The Warrior PVP Guide!

Contents Of This Guide:

• 1.0 Basic Warrior PvP Tips
• 2.0 Warrior Races
• 3.0 Keybinds
• 4.0 Professions
• 5.0 Stats
• 6.0 Specs
• 7.0 Common Arena Set-ups
• 8.0 Gear To Aim For
• 9.0 Enchants
• 10.0 Gems
• 11.0 Major Glyphs
• 12.0 Minor Glyphs
• 13.0 Macros
• 14.0 Master PvP Guide

This guide is primarily for Warriors who are fairly new to the Warrior class or to PVP in general. It you are already the Warrior PVP god it probably won't be much help, but everyone else should be able to learn from it.

If you do want to take the next step to PvP Mastery then check out our recommended PvP guide, below.

In addition, you might want to check out other Warrior guides: our Warrior Class Guide, Warrior Leveling Guide, and the specific build pages Arms, Fury, and Protection

1.0 - Warrior PvP Tips

The basic PVP tips:

• Tip #1 - Don't Die!
  When your enemies are focusing their attacks on you, use your defensive abilities and your partner's abilities to help you stay alive.
  
  
• Tip #2 - Don't Let Your Teammates Die!
  Learn to be good at peeling attackers off of your teammates. Use Charge/Intercept and Hamstring to keep enemies off of your healer. Your general damage can force enemies to play defensively and temporarily reduce pressure on your teammates. Here is a video of an excellent example: Dahis 7: 2700+ War/Druid #1 BG9 By Dahis
  
  
• Tip #3 - Don't Let Your Enemy Get Away!
  With your Charges and Snares you should be able to keep your target within melee range.
  
  
• Tip #4 - Use Proper Key Bindings And Movement Keys!
  Use WASD for movement with A and D for strafing. Use your mouse to turn by holding down the right mouse button.
  
  
• Tip #5 - Burst When Your Target Can't Get Healed.
  This is pretty self-explanatory. Don't waste cooldowns on targets that you know won't die. When they are vulnerable, pop everything and force some real pressure.
  
  
• Tip #6 - Sustain Damage When You Know You Can't Burst Them To Death.
  Continue attacking, but don't waste cooldowns on someone who won't die. At this stage in a fight gather Rage, wait for cooldowns to refresh, and refresh Rend.
  
  
• Tip #7 - Keep Your Character In The Center Of The Screen . . .
  This should be self-explanatory. (yes, it's a joke.)
  

2.0 - Races

Alliance:

• Dwarf:
  • Stoneform : Activate to gain immunity to poison, disease, and bleed (will also remove these types of debuffs); +10% Armor; Lasts 8 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.
  • The other racials are to snooze over, as far as PvP is concerned.
    
• Gnome: Size and Escape Artist are the reasons that some say the Gnome is the best of the Alliance PvP races.
  • Escape Artist : Escape the effects of any immobilization or movement speed reduction effect. Instant cast. 1 min, 45 sec cooldown.
  • None of the other racials are useful for warriors.
  • A Gnome's small size is useful as it makes it hard on people who use the mouse to target their opponenets.
    
• Human: The Human Every Man and Perception skill make for a good PvP choice.
  • Every Man for Himself : Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This is very useful.
  • Perception : Increases your Stealth (Rogue/Druid) detection, passive. Can be very handy.
  • Mace Specialization : Increases expertise with maces and two-handed maces by 3. Limited use.
  • Sword Specialization : Increases expertise with swords and two-handed swords by 3. Limited use.
    
• Night Elf:
  • Shadowmeld : Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Generally pretty useless in the Arena, but has its uses elsewhere when a rest is necessary.
  • Quickness : Reduces the chance that melee and ranged attackers will hit you by 2%. This is more useful for tanking than PvP

Horde:

• Tauren:
  • War Stomp "Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yds for 2 sec." This is a very useful interrupt.
  • Endurance "Base Health increased by 5%" - More health is always good.
    
    
• Undead:
  • Will of the Forsaken removes any Charm, Fear, or Sleep effect. This is the one useful PvP ability for the Undead, but it's a nice one.
    
    
• Troll: Probably the weakest Warrior PvP Horde race, as far as the racials are concerned.
  • Berserking "Increases your attack speed by 10% to 30%. At full health the speed increase is 10% with a greater effect up to 30% if you are badly hurt when you activate Berserking. Lasts 10 sec." Note that you have to be near death for the speed increase to be at its max. Occasionally good for those "last ditch efforts."
  • Da Voodoo Shuffle (Passive) "Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%." Any ability which reduces slows is a good one.
    
