Warriors
The warrior, regardless of it's talent spec or race is by far a very large support class within the game. Although it can be a soloable counterpart and deal out alot of damage, it is definitly without a doubt a support class. With no real surviveability but your HP you face alot more problems than other classes, however that being said your amount of HP and armor class gives you real surviveabilty with a healer. For this thread I will entirely be focused on the basis of a TANKING warrior. This entire thread is almost completely toned for PvE. As I'm sure some people will be mad that I havn't focused on the DPS warrior, I have seen that most DPS warriors just don't have the gear to be competitive and/or the server is in demand for so many tanks that no warrior can truly go PvE damage spec.

Warriors are very linear characters, people say that a warrior can be DPS and still tank fine, however there's no way to control massive aggro output on longer fights for a non-protection spec warrior. They're good for offtanking smaller fights where their target is going to die sooner rather than later. Heroic strike by itself just doesn't cut it. After a 10 minute fight spamming heroic strike + devastate + revenege + shield slam, people do catch up to even a protection warrior. Devastate is a huge threat enabler and makes a huge difference when spammed in combination with heroic strike. These skills both work at the same time therefore massively increasing your threat output. They both work because heroic strike is based on your regular white damage hit timer, while devastate is on your global cooldown.






Abilities
Taunt: A large portion of people believe this to be a threat inducing technique HOWEVER it's not. Taunt allows the focus of the mob to be focused on the warrior for a said amount of time without applying aggro to it, however the warrior can be out-threated on said target while taunt is active and lose the mob after the duration wears off. What taunt does regarding threat is equalizes your threat on the mob to that of the highest currently on the mob. To keep aggro you must deal 10% more threat than the currently top spot which means you need to apply a massive threat dump on that mob to keep aggro, otherwise you'd better hope the mob doesn't have the ability to one-shot people as you run around taunt tanking it.

Revenge: This is a very high-threat inducing skill that is active after a dodge/parry/block in response to the enemy. However, it has a very long cooldown and when tanking should almost always on cooldown for the entire fight. If it's not on cooldown you're messing up your rotation of skills and are therefore dropping your threat rate.

Shield Slam: Incredibly high induced threat. This is by far the #1 damaging technique of any protection warrior. It crits for about 1.5-2k damage and induces alot of threat. However like revenge it has an incredibly large cooldown and during a fight should be on cooldown always.

Heroic Strike: High threat, based on regular white hit timer.

Devastate: A very interesting talent deep in the protection tree that allows for massive threat dump on mobs in combination with heroic strike. On the global cooldown it applies threat based on a multiplier composed of how many sunders are inflicted on the said target. The amount of threat induced is easily more than the five sunder application. This is an amazing talent that makes threat containment easily controllable on longer fights within the game. VERY raid orriented.

Shield Block: Most people seem to lack the insight as to why blocking with a shield is even remotely useful as compared to dodge and parry. While dodge and parry completely avoid an attack they are completely random and much harder to stack to a suitable percentage. However shield block is very easily stacked to around 24% which with the skill "Shield Block" pops it up to 98-99% chance to happen. Now why does blocking a mere 500 damage from a 4000 damage attack even matter? It doesn't to be honest, however shield block is not for that purpose. In the game there is a mechanic known as crushing blows. This is an attack from a mob that allows for 150% damage to be input on the target. Therefore your regular 4000 damage hit has just become a 6000 damage hit that could possibly crit you if your defense is to low. Now once again you ask why shield block would be useful to stop 6000 damage, it's not. However the mechanic of a crushing blow cannot be induced when the regular attack is dodged, parried, and blocked. So that block that saves you a mesely 500 damage just actually prevented a possibilty of being hit for an extra 50% damage. This skill should without a doubt, ALWAYS BE ON COOLDOWN, 100% OF THE TIME!

Shield Bash: Interupts the casting of a spell and if spec'd properly can silence(waste of talent points in raids, everything is pretty much immune to silence).

Disarm: Not much credit is given to disarm, however some raid bosses and hard hitting mobs can be disarmed, this extremely reducees the damage taken. Example: Attunemen hits for about 3-4k with his weapon, after being disarmed he hits for about 1k damage max.

Concussive Blow: Stun; Good if you get too many mobs, pop it on the mob being focused fire and it should last long enough for the mob to be killed before it wears off. Very easily useable and a great utility tool for controlling the situation.

Intimidating Shout: Learn to use it properly and begin to understand how the mobs are going to run. This fear pretty much makes them run in a straight line from the point of casting. It's 90% controllable and 10% not. A bad fear can easily pull half an instance and wipe the group, however a good fear can easily save an entire group without a doubt.



Talent Spec
The protection tree is pretty much completely straight-forward, however you will always end up with a few points that can be thrown anywhere you want.

This is the general talent spec I would recommend:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TVZZbEtoIMdcest
However this build has 5 left over points which can be applied anywhere.
Good choices to throw these points is:
Improved heroic strike(Strong recommendation)
Cruelty(Weak, your crit won't be stacked enough for it to be noticeable but some people argue otherwise)
Improved disarm(Strong recommendation)
Improved revenge(It's okay, it generates slightly more threat I hear, but like improved shield bash the stun becomes slightly useless when the mobs are unstunnable and you feel like you wasted some talent points)
Try to avoid using improved shield bash, in dueling and 5 mans the silencing effect is undeniably nice to have. However, in raids the mobs are most likely(90%) going to be IMMMUNE to silence therefore tossing two whole talent points out the windoow.

-- Edited by Pinkardi at 15:39, 2007-05-15

-- Edited by Pinkardi at 15:40, 2007-05-15