Karayla

Hey, first time posting here just a quick couple of questions.

For arena if using a BS t1/2 weapon which is a more suitable 2hander spec, Axe or Mace? Perhaps Mace spec is of more value in 5v5 than 2v2/3v3? When it comes down to it 5v5 is what matters most too me.

I was originally going to go for axe spec for the higher burst damage, which as an ms/dw (34/24/3) warrior in arena is what i'm aiming for secondary only to stamina.

However, last night i was discussing this with a couple of guys and they are of the opinion that mace spec is very nice in arena due to the stuns causing interrupts and obviously making it harder for targets to run away (hamstring does this though..). My arguement was that even if mace spec does proc quite often diminishing returns means players would eventually just become immune or at the very least not get the full effect of the stun.

The second question is what stats should i be aiming for primarily when gearing my warrior and why? (hit 70 4-5 days ago, rerolled from a 70 Rogue with close to 200 days played)

The main stats to me to stack on are Stamina, Crit & Resillience in that order.

Obviously stamina and resillience for survivability and the crit for the maximum burst. I am of the opinion that even if i stack on the above 3 stats, i should get a reasonable amount of AP just with the gear.

 

archz0r

Mace is superior to axe in 5v5 Arena IMO, the Mace proc is on its own DR cooldown and does proc a lot, as a healer in 5v5 Arena I can't even begin to say how irritating mace spec is.

 

Erren

I'm no where near a respectable arena rating, partially because I play with friends with little regards to class balance, but what I've noticed so far is that I'm basically the last target anyone ever goes for. Does this stay true at the upper levels? I'm finding it hard to be interested in all the stam in the gladiator gear because frankly, I almost never get hit.

 

• aya

I think that depends largely on your team layout Bdevil.
For example in a team where you have a pair of frost mages, pair of paladins and a warrior, that warrior could well be the first one that's burned to the ground. On the other hand, if you're running around with an ele-shaman and a hunter, you can be almost sure those two are usually targetted before you are.

My point here being, that I think your focus in selecting gear should greatly vary depending on your overall team setup. Stamina/Resilience never ever hurt, but it's even more important at some configs than it is in others.

 

Karayla

Team setup is currently:

Paladin/Priest/Warrior/Warlock/Hunter

 

Mem

While I don't have any significant PVP experience on my warrior, I did play my first rogue with a combat mace setup for some month. While combat specs per se are not really that CC heavy as other rogue specs, the mace stuns compensated this deficit amazingly well. For this reason I will craft Thunder as soon as I get my primals together. Furthermore Thunder is not only the weapon with the highest average damage but also sports quite a lot of stamina. Overall imho the best packet you can get, assuming your AP/Crit is not desperately needing the crutch that is the 5 % crit from poleaxe spec.

 

woo-haa

Focusing on the warrior is a valid tactic IF you can kill him within a reasonable time period. Remember that a warriors take 110% damage from spells and roughly equal from physical attacks due to berserker stance. However, if you can't kill him on one round, he will have a lot of rage to retaliate ^^. Any team without a warrior will lose valuable DPS and, of course, the MS debuff. It's often favorable to trade a healer for the opponent team's warrior.

The top team in my BG is very good at this. They will do minor damage on several players at the start. Then they will intercept me (two warriors) and NS CL me at the same time. Most of the time they can burst me down before healers get a chance to heal.

 

• Zak

In a spec-related q, is there still a case where you can have 'too much' crit? I know back when I was doing MC, I was over the crit cap for +3 mobs with axe spec, since anything over 27% (from memory, number could be off) was wasted unless you had a lot of hit%. Then I got my OEB, swapped to sword spec and didn't have the issue any more.

But now I'm axe spec again with lunar crescent, and sit at 32% crit in battle stance - am I being dumb and wasting crit% here for pvp, or does it work differently? I'm entertaining the notion of swapping to maces if I ever get 12 nethers together - have only just started doing heroics, as a lot of my friends are slacking rep-wise.

 

Wizardspike

pvp has no glancing blows, hence you cannot ever get "too much" crit

 

suicuique

Being crit capped is mostly a side effect of glancing blows (in a PvE Environement agains ghigher level mobs). And as such of no consequence for PvP.

 

• frmorrison

Which weapon to get depends on your team. If your teamates are good with target swapping and coordinated burst dps, Axe is best.

If this is not the case, I would say Mace is better.

Many people don't focus on the Warrior first (it does happen though), so once you have about 9000 health I would get more offensive stats.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

• Ren

Mooncleaver for 5v5 and Deep Thunder for 2v2. Stuns are much more powerful when they incapacitate half of a team. Also, a warrior is much more likely to be focused on in 2v2, which makes the extra stamina useful.

For what it's worth, I do 5v5 with 9.7k HP, 206 resilience, 1600 AP, and 31.42 crit in Battle.

