Introductions
[This is not finished, it has not been spell checked and several sections are missing]
Please send me a private message with suggestions,grammer errors, or whatever else you feel could improve this guide.
Are you sick of playing PvP on the PvE realms but find Blackrock too unforgiving with its harsh learning curve and toxic community? I have met many players like you that had issues with getting into Blackrock. My vision for Blackrock is that everyone can have a pleasurable and competitive PvP experience regardless of their skill level and now that all of the best gear on Blackrock is available for free, the time feels right to make this guide.
After reading this guide you will hopefully have learned:
- What the right Gems,Enchants and race is for you.
- What gear you should be wearing on Blackrock.
- What skills you should be using and how you should be using them.
- How you should tackle playing on Blackrock and enjoying yourself.
- The General strategy against all classes.
- Ten helpful tips for new warriors while playing SoloQue.
While this guide will hopefully make it easier for players to play on Blackrock you will still need to pratice pratice pratice.
This guide will contain Blackrock specific parts that does not exist on Deathwing & Ragnaros, they will be tagged with "[Blackrock]".
Table of Content
About me
Character setup
Race
Talents
Glyph
Gear [Blackrock]
Gems and seeming strategy
Enchants
Macros
Warrior abilities and you
Dealing damage
Waiting with Overpower
Heroic Striking yourself to victory
Warrior Cooldowns and their use
The smaller Cooldowns
The medium Cooldowns
The heavy Cooldowns
SoloQue[Blackrock]
The right Mentality [Blackrock]
The plan [Blackrock]
10 general tips [Blackrock]
Having fun and general advice [Blackrock]
About me
I've played on several different warriors over the time I've played on Warmane/molten/AT after my breaks I usually had to make a new account for various reasons. I was r1 warrior on DW during a small period before the wipe and have played 2.4+ in all brackets on Blackrock/AT.
I play Warrior for fun nowadays and mostly just SQ or isle. Usually play another class.
I play PvE on DW every now and then very casually.
I play dota 2 and my Favourite hero is Qop (Vote Qop arcana).
Feel free to contact me Ingame, Caracan(war) or Caracin(pal) are usually the chars I am on when aim playing Blackrock. I can watch a game or two you play and give you some tips.
Character setup
Race
Disclaimer: Races that aren't listed are races I don't consider while playing warrior.
Alliance
1. Human Recommended
2. Gnome
3. Night Elf
Human: Two PvE trinkets, increase of damage.
Gnome: Snare & Root removal, can be useful but if you aren't up against significant roots or snares its useless.
Night elf: Used to dodge spells and make the enemy lose their target on you. 2 min cooldown and possibility of failure makes it unreliable
Human comes out on top in consistency.
Horde
1.Orc Recommended
2.Undead
Orc, Extra expertise with axe,Stun reduction, Ability: blood fury, Increase AP 2 min CD.
Undead, Fear removal that puts your medallion on a 30 sec CD. It can be moderately useful in certain situations.
Orc comes out on top in consistency.
Talents
Standard warrior talents most commonly used by high rated warriors.
Spoiler:Show
Some setups can benefit from running 3/3 Improved hamstering by dropping 3 points from blood crazed. An example would be Lock, Resto, Warr, you are missing a dispell so sticking to targets will be hard and both your lock and healer are targets you want to peel for.
Weapon Choice
Sword
Mace
Axe Recommended
Sword is good against low armour to get those burst moment and since you wont usually stay on a low armoured target an extra swing could win you the game.
Mace is good against heavily armoured targets
Axe is good in all situations and provides extra crit damage which is a great boost to your burst and overall damage.Recommended
Axe is the most consistent option.
Glyph of Mortal Strike ( Recommended, Straight up 10% damage increase on one of your primary abilities)
Glyph of Rending ( Recommended, A lot of global cooldowns and rage saved especially on targets you can't sit on because of the increased duration)
Glyph of Execution ( Recommended, Straight up more damage and you can't rage starve yourself with execute)
Glyph of Sweeping strikes (Removes rage cost, semi useful I don't often use it.)
Glyph of Hamstering (Same as the talent can be used if you play a comp where you think it could be useful)
Gear [Blackrock]
This will just be a quick summary of the gear I recommend you should wear when playing on AT (Remember that Blackrock gear sometimes change when they allow players to equip HC trinkets for example.)
