The Blade that protects the Realms (A Guide to Warriors)

With permission from Dawnfire/Athon Stormborne

Introduction

Warriors are the only pure melee class, focusing on fighting the frontlines and taking a beating for others, wrecking a carnage or simply singing a song of war cries like a true bard.

In this guide I'll go over pretty much everything there is to the warrior class, sharing you my experience and wisdom (and you're free to do as well, since I'm not all knowing).

Very long guide ahead, so get some drinks and snacks ready, and I hope it will be of some use to you.

Note: there will be no build guides in this thread (only links later), this is a more general run down of all things that is warrior, that helps you to create your own powerful builds. So let's get into it, shall we?

 Roles and subclasses

In this part I'll detail the 3 subclasses of the warrior class, and the roles they are capable of fulfilling.

Fury Warriors

Roles: DPS, Support

Fury warriors are the main damage dealing subclass of the warrior class. Combining direct and damage over time feats, with some CC and heal, it's main strength is killing single targets with great efficiency. They can also take on a dps heavy support role, utilizing war cries to buff teammates and debuff enemies

This setup also improves their AoE dps by a huge margin due to the Bloodlust and Booming Voice talents, however their single target damage is worse compared to the traditional DPS setup. The greatest weakness of this subclass is that they are vulnerable melee setups. You can offset this quite a few ways but that means less damage, and this subclass is already not high on the damage dealing list (but still any well built Fury warrior will perform well enough, just don't expect to top the dps charts).

Lightning Warriors Roles: Tank, Support

Lightning warriors are tanks, taking the majority of the damage for their teammates. They are more "selfish" tanks compared to Earth shamans, meaning they have plenty ways to survive and boost their own defenses but actually offer very little to their groups besides tanking itself (if you are looking for a tank that has lots of buffs to their team pick an Earth shaman). However they are also capable dealing higher damage compared to shamans. The Electric Disposition and Spurring Jolts are signature talents for these builds (making you super tanky and be able to use feats mor often). Under ideal circumstances they can rival the damage output of Fury warriors, but for the most part they will deal less damage overall. Just like Fury warriors, they can take on a support role as well, by getting war cries, buffing teammates and debuffing enemies, however going this route will leave less space for tanking feats and it has less synergy effective synergy with Bloodlust too. As such if you want to go supprot I'd rather recommned the Fury route, but it's doable to do that as a Lightning warrior as well, just don't forget, Lightning warriors are first and foremost always tanks due to their feats and rune passives. As mentioned earlier the weak points of this subclass is lower damage in solo environment, little/less support options for team.

Hybrid Warriors

Roles: Tank-DPS

Hybrid warriors are a unique blend, using both Fury and Lightning talents/feats. There are multiple ways to build, however since Lightning is inherently forces you to tank, they are a tank subclass with a very high damage potential. The Electric Disposition and Spurring Jolts are essential part of these builds, along with Endless Rage and/or Lightning Affinity. Point is to get as much Ability Power for both Masteries as possible, take a lot of beating to reduce cooldowns and use your highly damaging feats (such as Whirlwind / Thunderbolt / Pummel ) all the time. These kinds of builds I only recommend for group content such as dungeons and only for high level players, as it takes a great amount of talent points to make it work. When it works, it deals the most damage out of any warrior builds. The cons of this, is that it often relies on others for survival, the high level requirement and being very Mana hungry, meaning you will need to use Mana potions.  Weapon sets Warrior is in a unique position that it actually has access to 3 different weapon sets compared to other classes which only have 1. Which one you will pick depends heavily on what role (tank, dps, support) you want to play.

Sword and Shield The default warrior setup. Majority of the lightning warriors will want to run this, and some of the fury warriors as well since it offers a great addition to your defenses. Electric Disposition and Spurring Jolts talents will further empower this setup, and very much recommended to take if you decide to run this setup. Overall balanced, a great choice for any build, and should be your default weapon set for leveling.

Greatsword Greatswords are one handed swords with either Strength of Arms (Your Masteries are increased and both your Cooldown Rate and Haste by 10% ) or Swashing (Your Masteries are increased and both your Cooldown Rate and Parry chance by 10% ) runes socketed into them. Their downside is that you are unable to wield a shield with them. However they offer decent bonuses to make up for it. I generally recommend Strength of Arms for most Fury DPS builds, as your offense will be usually enough to take down your foes quickly, and in group content you are not supposed to take very heavy damage. If you need extra survival pick one of the shield options instead of Swashing.

Greatsword and Shield For this option you need to first get a Greatsword (detailed above) and the Heroic Strength ultimate from the Master-at-Arms talents line. There's potential greatness in this setup, probably for hybrid/lightning tank setups, but due to the heavy talent point investment it requires I'd suggest not to take this route, unless you want to experiment. There's just so many other great talents you can take with that 35 points.  Origin

Origins are a great way to make up the shortcomings of our builds or enhance certain elements of it above the soft caps. All of these are good viable choices, fulfilling different needs. Stormhold: Reduces the Mana costs of feats and spells by 10%. My personal favourite, this works well with pretty much any warrior build. Recommended for most builds, but if Mana is no issue for you there are other options.

Thorncrest: Boosts your critical chance by 3%. This is added above the Crit cap of 22%, making it possible to reach 25% Crit Chance (although you'll never reach it, due to how the stat system works). Great choice for warrior's looking to increase their damage output.

Greenhaven: Reduces magic damage taken by 6%. Just like Thorncrest works above the soft cap of 50% Magic damage reduction (making it possible to reach 56%), so if going full tanky is the way you'd wanna be, you can pick this choice. Though most tanks should have enough defense without, and damage dealers won't really neeed this.

Sunkentooth: Increases hero experience gained by 3%. If you don't want more crits, and Mana is okay, this is a decent choice for leveling. Yes 3% doesn't seem much, but over the course of reaching max level, especially if you Rebirth, this will add up quite nicely. Pick this if the other options don't offer enough for you.

 Talents

Talents are one of the main components of your build. Don't worry if you don't get it right first. For some silvers/gold you can reset them any time. Currently you can earn a maximum of 125 talent points (100 for reaching max level 90 and 25 for 5 rebirths). In the next section I'll go over all the talents warrior has, describing them and giving you my opinion of them.  Fury talents  Discipline talents  Lightning talents

 Feats Feats are yet another important aspect of any build. Feats are combat abilities, that defines your playstyle. Weapons can have 7 feats socketed into them (3 for free, rest for sockets), necklaces and class tokens (bracers for warriors) have access to 1-1 free feats.

 Fury feats

 Lightning Feats

 Discipline Feats

 Universal Feats Unlike the previous feats, these feats are available to all classes. I'll list those who I deem the most viable to the warrior class (however there are other options out there, don't be afraid to experiment and find what works best for you).

 Stats

Stats and Epic Stats are the final pieces of a build. Just like talents and feats, they are a very integral part of a build. They can make or break a setup if not properly adjusted. In the following I'll go over all the stats and epic stats, and their relevance to the Warrior class. Soft cap means the highest bonus you can add to your base value without special effects such as passive runes/origin/enchantments/talents. In the verdict section I rate stats in 3 categories: Primary, get as much as you can, it is very beneficial, Secondary, having some of it is important, but no need to overdo it, and Tertiary, you can ignore these stats. Another important note is that stats have diminishing returns. This means having more and more of a stat will start to worth less and less for each new point in that stat. While planning ahead keep this in mind.  Epic Stats: