Warrior Raiding on Turtle WoW
Written by Khoni
Intro
This guide is intended to be a resource for both completely fresh and experienced warrior raiders to learn and help compile information. A lot of what is written in this guide so far has been written and proofread by experienced long term warrior raiders, though no-one is infallible. If you feel like you can contribute in any way, if there's things written that you feel are incorrect or misleading, please let me know so I can update it. This page will likely be updated a lot with the addition of new items and potential class changes with the kara40 release, and I will happily update any existing information people feel isn't quite right.
The purpose of this page is not to answer the hundreds of "guys what is pre raid bis" "guys send me all your macros" "guys how do I farm as a warrior" questions asked in the #warrior channel each week. If you're someone who posts one of those questions without using the discord search feature for 2 minutes you're probably hopeless. This guide is for the stuff that you can't search easily.
Warrior is no doubt the most important class of vanilla, and this is true even on Turtle WoW after two rounds of class changes. We boast some of the most game-changing cooldowns in lip+challenging shout and shield wall/recklessness, as well as the ability to swap between tank and dps on a dime, and providing important debuffs in sunder armor/demo shout/thunder clap. This is all on top of having two of the top five overall DPS specs in the game, and the most versatile tank spec in the game in furyprot. The only thing a warrior can't do is heal, but even after CC2 you can somewhat heal yourself while farming with blood drinker now. I highly recommend anyone that hasn't tried a warrior at 60 yet to try the updated leveling experience and give warrior raiding a shot. The biggest problem with the class at this point is that so many people play it, which is a good problem to have.
Changelog
2025/1/22 Initial release
2025/1/23 Corrected demo shout interaction. Added extra wep skill items to wep skill section. Corrected execute/sweeping strikes interaction (only duplicates dmg if both mobs are <20% hp). Clarified arms rotation with 2x slam. Added new fury weapons section, and 10/20 man info.
2025/1/26 Updated sim section since it's accurate now. Updated MC/BWL sections. Added arms gearing/weapons. Moved changelog to the top.
2025/1/27 Updated AQ40 section. Added alternate arms rotation.
Which spec should I play?
Arms:
- does the most damage on aoe throughout the whole game due to sweeping strikes, as well as using a 2h for FAT whirlwind/cleave
- does slightly less damage than DW fury on single target in bis, but equal/slightly more during progression
- has a timing/swing based rotation similar to marksman hunter
- can perform well even in bad gear if piloted correctly
- has some of the biggest single damage numbers in the game with precision cut execute, both on trash and bosses
- has no cooldown apart from recklessness or your trinkets/potions
- has to stance dance sometimes for sweeping strikes/overpower
Fury
- does very competitive aoe damage, though not as good as arms, and always has the option to swap to a 2h for un-normalized whirlwind/cleave
- does the highest single target damage of any spec in the game, aside from fire mage with good rng
- has a fast paced gcd-locked rotation
- requires gear to reach full potential
- has two inherent cooldowns with death wish and bloodrage-enrage
- almost never has to swap stance in combat
- can tank anything without swapping specs easily unlike arms. just click off salv and swap stance and do (almost) regular dps rotation
Furyprot
- is the best and most well rounded best Main Tank spec in a 40 man raid environment
- has the most consistent snap threat in the game (first 15-25 seconds of a boss fight)
- scales infinitely with gear
- allows you to switch your gear around a lot to perfectly tailor your threat/mitigation as required
- gives you a balance of mitigation and damage cooldowns in death wish, shield wall, and last stand. more cooldowns than any other tank spec in the game
- allows you feel like a dps while still tanking due to the similarity in rotation to fury
Defensive Tactics Prot
- encourages flexible decision making on the fly
- in contrast to deep prot, encourages min/maxing and not just being a brick wall who takes hits
- has a fast paced gcd-locked rotation
- well suited for DPS players without perfect tanking gear. works well using your offensive stats to its advantage
- may appeal to tank flavour a bit more than furyprot since it never takes off shield
General
PRESS FUCKING SUNDER ARMOR
EVERY SINGLE MOB THAT LIVES FOR MORE THAN 4 SECONDS IN RAID SHOULD BE SUNDERED. THIS IS NOT ONLY THE TANKS JOB, OR THE FURY WARRIOR'S JOB, OR THE ARMS WARRIOR'S JOB. EVERY WARRIOR AUTOATTACKING A MOB SHOULD SUNDER IT AS THEIR FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT ACTION.
If every warrior in the raid sunders the target, you should get 5 sunders instantly. If sunders fall off, you get them back up. If SKULL has five sunders and CROSS has none, swap target and sunder it. Very few mobs in raid shouldn't be sundered at all.
You do almost 40% more flat damage vs a mob with 5 sunders compared to a mob without. This increased damage means more rage, which means more abilities, which means more damage. And importantly, it means the tank does more threat, so THE ENTIRE RAID can do more damage.
Macros / Keybinds / Setup
The very first thing I recommend to any new warrior is writing /startattack
macros into all of their abilities. One of the biggest DPS losses for overall (boss + trash) damage is auto-attack uptime, and a very easy way to significantly increase uptime is by ensuring that pressing any of your abilities toggles your auto-attack on.
You can do this by installing an addon like RoidMacros or CleveRoidMacros and writing a macro like the one listed below:
You can then put this on your bars wherever you previously had Sunder Armor, and it will dynamically display both the tooltip and the cooldown thanks to the first line (little roidmacros trick).
If for some godforsaken reason you refuse to install addons, you can use the following instead of /startattack: /script if (not PlayerFrame.inCombat) then AttackTarget() end
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Another overlooked fundamental detail of your abilities is their placement on your keyboard/mouse. The two abilities that are separate from all other abilities in your kit, being swing modifiers instead of instant/casted abilities, are heroic strike and cleave. I would HIGHLY recommend putting both of these on different mouse buttons. I use mouse4 and mouse5, but you could use scroll up/scroll down. If you already use a bunch of your mouse buttons for abilities and not so much keyboard stuff, I would put them on your keyboard close to your movement keys instead.
The key thing here is that you always want to be able to press those two abilities at ANY time, while using other abilities. 99% of your gameplay as a fury dps or furyprot tank is pressing one of those two abilities alongside something else. Arms players should consider doing the same keybind scheme with slam also.
This goes without saying, but you almost never want to have an ability only accessed by clicking. All of your abilities should be keybound, except maybe stuff used extremely infrequently in a raid context like intimidating shout or retaliation.
UI / Addons
UI is a very subjective topic. There are people that enjoy vanilla client with minimal addons, and there are people that spend hours modifying 20 different addons to fit together and create a bunch of useless shit to look at in combat. At the very least I recommend having an addon to track sunders on the target, and your own battle shout. MPOWA does both of these, but is known to sometimes lag peoples clients. SuperWoW users can use SunderNP to track sunders on mob nameplates, similar to some weakauras on 2019 classic.
In general you should try to condense information as much as possible, so you don't have to look around the screen very much to see important information. This is my UI at its absolute ugliest during raid. I use luna unitframes for my player/target/raid frames, mpowa to display battleshout/trinket uptime, aDF for sunders/armour debuffs, bongos for the bar below my player frame listing my ability/cooldown cds, trinketmenu and gearmenu for trinkets/gear swapping, and various other non class-specific addons like TWThreat/RAbuffs/BigWigs. This is probably too busy of a UI for a lot of people but as a raidleader I need to see slightly more information than a regular raider, and I'm a dumbass so I like seeing my trinkets on my screen three times. It's about halfway towards a fingerless gloves/semen remaining UI.
Some commonly used warrior addons are listed below, important ones in bold:
- sp_swingtimer (required for any warrior. requires SuperWoW.)
- tankplates (requires superwow. colours nameplates based on if you have threat or not)
- outfitter (required for tanks. you can't play without it. nice for dps for boss/trash sets)
- ragetracker (great if you dont like pfui/luna)
- roidmacros (makes writing macros super easy, TBC onwards syntax for the most part)
- mpowa
- adf
- trinketmenu
- gearmenu
- twsunders
- tankalyze
- tankhelper
More general purpose addons that are (often) required for warriors
Stats
DPS Warrior is primarily interested in six stats. These are: health, AP, crit, hit, haste, and armour penetration.
Health, AP, and crit are provided through base stats (in the form of stamina/strength/agility) while the others are found either in talents or in gear. In raid, without blessing of kings, 1 stamina = 10 health, 1 strength = 2 AP, and 20 agi = 1 crit. It is quite rare however to not have blessing of kings in a raid, since most raids run at least two or three paladins for blessings. Therefore REALISTIC values are below:
1 stamina = 11 health
1 strength = 2.2 AP
20 agi = 1.1 crit
It is important to note that raw AP or crit% on items do not benefit from blessing of kings, since the blessing only increases your total stats, which are later converted to AP and crit. If you can get an equivalent amount of AP from an item compared to str, you should take the str option, since it's possible that it can help your other gear "round up" at least 1 point of str/agi.
Health is quite obviously the thing keeping you from dying on every single pull, and it is a resource you can use to your advantage to do more damage. The higher your HP, the riskier you can play, since ripping threat results in a lower chance of dying when you're actually healable. Health consumes are recommended for this reason, as well as gear that provides stamina. What is not recommended however for dps, is stamina enchants, since in these slots, you can typically get a much better dps enchant option, and compensate for the stamina loss elsewhere in your gear.
AP interacts with most of your dps abilities, aside from, importantly, execute. Execute has its own formula, which is 600 base damage + 15*(rage - 15) for non arms warriors, and 600 base damage + 24*(rage - 15) for arms warriors. The interaction of AP with your abilities/autos is documented here, though some of these formulas are now outdated with cc2. The formulas that differ are bloodthirst which is now 200 + 0.35*AP, mortal strike which is now 105% weapon damage (which is calculated based on your AP as listed in the post, NOT just the damage listed on the weapon itself), and slam which is now 90% weapon damage.
Crit interacts with all of your abilities, and when talented into impale, which all dps warriors should be, it turns your regular 200% damage crits into 220% damage crits. It should be no surprise that a 20% damage increase on potentially up to 45% of your attacks in bis gear, or 60~80% during recklessness, should be a big dps increase. Despite this, there is a phenomenon where at high levels of crit, adding more crit results in diminishing returns. On Turtle WoW, these values are hard to reach until you have bis gear and optimal group setup, so I would recommend ignoring it until you get there.