5/5 Wrathful gladiators set
Neck: RimeTooth Pendant / ARP pvp neck for extra resilience
Cloak: Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape
Bracer: Polar Bear Claw Bracers
Belt: Flesh-Shaper's Gurney Strap
Boots: Blood soaked saronite stompers / Wrath boots for extra resilience
Ring1: FrostBrood Sapphire Ring
Ring2: Ashen Band Of Endless Vengeance
Trinket1: Deaths verdict/ DBW ( DBW if your focus target is plate/mail )
Trinket2: Whispering Fanged skull
Weapon: Standard Wrath axe 2h and 1h Axe / shield.
Ranged: Gluths throwing knife
Gems and gemming strategy
The gems you want to be using are:
Meta: 21 Agility and 3% increased critical damage
Red: 20 Armour Penetration Rating
Yellow: 20 Resilience or Hit gems if your gear does not let you reach the hit cap ( 164 rating or 5% )
One Blue gem slot to active meta: I personally recommend 10+ stats prismatic gem in legs but there are variations.
The general rule to follow is: If you can get the bonus with reds and yellows only then get it. If not then socket resilience or ARP depending on what you need. One hand weapon should have a resilience gem because you will be using it when you are in danger.
Do NOT socket stamina gems.
Spoiler:Show
Enchants
Head: 50 Attack Power 20 Resilience
Shoulder: 40 AttackPower 15 resilience
Cloak: +22 Agility
Chest: +20 Resilience
Bracer: + Attack Power
Gloves: 20 Hit or 44 AttackPower
Belt: Belt bucket, extra gem slot.
Legs: 75 AttackPower 22 crit
Boots: 15 stamina and minor movement speed increase
2h: Berserking
1h: Lifeward
Shield: 12+ resilience
Macros
Disclaimer: I do not take credit for the invention of any of these macros.
StartAttack Macros
Spoiler:Show
Charge / Intercept macros
Spoiler:Show
All in one interrupt macro
Spoiler:Show
Reflect Macro
Spoiler:Show
Bladestorm macro
Spoiler:Show
Focus macros
Spoiler:Show
Heroic strike stopper
Spoiler:Show
Berserker Rage
Spoiler:Show
Defensive stance and shield block
Spoiler:Show
Warrior abilities and you
Dealing Damage
As a warrior you have three debuffs you usually want to keep on the kill target inside of an arena.
1.Mortal Strike - 50% Healing reduce, always keep this up.
2.Hamstering/Howl
3.Rend (Rend can sometimes be more important than slow.)
After you have these abilities active on your target you can proceed to start dishing out damage.
1. Mortal strike
2. Execute
3. Overpower (Cast Overpower instead of Execute if your target is currently casting or you have been saving Overpower for to long (see Waiting with Overpower)).
Dealling damage in defensive stance
Even in defensive stance you should try and keep up the mentioned debuffs above. ( Motal strike, Rend, and howl because you cant use hamstering)
Defensive stance unlocks several new abilities that are useful to you while fighting in it.
1. Revenge is your biggest hitter in defensive stance and you can use it if you block a attack.
2. Shield slam does not deal alot of damage but dispels 1 magic effect. If your lucky you can get
important magic effects such as: Innervate,Sacred shield, Power word: Shield etc
3. Sunder armor - Can be useful sometimes but not very often
Waiting with Overpower
Taste for Blood
Whenever your Rend ability causes damage, you have a 100% chance of allowing the use of your Overpower ability for 9 sec. 1 charge. This effect will not occur more than once every 6 sec. (Important sidenote is that this will not proc if rend is absorbed)
This means in theory that you can wait 6 seconds before casting the overpower.
But why wait with casting Overpower? Its because of this talent.
Unrelenting Assault - Reduces the cooldown of your Overpower and Revenge abilities by 4 sec and increases the damage done by both abilities by 20%. In addition, if you strike a player with Overpower while they are casting, their magical damage and healing will be reduced by 50% for 6 sec.
This means that you want to cast Overpower when your target is casting and you have a 6 second window after your taste for blood proc to get it on their cast. (Important sidenote is that you can have a Overpower focus macro to hit casters you aren't necessarily trying to kill, the healer for example.)
When Not to wait with Overpower
1. Your target is not a caster (Obviously)
2. You won't be able to stick on your target for very long, a good example would be frost mages.
3. You think you will be able to kill your target. For example Overpowering a target inside a stun.
Heroic Striking yourself to victory
Heroic strike adds a lot of damage and does not cost a global cooldown to use. This ability however consumes a lot of rage and can in the worst case scenario leave you completely rage starved. That's why its important to know when you can use it.
