Warriors, everybody's best friend! Why? Because of their talent at keeping everyone else alive at their own expense, of course!
Tanks, we love 'em!
And today, tanks aren't just for protection - even protection tanks!
You see, prior to World of Warcraft 3.0, you could separate the protection tree from the other two trees and say, "protection is only for tanking, fury and arms do the damage".
Today, that's not so true, and protection warriors are dealing out much higher levels of damage thanks to some very interesting and fun to use shield skills, as well as still being heralded as the best main tank in the game.
So regardless of what you want to do with your warrior, do massive damage with slow swinging 2 hand weapons, or be the "rock" for any raiding group, I'll give you some pointers on how to craft an effective build here.
Lets begin by looking at builds that are suited to PvE, or leveling a warrior fast.
Going back to my statement above, post 3.0 World of Warcraft makes ANY Warrior build a highly effective leveling build, because protection warriors can now effectively generate high levels of rage which keep their abilities almost constantly firing.
There are a few things you want to keep in mind though, should you wish to choose a protection Warrior.
Firstly, you'll only do damage if your character is receiving damage. Rage is built up best by having opponents hit and damage you... or in the protection warriors case, as you'll soon see, when you block or dodge, or use blood rage!
Before I get into the important leveling talents for protection warriors, let me say to the arms and fury warriors - just pick the talents that make you crit more and do more damage. Plain and simply truths for you guys work a treat and you'll level very quickly.
So protection talents:
Make sure you take Improved Bloodrage, and use it before charging into combat. IBR gives you even more rage from the health sacrifice you make, and ensures your putting out maximum rage during a fight.
Also get your Shield Specialization maxed out quickly - each block means 2 extra rage generated. This stacking with Improved Bloodrage is all you need early on to have a huge pool of rage to chew through mobs and level quickly.
Later on, Improved Revenge, as well as the other blocking talents and abilities means you'll be stunning and damaging efficiently and repeatedly. This is one of my favorite talents as it both damages and reduces the damage you take.
Moving on to PvP Warrior builds:
PvP can be a bit more challenging for Protection warriors because like I remarked earlier, it can be difficult to build rage unless you're being hit. If you've played much PvP, you likely know if you're being hit, you'll probably die soon after, thanks to the burst damage slant most players give their builds.
So in PvP, protection Warriors, use Improved Bloodrage constantly! Use charge constantly, and stun constantly to ensure you keep the upper hand in the engagement!
Some handy PvP Protection warrior talents are:
Improved spell reflection - take the heat off spellcasters nukes by making the first cast miss automatically, and the rest miss more often. Spell casters with long range spells can be a hassle for warriors already engaged, unless of course they have...
Warbringer! Another of my favorite talents, Warbringer lets the poor PvP embattled warrior leave combat by charging, hopefully into the nearest cloth wearing upstart, which we will likely make very short work of soon after, leaving us free to return to the combat. At least that's the plan!
For Fury Warriors, you'll likely enjoy using a combination of critical boosting talents and Flurry, increasing your attack speed by 20% for 3 attacks after you score a crit in close combat.
But who needs these fancy talents when you hit level 60 and pick up Titan's Grip? If you don't like the idea of dual wielding 2 handed weapons (that's right, a 2h weapon in each hand), then the Fury build surely isn't for you!
Wielding such high damage weapons and then enhancing that damage with a well thought out Fury build is the stuff DPS dreams are made of, just don't let it go to your head, because unlike your arms and protection counter parts, you're just that little bit squishier.
So what about Arms Warriors?
PvP players will love using Mortal Strikes, which lets Arms Warriors reduce healing done to the target of this high damage, instant cast talent.
The end tree talent, Whirlwhind is also amazing for finding the largest group of enemies and literally wading in, whirling damage to 4 nearby opponents for 6 seconds.
Moving on to raiding and dungeon going Warriors, what should they look out for? And what are the best talents in their respective trees?
Lets continue talking about Arms Warriors -- they have the best of both worlds, but are the master of neither. Meaning they can put out excellent damage, but not as much as Fury. They can receive a lot of damage, but not quite as much as Protection.
For raiding though, as an Arms warrior there isn't much more to say than just think about yourself, and your own balance of damage and defense. The only power you have which can affect your raid mates (apart from your excellent melee damage output of course) is again Mortal Strikes, preventing mobs from healing.
The Fury Warrior is another story - while you still want to concentrate on your own damage dealing abilities, you also get a handy talent that will benefit the ranged and close combat classes in your raid.
This ability is called Rampage, and causes increased ranged and melee critical hit chance for all of your party and raid members by 5% for 10 seconds. This ability procs every time you score a critical, which is something you should be doing a lot if you've built an effective Fury Warrior.
The Protection Warrior is one of the most sought after raid members of all time. Able to taunt and hold aggro in all but the most difficult conditions, he also has a range of talents to help his friends.
My favorite is called Vigilance, and 1 point in it at level 40 gives you yet another way to protect your most valuable raid ally... the healers! Whether they be Priest, Shaman or Druid, the Vigilance ability is excellent for "siphoning" aggro from them and protecting them at the same time.
While the Protection Warrior has many other great abilities, I'll leave it to you to explore the tree to find them all.
Heard enough about the wide and varied play style of the Warrior? Get out there and start one! You don't need a perfect build to survive, just take the talents you find interesting. Unless of course you have aspirations of being a hard core raider or gladiator in PvP...?
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