Hit is a stat that must be addressed on a spec-by-spec basis, since it functions completely differently depending on your weapon choice.
Haste and armour penetration may seem foreign to a 2019 classic player, and a lot of players dont understand exactly how either works. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the exact formulas, but you should know that the haste formula is multiplicative: new_time = old_time/(haste1*haste2*haste3*…*hasteN)
. This means that stacking different haste sources provides more haste than you would think, and means that large sources of haste such as Kiss of the Spider or Tempest's Rage interact with other haste (notably, flurry, bloodlust, and battle chicken) in a very nice way.
Armour penetration in contrast is additive, but the value of armour penetration varies depending on how much armour is left on the target. Having a piece of gear give you +20 ArP vs a boss with 816 armour is not much of a dps difference, while the same piece of gear vs a boss with 50 armour is relatively quite a large dps difference, and that same piece of gear vs a boss with 0 armour is doing literally nothing. There is a spreadsheet listing the armour values for different bosses depending on your exact raid setup (the most common setup to look at it the Sunder + FF + CoR column).
In general, it is not recommended to enchant your gear with armour penetration, since at least some of the time (when mobs have 0 armour left) it has 0 value. The hyjal +2% haste to shoulder enchant is a nice alternative to the zg/saph enchants for any dps/tank. For head/legs most dps will use +8 str while tanks use +8 agi or zg idol. I can't recommend +1% haste in these slots myself.
Weapon Skill
Weapon skill on turtle wow has been completely reworked compared to both vanilla private servers and 2019 classic. Any guide for those will not be accurate. At level 60, you start with 300 weapon skill with all weapon types, with some races having 303 (humans with sword/mace, goblins with dagger/mace, and orcs with axes).
The hard cap for weapon skill on turtle wow is 315, so the racial advantage is somewhat mitigated. You don't need to feel bad about picking the "wrong race" (not that there was ever a wrong race in the first place).
The exact system of how weapon skill works is as follows: 1 point of weapon skill above 300 provides +0.2% hit chance, +2% dmg on glancing blows, +0.1% crit chance and -0.1% dodge/parry chance. This may not sound like a lot, but this is a SIGNIFICANT dps/rage/threat increase given that items have anywhere from 2-8 weapon skill on them. Your white hits vs bosses are glancing blows 40% of the time, the chance of which cannot be lowered by any stat currently in the game. Increasing the damage of these glances, as well as the hit and dodge/parry chance decrease, is point for point one of the highest increases in damage you can get from any stat.
Here's a sheet with all the information comparing the old (pre november 2024) classic-like system and new weapon skill system, if you're interested in seeing the numbers behind everything.
There are numerous different methods to obtaining 315 weapon skill, some in raid and some out of raid. You do not have to get exactly 315 weapon skill, it might be worth using 313, 314 or even 316 depending your exact gear/weapon setup.
The easiest way of acquiring weapon skill outside of raid is the weapon skill book system, accessed by completing a quest chain that starts from an NPC at Fray Island, east of Ratchet (where you got berserker stance). Completing a short quest chain will open up a quest for each weapon type that permanently provides +5 weapon skill to that type, including both 1h and 2h weapons if they exist (daggers and fists dont have 2h variants). You cannot repeat each quest for +10 in a weapon type, but you can complete multiple different quests. These books stack with any weapon skill racial(s) you might have, giving you 308 passively. Each quest costs a 250g fee, and an Ancient Warfare Text which is purchaseable on the auction house or farmed from any high level dungeon boss at a ~1-5% droprate.
The other way of acquiring weapon skill, both in and out of raid, is using gear/weapons that provide it. This should really be a guide of itself since there are many paths to go while progressing your gear. Standout items are listed below though some have inaccurate database information; other less popular choices can be found in the DPS sim which has a section below.
- Edgemaster's Handguards, +7 axes/swords/daggers. BoE drop, most commonly bought on AH.
- Tempest's Rage, +4 swords. Drops from summonable bosses in Silithus (common guild activity).
- Anasterian's Legacy, +4 swords. Drops from Moroes in Lower Karazhan (preraid instance).
- Blooddrenched Grips, +5 axes. Drops from Zul'Gurub bosses.
- Ashskin Belt, +5 fists. Drops from Molten Core trash.
- Aged Core Leather Gloves, +5 daggers. Drops from Molten Core bosses.
- Flameguard Gauntlets, +7 two-handed axes. Drops from Molten Core Bosses.
- Doom's Edge, +4 axes. Drops from Blackwing Lair trash.
- Drake Talon Cleaver, +8 two-handed axes. Drops from Blackwing Lair bosses.
- Maladath, Runed Blade of the Black Flight, +5 swords. Drops from Broodlord Lashlayer in Blackwing Lair.
- Ancient Jade Leggings, +8 two-handed maces. Drops from Solnius in Emerald Sanctum.
- Crystal Sword of the Blossom, +3 swords. Drops from the hard-mode chest in Emerald Sanctum.
- Anubisath Warhammer, +5 maces. Drops from AQ40 trash.
- Bile-Covered Gauntlets, +7 axes/two-handed axes. Drops from Princess Yauj in AQ40.
- Carapace Handguards, +6 two-handed axes, swords, maces, and polearms. Drops from Ouro in AQ40.
- Gloves of the Primordial Burrower, +6 axes, swords, maces, and daggers. Drops from Ouro in AQ40.
- Remnants of an Old God, +5 fists. Drops from C'Thun in AQ40.
- Death's Sting, +3 daggers. Drops from C'Thun in AQ40.
- Claymore of Unholy Might, +7 two-handed swords. CUM. Drops from Gluth in Naxxramas.
- The Hungering Cold, +6 swords. Drops from Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas.
Weapon skill is an extremely low value stat vs anything that isn't a level 63 raid boss. It is recommended to create two sets of gear, one for bosses and one for trash, so you can swap out weapon skill items when they aren't necessary. It's better to get used to this swapping early on.
Consumes
Warrior gets more power out of consumes than many other dps/tank classes, especially at low gear levels, where more damage = more rage = more abilities = more damage = more rage. Importantly, stamina consumes are just as useful as strength/agi consumes, since you do the most damage when you aren't fucking dead on the ground from mechanics.
Recommended consumes have a checkmark below. Non-recommended consumes have no checkmark.
- Juju Power. Purchaseable on the AH as "Winterfall E'ko". Requires a short prequest in Winterspring and the Cache of Mau'ri in your inventory when using. Can be farmed from the same mobs as firewater.
- Elixir of Giants. Craftable by alchemists, or purchaseable on the AH. Doesn't stack with Juju Power.
- Winterfall Firewater. Purchaseable on the AH, or farmable from furbolgs around Winterspring.
- Juju Might. Purchaseable on the AH as "Frostmaul E'ko". Doesn't stack with firewater, gives 5 more AP, but lasts only 10 minutes. Leave these to hunters who can't use firewater, unless you're parsing a specific boss. Too expensive to use all the time compared to the much cheaper and easy alternative.
- Juju Flurry. Purchaseable on the AH as "Frostsaber E'ko". Neat little button to press during last 20s of your death wish, or on trash pulls. Easy to forget about, best to macro this into your abilities if you care about that sort of thing. Not worth buying compared to farming from the cats in winterspring.
- Elixir of the Mongoose. Craftable by alchemists, or purchaseable from AH. Doesn't fade on death, so very high bang for your buck.
- Elixir of Fortitude. Craftable by alchemists, or purchaseable from AH.
- Elixir of Superior Defense. Craftable by alchemists, or purchaseable from AH. Only recommended for tanks.
- Power Mushroom. Obtained from the gardening profession, or purchasable from AH.
- Smoked Desert Dumplings. Farmed from Silithus mobs and cooked, or purchaseable from AH. Doesn't stack with power mushrooms, but easy to farm solo if you don't know how to do gardening.
- Hardened Mushroom. Obtained from the gardening profession, or purchaseable from AH. Doesn't stack with other foods, and only recommended for tanks or very high raid damage pulls/progression/hardcore. If you're really health maxxing, stacks with Gurubashi Gumbo for an extra 10 stam.
- Rumsey Rum Black Label. Fished from high level pools or purchaseable on AH.
- Medivh's Merlot. Looted from barrels in lower kara. Doesn't stack with rumsey rum, but gives 10 more stamina, though more expensive to compensate.
- ROIDS. Farmed from Blasted Lands quest (The Rage of Ages), or components bought from AH (snickerfang jowls, blasted boar lungs, scorpok pincers)
- Ground Scorpok Assay. Farmed the same way as ROIDS, and doesn't stack with them. Only recommended as a lower geared fury without much crit for flurry uptime, or for furyprot.
- Boar Lung Juice. Farmed the same way as other blasted lands buffs, doesn't stack with them, but also doesn't stack with zanza. Only recommended for those without rep for zanza.
- Spirit of Zanza. Obtained from a repeatable quest at the troll island in NW stranglethorn vale, only with Revered Zandalar Tribe rep. Tokens can be bought from AH or looted from ZG runs as \<colour> Hakkari Bijous or sets of coins. The best consume in terms of bang for your buck, it lasts two fucking hours.
- Swiftness of Zanza. Obtained the same way as spirit of zanza. Only recommended if you dont need the stamina (its 550 hp bro wtf), and don't have a druid in raid for the Emerald Blessing movespeed buff.
- Flask of the Titans. Expensive as hell. Crafted by alchemists with the (rare) recipe, and only in BWL. Only recommended for progression, or sub 2 hour naxx clears for sweaty gamers. In comparison Spirit of Zanza is THREE gold and gives almost half as much stam, and like flask doesn't fade on death. Now imagine using both.
- Mighty Rage Potion. Craftable by alchemists or purchaseable on the AH. You should at least have these in your bags, warriors that want to push their limits will use these on every boss fight, and some trash. Basically an extra active trinket. Don't recommend using these as main tank, since you want to use stoneshields instead.
- Great Rage Potion. Craftable by alchemists or purchaseable on the AH. Cheap version of mighty rage, a lot of people swear by these especially while in lower raids or in worse gear where rage generation is overall worse. Doesn't have the +str effect like mighty rage but gives a considerable amount of instant rage that can make the difference if you get ragestarved.