 

DrunkenDruid

Perhaps some more experienced warriors can explain to me why Sword spec is not considered over Axe spec. I must have a flaw in my calculations, because according to my numbers it provides more overall damage as well as the possibility for the biggest burst hit (2x crits).

Assume Weapon damage of D
(Critical Damage calculated at 1.6D (crit damage with 20% bonus to the 50% crit bonus from impale) + 0.6D (Deep Wounds))

At 20% crit rate w/o spec
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.8D + 0.2D*[1.6D + 0.6D]
 

Contents

1 0.8D + 0.44D 2 0.75D + 0.55D 3 0.75D + 0.55D 4 0.7D + 0.66D 5 0.7D + 0.66D 6 0.65D + 0.77D 7 0.8D + 0.396D 8 0.75D + 0.495D 9 0.75D + 0.495D 10 0.7D + 0.594D 11 0.85D + 0.264D 12 0.8D + 0.352D 13 0.8D + 0.352D

[top] 0.8D + 0.44D

1.24D
Axe spec: 0.75D + 2.5*[1.6D + 0.6D]

[top] 0.75D + 0.55D

1.3D
Sword spec: 0.8D + 0.2*[1.6D + 0.6D] + 0.06*[0.8D + 0.2D*[1.6D + 0.6D]] = 1.24D + 0.0744D = 1.3144D

At 25% crit rate w/o spec
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.75D + 2.5D*[1.6D + 0.6D]

[top] 0.75D + 0.55D

1.3D
Axe spec: 0.7D + 0.3*[1.6D + 0.6D]

[top] 0.7D + 0.66D

1.36D
Sword spec: 0.75D + 2.5D*[1.6D + 0.6D] + 0.06*[0.75D + 2.5D*[1.6D + 0.6D]] = 1.3D + 0.078D = 1.378D

At 30% crit rate w/o spec
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.7D + 0.3*[1.6D + 0.6D]

[top] 0.7D + 0.66D

1.36D
Axe spec: 0.65D + 0.35*[1.6D + 0.6D]

[top] 0.65D + 0.77D

1.42D
Sword spec: 0.7D + 0.3*[1.6D + 0.6D] + 0.06*[0.7D + 0.3*[1.6D + 0.6D]] = 1.36D + 0.0816D = 1.4416D

What we see here is that with impale and deep wounds, axe spec gives a constant 6% damage increase to what your average base damage would be. Sword spec, however, scales up with crit rate providing an increasing bonus. Now lets's take 25% and 30% crit rates and see what happens when we add 195 and 390 resilience into the equation.

25% Crit rate vs 195 resilience target
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.8D + 0.2D*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.8D + 0.396D

1.196D
Axe spec: 0.75D + 0.25*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.75D + 0.495D

1.245D
Sword spec: 0.8D + 0.2D*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)] + 0.06*[0.8D + 0.2D*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]] = 1.196D + 0.07176D = 1.26776D

30% Crit rate vs 195 resilience target
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.75D + 0.25*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.75D + 0.495D

1.245D
Axe spec: 0.7D + 0.3*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.7D + 0.594D

1.294D
Sword spec: 0.75D + 0.25*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)] + 0.06*[0.75D + 0.25*[0.9*(1.6D + 0.6D)]] = 1.245D + 0.0747D = 1.3197D

25% Crit rate vs 390 resilience target
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.85D + 0.15D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.85D + 0.264D

1.114D
Axe spec: 0.8D + 0.2D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.8D + 0.352D

1.152D
Sword spec: 0.85D + 0.15D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)] + 0.06*[0.85D + 0.15D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)]] = 1.114D + 0.06684 = 1.1804D

30% Crit rate vs 390 resilience target
None-spec'd average damage is: 0.8D + 0.2D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)]

[top] 0.8D + 0.352D

1.152D
Axe spec: 0.75D + 0.25D*0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)] = 0.75D + 0.44D = 1.19D
Sword spec: 0.8D + 0.2D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)] + 0.06*[0.8D + 0.2D*[0.8*(1.6D + 0.6D)]] = 1.152D + 0.06912D = 1.22112D

Now there are of course other factors to consider. On a hit that's higher damage than a white hit, a critical strike is preferable to an extra swing. Conversely, a critical strike on a hamstring is no where near as good as an extra swing. Also, extra swings proc'ing from special moves give you rage that you would not normally have. Any corrections or updates to my formulas would be much appreciated.

 

diotox

A lot of warriors will either spec 31/30 or 33/28 and get some points in flurry, so axe spec helps with getting flurry up, especially post-resilence.

 

AndrewCarr

We usually target the warriors first in our 3v3's and it works very well. This is partly because they rape the two casters on our team(affliction lock and elementalist mage) and partly because hp and plate are really their only defenses, an plate doesn't help against 2/3 of our damage. So while other classes can iceblock, bubble or simply live through our attacks(priests, ugh), warriors usually go down quite easily, especially since their healer is spell locked or cs'd and they're stunlocked.

