Warriors have always existed in the World of Warcraft and it is a reliable class that can take lots of damage before going down. However, in WoW the Warrior have more than one type of fighting styles; it doesn’t have to be the defensive type that is common in other MMORPGs. The Warrior is a very gear dependant class but on the other hand has a very huge choice of equipment; The Warrior is also one of the few classes that can wear plate armor.

The Warrior has a red Rage bar which is similar to a mana bar that spellcasters use. Rage is used to execute abilities and during combat the Warrior generates Rage. The Rage generation is based on the damaged dealt/taken, you can also use different abilities or items to generate more Rage. After combat the Rage bar slowly fades to 0. That's the reason, why you shouldn't shield the warrior (note for priests, paladins).

The Warrior has a choice of three different combat stances; depending on which stance you choose different abilities will become available to you. The first one, Battle Stance, is mainly used when soloing with your Warrior; it has both defensive and offensive abilities. The second, Defensive Stance, is mainly used when the Warrior wants to act as a group’s main tank. It gives the warrior defensive abilities and a bonus to the defense rating. The third one, Berserker Stance, offers a lot of offensive attacks but your Warrior will take more damage when this stance is activated. This stance is recommended for use in groups when you act as the secondary tank.

How does my warrior work?

A warrior is quite different from most other classes. He’s a pure melee class, while we do have ranged abilities, we mostly don’t use them for dealing damage - since we hurt much more when in close quarters. We use ranged attacks mostly for pulling, and for the stats. The main thing that sets a warrior apart from other classes though is that he has all the abilities needed for a good tank. So, if you roll a warrior, be prepared to tank a lot.

Warriors have the widest choice of equipment, they can wear mail and later (with lvl 40) plate armor, and they can learn to use almost all weapons (with the exception of wands - ask your local weapon master for training). With lvl 20 they can learn dual wielding (DW). For plate and DW, you’ll have to speak with your warrior trainer.

DW, 2h weapons, or 1h + shield?

The choice between these weapons is also a choice between talent trees, as further explained in the Talent Points section. DW is favored by the fury tree, while 2h weapons are favored by the arms tree and 1h+s is the protection tree’s favourite - other combinations are perfectly reasonable too though.

1h+s is somewhat viable, but many warriors opt to go for more damage output instead of having a shield and thus taking less damage. If you like, you can of course quest with 1h+s, but it’s not really recommended. So I’ll mainly compare DW and 2h now. You should however always have a good combo of shield and 1h in your backpack for tanking.

Both DW and 2h are intended to make about 20% more damage than 1h+s. This comes not only from the weapon damage - but 2 weaker weapons can hit as hard as 1 stronger weapon, eventhough there are some limitations on DW like a higher miss rate and reduced offhand damage. They were introduced because DW would otherwise do much more damage than 2h, the increased miss rate and reduced off hand damage balance out these alternatives. The remaining damage comes from the faster rage generation DW generally brings, especially when coupled with fury talents.

Keep in mind though that DW is generally less reliable, you miss around 24% with both hands - unless you have many +hit% items. OTOH, more attacks on casters mean that they can also cast less reliable - although every serious PvP mage will only use instant casts whenever a warrior is nearby anyway.

Some warriors like said fast rage generation with DW, while others like the burst damage and incredible crits (up to 3k and more) huge 2h weapons with mortal strike do. This burst damage is also what makes the MS build a bit better for PvP, since you won’t have much time with your opponent. It’s better to make those hits count.

Both options have goods and bads, find out for yourself which one fits you.

By the way - protection warriors often use DW to build up rage too, the 1h specialization helps there as well. And if you want to use 1h+shield mainly, you can, you’ll have less downtime, but kill mobs much slower.

Tank or Damage Dealer?

The short answer: Both!

The longer answer:

The warrior is primarily geared for tanking. He has quite some skills that generate much threat and secure aggro, be sure to read the stickied tanking guide in this forum before you get to tank your first instance dungeon.

A warrior has lots of HP, high armor, and he can glue the mobs to himself pretty well. So, since no other class is as good in tanking as a warrior, you’ll be tanking most of the instances. Don’t think that’s not fun, actually, tanking is (together with healing) one of the two most important things a group member can do in an instance. It bears quite some responsibility.

But a warrior has all the skills he needs to dish out large amounts of damage as well. In Berserker Stance and with two weapons or a large 2h axe, you’ll help a lot to drop the mobs. This is tremendous fun too, but you have to know that you’ll do this less often. You’ll also find that this is actually a lot easier than tanking…

What’s important to know though: You shouldn’t tank and deal damage at the same time. Well, most of the time, except when you’re tanking instances 10 lvls below yours. It’s a common misconception that you can keep the mobs on you better when you deal more damage - threat is not the same as damage, and most of a warrior’s most threat generating abilities cause very little damage.