I considered it and will probably try it as well. At the moment I don't want to drop piercing howl yet. Its sometimes very very strong. Last stand combined with pain suppressions sounds nice, for it would give us two outs for situations where enemy dps prefers to focus me instead my priest - and PS saved my ass yesterday at least once.

That 45/5/11 spec with last stand looks VERY nice. that could be the new ms warrior 2.3 build.

One question i asked that i have not seen touched on yet was the stance dancing, swing timer, reset problem i am having. on occasion when i am doing alot of stance dancing my swing timer seems to be reseting. it seems to happen more often if i switch stances right before i swing, or as im swinging. is there something i can do to avoid this or is this a random bug?

Are there any gladiator-caliber warrior/paladin teams out there that would be willing to give me some advice?

Here's the situation. My paladin and I are pushing up through the ranks, and we win some very tough games against some very tough matchups/opponents. But it seems like we just can't seem to do so consistently. Our rating will hover right around 2010-ish. We spiked yesterday to 2060, starting off something like 6-2, but then took a break, came back, and plummetted to 1978.

As far as matchups go, we seem to always beat other Warrior/healer teams. My paladin is very good at knowing when he can get away and drink, which seems to be enough to push us ahead of almost all of these teams. In fact, I can't remember the last time we lost to Warrior/X, and in general, if we can get into a mana fight with the other team, we do extremely well.

Where our problem seems to lie are Rogue/X matchups. For some reason, I'm either too squishy (I don't think this is a reasonable cause -- I'm at 351 resil, 12.2k hp) or me or my paladin aren't doing something right.

Against Rogue/Mage, we don't have success when focusing the rogue. The mage can keep my paladin out of the game long enough to just kill me inside of a counterspell duration. When focusing the mage, we tend to do better, with me using a judicious amount of spell reflect coupled with forcing blinks. Eventually the mage is OOM and has trouble taking my paladin out of the game while kiting me at the same time. But this strat seems to work rarely, only when catching the mage off guard, as I'm sure the mage is not the usual focus of most warrior teams. We've never beaten a team twice this way.

Against Rogue/Warlock, there seems to be just too much damage -- one spell lock or blind and I seem to go down. We beat these teams when they make major errors, but that could be said about any team.

Rogue/Priest seems to be our worst matchup - 400ish resilience priests are just never going down if I'm on them. This leaves the rogue, and with priest bubbles, evasion/vanish/prep/evasion/vanish tactics, and a large passive dodge/parry rate, I just can't seem to keep enough pressure on the rogue to keep the priest from mana-burning my paladin to zero. This matchup *seems* winnable to me, as the priest is usually at less than a thousand mana right when they kill one of us, making me think that lasting just 30 more seconds would be enough to give us the wins, but those 30 seconds never seem to come.

Oh, and I got soloed by a perfect 5-8 kite against Ultimus's Rogue/Rogue team. We killed Ultimus, then somehow my pally died. Is there some way to counter the perfect 5-8 kite? I put on a shield, and began with the rogue at 25% or so and stealthed. He opens as expected, begins the 5-8 kite. Every time I seemed to get the upper hand, he would drop combat and restealth, wait for cooldowns, bandage, etc. Is this beatable? I can't seem to figure out a way to do it, as long as the rogue is good enough to never let you intercept him.

I have a feeling that winning these matchups is the key to pushing into gladiator reaches, at least on our BG. Any help would be appreciated.

Lastly, in regards to the previous page, I specced Blood Craze recently, and I can't imagine PvPing without it ever again. It is extremely good if you're planning to play the outlast game, and helps immensely with 2 dps teams ability to burst you down inside of a counterspell/silence/spell lock.

Edit -- Got Blood Craze and Blood Frenzy backwards. XD

My partner and I do exceedingly well against rogue teams or other double DPS, so I'll throw some pointers out there.

For one, max rank BoSac is your friend. It will split a quite substantial portion of damage between you and your paladin, meaning that you're taking less and he can easily get behind a pillar and heal himself if he takes too much. This also prevents sheep/blind from being an issue (though it will still interrupt casts), and can definitely save you during a CS.