This is with 1 healer, 1 warrior, 1 caster dps groups though. With 2 healer 1 dps groups things might work differently. Probably the only other higher priority targets would be a hunter or a lock(or a fire mage, if anyone we fight is spec'd that way...) since they are similarly weak when it comes to defense.

I guess that's just how things work out anyway. If we focus fire a somewhat softer target, such as their priest, they can run out of los, they can pain suppression, etc. But the warrior is usually standing right in the middle of us, with no way to escape, and totally reliant on an eaisily neutralized healer to survive.

[Edit:] Sorry if this is a bit off topic.

For gear, I would recommend a 2h mace such as deep thunder. My pally in our 2v2 (we have a respectable 2000+ rating I suppose) has been stunlocked by mace spec'd warriors before, and it blows.

 

oldmandennis

I'm rolling a deep thunder/MS warrior, for maximum FOTM arena effect. It seems from the armory that most top warriors went Aldor. I know its a small difference, but I was wondering if there was a reason for it, or if it's just random.

 

Humbaba

My FoTM warrior is going scryer. They appear to be the same from a pvp perspective and I'd rather live when I jump off the ledge.

 

◊ Anias

Aldor gets you a free offhand at exalted and a free tanking chestpiece. Both are very welcome if you're dropping your income for thunder and gearing for pvp primarily.

Think of it as easing the farming requirements for stuff outside of pvp, which you'll do occasionally.

 

• frmorrison

Aldor is a slightly better PvP shoulder enchant, and at least on my server the stuff to buy to rep up is cheaper than Scryers.

That said, the enchants are still pretty close in power, and indeed you can live via jumping down from the Scryers part of the city, that Aldors can't say that.

Also you get a fair ring and tanking chest at revered.

Another thing are they have different quests in Netherstorm, so maybe the Aldor one had better Warrior rewards?

 

• Ren

I'm not sure what you mean here. Melee attacks crit at 2D, and Impale increases that to 2.2D. Deep Wounds, the 0.6D, is not affected by armor or resilience.

A hamstring crit still leaves a Deep Wound on the target, which nearly balances out with an extra attack. Axe spec gives 5% to white attacks, which is "rage that you would not normally have" too.

The main reason why Axe spec is so much more prevalent than Sword right now is that the Tier 2 BS Sword nowhere compares to the T2 BS Axe. 2-300 resilience also gimps a warrior's much-needed crit rate, and Axe spec helps relieve that somewhat. A warrior who rarely crits is a lot easier to heal through.

 

Martyr

Thunder requires 350 blacksmithing. This is attainable easily enough without the need for reputation based recipes.

To create Deep Thunder and eventually Stormherald, however, one needs to reach 375 smithing. To do this cheaply (not crafting expensive world-drop epic recipes) you need to rep up with scryer or aldor.

The difference between the two, taking from "Powerleveling Guides For All Professions" on wow-professions forums (credit to Highlander and Elzix), is as follows:

So we have three options listed for getting from 360-375, Aldor, Scryer or farming for Felsteel Gloves;

Aldor: 320 Fel Iron Ore, 70 Primal Water, 60 Primal Fire.
Scryer: 800 Adamantite Ore, 160 Arcane Dust, 40 Large Prismatic Shards.
Felsteel Gloves: 540 Fel Iron Ore, 360 Eternium Ore.

So depending on the price of mats on your server, choosing a path to 375 Smithing is quite important. That is, of course, if you even want to upgrade Thunder.

For me, Aldor is by far the cheapest, even though it may be harder to rep up (from what I've heard)

 

sasukekun

This should help:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Comparison_of...Scryer_rewards

http://www.wowwiki.com/Augments#Inscriptions

 

Theldon

The other major flaw in sword spec is that when sword spec procs, it resets your swing timer.

 

doogless

As someone who's on the receiving end of many a Deep Thunder, the combination of that weapon's proc with mace spec is the most godamn frustrating thing.

You can probably get away with less HP at lower rating brackets, but once you get higher and you see the same teams more often, they'll be smart enough to recognize your lacking HP pool and gib you.

 

• Fogbug

I would recommend Deep Thunder, but if you don't have access to it (lol armorsmith) then just use the spec of the best 2H available to you. With the changes to mace spec I find it to be balanced nicely with axe/sword spec, with maces being a bit less effective for pve dps and a bit superior when it comes to PvP

but Deep Thunder is king. I use a World Breaker and it beats Deep Thunder in the looks department, but that 4s stun sure would be nice

in terms of other gear, my priority is getting the arena 4piece. other than that I prioritize crit over AP and resilience/sta over other mitigation stats

for reputations, I see crit as a superior investment to AP, so I would go Scryer

I went Aldor because I figured we might need an aldor smith, and because it seemed easier to raise. it doesn't really make a huge difference

also, I've merged the 2 warrior threads since their content and discussion was pretty similar anyway