Overview

The warrior is a melee character, always right in the thick of any battle. They have no magical abilities, but they do have a wide range of special moves. Instead of having mana, a warrior requires rage to use most of their special abilities.

A warrior's primary role is to take the hits. This means they have to keep the mobs focussed on themselves, by generating as much aggro as possible. Warriors should have the highest hitpoints and armour class of all classes in the game. Depending on how a warrior spends their talent points, they can also put out some very good DPS.

Warriors can use all armour types, and can wield all weapons types except Wands in battle.

Races

The warrior can be played by every race:

• Alliance
  • Dwarves
  • Gnomes
  • Humans
  • Night Elves
• Horde
  • Orcs
  • Tauren
  • Trolls
  • Undead

Rage

By default, a warrior's rage bar is empty. Warriors can gain rage by being hit, by dealing damage, or by using certain Warrior Abilities. Other abilities then require a certain amount of rage in order to activate them. Once a warrior leaves combat, any left-over rage will slowly seep away until the bar is empty again. The bar will also empty immediately if a warrior switches stance. (unless the warrior has the [Tactical Mastery] skill)

Note that due to rage being generated by battle, the strategy of a warrior is a bit different compared to other classes with mana. Even Rogues use a different strategy from warriors as they, too, simply have to wait to regenerate their "pool". Warriors generate rage mainly by being in battle, which makes them capable of fighting long fights rather well (as long as "that other bar" doesn't drop too fast). This should be taken into consideration when playing a warrior - when you get hit, you actually become more able to do stuff!

This also leads to the warrior actually preferring to "fill up" on a less powerful enemy before taking care of a more powerful one. A warrior with a full rage bar to unload can do some serious damage, what with all the instant abilities that are available.

See: A Closer Look at Rage Mechanics

Stances

The Warrior has different stances for different situations. Which stance to use will also be determined by the warrior's talents.

• [Battle Stance]: The standard, starting stance for all warriors. A balance of offensive and defensive abilities.
• [Defensive Stance]: As it suggests, more defensive orientated and fewer offensive, damaging moves. Best used when playing in the main tank role. (-10% Damage Received, -10% Damage Inflicted)
• [Berserker Stance]: All out attack, with little regard to the warrior's own health. Best used when somebody else is tanking and you need full-on DPS. (+3% Crit, +10% Dam Received)

Some Warrior Abilities are limited by which stance you are in, so choose wisely! Remember that the rage bar is emptied whenever switching stance unless you have [Tactical Mastery].

Abilities

The Warrior has various abilities based on the current battle stance or usable with any stance.

For more detail, see Warrior Abilities.

Talents

Warrior Talents are split into 3 categories:

• Arms
• Fury
• Protection

Talent builders can be found at Official Blizzard site, Classes of Warcraft, WoW Vault, ThottBot.

Further Information

See Starting a Warrior for some advice when starting out.
See Warrior Sets for information about Warrior-specific set items.

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