    
• Orc:
  • Blood Fury "Increases attack power by 322 at 80. Lasts 15 sec." Very nice, even outside of PvP.
  • Hardiness "Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 15%." Reducing stuns is always a good thing. It annoys the Rogues even more.
  • Axe Expertise - useful if you're taking the PoleAxe talent in Arms.

3.0 - Keybinds

The use of keybinds allows you to react to situations far more quickly than with the mouse. Leave the mouse for turning and the occasional clicking.

• Use the W-A-S-D keys for movement with A and D for strafing (moving side to side.)
• Use your mouse to turn by holding down the right mouse button.
• Bind abilities to the 6 keys on the far left of the top keyboard row: `,1,2,3,4,5, and to Q,E,R,T,F, & G. When combined with Shift, Ctrl, and Alt you have a lot of buttons available to you for binding.
• Start with just a few binds and practice them relentlessly. Add more as you get comfortable with them. Your goal is to be a fast touch typist with your keybinds.

This is probably the single most important thing to do that will improve your PVP skill.

Of all the classes warriors might require the most instinctive play as opposed to actual well-thought out strategies. How much time played seems to drastically improve my abilities as opposed to training myself for specific fights.

I sometimes use a Nostromo gaming pad, sometimes not, I've also experimented with special macro set-ups for specific classes, but either way I found that whether I could mash the required key before my opponent could react decided most fights before they even began.

Hitting charge before you’re forced into ‘combat’ status, mashing intercept to catch the sprinting rogue and following it up with hamstring, intervene a team-mate to gain ground or help them fight off another player, all these are determined by how well your hands know what you’re doing as opposed to conscious thought patterns.

Whether you’re Arms, Fury, or Protection, if you can master your keys and hit them in proper succession with your eyes closed, you’ve probably reached the level where you need to worry more about gear than experience.

4.0 - Professions

Benefits from professions. These are the special benefits you get from having a high level in the professions and they're significantly better than anything you will find outside of that profession. Note that, in most cases, you'll lose those benefits if you lose that profession.

• Blacksmithing: 2 free sockets.
  
• Jewel Crafting: 3 BoP epic prismatic gems.
  
• Mining: +50 stam, not affected by percent based buffs. Increased in the 3.2 patch.
  
• Leatherworking: Gives the option for 90 stamina or 114 AP to wrist.
  
• Enchanting: Gives ring enchants for 24 stamina each or 32 AP each (total 48 stam or 64 AP, or one of each).
  
• Inscription: Shoulder enchant for 104 AP and 15 stam.
  
• Skinning: Gives 25 crit rating. Increased in the 3.2 patch.
  
• Herbalism: Gives a heal for 2k/5 sec on a 3 min Cool Down. Increased in the 3.2 patch.
  
• Tailoring: Powerful cloak enchant (swordguard embroidery) which procs for 300 AP for 15 seconds.
  
• Engineering: Add use onto gloves for 340 haste, Or you could add a rocket onto gloves.

   

5.0 - Stats

• Strength, Crit rating, and Stamina are your primary stats.
  
  
• Resilience is something you will want to get alot of. It's been nerfed a bit with the 3.2 patch, so you'll need to get more of it to get the same resistance to critcal attacks as before. PvP gear has this stat, PvE gear does not. So you will have to do some balancing between the better damage stats of PvE gear and the better defensive stats of the PvP gear.
  
  
• Hit Rating- You will need to get 164 (5%) hit rating to be capped for Arms PvP. To achieve this you will probably have to get the "Victory" items instead of the "Triumph" items. You can also substitute PvE gear or hit gems to reach the cap if you have to.
  
• Armor Penetration- This is another good stat you should aim for.

6.0 - Warrior Talent Specs

After the Fury nerf in 3.1, Arms is the PvP spec again. We're at 3.2, as of this writing, and the hot builds remain to be seen. The basics will never change, tho. If you know your character better than the other guy knows his then you have a edge. If you have that and you know his charatcer at least as well as he does then you have a big edge.

If you never bother to learn the other classes then you'll never rank his in any PvP system.

Season 6 builds. Season 7 will come later, as data comes in.

• 57/14/0 - You can also put some points in Improved Hamstring or Tactical Mastery.
• 60/11/0 - You can also put points in Improved Hamstring if you want.

