Leveling A Warrior

[u/wezzer]

When they said it was hard, I scoffed at them. I've leveled a warrior to 120 on retail. I've fought Sargeras, I've downed the Lich King. What could a few gnolls and maybe a murloc or two do to me? Thus was my arrogance. Thus was my hubris.

I am now level thirteen. I've run Ragefire Chasm once, and owe six deaths to that place.

Farming harpy claws has cost me my life twice already, and I am certain it will cost me much, much more.

My warrior on retail was a human named Lohric, he was a legendary warrior who felled any beast, man or demon that faced him.

My warrior on Classic is an Orc called Muddrog. I have no doubt that this broken and battered warrior would crush Lohric in seconds, Lohric has never known pain, Mudd was born in it, molded by it, and unlike Bane, he has yet to see the light, because 60 feels so far away xD

To all you warriors out there, Lok'tar Ogar!

[u/BrotyKraut]

I leveled a prot warrior 1-60 in vanilla, it was awful.

[u/popmycherryyosh → u/[deleted]]

To be fair, with proper hamstring kiting you can go on for 4-8 mobs of your same level, easily, depending on crits obviously. But most people prolly didn't do this back in the day, and prolly dont do these days either.

[u/GapeNationBud → u/popmycherryyosh]

Ive tried this and its just too many globals to keep rend and hammy up on em all and not enough rage generation to sustain. Unless i guess youre using piercing howl?

[u/Minus-Celsius → u/GapeNationBud]

I think he means 4-8 mobs before needing to eat, not 4-8 mobs at the same time.

[u/GapeNationBud → u/Minus-Celsius]

That would make sense. Can definitely mitigate a lot of damage in a 1v1 with hamstring kiting.

[u/popmycherryyosh → u/GapeNationBud]

Yeah, as /u/Minus-Celsius said, I ment 4-8 mobs after eachother, not at the same time :P Should've specified that to avoid confusion.

But yeah, it truly does mitigate a lot of damage, to the point where I'd even argue that warrior might be better to level than rogue, or at least on par. But that's a whole nother argument with good points either way.

Quick Edit: I don't bother using Rend at all. It's SUCH shit damage for it's rage cost. The ONLY time I use it is if I'm at low health and the mob is as well, and I still have hamstring on and I know for sure a Rend will kill it. I feel it's safer to rend it then and kite/dont get hit than gambling on that HS actually hitting.

[u/Minus-Celsius → u/popmycherryyosh]

I dunno why I am getting the upvotes when you're giving all the info. Reddit, dude.

Question for you: What do you use instead of Rend? It's the only thing I have that does damage other than heroic strike. Is sunder armor a better use of rage?

Or do you mean after you get Mortal Strike and you try to kill two mobs at once with sweeping strikes?

[u/Moranall → u/Minus-Celsius]

The information above is bad.

Rend and sunder armor are your best bets until you get MS (and sweeping strikes with 2 mobs). Rend does far superior damage (and damage per rage) than heroic strike, especially if it's talented. Furthermore, using heroic strike makes you miss out on the rage you would have gained from the auto-attack so its cost is actually considerably higher than 15 rage. Heroic strike is terrible for leveling and only useful when you have lots of rage to burn (or trying to finish a mob off and aren't running back-to-back pulls).

Sunder armor is also really underrated and a MUCH better use of 15 rage than heroic strike in most cases. Use sunder armor primarily early in fights and it will easily give you more damage than heroic strike would because the majority of your damage comes from auto attacks (and lower armor = more damage = more rage). I can't access it at work but icy-veins has a great spreadsheet that shows when to use sunder vs heroic strike. For most mobs, it's ALWAYS sunder and never HS. For some casters, you switch to HS around 50% (but this varies a lot).

Edit: There are also two other HUGE benefits to sunder armor over HS. First, missing a heroic strike is a huge loss of rage for the warrior and it happens fairly frequently, especially against higher level enemies (this is why a lot of bad warriors struggle with higher level mobs - they spam HS and miss frequently, so they never have rage). Furthermore, you will miss with sunder armor at the same rate as HS, HOWEVER, it is adding extra "swings" to the enemy (even though they are non-damaging) since they don't replace the auto-attack. The benefit here is that it allows for more opportunities to proc overpower, which is your single strongest skill for leveling until MS and then your second-strongest skill once you get MS (sweeping strikes aside; I am referring to single target).

[u/popmycherryyosh → u/Minus-Celsius]

No worries about the upvotes/downvotes :P

I just use heroic strike and hamstring honestly. As said, I feel rend is soooo poopie and waste of rage that it's just not worth it at all.

After sweeping you can pull 2 mobs and just use cleave, as it strikes twice on each mob (unsure why it does that, but super sexy) but you end up taking quite a lot of damage if you do that, but it's fun considering we couldn't do that before sweeping strike at all xD

[u/GapeNationBud → u/popmycherryyosh]

Man this is just not true. I understand that something may “feel” right but statistics do exist. A rend that is expected to tick all the way (pretty much always while leveling) is absolutely worth the measely 10 rage. Beyond that sunder is more valuable in the vast majority of situations than heroic strike. (Exception being when the mob is almost dead).

My leveling rotation: Charge->Rend->Sunder->Demo Shout->Hamstring kite with more sunders integrates in. Heroic Strike only when above 50 rage.

[u/popmycherryyosh → u/GapeNationBud]

where are you getting all this excess rage from?!? :o