Against rogue/mage, there's really not a whole lot you can do. One thing we found worked was splitting damage: Focus on the rogue for a bit, then switch to the mage for a bit, then back to the rogue. The trick is, your paladin has to be good at avoiding the mage's counterspells, and if he does catch one, you should throw on a sword/shield immediatley, try to intervene to your partner and get out of LoS, and spam spell reflect.

Against rogue/lock, kill the warlock. Otherwise he'll just CC your partner and there's not a whole lot to be done once bubble is down. Also relies heavily on your partners ability to stay out of LoS while popping in occasionally to keep you healed. A great thing, to keep from having to bubble early, is after you've pummeled a fear, have him bring the lock pet near you and then blow your own fear. The pet will be out of commission and unable to spell lock, allowing your parnter to get some heals off uninterrupted. Have him keep bosac up to avoid blinds and keep the pressure off you, and if he pops bubble when the lock is around 30% ish, he can get a couple big heals off on you and then shock/judge righteousness/hammer of wrath to help finish it off quickly. Again, if he gets CC'd with no out, you should probably throw on a sword/shield, intervene away from the rogue, and spell reflect.

Against h or disc priest/rogue, bosac is once again your friend. keep the pressure on the rogue as much as possible, your paladin just needs to line of sight the priest AND (this is key) if the priest is mana burning your paladin within LoS, intercept him to stop it. This is especially important against dwarf or draenei priests, as they can pull off some easy burns with fear+burn and then chastise+burn.

If you're just losing back to back to back, don't queue for a while. We have a rule that 3 losses in a row=stop for 30 or more minutes at least.

Blood craze? Or do I have no idea what you're talking about?

Yes, Blood Craze. ^_^ Sorry for the confusion.

Huh?

At 12khp, a Blood Craze tick is 360hp, every 6 seconds, absolute best case scenario. If you get crit again, the buff resets itself.

I guess I dunno how 360hp (MS and Wound Poison modify this too) over the course of a counterspell is going to save anyone from anything.

Bloodcraze is AWESOME for 2v2. Healing ~350-400 when you get crit (including crits your resilience prevented!), is way better than getting another 45AP or giving you and your partner an extra 150 max hp, via commanding presence.

The discussion between axes, swords, and maces has been discussed to death. However, some indecision still remains, especially after the recent changes to weapon skill, expertise, and racial abilities.

Recently, I began pursuing other class interests and decided to use my warrior primarily for a fun class to play in small battlegrounds. Having specialized in maces for the entirety of Season 2, the change in direction of where I want to take my warrior and the latest adjustments to both mace spec and orc racials have left me with the feeling of indecision regarding my talent spec for Season 3.

Before the mace warriors jump into a reply, please note that I am well aware that maces will more than likely still retain its title as the meta-game arena spec in all brackets. Despite knowing this, I am prepared to let my arena potential slip in favor of more interesting burst damage potential in battlegrounds. Before the sword warriors jump into a reply, please note that I am well aware that sword spec is more damage than axe spec without any expertise rating affecting axes. For additional clarification, I plan on speccing tactical mastery instead of flurry, so I would be grateful for some discussion pertaining to axe spec without it (even though some argue that swords could have more potential synergy with flurry).

Now that we have those prerequisites met, I've had a hard time weighing the pros and cons between sword spec, and axe spec with 1% expertise. The way I see it, it's divided like this:

Sword Spec:

• of course gains all the advantages of having a 5% chance at an unmitigated, new white hit on all instants, including hamstrings (which must be spammed more than before the 2.3 patch).
• in a sense, "unmitigated" by resilience. Having the sword proc crit is of course a bonus.
• the most synergy with windfury, and possibly the new Sweeping Strikes (depending on contact time, i.e. difficulty using all charges, in those 10 seconds).
• the highest potential burst.

This is all old news of course, especially to anyone reading through this thread, so let's get down to what's giving me a hard time.

Axe Spec with 1% expertise:

• 5% more crit, mitigated by resilience, and gives an (arguably?) higher chance to proc defensive anti-crit talents.
• 1.25% more "hit" on most light-armor targets, 2.5% more "hit" on anyone possessing the ability to parry. This is of course dependent on the target not being stunned.
• as a result of this improved "hit" chance, slightly less possibilities for an avoided hamstring to allow my target to escape, or for Mortal Strike to fall off my target (this would be the most likely reason for me to switch to axes).
• with this improved "hit" chance, and the aforementioned bonuses that it entails, a possibility at exceeding sword spec in both damage and utility.