- Greater Stoneshield Potion. Craftable by alchemists or purchaseable on the AH. Great for maintanks in upper tier raids, or any tank in progression. Mitigates a ton of damage over its duration, but quite expensive for each use.
- Consecrated Sharpening Stones. ONLY IN NAXX VS UNDEAD MOBS. Obtained from repeatable Argent Dawn quest or purchaseable on the AH. Probably the best dps consume in the entire game when you get to use it, you can literally feel the damage difference immediately after putting them on. Can safely put them on both mainhand and offhand after patch 1.17.2
- Elemental Sharpening Stones. VS ANYTHING THAT ISNT UNDEAD. Crafted by blacksmiths, or purchaseable on the AH. Not quite as good as consecrated, but can be used in any raid at any time. Especially nice for fury and furyprot who value crit higher than arms/deep prot. Pretty expensive but worth it imo.
- Free action pots/protection pots/juju ember/juju chill/frozen runes/nordanaar herbal tea/etc. Required for any raid content, depends on the exact raid and your guild ofc. If you don't keep yourself alive with these, what was the point of showing up in the first place.
- Goblin Sapper Charges/Dense Dynamite/Stratholme Holy Water. First two are crafted by engineers and purchaseable on the AH, both require engineering to use. Great for aoe trash pulls. Holy water is looted from stratholme in the crates scattered around the instance. Unlike the other two it doesn't require engineering, but is only useable vs undead mobs. Causes 0 threat, and scales with spellpower if for some reason you enjoy using SP consumes.
- Limited Invulnerability Potions (LIP). One of the most powerful consumes in the game, it serves two purposes. Firstly, it's your safety net when you rip threat both on trash or bosses. You can pre-emptively use this, and then dump a fat WW+cleave+sapper and the mobs will just ignore you. Secondly, it's essential when used in conjunction with challenging shout. I recommend keybinding both close to eachother, so you can hit LIP -> challenging shout, which is a 6 second immune-to-damage aoe taunt. Any warrior needs to be ready to do this at any moment on trash/bosses when a raidleader calls for it.
Using the DPS Sim
The warrior dps sim maintained by Zaas (ugoboom on turtle wow discord) is a very helpful resource to help with gearing. It is best suited for fury, since it doesn't have current slam or any threat per second feature. As of January 26th 2025, the sim is currently (mostly) accurate for cc2 fury. It is not recommended to try to compare between 2h and DW sim numbers, since the sim is a lot less suited for 2h rotation than DW. It's still good to individually compare gear within each playstyle, but for the most part, the sim is primarily a DW fury and furyprot DPS sim.
There is a (now quite outdated) tank sim for furyprot and deep prot, modified during the first class changes patch. I don't recommend using it very much, but it is technically there for tanks to use. Best if you use mostly gear that was in vanilla.
It's kind of confusing to navigate at first but the initial thing to do before putting in your gear in each slot is to click "FIGHT SETTINGS" in the bottom left. This opens up a new interface where you can modify the fight length, consumes, buffs, debuffs, rotation, talents, and other important parameters like whether or not you have the AQ20 battle shout/heroic strike books, or your weapon skill from books. This is what my fight settings looks like for simming my naxx boss fights. You might have different buffs, or different consumes, or less debuffs (only sunders instead of expose armour), or you might want to do a completely different (much longer or shorter) fight duration. This is where the sim is very customizable, it's not just meant for one particular fight, you can even sim trash by using the "adjacent mobs" slider on the left and adding cleave to your rotation.
Once you've set up a particular encounter to your liking (remember the most important things are fight duration in seconds, the debuffs, and your rotation), you can click filter out different gear from different drop sources in the bottom right. You might not care about naxx gear as a pre-raid bis warrior, just like a naxx warrior doesn't care about pre-raid bis items. This not only helps to speed up the sim when you look at all the items in a slot, but it also helps you focus on items that are in your immediate future.
After all of that, you can click "FIGHT SETTINGS" again to return to the gear page, and then go to each slot and select the piece of gear you're using, as well as the enchant for each at the bottom of the page. If you click "CALCULATE DPS", it will do the specified number of sims you set in fight settings, the default being 50,000 (I would leave this default tbh), and then display the min, max, and average dps given all of your gear/parameters.
"FIGHT STATISTICS" will show you an average damage breakdown as well as aura uptime and the distribution of your damage. The distribution in particular is important. Certain items or parameters might lead to a higher average dps, but introduce more variance and less consistency. This is shown by a wider and shorter distribution.
There are two ways to compare two different items. One is by using "RANK YOUR OPTIONS". This will sim every single item in the particular slot you're viewing, as if you had swapped to that item in that slot and kept all other gear as it was. It then (usually) sorts them by the highest dps on the top and lowest dps on the bottom. This is best to compare a bunch of items in one slot at once, but it can take a while to sim depending on how many iterations you set your sim to run, and how many items you left un-hidden on the page. The second method is clicking on an item you care about, using "CALCULATE DPS", noting the value and distribution, and then clicking another item and checking the new dps with "CALCULATE DPS". Bear in mind that items are only a source of stats, and stat value changes depending on the exact encounter type and length, and well as all your other gear.
An easy example of being mislead by the sim is seen by simming with one of two items, either Badge of the Swarmguard (trinket) or Bonereaver's Edge (2h wep). If you sim with either of these items, you will see the value of any other item with armour penetration go to virtually nothing. This doesn't mean these items are bad, it just means that IN CONJUNCTION with badge or bonereaver's, the armour penetration stat on them provides nothing, since you most likely set your sim up in such a way that either of those items removes all remaining armour from the target. There are other examples too, like turning on recklessness will devalue crit on all your other gear, or the most common example: items with hit become less valuable after soft hit cap. You might not understand what "soft hit cap" means but that's okay. It will be covered in the fury section below.
Fury
Playstyle
Fury is one of the most dynamic and interesting specs in the entire game. Your rotation can include up to 15 different abilities, all important, and all used at different times, depending on rage, number of mobs, weapon, mob positioning, and a bunch of other factors. This sounds intimidating at first but this is the exact thing that makes fury so fun to play; someone might have relatively more execute damage because they like maximizing their executes on trash, someone else might have more cleaves than everyone else because they press it as much as humanly possible, someone else might have the most ability casts on bosses because they perform their bloodthirst/whirlwind/HS/hms/execute in a super clean way.
Overall, there is almost never one specific "correct" button to press in a given situation, there is generally just more intelligent and less intelligent ways of utilizing your rage resource. This is best represented by thinking of your buttons in terms of a priority system. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is press nothing at all.
Fury is a spec that benefits the most from using cooldowns on aoe/cleave pulls, or very short (sub 60 second) boss fights. Ideally you keep death wish on cooldown by using it on as much aoe as possible without depriving from boss usage. If you've gone more than 5 minutes without pressing death wish, you almost certainly missed an opportunity to use it. On most bosses, you should aim to time your death wish to run out exactly as the boss dies. The same is true for your trinkets, and other cooldowns like berserking/blood fury/recklessness. Learning to perfect this is key to maximizing fury dps, since your damage spikes heavily when you can use execute.
Recklessness is best planned ahead of time based on the raid speed, since the cooldown is so long. You might choose to use it on the same bosses every week, or alternate different bosses to show up higher on turtlogs if you're a rankings player. Don't be afraid to use it on huge aoe trash pulls, one of the best warriors on the server uses it on gargoyles in naxx cause he doesnt't give a fuck. Do whatever makes you feel good.
When do I use a 2h as dual wield?
Some dw fury warriors may opt on specific fights (Anub'Rekhan, Gothik, Razorgore, mad scientist trash, faerlina trash, etc.) to swap from dual wield weapons to a 2h weapon, even while specced with full dual wield talents. This is because whirlwind/cleave damage is normalized, but only within 1h OR 2h weapon types. Therefore a whirlwind with a 2h wep vs a 1h wep will be much higher damage, as well as cleaves (cleaves are techncially normalized through them happening slower with a 2h wep). In addition, 2h weps do much higher initial damage if you only get one hit on the target.
On trash, it's generally considered best to only swap to a 2h wep if you have some form of rage income on that pack, or if you have close to full rage going into it. If you can rip threat on a mob or two and then swap target so you dont get parried, you can INFINITELY cleave and press whatever buttons you want. If you can't get the rage you need to rip threat or take dmg from raid mechanics, you will not have enough rage to keep cleaving with your 2h, so you should swap to dual wield weps and use your offhand rage gen. The above fights are chosen because they have either big raidwide damage, or the mobs die so fast that you only get to hit them once or twice. Anub is often done with a 2h (only with weapon skill) because windfury procs with DW + reck up give you the rage you need to keep cleaving.
Higher prio abilities are higher on the list, rotations are listed below.
Single target DW fury:
- Sunder Armor until the mob has 5 sunders.
- Execute if the mob has less than 20% hp, whenever you have enough rage to use it. Sometimes it's better to use bloodthirst instead if certain conditions are met, this is touched on in a section below.
- Bloodthirst. Keep this on cooldown as much as you possibly can. When whirlwind has 1 second left on cd and bloodthirst has 2 seconds, don't press whirlwind. Wait and press bloodthirst (this comes up a lot).
- Whirlwind. Keep this on cooldown as much as you can without clipping bloodthirst cd. If using a dagger mainhand, prio this below HS.
- Heroic Strike. This is one of your rage dumps, and it makes your mainhand both unable to MISS or GLANCE while hitcapped. Causes excess threat compared to damage dealt, so this is the first thing you stop pressing if threatcapped.
- Pummel/Hamstring/Sunder. This is solely to try to proc windfury/flurry/crusader/weapon procs, it should never clip your bloodthirst/whirlwind cd, or prevent you from using HS.
Multi target DW fury:
- Sunder Armor first gcd. You don't need to sunder every mob to 5 on aoe pulls, but at least sunder each mob you auto once.
- Whirlwind. This spikes in value massively when fighting more than one mob, since the damage is duplicated for each mob nearby up to 4.
- CLEAVE. By far the best and most consistent ability you have for AOE in your toolkit. Has no cd, only tied to your swing timer. Deprives you of the rage from the swing, which you gain back from your offhand hit and possible windfury proc. This button is the reason we are a top dps spec.
- Execute. Still does insane damage on aoe packs, but not as much as whirlwind. Execute on trash can be a gear luxury, so you might consider skipping it if you find yourself ragestarved going into packs after.