When to Heroic Strike Spam
1. You are getting trained. You will pretty much have unlimited rage, heroic spam away (remember to do it even in defensive stance.)
2. When you're hitting a warlock (You won't get rage starved at all)
3. Mages (keep heroic strike up so when you get close you get the extra damage in on the mage. (cancel heroic strike when you swap stance.))
4. Druids without a form ( tree / Moonkin etc )
5. Rogues / ferals
6. Prot warriors (unless you notice he runs more resilience and your rage is getting low)
7. Enhancement shamans/Bm hunts are usually very squishy.
When to sometimes add a Heroic Strike
1. Priests. Heroic strike should be on your mind but you might actually run out of rage doing it if you're unlucky with crits ( Many priests on Blackrock run a insane amount of resilience)
2. Hunter if he isn't letting you stay on him.
3. Just used a execute and rage is still high.
4. You simply have a lot of excess rage from hitting on your target (most likely they run low resilience or you had a crit spree)
5. Your target is in danger and you don't have an execute proc.
Potential damage fillers
Mocking Blow (This does not work on Blackrock)
1. Use this on targets that have an absorb of some kind and you need to get the rend tick but mortal strike is on cooldown.
2. If there are not any absorbs in the game you can use it whenever you feel you need that extra damage.
Heroic Throw
1. Use this on targets that have an absorb of some kind and you need to get the Rend tick but Mortal Strike is on cooldown.
2. I would save it to try and secure a kill. Combo it up with a throw+HeroicThrow or Shattering throw+Heroic throw. These damage surprisingly much and can end the game for you.
Thunderclap
1. The only use is when they are dead-ranging your charges and intercept and you want any damage to land on them.
(Dead ranging as in they are standing in the zone where you cant charge them because they are to close but to far away to hit )
Warrior cooldowns and their use
The smaller cooldowns
Charge
One second stun and brings you to your target.
1. If you see someone jumping wait until they are about to land before charging.
2. You can use it to interrupt casters spells then return to your original target.
3. If you're charging a target with high dodge (Rogue etc) then be sure to apply Mortal strike first so they don't dodge it.
Intercept
Same as charge but the stun duration is longer.
Important to note is that it does DR stuns like druids bash, so if he tries to bash then clone, it will fail.
Spell Reflection
Pretty straight forward spell to use. Reflect CC or heavy hitting damage such as Chaos bolt or Lava burst etc.
Don't use reflect too early because they will stop casting and use a trash spell instead.
Sometimes players will try to fake, depending on your MS it can be a guessing game if they are going to cast it or not.
Intervene
Brings you to a friendly target and redirects one physical hit.
1. Great defensive cooldown. If you're in danger just intervene back to your healer by the pillar.
2. Can be used offensively if your teammate is in a position where you could charge your target, but you are not.
3. Lastly it can simply be a good way to get a charge or intercept on a target you're hitting by intervening your ally then charging back.
4. intervening your feared hpal can keep him from getting sapped.
5. If you see a rouge running towards your healer it's a good chance he will try to blind/gouge so It's an opportunity to try and intervene.
6. If your healer is getting focused by a warrior and his mortal strike is falling of a intervene can land you stealing the mortal strike from your healer.
The medium cooldowns
Disarm
Disarms the enemy making them unable to attack with their main hand.
1. Try to disarm melees burst cds, Rogues dance, Warrs bladestorm, Ret wings Etc.
2. If the opponent warrior uses Bladestorm he is unable to refresh his Mortal Strike, in order to take advantage of this you can Disarm him just before his Bladestorm has finished so that he can not refresh Mortal Strike.(This only works if the opponents Mortal Strike is expiring during his Bladestorm) Be warned though they might cancel Bladestorm early in order to avoid this
Sweeping Strikes
1. Can be used to punish casters that aren't controlling their pets properly
2. Can be a okay idea to use when your target is huddling with the healer at a pillar.
3. Obviously can be used with bladestorm to increase the damage if there are multi targets.
Blood Rage
1. Can be used before execute to get that extra damage in.
2. Can be used as a failsafe against rage starvation.
Bladestorm
Removes snares and makes you immune to all forms of crowd control. Meanwhile your in this state you cant use abilities but deal damage to everyone close to you. You can still autoswing.
