So you are getting your PvP gear and started to wonder how to gem it and what trinkets should you use. The first thing I’m going to cover is the metagem + feet enchant choice. Why those two? I simply cannot imagine pvping without minor speed effect on my character, so you either get that from enchant or metagem.

FEET ENCHANT AND METAGEM:

1) [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] + [Boar's Speed]

This configuration will give you a lot of stamina along with 5% stun resistance, which is good since it stack with Iron Will (and Orc Hardiness if you are an orc). Bad side of this is that you will have to change 3 red/yellow gems in your armor for purple/green ones for the meta gem to work (which will give you even more hp).

2) [Swift Skyfire Diamond] + [Surefooted]

This configuration won’t give you any stamina, but is very good for maxing attack power. Even if you don’t put any stamina gem in your gear and won’t have stamina enchant on legs or whatever, you will have over 12k hp in full S3 gear, which is very fine. Surefooted enchant will give you 5% snare resistance, which is nice (not very reliable tho, as we have no snare resistance talents), and 10 hit rating, and while hit rating might not be the sexiest stat ever, this enchant with full S3 gear and S3 weapon will give you pretty much enough hit rating not to worry about missing in arena.

3) [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] + [Boar's Speed]

I’d never use this configuration for my arena gear, but some people do use it, so I feel I must list it :p.

ATTACK POWER VS CRIT:

When wondering if you should gear for attack power or crit as a warrior, there is only one answer: you need both. PvP gear have a lot of it’s item value spent on crit and have 3 red slots and 5 yellow slots, which makes it much easier to max crit rating as a pvp warrior. When maxing crit you can get 40 crit from [Battlemaster's Cruelty], 50 crit from 5 epic yellow gems and 15 crit + 30 attack power from 3 orange meta gems, giving you total 105 crit rating and 30 attack power. When maxing attack power you can get 80 ap from [Battlemaster's Determination], 60 ap from 3 red epic gems and 50 ap + 25 crit from 5 epic orange gems, giving you total 190 attack power and 25 crit rating. So all in all, the difference is that you will have either 160 attack power or 80 crit rating (3.63% crit). Which is better.

Using my axe vs sword calculator as a dps calculator tool for comparing the two, with base data being 1900 attack power, 31% crit, 134.2 dps 3.6 speed weapon hitting 400 resilience target, the results are:

Base damage: 178079 - no spec
Maxed crit: 183076 - no spec (2.8% dps increase)
Maxed attack power: 184853 - no spec (3.8% dps increase)

Maxing attack power will give you more dps over time than maxing crit. There are two reasons for that, one is that resilience cuts a lot of dps from crits, second is that pvp gear have tons of crit on it’s own. The difference is not very big tho and you can easly max out crit for having a bit lower burst damage, but have it more often.

Terhix

Personal rating - checked.
Team rating - checked.
No druid 2v2 ez mode - checked.
Arena points - 150 missing.

[Vengeful Gladiator's Bonegrinder], you are mine baby!

Terhix

To the tune of www.badgerbadgerbadger.com ;).

As I’m getting closer to putting my hands on dirty, ez mode, welfare, skillful and whatever you want to call it, S3 mace, considering I’m already 3/5 S3 with everything obtainable form honor already bought (ok, I still need to get the shield) it’s high time for me to complete my Ignore Armor Crab and get [Dory's Embrace].

First we tried Heroic Underbog, as a fresh Hunter from my guild and new 5v5 team (a lot of my ex-alliance guildies rerolled horde not so long ago) still needed cenarion rep for the head enchant. When a PvP warrior, a PvP S1 geared disc priest and a PvP S1 geared hunter with virtually no knowledge about instance begins to do heroics, a good laugh and repair bills are guaranteed. Coming with the idea that def gear is overrated and I don’t want to respec for one instance, we came with 0 defense and 0 protection talents tank into a heroic dungeon, backed up with a pvp priest with virtually no mp5 or whatever PvE stats you would like to see on a healer. We also got a random mage (can’t poly elementals, fun stuff) and PvP rogue (can’t sap elementals, more fun stuff). In result we had a long, dramatic but successful Underbog run and first 4 badges ever. Say whatever you say, but full 18 seconds of proper tanking (pain suppression followed by shield wall ;)) on a boss is better then nothing, actually, the only boss I died on was the first one. On the last boss we also got a pretty cool trinket for our priest, 33 or so resilience with 2% chance on struck to regenerate mana, don’t remember the name, sorry folks, PvE is a whole new world for me, something I didn’t intend to do at all since TBC.

Despite our initial success, we didn’t want to repeat that, especially since there are harder instances than underbog. Being the lucky bastard I’m, the pally who I 2v2 with is a raider, and with the access to PvE gear, he grabbed some tanking gear so he can do heroics with us. Our next goal: shattered halls (there was a daily quest and our priest needs the rep for his head enchant), so we went with pally tank, 2x PvP warriors, same PvP hunter and PvP priest. Trash packs in SH are pretty large, which was cool for us, aoe tanking prot pally and two warriors beating the hell of them with sweeping strikes + whirlwinds = win. The run was a blast and soon we all had 5 more badges + 2 more from the daily. Not to waste the pally’s respec money we also went into ramparts right after for additional 3 badges that day, if things are going to stay as they are, I’m going to have my cape in no time.

TS discussion highlight:

Pally: Hey, give me like 5 seconds to build agro before you guys charge in, it’s not like my consecration insta agroes them.
Me: Maybe because you don’t have Righteous Fury on?
Pally: Righteous Fury only redu… oh wait, you might have a point.

