I've just started doing ICC 25's each week on my warrior so this is a good time to get some deeper knowledge into the class so I don't make noob mistakes. Hoping someone with more experience could answer a few questions I have.
1: Firstly, I've a hard time knowing when it's safe and not safe to use Cleave without risking getting aggro or ****ing something up. For example is it safe to Cleave when adds spawn on Saurfang or the ghouls on LK phase 1? Any big "no no"'s when cleaving or aoe in general?
You cleave everything exept on DB, adds has a buff like hunter pets have that reduce 95% AOE dmg, that inclused cleave so your dmg will be very little, on the other hand you risk draging aggro from blood beast, everytime a blood beast hit someone it give DB rage (he has a purple bar or rage) everytime that bar reach 100 it will throw mark of the fallen champion on someone on the raid, if a person dies with that mark on him it will heal DB for 20% of his max HP, so melees NEVER hit blood beast for that sole reason. On other bosses go ham cleaving but always give tanks 1 or 2 GCDs of agro b4 you start doing cleaves.
2: How come some of the BIS items seem to favor agility over strength? For example Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance instead of Might, or Vereesa's Dexterity over something like Winding Sheet. Does crit affect dps more than AP?
Agi items are for extra crit, most of time you use agi hands, cape, 1 ring (rep str ring + agi arp ring OR rep agi ring + arp str ring) bracers. The str EOF cape is used only when you need to cap expertice which should come from T10 pants + arp neck or glorenzerg.
3: I see some warriors prepot and pop CD's before the pull, and some a few seconds into the pull after trinkets pop. Deathwish and Recklessness both cause a GCD, so it worth using them before the pull or after it in terms of maximum dps? Do I save the cooldowns for Hero/BL if they can only be used once in the fight?
Prepot armor potion for extra 92ap (from t1 fury talent which gives you AP from armor) If you use it on combat you wont be able to use a second one since potions CD count down wont start during combat, so you pre pot because of that.
Recklessnes last 15 secs so pre cast it to secure instant deep wounds right of the bat.
Deathwish should never be precasted, the optimal situation for DW is when your trinkets get activated over an already used heroism. Heroism/BL last 40 secs so you have a nice window to look for the optimal death wish.
4: On paper it looks like Demo Shout barely does anything significant, is it really worth it to keep it up?
Do never waste GCDs on demo shout, it lowers like 550 AP from bosses that have at least 50k attack power (DB 25hc has 77.5k attack power) demo shout is just a complete waste.
5: Is Improved Intercept a really bad talent? I've never seen any warrior take it but I can think of at least a few scenarios where multipe intercepts in a short time could be useful.
Do never take improved intercept but you should take Heroic Fury (talent that resets intercept CD and also act as a trinket to get free of snares and roots) Good on valithria where you get slow a loot and need to stop multiple fire mages casts of "lay waste" the skill that burn mana from the raid, also to move faster from one stack of supressers to another.
On DB ive found myself saving multiple casters by intercepting blood beast for the stun it does.
On LK you can stun valkyrs with intercept
On sindra you can change from side to side faster as needed to DPS icetombs.
On marro i always intercept that bone spike that is most far away and also not being hit by anyone for the same reason and go back to boss by another instant intercept.
On lady youre hitting lady but you can intercept to trash to kill it and even interrupt "hammer" cast that kill most of melees and then go back to boss asap with another intercept.
On PP you can intercept ooze (you need to wait it to cast on someone else ofc otherwise is suicide) and go back to boss asap with another intercept.
And so on, that skill gives you mobility, something very useful if you learn how to use it.
6: This one is stupid but how do I know which abilities are interruptable with pummel or shield bash? Any key abilities I'm looking for to interrupt in ICC?
There is 2 kinds of cast bars. One if normal cast bar that can be interrupted by pummel, shirld bash, kick, etc. The other one cannot be interrupted, to identify its simple. That cast bar has a silver frame arround it, if the silver frame is not there, you can interrupt it.
To know how it looks that silver frame just target yourself and cast mount and you will see the silver frame arround the cast bar.
7: If the tank is a warrior, is it common for the tank to keep SA up?
If a warrior is tanking you can completely ignore SA since prot warriors use Devastate very often which has sunder armor built in it so theres no reason to use Sunder armor if a warrior is tanking, he will take care of it inevitably due to his rotation being something like: Shield slam + devastate + revenge+ devastate+ devastate+ devastate. and repeat. (ofc is a little deeper than that cause devastate can reset shield slam CD but you get the point, they use devastate nonstop.)
That's all I could come up with at the moment