1. Nice to use with sweeping strikes if there are multi targets when you are storming.
2. If a dk is peeling you off your target you can always try to spell reflect bladestorm to see if he grips himself. Swap to 2 hander inside bladestorm if he does fall for it.
3. Knockaways does not work on you when you are bladestorming.
4. Aborting bladestorm early on a healer to get one if his casts with Overpower can be a smart idea.
Shield Block
Gives you 100% block chance essentially blocking every melee hit ( including hunters )
1. Revenge becomes available to you if you block once, deals a lot of damage.
2. Shield block can be used against caster cleaves with pets to keep pressure up in defensive stance. ( treants, fiends etc )
3. If you are on a healer and a melee and/or hunter is on you then it is a good idea to shield block while turning to look at them while spam revenge into the healer.
Heroic Throw
Ranged attack that decent damage.
1. Avoid using just to increase the damage you are dealing
2. Try to secure a kill with it from ranged ( combo it with throw or shattering throw )
3. Can be used to destroy absorbs so you can get rend procs.
Intimidation shout
Physical fear in a AOE ( cant be dispelled but can be removed by tremor totem.)
1. Breaks from damage be careful
2. Can be used to fear the priest shadow fiend ( watch out the priest can put fear ward on it )
The heavy Slowdown
Shield Wall
Reduces damage taken by 60%
1. Cant be used if you are dismantled ( you can use it if you are disarmed )
2. Not much to say straight up damage reduce. Yay.
Recklessness
Next three hits will crit you take more damage. You are immune to fear during its duration.
1. Try to avoid popping it while you are under pressure.
2. Cancel it if they get you in a stun with it.
3. Completely pointless if a hunter uses crit immunity.
Retaliation
Counters every melee hit with your own.
1. Murders fast hitting classes, can be used defensively to make them stop hitting you if you are all out of cooldowns (Retal puts Shield wall/reck on a short CD)
2. If a hpally is hitting you to stack debuff you can stop him momentarily with retal, also gets you a hit or two off.
Shattering Throw
1. Destroys all immune effects ( If a target has both iceblock and Blessing of Protection it destroys both )
2. Reduces targets hit by it armour by 30% ( Combo with heroic throw makes throw deal more damage)
3. Avoid using shattering throw to try and secure a kill if you aren't sure you will get it ( Only if they have Immune effects) else try to use it when you cant reach your target and its looking like a potential kill.
Enraged Regeneration
1. Stops you from using Berserker rage during its duration.
2. Can be used to help against pressure teams so you can stay aggressive.
3. If you have no enrage effect you can use berserker rage to active enraged regeneration.
Solo Que[Blackrock]
Solute is a very popular form of pvp on Blackrock. Three random players get matched with three others. Before it was a requirement to be At least One healer One melee and One caster in each team. Right now its One healer and two random Dps in each team.
The right Mentality [Blackrock]
Because of the very nature of a random queue system that requires teamplay and coordination the player playing soloque can easily be put on tilt when his teammate gets globaled five games in a row and he loses 1 hour of progress in 10 minutes because of some ****** **** *****.
Pardon what I meant to say was, because of some miscommunication between the two players some games simply makes you frustrated. The toxic behaviour this breeds is only natural and I can shamefully admit that vive let of some steam on players. This behaviour isn't exclusive to competitive random systems just look at some of the most popular games out there: League, data, counter strike go.
So what to do? Personally I think the best way to tackle this is to simply
1. Tell him what you would do to his mother( if you must )
2. Ignore him.
Having a big argument over what happened usually just tilts you more and distracts you from the next game.
The plan [Blackrock]
Before the arena starts a good way to to increase the chance of winning is to have a general plan. You can ask what they would think is a good target or you can make the plan yourself the most important part is that you are all on the same page. A frost mage that knows you will be going to try and zerg a resto shaman very differently compared to a mage trying to CC him.
10 general tips [Blackrock]
1. Both shamans and Priests are healers that are easily killed with a swap since they are easy to stick on. Hpallies and Resto druids can be slightly trickier.
2. Warlocks are targets you deal a lot of damage to, swapping to pet can be a good idea though if you face a hpal and your team has no purge for beacon it will usually not work. Be sure to know where the warlocks port is so he cant resummon it for free.
3. If you play on a map where the warlock jumps off the highground to try and lure you down so he can port up it can be a good idea to swap/fake swap target.
4. Hunter teams usually go you unless you have a mage. Equip slightly more ressi against hunter teams
5.Interuppting gargoyle is usually a good idea
6. Root is usually used by resto druids to make you waste reflect so he can securely cyclone you.
7. Rogues are very easily gibbed. Training a rogue at low rating usually gives you a free win.
8. MM Hunters pets are very vital for them killing their pet hurts them a lot. ( If he tries to revive it in a deterrence you can interrupt it with shield bash)
9. Warriors can solo priests, even really experienced priests can easily fall if you get a UA on them and they arent getting proper peels.
10. Against Lock ele sham they will usually go you. try to be in defensive stance everytime they use their heavy hitters (lava burst,chaos bolt etc).
Having fun and general advice [Blackrock]
1. Train professions at the profession vendor, you get skill as you play soloque. At max level of the profession you gain the extra attributes from having it. The npc that trains you also have a tab for the materials you need to make it. I would suggest getting Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing.
2. Finding a 2v2 partner is hard when you don't have any previous rating. Either play with a friend or stick to soloque until you have improved is my advice. (2v2 has a higher learning curve)
3. There is a transmog system that lets you transmog every item in the game regardless if your cloth or plate. 1 hand sword can look like a fist weapon etc. Check the blackrock forums for a full explanation. Some gear transmogs require rating so set your goal and go for it!
4. Isle of queldanas is a world pvp zone ( Be warned the max limit of a group there is 3 so going alone is usually a bad idea.)
5. Don't take any flame to heart usually they aren't even right, just focus on your own game. ( Though just like MOBAs after a while you develop the same attitude towards other players.
6. If you ever get bored dont forget that there are 10 classes to try! I would recommend Paladin as a great starter class. ( Might make a guide for it).
7. Slight warning if you Duoque instead of soloqueing you will most likely face a lot better players on average than you do in soloque.
8. If you are very new to pvp head out to the duel area and duel, this way you can get a basic understanding about what that class has for abillities and what to watch out for.
9. If you ever feel like you don't want to play on the warrior because you feel ashamed that you've played badly you can change your name using the command .U customize. ( .u changefaction also exists ) That way if you ever feel demotivated because of other players you can just get a fresh start with the same raiting.
10. If you are getting upset, take a break. Never helps to be mad.
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Member
[Guide]Arms warrior PvP, Release the caracan!
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Member
Sick guide m8 i r8 8/8 sorry im l8 to congratul8 but i str8 up apreci8 this guide i cant w8 to convers8 with you m8
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Member
Great guide and up to date to the server's state. Hoping this gets stickied as there are lots of outdated guide in the sticky section.
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Member
Actually I still like more the guide written by Medios, but this one is quite decent.
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Member
Ive also read it and while his guide has some good points there are also things i flat out disagree with hence this guide was created.
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Member
I don't get it. Most of your guide speaks about things which are already covered in Medios one without giving a different point of view.
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Member
(Off topic) Trying to figure out who Medios is on the forums and what thread you are refering to :/ I'll read this guide later when i have time :)
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Member
Meh, he has changed his forum name.
Btw:
http://forum.warmane.com/showthread....s-Arms-warrior
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Member
Medios only talks about 2s(war/pal) and duels and caters mostly to molten's meta (mocking blow, not using execute glyph) while this talks about blackrock's solo queue system which might be new to a lot of people in the server. This guide's explanation on UA can actually be better for newer players as well.
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Member
Not going to give a huge wall of text where i explain the differences between our guides so il give you three points where the guides differ.
1. Stamina gems arent recommended in my guide and are usually the sign of a bad player.
2. Talent trees are different and so are the glyphs.
3. and my guide does not recommend this from his rotation summary
While his guide is very nicely done some of the information is sketchy or wrong.• It's best to use Thunderclap ONLY when your rage is 70-100 as a filler.
• You can start with Heroic Throw if you want, it costs no rage.
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Member
Thunderclap is very useful to kill the snakes from the hunter's snake trap.
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Member
I see I'm being talked about in this guide which I came by, accidently. I'm afraid Rerinroll is correct in his assumption. I've learned different things while playing on AT and some of the things I wrote have become arguable in my current PoV. I commend you for this good guide, Rerin, and about my guide, there are some things I should've changed now that I got to know the better tactics of proper warrior playstyle. It's just that I don't feel encouraged about changing it since I feel like my guide has become something more of a relic and went inactive. I noticed you said something about Stamina gems. I don't recall recommending stamina gems in my guide. If you meant arpen+stam, then why? I still don't get why it's not good?
Good guide all in all. Keep up the good work.
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