Terhix

So I finally got dedicated enough to farm that 30k honor for battlemaster trinket, and already had a chance to try it out in the arena. The results? It’s good, it really is. I picked the 80 attack power one, as total dps gained from it is better then crit against resilience heavy targets. This allowed me to break 2000 (2013 exactly) attack power with just battle shout up (1/5 commanding presence, blood craze FTW). I dropped the blue quest reward from hellfire for it, so as you can imagine, it’s quite an upgrade for me. The AP on use increase was nice, but it never felt like I won a game due to it.

I’m running War/Pala 2v2, which is not that sexy anymore, but with right tactics we manage. We are still bellow the almighty 2k rating (I blame my gear for it, getting S3 mace soon), and I’m not even dreaming we will beat the really good war/druid teams and what not, but at 1800 rating we can nail them down pretty fine, it has a lot to do with the fact that my pally is really well geared with half PvE gear giving him a lot of mp5 (in mirror match that turns into a mana war, my pally usually sits at 3k mana when the other team’s pally is dying with 0). Anyway we used to have some problems with 2 dps teams as our weakness against them is that my pally can be easly closed down while I’m getting killed, heck we even had problems with rogue/priest team where the priest had 21 shadow for silence and helped the rogue to nuke me down with mindblast here and there. Having the battlemaster trinket that’s not really happening that often anymore, the trinket is really good, it gives me just enough hp to survive that extra nuke before my pally is back in control of his character and can heal me, not to mention it can get me out of execute range, or above 35% so full sub rogues don’t get their mad 20% dps increase on me.

On a side note I’ve just read newest article on World of Ming, where some guy is claiming he can ‘outmuscle’ a warrior in 2v2 manafight, after reading how he use kidney shot every cooldown with full combat spec it made me smile. Now I’m not at 2.2k rating in US BG9, but we played against rogue/druid team yesterday, when you resist THREE kidney shots in a row, you know you picked the right race (and the best looking one at the same time), Orc FTW!

Terhix

With patch 2.3 players may be deciding to create new characters to take advantage of the improved leveling from 20-60. In my previous post a player asked for some advice on leveling his warrior, and I figure a single post with some of the basics could be a useful resource for other players. I’m not going to get into every little detail. If you’re that desperate go subscribe to one of those guides-for-noobs websites.

Note that you should level your warrior where you have level 70 friends and then transfer him somewhere else if possible. If not you’re going to have a more painful experience getting the instances/gear you want.

WEAPONS

As a warrior, you live or die by your weapon. Luckily there are powerful, easy-to-get weapons placed along your leveling path. You can also use thottbot to track down what weapons you can easily get for each level bracket. Basically though:

Deadmines will give you either [smite's mighty hammer] or [taskmaster axe], which is sufficient until level 30.

At 30 get a higher level character to help you complete the quest for [whirlwind axe]. Which in turn will do you until 40-45.

You can then either buy something cheap on the AH like [blight] or get something out of SM/Uldaman.

If you don’t it’s fine, because at 51 go win a single AV and pick up your [ice barbed spear].

At 58 head to outlands, grab [hellreaver] out of ramparts or [warsong howling axe] out of furnace.

At 65 if you have 4 friends go do ring of blood quests for gold, potions, and the [honed voidaxe].

At 66 get a sethekk halls run and enjoy your [terokk's quill]. 93.3 dps is the standard for blue level 70 weapons, so you’re set with the quill until you craft, pvp, or raid for an epic.

Put crusader enchant on your whirlwind weapon (I think you still can), your ice barbed spear, and possibly your hellreaver/howling axe. Once you’ve got the quill pop savagery on it if you can afford it.

TALENTS

Notice a trend? From level 30-70 the easy to obtain weapons are polearms or axes, so you guessed it - use arms with poleaxe spec for leveling. You shouldn’t need a step-by-step talent spec. Start with 5/5 cruelty then go to arms tree. Probably go 3/3 heroic strike, then 2/3 imp rend (I think you basically use these for dps until you have MS anyways so might as well take them over parry early on - mobs don’t hit that hard). 2/2 imp charge, 3 points wherever. Deep wounds 2/2, anger management 1/1, and 1/2 imp overpower. Get impale 2/2 and 2h wep mastery 3/5. Get death wish, then axe spec, then probably swing back down to finish up 2h wep mastery and imp overpower. Finally your time has arrived and you now have the infamous zomg mortal strike upon which this site is based. Get all the good arms talents - 2nd wind, blood frenzy, imp MS, and even Endless rage before heading back to fury. Be sure to grab blood craze when you can, it’s helpful for soloing. By the time you’re 61 you may want to respect to 31 arms 21 fury, and then work your way back through the arms tree as you level to 70.

STATS/ARMOR
For armor and jewelry, again check thottbot for blue items around your level and chase down any easy-to-get quest rewards. You might want to hit up some pvp early on and get enough rep for the trinkets/rings in your 20’s since you won’t see many of either until later on. Stat wise focus on strength/AP followed by crit and stamina. Don’t place too much importance on agility, pound for pound crit and strength are much more potent for your warrior. For the most part green armor is sufficient for leveling, and you do not need enchants on it. Buy cheap armor kits or something if you want to put things on your gear. As a rule only enchant armor you know you’ll be using for a long time, otherwise it’s a waste of gold.

The pvp gear rewards are some of the best warrior items along the path from 1-60, so if you like pvp at all (I assume you do since you rolled a warrior) do it along the way and spend the points for important pieces of equipment that you can’t easily or quickly replace through pve.

The rest is just details.

Veritas