So here is a question. Can 5% more mitigated crit, but with a potential 2.5% more hit, surpass swords in terms of damage? More importantly, can this expertise rating help surpass sword spec in terms of Hamstring and Mortal Strike utility? This is what this discussion boils down to.

I agree that the choice favors bloodcraze, however things need to be kept in perspective; they are both a means to get to enrage, and neither have very serious implications, similar to the booming voice/unbridled wrath debate. I will admit that i love bloodcraze for solo pvp, as I have won out over many a 2 man team around Halaa because the rogue kept me healed between bloodcraze and second wind.

Well i think most of the people wait til the new trinkets will be available for honor. There is also a cloak you can buy, so this might be done first.

The trinket is pretty bad and very situational , 5v5 vs a burst team or in 3s if your healer is dumb enough to get CS'd or something.

Very weak trinket imo.

It would be lots better if it had a heal to it as well , like the old lifegiving gem did.

It isn't bad at all. 1800 health through debuffs like wound poison is great to combine with a Last Stand spec.

I don't think I'd strictly wear it, but it would be sick to have on the wings as a trinket to swap in for a team that guns for you.

I was wondering because my warrior mostly plays 2v2 with a pally where I get zapped fairly often. Can anyone confirm that there is no heal from using the trinket?

The trinkets would be worse than blues w/out the heal effect. What's the deal?

The trinkets work in the same way as Last Stand.

For example:

You have 5000HP/12000HP.

The effect of the trinket will give you temporarily 6750/13750HP.

When the fifteen seconds are over the extra Hitpoints will be lost and your Hitpoints will return to 5000/12000.

This is the most important part of your entire post. With fun as your main concern then swords is the spec to chose. You will never brag about that time where a rogue didn't dodge your axe and you killed him. You will smile with glee as you remember that time where you timed MS with a white swing, both got sword procs and everything crit.

Both specs are fun but I live for those occasional moments where stupidly fun things happen.

With the recent change to hamstring (10sec duration), it is very helpful now. I always put at least 2 points into it. It is unreliable, but it can save the day when trying to get a melee off your healer.

There was a bug, when you got hit wearing resilience and that resilience absorbed an critical strike, that only one of this abilities, Enrage or Blood Craze could proc. Is this still true? If yes, I doubt it has any sense, speccing Enrage or Blood Craze. You would've wasted 3/5 Points for a talent that procs only 50% of the time.

The game does not track "converted" crits due to resilience at all. The way they implemented it, take your -% chance to be crit from your resilience. For example, let's say you have -10% chance to be crit from your resilience. Every hit you take has a 10% chance to proc enrage. If you have multiple abilities that function like this, in our case, enrage and blood craze, it checks to see if each ability procs separately. That is why you will see yourself having enrage, but not blood craze, or vice versa. Taking blood craze does not decrease your chance of getting enrage, because it is two separate 10% checks.

You can verify the above by standing in a fire in town and watching the results. Fire damage from standing in a fire is not capable of critting. Stand in a fire with 0 resilience, you will never see an enrage or a blood craze. Throw on all your resilience, and stand in the fire, and watch what happens.

It's gold. Try it, you won't regret

Imp Harmstring is really gold. Most often it will cause the target to blow a CD or just eat a lot of damage. Not to mention that it will often save your healer in a 2:2 situation.

Regarding Blood Craze. It really shines in smaller brackets where you will get targeted sometimes. It happens quite often that you survive with only a few HPs left only to get healed to 50 %. It will also help you to play the outlast game which is often a winning proposition for warrior teams. Against some kinds of dps BC won't help you that much, but against mages and rogues BC/2nd Wind are really really worth the investment. Especially if your gear isn't only enchanted/gemmed for dps (I'm sitting at 12,4 k hp in PVP gear totally unbuffed which leads to nearly 15k HP fully buffed due to fortitude and commanding shout).