- Bloodthirst. Kind of outshined by other buttons on aoe since they hit two or four mobs at once, or do a stupid amount of damage of frontloaded damage like execute.
- Pummel/Hamstring/Sunder. Really not important to be pressing during aoe since the windfury procs you gain delete your cleaves by turning them into regular autos. Still great to sunder random un-sundered mobs though.
Single target 2h fury:
Mostly the same as DW fury, but Heroic Strike is very low prio. Instead of Heroic Strike you use Slam right after your swing hits. Can be kind of a jarring playstyle when you dont have offhand swinging to generate rage, but the new Slam has massively helped rage generation out by allowing your swing timer to keep going in the background until the slam finishes. Overpower is considerably better for 2h fury than DW fury, especially in lower gear. Try not to waste rage by swapping stance too much for it.
Multi target 2h fury:
Same as DW fury, with even more emphasis on ww/cleave.
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When is bloodthirst > execute?
As hinted above, it can be a more efficient use of your rage to press bloodthirst instead of execute, which may sound paradoxical at first; isn't our damage supposed to spike during execute? We can use bloodthirst all the time!
This is a quirk of the formula for bloodthirst at high levels of AP. Since execute does a static amount of damage per point of rage while bloodthirst scales with your AP, it's a more efficient use of 30 rage to press a >1785 AP bloodthirst compared to a 30 rage execute. This value is obtained from combining both formulas: execute does 600 + 15*15 = 825 damage at 30 rage, while bloodthirst does 200 + 0.35*X, where X is your AP. This gives you 625 = 0.35*X, so then X > 1785, your bloodthirst does more damage per rage than execute.
There is a caveat with this however, which is that any rage over 100 is completely wasted, and bloodthirst being more damage per rage is irrelevant at that point since you essentially just threw extra damage down the drain in the form of rage.
This means that you only want to use bloodthirst instead of execute, when you are:
- Above 1785 AP
- Between 30-60 rage
- Not having insane constant rage income from recklessness/loatheb buff/thaddius buff/raid damage
- Expecting to get at least one more gcd to use execute afterwards
Talents
Typically people use one of these three builds for fury, depending on 2h usage:
Mixed 20/31 DW Fury using some 2H on trash
The points in overpower vs charge are debatable. I don't recommend using overpower in your rotation at all as DW fury, however it has a lot of value for 2h users. Low-geared DW fury players might consider using overpower since their rage gen wont be as consistent at first, as well as people not in a windfury group. The other choice in talents is whether or not to go 3/3 improved whirlwind and drop some points in improved shouts. I cannot personally recommend this either, since being able to shout yourself (and not being reliant on another warrior in your group to do it) feels much more consistent to me. I can't count how many times battle shout has dropped during execute phase because of someone else shouting at a bad time, and I've had to reapply it.
Gearing / Stat prio
Fury has quite varying values of str/AP/agi/crit/hit/haste overall, since there are more overall variables between flurry/dual wield penalty/cooldowns.
In pre raid gear, agi and str are roughly equal in value. In a 1 minute single target boss fight without using recklessness, 1 crit ≈ 37 AP ≈ 1.6 haste ≈ 2 weapon skill. Keep in mind that this is an approximated value, ONLY versus bosses, using typical buffs/debuffs/consumes. As a lower geared fury warrior, it's best to build a "base" of agi/crit, to raise your flurry uptime. Marrow wrote about how flurry uptime works in his guide from 2020, and it functions identically on our server. As a side note, this guide is referenced often by high level warrior players, but keep in mind that many of the formulas used have unfortunately been changed on turtle at this point.
Once you have around 34% crit buffed, the worth of crit starts to go down (though it's still quite high), while the worth of AP strictly goes up.
In bis gear, with good group setup, str pulls solidly ahead of agi. In a similar 1 minute single target boss fight without recklessness: 1 crit ≈ 30 AP ≈ 1 haste ≈ 1.5 weapon skill. As you can see, since haste is somewhat of a modifier on your total dps, the value goes up as your other stats increase. The same is true for weapon skill, and for armour penetration.
Recklessness is important to single out here, since the value of crit on (short) fights with recklessness goes waaaaay down, since such a large percentage of your cooldown window is guaranteed to crit. On fights where you use recklessness, you might want to consider swapping crit pieces you would normally be wearing to instead wear more AP/haste pieces.
Hit is an important stat to talk about, but cannot be compared directly with AP/crit, since it relies on your weapon skill, total amount of hit from other gear, whether you're dualwielding or using a 2h, and if you're facing boss or trash. To simplify, I will assume that a player is dual wielding. 2H fury enjoyers can refer to the stat prio section in Arms, since it's mostly the same.
With 300 weapon skill and 0 hit vs a level 63 boss, your abilities have an 8% chance to miss, while your mainhand has a 27% chance to miss, and your offhand has a 17% chance to miss (with talents). It is therefore very important to try to reach "hit cap" (technically this should be referred to as soft hit cap, since you can still miss with autos) in order to make your abilities unable to miss, though they can still be dodged and parried. As mentioned in the weapon skill section above, each point of weapon skill gives you a +0.2% chance to hit, and therefore:
Weapon Skill | Hit required for hit cap |
---|---|
300 | 8% |
305 | 7% |
310 | 6% |
315 | 5% |
You can interpolate between these values to get the hit required for 303, 306, 314, etc. but keep in mind that there is no decimal hit from gear and therefore you might want to round up to the next hit value if you never want to see ability misses. Thankfully, hit is very plentiful on raid gear, and you typically end up with way too much of it after gearing up a bit. This is not a bad thing, because it increases both the chance your mainhand hits when not using heroic strike/cleave, and the chance your offhand hits. If running 310 weapon skill, and 10% additional hit from gear (though you only "need" 6%), your abilities cannot miss, your mainhand has 15% chance to miss, and your offhand has 5% chance to miss. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO RUN EXCESS HIT OVER HIT CAP, the value of hit decreases after this point, but 1 hit is still worth about ~0.4x as much as 1 crit.
The scope of this guide does not include showcasing different gear sets at different phases of raiding, you can figure that out yourself by using the sim. However, since there are no real debates about this, the two current dual wield fury full bis setups are listed below (this might help you get an understanding of stat prio even as a fresh warrior):
Offrace warriors can use either option, while humans should go with the swords (left) and swap the gloves for Gauntlets of Annihilation. Technically there is a goblin bis list with different weapons but I cba to write it. I think they use castigator/kingsfall and some funny gloves.
The only disadvantage to the fist alternative is you cannot swap your weapon skill items out as easily, since one of them is your mainhand, and the only better mainhand to use for trash would be gressil. You can still swap out your belt, just as an offrace swords user would swap out their weapon skill gloves, however sword users get to swap their offhand for Kingsfall which is relatively easy to acquire in a naxx farming guild.
Another alternative is to circumvent the "exodia set" obtained from BWL/AQ40/NAXX and use t3 8/8 for the +30 damage proc. This has been used to some success but needs further testing to determine if the stamina/dps loss from gear is made up for by the set effect.
Also important to note is that with stat prios changing on trash vs bosses, there is a "trash bis" set. This would call for swapping your legs for Leggings of Apocalypse, the boots for Wormhide Boots or Dreadnaught Sabatons, and any other weapon skill items you might use on bosses for the traditional-bis alternative like Gauntlets of Annihilation or Girdle of the Mentor.
Weapons
There are way too many weapons usable for fury, since you have access to all weapon types for both 1h and 2h. In general, you should try to go for weapons you already have a good amount of weapon skill for (308+), or weapons you can GET a good amount of weapon skill for quite easily. Rawdogging 300 weapon skill is not a fun experience on bosses since your glancing blows are absolutely pathetic compared to hits/crits. A lot of people swap to higher dps/higher statted weapons that they don't have weapon skill for on trash, where weapon skill doesn't matter. This is commonly done with two-handers, since a lot are left for PVP or OS roll. I would highly recommend getting yourself a reasonable 2h to use for huge aoe cleave packs as a DW fury warrior, though it's not top prio (it's still technically a MS roll but just barely).
The traditional school of thought with weapon speed for DW fury is that you want a slow (2.5-2.9) high dps weapon in your mainhand, and a fast (1.5-2.0) stat-stick weapon in your offhand. The exact dps on your offhand doesn't matter AS much, however any +stats on it are quite impactful (since they affect all your abilities and auto-attacks, not just your offhand hits). The middle ground between dps and stats can be found by using the dps sim. You don't necessarily need a slow MH and fast OH, however they do pair together nicely. A slow MH allows you higher damage on whirlwind and cleave, which both have a formula that promotes high weapon damage. It also means you heroic strike relatively less, so your threat isn't abnormally high (tanks rely on the exact opposite reasoning). A fast OH has always been used by DW fury warriors even in vanilla/classic, since it synergizes extremely well with the heroic strike queue bug. This bug has recently been removed on turtle, and now currently the main incentive for a fast offhand is smoother rage generation, especially during execute phase. Your offhand swinging every ~1.5s lines up perfectly with the recommended strategy of maximizing execute gcds. Despite this, many people use a slower offhand (2.3-2.5) with great success, it is very much personal preference.
Another important aspect to picking your weapon is their proc (if any). Weapons with procs are best suited to your mainhand, where they get additional chances to proc from abilities as well as windfury totem. Offhand weapons with procs can ONLY ever proc from offhand auto hits, never anything else. This means that the procs per minute in your mainhand can be up to 2-3x as much compared to the same weapon in offhand.
It's hard to write an exact weapon progression for each weapon type, since you can mix and match a lot, as well as the fact that a lot of people skip weapon prog and go straight to naxx to farm MSA/harbinger. I would again recommend the sim for this, especially using the gear filter in the bottom right of fight settings to filter out raids you don't have access to yet.
Currently, the new 8/8 t3 set bonus seems to promote using two fast weapons to take advantage of the flat damage on crit proc. This still requires testing, and may in the near future get nerfed in order to promote using the traditional slow MH/fast OH.
Trinkets / Cooldown usage
Both trinkets and your ability cooldowns (death wish, recklessness, bloodrage, and any racial you might have) are completely crucial to your damage in raids as a warrior. The inherently high damage of aoe phases and <20% hp execute phases serve as ideal points to stack these cooldowns. In a two hour raid, you should be using death wish close to 30 times, and any trinkets (depending on cd ofc) close to 40 times. It's better to use cooldowns (close to) on cooldown than waste time waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it, similar to any class.