Most warriors go axe weapon spec. Axe will be better unless your mace proc puts you at 100% armor ignored.

7.0 - Common Warrior Arena Teams

Basic Arena Tips:

A good arena team has to communicate.

• Use macros to call out stratgy and specific actions so that your teammates know what is happening.
• Healers should call out heals that are going out.
• Mages should call out crowd control (CC) that is going out, (such as sheeping the other side.)
• Call out CC that is coming in, damage taken, kill opportunities, as well as other important information.

Another important thing is to always know what's around you. You should know where to line-of-sight your enemies, and know where they can line-of-sight you. You want to know where your enemies and teammates are at all times. Right clicking a portrait and using the raid symbols can often be a huge help to track movement. For example, put a star on your partner(s) and a skull on the opposition.

Advanced Arena Tips:

You must find a perfect balance between doing damage, being aware of your surroundings, and not getting tunnel vision. If you focus on just one person to kill, CC, or heal, you often lose track of what's going on around you. Try to be aware of everything that's happening. Focus Frames and Unit Frames coupled with Healing/Damage Macros and Focus Macros will greatly aid you in this department.

Coordination between teammates is important, especially when quickly switching targets to exploit an enemy player who has gotten out-of-position or who has used a PvP trinket/large cooldown at a bad time.

Practice with your team and develop complex strategies. Simply using basic strategies like “attack the healer” will not get you to the top of the Arena ladder.

Again, the more you play together the better your reactions to enemy action will become. Just as in any other battle situation, having the ability and knowledge to counter an opponent’s attack is crucial to your success.

Use Focus Target to have a better idea of what is going on. Combine Focus Target with macros to play more efficiently. Focus can be keybound and it can also be set to a specific click with the Arena addon Gladius.

-2v2-

1. Arms Warrior/ Restoration Druid
   

-3v3-

1. Arms Warrior/ Retribution Paladin/ Restoration Druid
2. Arms Warrior/ Holy Paladin/ Unholy Death Knight
3. Arms Warrior/ Unholy Death Knight/ Restoration Druid
   

-5v5-

1. Arms Warrior/ Holy Paladin/ Discipline Priest/ Elemental Shaman/ Frost Mage
2. Arms Warrior/ Retribution Paladin/ Destruction Warlock/ Discipline Priest/ Elemental Shaman

8.0 - Gear To Aim For

Patch 3.2 is here and so is a new PvP season. One interesting change for arenans is that players now have to compete, and rank, in all arena brackets to get the arena weapons and shoulders. Other items can be had with just rating in one bracket.

Honor gear from the BGs is a good starting point until youi can build up enough arena rating to get that gear.

• Most Warriors work to get the 5/5 PvP set.
• Some have the 4/5 PvP set with a PvE in the 5th slot.
• Make sure you at least have the PvP Gloves.
• You can change in some more PvE gear for higher damage, but make sure you have an ok amount of resilience.

9.0 - Enchants

Beneficial Enchants, in order of best (most expensive) to decent. Special requirements are noted.

• Helm:
  • Arcanum of Torment or
  • Arcanum of Triumph
• Shoulders:
  • Master's Inscription of the Axe (Inscription 400)
  • Greater Inscription of the Axe or
  • Inscription of Triumph
• Cloak:
  • Major Agility
• Chest:
  • Powerful Stats or
  • Exceptional Resilience
• Wrist:
  • Greater Assault
• Hands:
  • Crusher
• Waist:
  • Eternal Belt Buckle
• Legs:
  • Icescale Leg Armor
• Feet:
  • Tuskarr's Vitality
  • Greater Assault
• Rings:
  • Assault (Enchanting 400)
• Two-Hander:
  • Berserking
  • Massacre
  • Greater Savagery

10.0 - Gems

Meta

• Chaotic Skyflare Diamond

Normal

• Red - Bold Scarlet Ruby

Yellow

• Smooth Autumn's Glow
• Rigid Autumn's Glow

Orange

• Inscribed Monarch Topaz
• Etched Monarch Topaz

Purple

• Sovereign Twilight Opal

Green

• Jagged Forest Emerald
• Vivid Forest Emerald

11.0 - Major Glyphs

Here are some good Major Glyphs:

• Mortal Strike
• Bladestorm
• Sweeping Strikes
• Rending
• Hamstring

12.0 - Minor Glyphs

And some good Minor Glyphs:

• Charge
• Battle
• Bloodrage

13.0 - Macros

• Spell Reflect: - Replace the weapon/shield names with the names of your weapon and shield.

