heroic is a dw fury and/or tanking talent.

for dw fury, it drops your mainhand miss rate from 24% to 5% and the extra damage is just icing on the cake.

for tanking: 1) heroics can't glance for reduced damage against higher level mobs, and 2) there is a large amount of threat built in to heroics which helps with holding aggro.

the extra threat makes heroics somewhat risky for dw fury warrs in a raiding environment.


Edited, Feb 8th 2007 11:58am by axhed