As mentioned above, on most boss fights you want to time your death wish with boss death, to both take advantage of the damage spike in execute phase, and maximize the damage before that as much as possible. This is a timeline from a recent boss kill where I used basically every cooldown possible in a 1 minute fight. You want to try to make your cooldowns look like that as much as possible, so 30 second cooldowns are pressed 30 seconds before boss death, 20 second cooldowns 20 seconds before boss death, and 15 second cooldowns 15 seconds before boss death. There is debate about whether or not you should use mighty rage potion with that 20-second timing or if you should save it to take full advantage of the rage gain for a specific execute gcd, but there isn't really a clear correct winner there.
Keep in mind that if you are unfamiliar with your raid's kill times, or they seem to vary a lot from week to week, it's better to use them early rather than late. You will lose more damage from only having 25 seconds of your death wish but having it for the whole execute phase, compared to having a full 30 seconds where the last 5 seconds of execute phase had no cds. A great way to get a feel for your raid's kill times is recording your gameplay each week. You can then note the boss hp% 30 seconds before death, and know to use your cds right before that hp% next week.
The new bloodrage-enrage proc interaction is overlooked, but it is very powerful especially for trash. Considering trash pulls never last a full minute, the relative uptime on it is quite high, and it should be pressed literally as much as possible while in combat, while not depriving from use during boss execute phase. It's like a more frequent death wish in a way, since the cooldown is one-third as long, and it lasts one-third as long.
Common fury on-use items are listed below, ordered according to overall power. Many of these are hard to get, so start with the ones near the top.
- Diamond Flask (PRERAID item. you will use this for a long time. great for ~1 min fights)
- Cloudkeeper Legplates (PRERAID on-use legs. very strange item but great for fresh warrs since BoE)
- Earthstrike (any warrior clearing AQ40 should be looking to do this grind. it's not that bad. great item for trash, not great for bosses)
- Jom Gabbar (slight upgrade to earthstrike. again great for trash, not great for bosses. more of a rogue/hunter item)
- Slayer's Crest (this is earthstrike but actually worth using on bossfights.)
- Kiss of the Spider (really shines on cleave or reck fights, when you get this you want to keep it on cd the entire raid. crazy good)
- Badge of the Swarmguard (best trinket in the game and it's not even really close. the rage gain you get during the active on it is honestly broken. the only caveat is that not all mobs have enough, or any, armour to penetrate. on some bossfights it can be better to use kiss or slayers because of that.)
After using most of these, it's best to swap to a passive trinket while the cooldown ticks, and then swap back when it has ~30 seconds left. Typical passive trinkets are Blackhand's Breadth, Hand of Justice, Drake Fang Talisman, The Heart of Dreams, and Mark of the Champion. Blackhands and heart in particular are singled out here since they are so easy to get, and so good. Mark of the Champion is a late naxx-only trinket that you will use almost the entire time in undead quarters in naxx since the passive AP gain is absurd. Hand of Justice is somewhat mid on twow since there is a potentially bugged interaction with windfury totem; I don't recommend spending hours trying to farm it when functioning alternatives exist.
Arms
Playstyle
Arms is the trash melting spec. If you want to see big numbers on trash and may not have the best gear, this is the spec for you. Despite what you may think, arms is less focused on cleaving than fury. Instead, it relies on whirlwind/sweeping strikes and sniping low hp mobs with execute. Your overall damage can be up to 20-25% execute, a LOT of which is on trash, in stark contrast to fury which usually has around 10% overall execute damage. The rage refund from precision cut works well with execute on trash, since even if you execute as your last gcd on the last mob, you are left with enough rage to safely swap to battle stance and pop sweeping strikes again for the upcoming pull.
Another important important distinction of arms is that unlike DW fury, you only need one weapon. It can be slightly easier to get going with arms as a fresh warrior since you don't need to hunt two different drops in each raid tier to maximize your performance. In addition, a lot of good two-handers are found in MC and BWL, and don't need to be upgraded until naxx.
The spec loses some power and interaction by not having the cooldowns of fury, but gains it back in the form of extra attacks and the master of arms talent, as well as mortal strike, which hits about 20% harder than bloodthirst in equal gear. When using a mace (including the illustrious MoM) it gains 360 flat armour penetration, which on most bosses and a lot of trash translates to about a 7-8% raw dps increase. In addition, slam has been changed to allow your weapon swing timer to keep going in the background, only pausing if the swing is complete to wait until your slam is finished. All of these factors serve to make arms rotation a calculated, swing-timer based single target rotation in contrast to fury:
Single target arms:
Sunder Armor -> Slam -> (auto) -> Mortal Strike -> Slam -> (auto) -> Whirlwind -> Slam -> (auto) -> (repeat, starting from mortal strike)
->(target at 20% hp) Execute
If your auto just went off, and both MS and WW are on cd, you can do Slam -> Slam if your weapon speed is slow enough (between 3.6-3.8). If you would ragecap with your next swing, you can queue a Heroic Strike instead for a bit of extra damage. In low gear, when you get dodged you can use Overpower instead of Slam if it doesn't lose you much rage from swapping. Also, when a mob is about to hit 20% hp, you should pause your rotation momentarily to pool rage for a 120 rage execute immediately. Afterwards, if your swing isnt about to happen, you can use a mighty/great rage potion and get another high rage execute using the rage refund, then swing and get a third high rage execute.
If using a 3.4 speed wep, or if you have a decent amount of haste, you can instead try just:
Sunder Armor -> Mortal Strike -> (auto) -> Whirlwind -> (auto) -> Slam -> Slam -> (auto) -> (repeat, starting at mortal strike)
-> (target at 20% hp) Execute
AoE rotation is quite different, and follows more of a priority system similar to how fury plays, since you shouldn't really use slam.
Multi target arms:
(prepop Sweeping Strikes)
- Whirlwind. Hits like an absolute truck when you have Sweeping Strikes up. Be prepared to LIP if you find yourself ripping threat and getting too low from using this frequently on trash.
- Sunder Armor. You don't need to sunder every mob to 5 on aoe pulls, but at least sunder each mob you auto once.
- Execute. Disgusting ability, if you can tab target to a low hp mob and keep hitting executes back to back to back you will do insane numbers on aoe trash. Bonus points if you still have Sweeping Strikes up when using, since it duplicates the Execute damage if there's a second <20% hp mob nearby to chain to.
- Cleave. Still great to keep queued for aoe, but your inherently slow swing timer (no flurry) means it's not quite as high dps overall compared to your instants. Best part of cleave is you can keep it queued in the background while pressing everything else.
- Mortal Strike. Technically last in your aoe ability rotation, but gets used every single aoe pack many times nonetheless. Great damage for the rage cost when your gcd is open after Whirlwind.
Arms quirks to keep in mind
There are a few small quirks of arms that are often overlooked. The first is that you can queue cleave/heroic strike before your slam, and your bars will get grayed out, but you will still get a heroic strike/cleave instead of an auto. The second and more esoteric trick relies on some knowledge of your raid's pace. It is best to use sweeping strikes as early before a pull as possible, while ensuring that you can still use all the charges on pull. This is because the cooldown on sweeping strikes starts upon using it, and the charges last for almost the entire cooldown. The consequence of this is that you can run into pulls with sweeping strikes charges about to expire, then whirlwind, swap stance as sweeping strikes comes off cooldown, use it again, swap stance, then cleave/mortal strike and get a second set of sweeping strikes charges.
Talents
There is not much variation in arms talent choice, since the good talents are very clear cut. Most of the changes you might make are at the top of the tree, and are just choosing a different combination of charge/overpower/heroic strike/parry. Here is one common build:
Gearing / Stat prio
Arms is easier to gear than fury for a few reasons. Flurry uptime on fury requires crit, while Arms relies on abilities that use flat weapon damage. It also gets free weapon skill from talents, enough to reach 308 from talent+book alone, and only needs to find one weapon instead of two. It's really hard to overstate the impact that has overall - an arms warrior can get ONE weapon from ragnaros/razorgore (BRE or UTB) and top raids effortlessly, never needing to upgrade until they get ONE final boss weapon in naxx.
There is no arms sim, so exact stat weights are a bit tough to figure out. In general, crit vs AP is roughly the same stat weight as it is for early gearing fury ( 1 crit ≈ 37 AP which means 1 agi ≈ 1 str), however given the choice between an equal amount of str and agi, you should go for the str. This is for two reasons - first, similar to fury, any fight where you use recklessness will devalue your agi from gear/enchants, and secondly, if in a super stacked +crit% group or using an axe, you will approach 2h crit cap in close-to-bis gear. If not for these problems, agi would likely be a slightly better stat for arms than str.
Where arms and fury differ greatly in gearing is hit. Arms being a two-handed user gains absolutely zero value from any hit after hit cap, which changes gearing choices mostly in progression. You should try to drop any excess hit over hit cap for more crit/AP/haste (refer to fury gearing section for exact numbers on what your hit cap is based on wep skill).
A standout set for arms in particular is the dps t2 set. You don't sacrifice much in terms of stats for the tier it's obtained - though it's pretty hard to get the whole set - and all three set bonuses are great. In particular, the 8pc giving +2 targets on whirlwind is an absolute monster for aoe trash, assuming there are 2 extra mobs to hit with it. The 5pc giving weapon skill also helps solve problems you have with certain weapon types where your only real options are the +3 talent and +5 book. For single target bosses, you likely want to swap the three worst pieces of t2 since the last bonus won't do much and you're better off with raw stats instead.
Weapons
There are less two-handers overall to choose from than one-handers, but many are absolute powerhouses that are hard to replace. Ideally you want a slow (3.5-3.8) weapon, since most of your abilities (mortal strike, whirlwind, cleave, sweeping strikes) use weapon damage instead of AP. Standout 3.4 weapons exist, those being Bonereaver's Edge (BRE) and The Untamed Blade (UTB), which both have such insanely overtuned procs that they are usuable until late naxx despite their speed. Anything faster than 3.4 is borderline unusable currently. Since there are so few two-hander options and simming is not an option, the best/easiest ones are listed below in order of where they drop.