#showtooltip Spell Reflection
/cast [stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Spell Reflection; [stance:3] Defensive Stance
/equip [modifier:ctrl] Nameoftwohanderhere
/equip nameofshieldhere
/equipslot 16 nameofonehanderhere

• Pummel/Shield Bash: - This macro will Pummel if you have a 2 hander, and switches to Berserker stance. If you have a shield equipped it will Shield Bash.

#showtooltip Pummel
/cast [equipped:Shields, stance:1/2] Shield Bash; [noequipped:Shields, stance:1/2] Berserker Stance; [stance: 3] Pummel

• Intercept/Focus: - Changes to Berserker stance if you're not in it. Then uses Intercept. Hold shift and it intercepts your focus target.

#showtooltip Intercept
/cast berserker stance
/cast [target=focus, modifier:shift] Intercept; Intercept

• Charge/Focus: - Changes to Battle Stance if you're not in it. Casts Charge. Hold shift and it charges your focus target.

#showtooltip Charge
/cast battle stance
/cast [target=focus, modifier:shift] Charge; Charge

• Bladestorm Start/End - First use will cast Bladestorm. Second use will cancel it.

#showtooltip Bladestorm
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/cast Bladestorm

• Full Execute - This macro will remove the Sudden Death buff if a target is below 20% health so you can get a harder hitting Execute cast.

#showtooltip Execute
/script if (UnitHealth("target")/UnitHealthMax("target") < .2) then CancelUnitBuff("player","Sudden Death") end
/cast Execute

• Enraged Regeneration Cacenlaura - This macro will cancel Enraged Regeneration so that Berserker Rage can be cast.

/cancelaura Enraged Regeneration
/cast Berserker Rage

• Rend - This macro will perform Rend if you are in Battle or Defensive Stance and will switch you to Battle Stance if you are in Berserker Stance.

#showtooltip Rend
/cast [stance:1/2] Rend; [stance:3] Battle Stance

• Shield Wall - This macro will equip your shield and cast Shield Wall. Replace the weapon/shield names with your own weapon/shield names.

#showtooltip Shield Wall
/cast [stance:2,equipped:Shields] Shield Wall; [stance:1/3] Defensive Stance
/equip [modifier:ctrl] Nameoftwohanderhere
/equip nameofshieldhere
/equipslot 16 nameofonehanderhere

• Shield Slam - This macro will equip your 1 hander and shield and cast Shield Slam. Replace the weapon/shield names with your own weapon/shield names.

#showtooltip Shield Slam
/cast [equipped:Shields] Shield Slam
/equip [modifier:ctrl] Nameoftwohanderhere
/equip nameofshieldhere
/equipslot 16 nameofonehanderhere

• Thunder Clap - This macro will cast Thunder Clap if you're in Battle or Defensive Stance and will switch you to Battle Stance if you are in Berserker Stance.

#showtooltip thunder clap
/cast [stance:1/2] thunder clap; [stance:3] battle stance

• Intervene Healer - This will change you to Defensive Stance if you're not in it, and cast Intervene to your healer.

#showtooltip Intervene
/cast defensive stance
/cast [target=healername] intervene

Other macros:

Macros to make stance switching easier:

#showtooltip Disarm
/cast Defensive Stance
/cast Disarm

#showtooltip Mocking Blow
/cast battle stance
/cast mocking blow

#showtooltip Overpower
/cast battle stance
/cast overpower

#showtooltip Recklessness
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Recklessness

#showtooltip Retaliation
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Retaliation

#showtooltip revenge
/cast defensive stance
/cast revenge

#showtooltip Taunt
/cast defensive stance
/cast taunt

#showtooltip Whirlwind
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Whirlwind

#showtooltip Shattering throw
/cast battle stance
/cast shattering throw

This helps saving keybind space as well as time. If you're in the stance it works just like your spell, but if you're not in that stance it functions as your stance button. With "#showtooltip" macros make sure you select the "?" as your icon.

Master PvP Guide

Want more? Do you need to know the fine details to achieving Maximum Pwnage? A full blown PvP guide will not only give you the above tips, but will also include strrategies against all other classes, how to work with other classes, how to master the Battlegrounds, get your arena ranking to the top so you can get the best gear, and much more. . It will take you to the next level of PvP mastery.

Get your Master PvP guide here.