Warriors

Playing a Tank you'll quickly notice two things. Making tiny mistakes will often wipe the Raid! No other role in a raid is punished so badly for making a mistake. On the plus side the best thing about a Warrior is you get to control the Raid if you are Main Tank. Unless you are 100% ready you can demand people wait as they can't pull unless you are ready. One important tip as a Tank is the need to remember what your role is. That is to keep aggro on your assigned targets and manage the damage you are receiving as much as possible. It is not to monitor your health bar. You'll drive yourself mad watching you health bar as you'll go low on health several times in particularly boss fights. Try to concentrate on your role and not worry about your health as that is your healers job not yours.

Whether you want to be a Tank or a Damage Dealing Warrior in a Nemetos Order Raid the first thing you need to remember is your gear must really good. Warriors are really dependent on their gear. You need specific gear for each specific role.

Tanking

To make yourself a successful tank you need the right stats. This is a list of the order in which you should target improving each stat.

• Stamina is obviously the most important stat as it gives you more health. Having health is a good thing as if you have none left you are dead and corpse running ;)
• Armour is the next best stat for a tank. Most damage you will receive is physical and your armour will protect you from taking the full force of any attack.
• Defence protects you from Crushing Blows that together with special attacks off various bosses/mobs are the most likely thing to kill you. Being a tank is all about managing your damage so you take a consistent level of damage and not huge burst damage that catches your healers of guard and unable to heal you before the next blow.
• Block percentage is your protection from critical hits. If you block an attack with a shield it can't be a critical hit.
• Parry is a great defence against physical attacks and should not be ignored.
• Strength improves your attack power generating more threat through more damage while also improving your Block Value reducing the damage from attacks you block.
• Agility improves your dodge chance and gives more armour adding to your ability to survive by avoiding damage.
• Block value is how much of an attack you block that is absorbed.
• Dodge is good at avoiding damage but it has a negative side and thats it doesn't generate any rage when you dodge an attack. This limits your ability to use your spells to create threat. Having too much means you'll stave yourself of rage and loose aggro. Try not to have more then 20%
• More stamina! Stamina on its own won't protect you but having more stamina will make it easier for your healers as they will have more time to heal you before you die.

Pulling

Hunters Pull!!! With Misdirection (the new Hunter ability in Burning Crusade) Hunters are even better at pulling then they were before the expansion. Misdirection causes all aggro the hunter causes on a target when he pulls to go straight to you. The result is you get the initial aggro as if you had pull yourself. Combine this with long range and instant attacks hunters make pulling easy. And the best thing is you get to blame the Hunter if the pull goes wrong! Now even if the Hunter is pulling or you are pulling yourself I recommend a certain order in which you gain that all important aggro at the start. Firstly never charge in unless its 100% safe on mobs and NEVER EVER charge in at the start of a boss fight. You risk running out of range of you healer when Charge bugs and it always does! Particularly on physically large boss you will find yourself behind and not in front of the boss. This can be up to 10 yards further away in some cases! The safest way to pull is put yourself in defensive stance and run at the target as soon as you aggro hit Blood Rage, then self buff (Commanding or Battle Shout). What this will do is generate threat on the boss and all adds. Against a single target I open with a Heroic Strike or Shield Slam as this leave taunt free if I miss against one target or spam Demoralizing Shout a few times to generate threat on all targets.

Talent Builds

The key to any talent build is to maximise its effectiveness in the role you are fulfilling. For Warriors this is one of 3 roles;

• Tanking
• PvP
• DPS in PvE

Tanking Build - 8/10/43

After extensive testing in 5-man and Karazhan I can say without question this is the best tanking talent build in the game by a clear margin. Since the changes to Thunderclap the 3/3 in Improved Thunderclap is amazing for holding aggro on multiple targets and reducing damage by a significant amount. Improved Demoralizing Shout is also an essential talent. The extra threat it causes on targets is very helpful and the damage reduction scales nicely particularly with raid bosses. Some testing on Romulo in Karazhan showed a reduction of damage from 900-1100 to 500-800! Within the protection tree my build always end with 3 spare points. 1 point I have put in Improved Bloodrage and this is extra rage and threat (if you follow my above method of pulling). The other 2 I put into Improved Shield bash as that is my personal preference. This helps against caster/healer trash mobs. You may wish to put these 2 points into improved Taunt instead as this may well just save someone character from a sudden death. Neither of these are useful in most raiding situations though, just the 5-man instances. You could put the 3 points in Improved Revenge instead but this is also useless in raids as the trash/bosses are mostly immune to stuns. 3 points in Tactical Mastery is a safe use for these 3 talent points.

PvP - 35/23/3

While some may look at this build and question why I haven't gone for the popular 31/30 build its totally a personal preference. I agree with the new Stance Mastery ability giving you enough rage for most abilities after a stance change that you typically using in PvP (Overpower, Intercept, Pummel) I just find you maintain your momentum by having the extra 15 rage when you change stances. Piercing Howl is another ability many swear by for PvP. I find its a very situational ability where its only use is against groups of players who aren't Druids. Normally when you find yourself surrounded you are imminently about to die so its a mute opinion. This build gives solid survivability with Iron Will, Second Wind, Commanding Presence, Deathwish with lots of damage and the best debuff in PvP - Mortal Strike.

DPS in PvE - 17/41/3

This is probably more of a Levelling/Questing/Grinding build. Testing it at level 70 with was extremely effective at grinding primals and questing and I'd highly recommend it for efficiency as most mobs died so quickly there was very little downtime. This build is the best option for levelling also having used this myself for periods when I had decent 1H weapons. Spend your first 5 points into Cruelty then work your way up to 2/2 in Impale then 3/3 in Tactical Mastery before pointing all the other points into the Fury Tree as you level.