- Doomulus Prime, guaranteed from a quest which is completed in one ZG and AQ20. Not the best, but extremely easy to get.
- The Unstoppable Force, guaranteed from vendor after you get exalted AV rep. Nice and slow, and has good stats with a potentially griefing stun proc.
- Fist of the Forgotten Order, drops from Moroes in Lower Karazhan. Proc doesn't stack with juju power but still a nice and slow option.
- Obsdian Edged Blade, drops from Molten Core bosses. Has wep skill on it so great for bosses, outclassed by other weps obtained soon afterwards especially for trash.
- Spinal Reaper, drops from Ragnaros in Molten Core. Not the best stats or speed, but when paired with Flameguard Gauntlets means you cap weapon skill on bosses. Solidly better than everything previous.
- Bonereaver's Edge, drops from Ragnaros in Molten Core. Currently bugged and whirlwind doesn't proc it, but insanely good on fight where you can keep stacks up and where the target has enough armour to penetrate.
- The Untamed Blade, drops from Razorgore in Blackwing Lair. High impact proc with high ppm makes for a great option, though expect to compete with ret paladins for it.
- Drake Talon Cleaver, drops from Blackwing Lair bosses. Recently gifted with +8 weapon skill in 1.17.2, this is an incredible option when paired with Flameguard Gauntlets from MC. Those two items alone will put you at wep skill cap even without the book. Carried basically solely by the weapon skill and reasonable proc. Best to swap to a different, slower 2h on trash that you may not have skill for.
- Dark Edge of Insanity, drops from C'Thun in AQ40. Always been more of a pvp weapon, but the damage and stats make it an absolute monster for arms PvE. Maybe your first upgrade from BRE/UTB, though I would hold off on it unless youre a big pvper if you already have one of those two.
- Corrupted Ashbringer, drops from The Four Horsemen in Naxx. Better than everything previous except dark edge. Has a nasty -25 stamina which you REALLY feel compared to other two-handers that give you stats. Goes well with ouro gloves, but try not to take this from any ret palas that want it.
- Claymore of Unholy Might, drops from Gluth in Naxx. Legendary CUM sword. Great option if nothing else drops and you don't have ouro 2h gloves, since it caps you with talent+book.
- Severance, drops from Patchwerk in Naxx. Second bis 2h wep in the entire game, arguably bis on fights where you can't benefit from mace spec. Great with ouro gloves or flameguard gauntlets to get wep skill cap.
- Might of Menethil, drops from Kel'Thuzad in Naxx. Bis for 90% of content. Absolute dream to play with, 3.8 speed makes rotation a breeze. Has 50 stamina on it with kings scaling which is half a titan's flask. Lots of competition since it's bis for many specs (enhance, ret, feral, arms/2h fury) so can be hard to get.
Furyprot (WIP)
WIP
Defensive Tactics Prot (by Essee)
Playstyle
This section is written by primarily a DPS player at end-game BIS Gear levels. It is more than viable across all current tiers of content from Dungeons to Naxxramas as both Maintank, and Offtank.
Content Changes 2 has brought into play changes to the Protection Tree which adds some variability to tanking. The key talent of this is Defensive Tactics allowing you to retain additional threat modifiers in stances other than Protection Stance, however Improved Shield Slam also adds a buff on Shield Slam to give you 75% block for 6 seconds.
For this, the mindset has to remain similar to that of traditional furyprot, in which we are aiming to hold the targets aggro by being as offensive as possible. Our off-hand sword is now gone, and instead we are ultimately using our Shield as on offensive weapon (which gives you additional armour also!), coupled with Shield Slam as a primary means of generating threat, in addition to Heroic Strike and of course…Sunder (EVERYONE SHOULD SUNDER!). Depending on the stance you tank in, your abilities will differ, which is a lot of the appeal of this spec compared to furyprot or deep prot.
ere are the pros/cons to each stance:
Defensive Stance:
- gains Revenge as part of your rotation. Revenge whilst very good threat per rage, does not have any scaling.
- gains access to taunt without swapping stance
- gains access to shield block for mitigation
Battle Stance (vs defensive stance):
- +10% Damage Taken
- +10% Damage Done
- gains Overpower as part of your rotation. Overpower is a powerhouse, due to the talented effect. At end-game gear levels it's very easy to attain 80%+ Critical Strike chance of Overpower in tank gear.
Berserker Stance (vs defensive stance):
- +20% Damage Taken
- +10% Damage Done
- +3% Critical Strike chance
- gains Whirlwind as a part of your priority abilities
Whilst Berserker Stance seems immediately the most appealing for threat, you are also asking a lot more of your healers. In addition, Whirlwind with a 1H weapon isn’t particularly appealing for single-target threat, but is a very good option for AoE when combined with Cleave and Berserker Rage. You could also consider this as a threat chasing stance in which you focus on Shield Slam, Heroic and Sunder to climb the threat table of the target.
Defensive Stance rotation:
- Shield Slam
- Concussion Blow
- Revenge
- Sunder Armor
- Heroic Strike where rage allows
Battle Stance rotation:
- Overpower
- Shield Slam / Concussion Blow
- Sunder Armor
- Heroic Strike where rage allows
Berserker Stance rotation:
- Shield Slam / Concussion Blow
- Whirlwind
- Sunder
- Heroic Strike where rage allows
For aoe, your rotation becomes whirlwind -> cleave -> other abilities.
Talents
There are a few choices to make with talents, but this is the showcased spec.
The arms talents are taken for bigger crits from impale/improved overpower, as well as making heroic striker cheaper which is a consistent threat generator. In fury, your last 3 points go into cruelty, though some of these points can go into one-handed spec in prot instead.
Most important are the prot talents. Only 4/5 shield block is taken, since in battle stance the difference in mitigation/rage generation is minimal, though these points are up to you. The points in anticipation are up to preference, you might want to put 3/3 in anticipation or you might want to go for the improved taunt/intervene talents. You kind of have to waste points in these upper talents to get to the juicy stuff at the bottom. Toughness and last stand are both no brainers, both massively help in keeping you alive.
Defiance is also (obviously) required, and gives us enough points to get row 5 for some of the most important talents. One-handed spec points are up for debate, you might go anywhere from 3/5 to 5/5. The choice is essentially between 2% weapon damage or 1% crit. Shield slam and improved shield slam are vital for our rotation, and improved shield slam helps us become avoidance capped.
The standout talent in this build is Defensive Tactics, which makes the whole build work. It gives you a higher threat modifier in stances other than defensive stance, and lets you benefit from no longer having -10% damage done in defensive stance. Do note that this talent only works if you have a shield equipped. You don't get to dual wield as this spec.
Gearing / Stat prio
There are two avenues to pursue to gear defensive tactics prot.
For full threat/damage: Shield Block Value > Crit > Agility > Defence > Strength > Haste / AP
For full mitigation/defense: Shield Block Value > Defence > Block > Crit > Strength > Haste / AP
Shield Block Value is king as this effects your big threat generator, Shield Slam. All other stats are changeable, and should be adjusted on a fight by fight basis taking into consideration the fight length, incoming damage and strength of the healers around you. As an example, I run multiple gear sets starting at ~360 defence through to 440+, with harder hitting fights becoming less offensive and more defensive as required. For those used to furyprot, this should come as no surprise.
Since you will be taking 3/3 Anticipation to bulk up your Defence Stat, you can run more offensive gear - but judge this at the strength of your healers. A setup with 360 as a start point, similar to Fury Prot is a good starting place, however you will also carry a shield giving you a little more defence via armour.
Tempest's Rage, and either Aegis of the Blood God, or Drillborer Disk are valid entry options for weapon/shield. As you progress, Elementium Reinforced Bulwark is the natural upgrade, whilst BWL doesn't host any particularly fast weapons. Maladath is always an option but is heavily contested and sports a funky speed of 2.2. You would be better holding on to Tempest's Rage, or taking Anasterian's Legacy from Kara10 for its stats and slightly higher dps.
In AQ40, Tier 2.5 is where you begin to really build on offensive stats, as you would with Furyprot; the set provides considerable offense alongside the defence you need. Weapon wise, if you feel you're now falling behind damage wise to keep your DPS at bay, Blessed Qiraji Pugio may be a consideration - but do be prepared to also get the weapon skill book for daggers. For shields, Blessed Qiraji Bulwark offers slightly less Block Value for Shield Slam damage, but does sport 3% extra block if you need it. Cloak of the Fallen God from the C'Thun token also holds great stats for this spec.
Naxx gear comes at a cost and competition - key items would be Glyph of Deflection due to its increase in Block Value for the duration, this is to be used on the pull to establish threat very quickly. This trinket also doesn't share a cooldown with anything, and can be used in conjunction with other trinkets like Kiss of the Spider. Widows Remorse is often an easy upgrade and will carry you well until The Hungering Cold if you are lucky enough.
For enchants, you should go for full threat (agi/str) and compensate for the lack of defensive stats in your gear and playstyle.
Raid optimizations (naxx WIP)
Non raid-specific stuff
- Positioning your character on trash (and bosses) is extremely important. You want to minimize the amount of time you get parried, and maximize the amount of time you can cleave nearby mobs. Sometimes you might need to move away briefly to avoid aoe dmg (think patchwork golem stacking in naxx or rain of fire in BWL) or position your character towards one side of a trash pull for safety. Sometimes parries are unavoidable, like standing on the tank on KT or thaddius, or if someone rips threat on trash. It is what it is. For the most part it's on your tanks to position mobs facing away from the raid, but sometimes that doesn't happen and you need to adjust.
- Whirlwind, along with all of your aoe abilities (mostly shouts, but also stuff like sapper) gains extra range when used while jumping, since your hitbox is extended slightly. This is used most notably on KT phase 1 to hit skeles, but it's good on all aoe trash for slightly extra range.
- Berserker Rage is a very important ability that should not only be used to break fears. While active, it gives you a +60% rage bonus from damage taken. On fights where you take raidwide damage (think geddon trash/BWL techies/naxx spiders/sapphiron) it's well worth pressing, even if it uses a gcd. I would use this instead of pummel/sunder/hamstring, never clip your bloodthirst/whirlwind cd with it.
- Disarm can be used on many mobs as a way to prevent tanks from dying. Any mob with a weapon in their hand can be disarmed, massively reducing the damage intake. Typical uses for this are razuvious/four horsemen/deathknight captains in naxx, broodlord in BWL, and axe throwers in ZG.
- There are times when even as dps you should swap to a different stance to take less damage. Common examples of this are viscidus, sapphiron, and four horsemen when marks are about to go out. During progression you end up doing this a lot more, because fights tend to go long and healer mana becomes an issue.
- Anyone that ever tanks any mob in a raid (so any warrior) should consider installing tankalyze. This addon announces your taunt resists in /say or /yell, and it also has an auto salv-removal feature. I would highly recommend using this instead of lazypig for that feature.
- On some fights, it can fall to a dps to apply demo shout. If you're talented into improved shouts, do not be afraid to press it. The only fight where this can grief is twins, so just be aware to only press it when theres no bugs nearby the boss (you can jump maxrange to apply it if theres no bugs on one side of the boss). All warriors should be aware of the bugged demo/CoR interaction: never apply demo shout BEFORE curse of recklessness is applied by a warlock. The -AP debuff from demo shout is completely canceled out by the +AP buff from curse of reck, and leaves a bugged demo shout on the target until it falls off. Another warrior talented into improved shouts can fix this by overwriting your demo shout, which will update the demo shout to properly apply -AP again, but getting someone else to demo shout when it's already applied will require communication. TankHelper is a helpful addon to remind you to demo when it's not correctly applied.
- Weapon swapping during combat is extremely clunky. This is because it causes gcd (though your mainhand can be swapped while gcd is active) and doesn't allow other abilities to be used at the same time. In addition, swapping any weapon will reset your swing timer. In particular, equipping/swapping an offhand is notably bad, and feels like it can take up to 5 seconds of spamming the button sometimes. The exception to this problem is shields, which can be swapped instantly in or out of combat with no penalty.
10/20 mans
Kara 10:
- Arms is by far the best spec both to dps and tank kara, since every trash pull is 3+ mobs. If there's already a couple arms warriors I would swap spec though, cause you will have trouble getting rage from ripping threat. Tanks shouldnt be afraid to allow other melee to take hits, since the mobs don't hit very hard at all and mostly for warriors is just free rage/damage.
- Be aware that there is a bugged pull through the second set of stairs on the way up to the imp hallway from the entrance. If you jump or aggro the phantom guardsmen weird, you can chain to the entire floor above you which will run through another pack and almost certainly wipe your group. It's best to ranged pull these so they dont promixity aggro, and then have everyone run through after the servants are dead.
- If you don't have a shaman in your group or you get annoyed by cleanses not happening quickly you can use anti-venom on the darkfangs before Araxxna to cleanse the attack speed debuff.
- All of the imp/ghost trash as well as Grizikil are undead/demons, so stuff with +AP vs undead/demons is great there. Elixir of Demonslaying is +265 AP vs the entire imp hallway if you want to have some extra fun. Imp channelers and shadow-weavers can be interrupted during their holy fire/mana drain, which helps your healers mana so you can keep pulling. If your interrupt is on cd, you can run away and intercept back in for a second interrupt on any casters.
- Moroes is also undead, though his tooltip initially says he's uncategorized, so +AP vs undead items are great for him. If you use a free action potion after about 10-15 seconds you can completely ignore the stun for the rest of the fight. This is great both as the tank and any melee that might be high on threat.
ONY:
- Not much to say here, if you're the main tank make sure you run directly through her on pull rather than swinging her around in a circle. If you don't have fear ward right before phase 3, use death wish or berserker rage so you can run directly up to her as she lands and reposition. If you're tanking her with your back completely on the wall, her wing buffet can knock you up onto the ledge and she will start evading. When you get knocked up, make sure you come back down and stand slightly away from the wall.
ZG:
- All bosses aside from Mandokir have very low armour. If you have a warlock and druid for CoR/FF, any armour penetration items are completely wasted on them.
- Similar to kara10, it's good to keep some anti-venoms for the snakes around Venoxis to cleanse the attack speed debuff. The axe throwers in his vicinity can be aoe feared right before they start spinning so you dont sit there stunlocked for 30 seconds. Disarm is supposed to stop them spinning entirely, but it only seems to work sometimes for me.
- If you do spider boss, the trash will disarm you (wear your death grips/stronghold gauntlets), as well as randomly give you a drunk debuff. This debuff is the most annoying shit in the entire game. You can somewhat mitigate the effect it has on your screen by going to video options -> disable full-screen glow effect, otherwise it only fades on death. A lot of people skip this boss solely because the trash is so ass.
- Tanking on Thekal is made a lot easier by using the alliance-only Crystal of Zin-Malor, or having someone spirit link the Lor'Khan tank. The damage dealt to you will break the constant gouge/blind cc.
- Hakkar's mind control is completely negated by a shaman in the tank group using grounding totem. As the tank or offtank in this fight make sure the shaman in your group understands to drop that instead of windfury.
AQ20:
- General advice: don't waste your time running aq20 on cd for the crossbow. It's about as good as striker's mark from MC, and even if you dont have the best ranged wep (if you're still using satyr's bow/blackcrow) the upgrade is extremely minimal compared to the impact on your mental health from pugging this shit raid. I would run AQ20 if you enjoy it, or for slime kickers/bracers of brutality/sand polished/daggers. Don't go crazy for the crossbow that never drops.
- The humanoid looking trash can be disarmed. This is crucial for the Qiraji Gladiators found between bosses. You can also get a shaman or priest to purge their enrage when it pops.
- The first wave of mobs in the General encounter has an aoe fear, where death wish is useful (or just berserker rage as arms/prot). The second wave has a fixate mechanic on a random raid-member, for which challenging shout does nothing. The mobs will look at you for about 0.5s, and then swap back to their fixate target. Piercing howl is bis for all of the general trash, or getting a hunter to frost trap in the gate before it arrives on each wave.
- Buru has some kinda confusing aggro mechanics. What's important to know is that while he's actively fixating someone, he ignores all other threat. If there are no eggs to dps, you can safely dps the boss. Just make sure to move away after the egg blows up in case he fixates you next. If someone has to LIP/get BOP to reposition as the fixate target, he will swap to the highest threat, so be prepared to move out if it sounds like they're in trouble.
MC
- Trolls do +5% damage from Beast Slaying vs every core hound in the instance INCLUDING MAGMADAR 💪💪💪
- Tons of cleave trash/bosses, particularly the core hound packs make 2h a decent amount better than dual wielding here. Even if you have a terrible 2h I would swap for the core hound packs at the very least, try to rip threat there as much as possible for bleed stacks for infinite rage. Absolute baller strat is pulling all 3 core hound packs before magmadar and using recklessness/full cds on them.
- GFPP/frozen runes are great for all of the trash around baron, including the boss, where staying in for inferno and popping a 2nd gfpp/frozen rune will keep you alive.
- Tanks on baron/ragnaros are recommended to have around 240 FR from gear to tank these comfortably. If you're tanking all the adds on Garr it's recommended to stack FR as well to resist their immolate casts. You can also get people to buff you with random shit buffs like detect invisibility or water breathing to serve as dispel bait on that fight.
- Free action potion is bis for Gehennas/Sulfuron Harbinger pull since both bosses do an aoe stun. You can use one as Golemagg gets <30% hp and not take damage from earthquake.
- Sulfuron Harbinger caster mobs often wont show a castbar on your unitframes. It's best to watch the actual animation of the mobs to see when they're casting and only interrupt then.
BWL
- Razorgore trash dies so fast that it's recommended to have a 2h since you often only get to hit mages/legionnaires once. If you're dw fury typically then you can just swap back to your usual weps after the last egg is broken. Never forget to free action potion when the boss comes over, or you get stunned 50% of the time while dpsing. This fight typically goes so long you can death wish twice and still have it up for vael (just dont use it on razorgore himself unless you take forever to pull vael)
- Vael is one of the best warrior fights in the game, since you get free insane rage gen, and the boss is <20% for two thirds of the fight. You want to use death wish relatively early, then reck with 20s left on death wish. I would keep your LIP cd here in case you're about to rip threat, then use it pre-emptively when your threat climbs and if the boss isn't dead when your LIP finishes then move to the tank spot. If you get threat capped consistently every week, consider using cleave instead of HS, since it has a slightly lower threat modifier. It's not uncommon for tanks to use recklessness on this pull for the increased threat gen, threat is everything on this fight.
- Arms absolutely fucks on the post vael trash since you're cleaving 4 mobs for 30+ seconds (that means at least 3 sweeping strikes usage, and fury warriors will still have cd on their death wish). Just make sure to sunder the non skull targets for bigger cleaves/ww. Raids who skip this trash are missing out on cleavemaxxing BIG TIME.
- Oil of Immolation is nice for suppression room until you get to broodlord, nice bit of extra aoe dmg when you pull 1 million whelps. In general suppression room is a bit overlooked in terms of overall dmg, you really underestimate how many mobs you fight in a row while doing it. It's not uncommon for the hatchers to be in your overall top 5 dmg dealt. Sappers/dynamite is great for fat aoe damage here as well. On broodlord you want to position yourself as a dps so you get knocked away into the wall (so you don't move) instead of getting blasted into africa. Make sure as a tank there you don't walk too far to your left (back towards entrance of suppression room) so you don't get suppressed by the close pylon. If you do get suppressed, and you're using a 2h, you can wep swap twice to get your 18 second swing timer reset.
- Firemaw is a really strange fight where your damage is mostly linked to how much FR gear you have. If you still have UBRS +FR buff cause you haven't died yet, you can wear a ~157 FR set, use juju ember, and you will have 315 FR (resist cap vs bosses) assuming you have FR totem or aura. With good RNG you can stay in the entire fight, since you resist so many stacks that you often reset back to 0 and never need to lose uptime from running out. Just be aware that you can get unlucky on this fight no matter what and sometimes hit 7-8 stacks (just get tf out and let stacks drop).
- Technician packs have some weird quirks. The warlocks show a castbar now, but can't be interrupted at all. Interrupting will just delete their cast bar from your screen however they still end up casting. Spellbinders have a castbar which also can't be interrupted, however they can be stunned by intercept, concussion blow, or revenge stun. This means you can either rely on rogues (useless) to stun them whenever they cast, or take the initiative and dip out right before they cast flamestrike to intercept them. If you're on tanking duty on these mobs, be aware that you can hamstring kite them. Once all the other mobs are dead, you can run over and dynamite the techie stack, or if you can see where they're throwing bombs you can even run in and sapper/whirlwind. You won't rip threat on them that late unless every single ranged dpsing them died.
- Flamegor/Ebonroc don't really have anything special to know. You can intercept the tank right before pull and eat one charge of their thrash, and don't use your potion cd on flamegor. You never want every tank in the same spot, since wing buffet will drop all of their threat. It's best to put maintank on one wall and the offtanks 90 degrees to the side on other. Get your trigger finger on challenging shout in case a ranged or melee rips right before shadow flame. The wyrmguards before and after these two bosses do an aoe stun which you can use Free Action Potion pre-emptively to negate. As a dps here you should probably be looking one of these up in case they get loose, since they often bronze-stun the tanks on pull (cant be fap'd) and run into the raid. Just make sure when you tank these that you don't stand too close to the Ebonroc ramp.
- Chromaggus is a stupid ass RNG fight. The offtank needs to build significant threat so that if it's time lapse it will run to them after hiding. It's recommended for the offtank to hide in the ranged group, and run DIRECTLY through the boss to reposition, instead of trying to swing him to the side. He frenzies at the same time after breath, so as offtank you need to swap to shield there or risk death since you might quickly LOS healers running through the boss. Any tank or dps that cares about pumping on that fight should get their own hourglass sand (or from the gbank if youre lucky) and pop it whenever they get bronze debuff. If you run out of sand, you need to get out early for each breath as dps/offtank since you risk getting 2x stunned and breathed on. In general it's best to stand at max melee range on this fight to minimize the amount of time it takes to run out. When he goes fire vuln, you can use sapper/dynamite for a ton of extra damage.
- Nef is the only fight in the game where fear ward is truly required for the tank, even if you're a warrior. You need to have active communication between the MT and your priests for it, since the spell cooldowns often line up where you get fear -> shadow flame which will be insta wipe if you get feared. Onyxia Scale Cloak is ONLY required for tanks on turtle wow, since he doesn't shadow flame the raid on pull. It's a great fight for defensive tactics tanks who don't need to stance dance for berserker rage, and don't care about being locked in berserker stance during warrior call since they keep their threat gen intact. Stratholme Holy Water no longer causes threat, so you can safely use it on the adds at the end of the fight without using LIP first. Great spot to use LIP+challenging though to save your casters/healers.
AQ40
- This entire raid is a shitshow for melee dps. 7/9 of the bosses and a lot of the trash have very anti-melee and pro-caster mechanics. You can still do very well here as a dps but it's such an uphill battle compared to casters. Tanking it is kinda fun, especially twins where sometimes you get to edge yourself on the brink of death for 4 minutes.
- The anubisaths at the entrance have some important things to know. If they have knockback aura, you NEED to get out when it hits 30% as melee. There is a bug where they enrage + knockback every single person in melee at once twice, for about 6-7k damage total depending on your armour. Only the tank should have to eat this, ideally. A general kill order on these (don't just kill skull -> cross etc) is: mending/reflects > mortal strike/knockback > shadowbolt volley > thorns/thunder clap > mana burn. If one is shadow bolt volley and none are thunder clap/mana burn, you can kill that one first and stack everything up. If tanking either mana burn or thunder clap, drag it slightly out of the raid (or way out of the raid for mana burn).
- Skeram has the same bug as sulfuron harbinger mobs where his castbar often doesn't show for a lot of people depending on their UI. You have to look at the casting animation on the actual mob (look for the blue glow) and pummel/shield bash. Don't forget you do have CC for people that get mind controlled in intimidating shout (you can also intercept/disarm them if it's a dagger rogue or something just going apeshit on everyone). Try not to spam whirlwind when mind controls go out, since you can both kill the mind controlled players and break any CC applied on them.
- Vekniss Guardians are some of the most lethal trash in the entire game. Both tanks and dps need to have to your back up against the wall so you don't get knocked way into africa. LIP will fully negate the knockback AND initial charge damage AND the bleed, so you should time it with any trinkets you have and stay in for big cleaves/whirlwinds. Don't forget to snowball yourself or noggenfogger when you do get knocked up, which will prevent fall damage.
- Bug Trio can get botched easily if tremor totem isn't done correctly, or if Yauj isn't tanked far away from the rest of the raid (if she isn't killed first). It's best to use berserker rage soon after pull to eat the first fear, then as fury save death wish for when actively dpsing Kri (since he doesn't move around much) or Yauj (to negate her fear). After death wish falls off, if Yauj isn't dead you can use berserker rage on cd to prevent fears. If killing anything that isn't Vem last, be prepared to shield wall as the tank that picks up the last boss, since the enrage granted by Vem is absolutely brutal (+150% haste, +100% damage).
- Sartura is very much both a tank and RNG check. Before pull if you have fast loading times you can stoneshield, log out, log back in, pull, and keep the stoneshield active while still being able to use your LIP cd mid fight. I would say this is mandatory if you want to stay in for whirlwinds as dps. You can also prepop ZG trinket right before pull, and swap before combat starts to a passive while keeping that active too. As a tank, wear full mit gear + shield here since threat is reset every 0.5 seconds during whirlwinds. As soon as your assigned mob is dead you should intercept/intervene over to sartura to help with taunt rotation. Challenging shout is underrated here to keep her in one spot, since it has double the range of taunt + even more if you jump. If she runs out of range of challenging to a random ranged and they dont use LIP, there's nothing you can do.
- The gauntlet is kinda not great as warrior, I would use sapper early on so you have it up for visc, and just throw dynamite otherwise. You can intercept farther up to whirlwind/cleave mobs that haven't been melted by arcane explosion yet. Fankriss adds don't have to be tanked by a paladin despite popular belief. You can tank them quite easily as a warrior using force reactive disk + oil of immolation + thorns effects + dynamite, as long as people wait to dps them (there is really no reason for people to dps them aside from padding dps meters). Fun fight to use reck on as dps since it's one of two fights in the raid that aren't complete ass for warrior.
- Viscidus is not a dps focused fight at all. Your entire job if not MT is to spam hamstring/sunder with 2x coldrage dagger + 2x frost oil in battle stance solely for frost procs. When he splits up into the adds you can go out and swap to a 2h then jump + WW for a bit of extra damage, then jump + sapper when they get close. Sunders should still be applied on the boss to help tank out threat heal aggro. When the fight is almost over, I would recommend swapping to berserker stance and pooling rage for the upcoming scorpion pull after unless your raid goes full afk after boss fights.
- Any warrior should be prepared to hit LIP + challenging on the lasher/wasp trash between fankriss and huhuran. These are great packs to bust out your 2h as dw fury, since there's so many mobs to perma cleave/whirlwind and so much raid damage for rage. Try not to position yourself on the far side of the mobs since they will knock you into extra packs and you will get charged into insta death.
- Huhuran can be very different in prog vs on farm. Dps will be considerably slower in progression, meaning a nature resist set is kind of mandatory for any dps (NOT THE TANK). Regardless of prog or farm, you should equip a Barov Peasant Caller to use just before 30%, then take a small step back after using to ensure the mobs are farther ahead than you. Lucidity potion will help prevent sleep if you use ~10 seconds after pull, but the shaman in your group should also be using tremor totem to prevent this. In prog it's recommended to save your potion cd for GNPP rather than lucidity.
- The trash between huhuran and twins is very skippable, but if not skipping just be aware of a few things: one offtank should sit in the ranged stack to pick up any loose adds in case a melee tank misses them, and if you get plague as dps you can still keep dpsing, just make sure to sit max melee range apart from everyone else (might be hard sometimes without good communication).
- Twins is one of the hardest hitting boss fights in the game, especially when done at full 40 man scaling. Unbalancing strike into a bad crit or crush is almost certain death, especially since you often wont have armour buffs (inspiration/ancestral fortitude) when vek'nilash teleports into you. Thunderfury is both absolutely useless as well as a huge grief on this fight, since the proc does no threat to the boss but will chain to nearby bugs and aggro all of them. Stoneshield is hard required for tanking, unless wearing full bis mit gear with good healers. If there's no bugs around, try to keep demo shout up, even as dps. You can jump off to the side and apply it even if there's bugs on one side of the boss. As dps here, make sure you don't randomly whirlwind with bugs nearby, and get out with at least 2 seconds left on teleport. This allows the tank time to swing around to the close side of the boss and get maxrange to avoid getting arcane explosioned into space by vek'lor. Twins typically goes so long that you can get 2x death wish and 3x two-minute trinket uses.
- Ouro is a truly abysmal melee dps fight since you constantly have to get in/out as well as being threatcapped the entire time by tanks whose threat resets. If you ever have threat on this fight as dps, you should immediately run out (dont go back in right away or you risk submerge), and as tank you should move over to the maintank spot. You never ever want to get sandblasted as an OT unless you're actively tanking the boss, since it will wipe all of your threat. In slower kills you can often get double death wish + trinkets here, but save your potion cooldown to use lucidity potion during the submerge/enrage phases.
- C'Thun strats will vary from guild to guild. Some raids allow 2x melee in each melee spot, while others will force people to log out and only have 1 melee per spot. Prepotting GNPP is really nice here and can prevent deaths from a bad chain (if you can see one is about to happen, swap to defensive stance). Tanks can safely respec to fury or arms since there's almost no tanking/threat generation to do and no boss afterwards. For most raid kill speeds you can use cds on pull and have them up again for vuln phase later on. Don't forget you can intercept or pummel/shield bash the giant eyes to prevent a raid-wide eye beam; if in a melee stacked comp you can consider intercepting to a farther small eye and pummeling/ccing them to help out your casters. If you have any debuff weps like annihilator/rivenspike etc. you can use them during phase 2 on the boss to have some uptime up on them during vuln phase.
NAXX
Special Thanks
Thanks to:
Pepe and Qoyu for helping bounce ideas and proofreading the fury/arms sections
Ehawne for helping edit the tank stuff and writing 50% of the addons I use
Dewbie for the furyprot blurbs at the top
Essee for writing the entire defensive tactics section
Pepopo for inspiring me to write this in the first place and writing the other 50% of the addons I use
Mr. Zaas Reynolds for maintaining the warrior sim (never forgive him for slopfury though)
Everyone who corrected little typos or mechanics I got wrong - too many people to list.