If you want better formatting go to the TankSpot thread.

Tankspot Thread:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f40/36797-comprehensive-warrior-pvp-guide.html

News:

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Q u o t e:
Warrior 3.1.3 Changes

Blood Frenzy: This talent now provides 5/10% haste instead of 3/6%.
Bloodthirst: Cooldown reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds, and rage cost reduced from 30 rage to 20 rage.
Juggernaut: This talent now also increases the cooldown on Charge by 5 seconds.

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Updated for:

Date: 6/2/09
Patch: 3.1.3
Season: 6

Contents Of This Guide:

General Advice
Specs
Common Arena Set-ups
Gear To Aim For
Stats
Enchants
Gems
Major Glyphs
Minor Glyphs
Races
Professions
Macros
Interface
Keybinds
Links

If you see any missing info, let me know and I'll look into it. If you have anything that you think will improve the guide ( links etc.) please let me know. This guide is aimed toward new Warriors or players that are just switching to PvP. It was created using multiple sources that I have found useful along with personal experience. This is not meant to be a guide for gladiators. It is merely meant to help maximize your potential. What you do with it is up to you.

General Advice

How To Be Effective:

I) Don't Die- If you are getting burned you have: Defensive Stance, Shield Wall, Intervene, Intimidating Shout, Enraged Regeneration, Shield Block, Disarm, Spell Reflection, Hamstring, Piercing Howl, Thunder Clap, Demoralizing Shout, and your partner's abilities to help you stay alive.

II) Don't Let Your Partners Die- Learn to be good at peeling. Charge/Intercept and Hamstring to keep enemies off of your healer. And just your general damage can force enemies to play defensively and temporarily reduce pressure. A good video to watch on using charge/intercept/intervene correctly is:

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=112573

III) Don't Let Your Enemy Get Away- Between all of your charges and snares you should be able to keep a target within melee range.

IV) 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.

V) Sustain Damage When You Know You Can't Burst Them To Death- Like I said above continue attacking but don't waste cooldowns on someone that won't die. This stage in a fight can be when you gather Rage, wait on colldowns to refresh, and refresh Rend.

In order to be successful in arenas you need to have an extensive knowledge base.

It is important to have talents and abilities of other classes memorized, as well as each class spec’s strengths and weaknesses. You can learn this through duels, BG's, skirmishes, and through rated games.

Vital information about a class/spec include cooldowns (CDs) available, cooldown duration, and knowing certain classes “tells” when they are about to do damage.

The biggest key to success in arena is communication.

Call out heals that are going out, crowd control (CC) that is going out, CC that is coming in, damage taken, kill opportunities, etc.

In the arena, you must always know your surroundings. Know where to line-of-sight your enemies, and know where they can line-of-sight you. Know where your enemies are going and know where your teammates are going. Raid symbols can often be a huge help to track movement.

You must find a perfect balance between doing damage, keeping aware of your surroundings and not getting tunnel vision. If you focus on just one person to kill, CC, or heal, you often lose focus of everything else going on around you. Try to be aware of everything going on. Focus Frames and Unit Frames coupled with healing/damage macros and focus macros will greatly aid you in this department.

Many people make the mistake of trying to just burst a target down with no regard to timing; timing is everything in arena. Even if the other team is winning the mana battle and you're behind, well timed CC and burst damage can completely switch the game and surprise your opponents. Save your burst damage for the right time. Have your cooldowns ready, which includes class abilities, crowd control, and trinkets, and wait until diminishing returns are stacked up on your opponents' CC. When you feel like the pace is slow, CC whatever you can on their team.

Be fluid when it comes to picking a kill target. Committing to one person can often result in your team doing nothing but running around and getting line-of-sighted or crowd-controlled. If one person runs away, don't be afraid to switch to a target that is close. Split damage is something many teams do not consider, but can create vital pressure. Often this will make two people go defensive and also apply extra pressure on the healers. If you have two Mortal Strike effects, this is especially useful. When one target is low, call for a switch and merge on it to try and create that vital kill shot.

The more you play in arena, the better you will be able to quickly recognize the opposing team’s composition and know your own team’s strengths and weaknesses against their specific makeup.

Coordination between teammates is important, especially when quickly switching targets to exploit an enemy player that has gotten out-of-position or used their 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 specific click on the arena addon gladius.

I personally couldn't see myself playing without nameplates showing. You can turn them on by pressing V. This puts a floating healthbar over your enemies. Since 3.0 you can see these for your opponents no matter how far you are from them in an arena. You can also set these to display class colors through the interface combat tab.

Skill in PvP can be described by what you do with your GCD. Some players use the comparison to chess (Each GCD= a turn). While there are some exceptions that are off the GCD, like vanish or interrupts, for the vast majority actions the speed of performance is neither highly variable nor an indicator of player skill. The skill in this game, just like in chess, comes from which action the player chooses to make each turn. The more turns the game lasts and the more choices the player makes, the more they have a chance to influence the game by how well or poorly they play.

Dreasus wrote this. You can find his guide here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f40/31991-dreasus-guide-pvp-warriors.html

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Q u o t e:
Every single thing is limited to you, to the way you think about things - just as in the real life, you might find a piece of paper useless, but there are some people who could use that to kill someone. As a fact, there are some features in World of Warcraft that I call "game mechanics" what create limits to things, involving classes and their relationship to each other, but I pretend that there isn't any of these mechanics that ruins the PvP for any class. Everything depends on you, there for if you are not satisfied with any kind of performance you provide ingame, search the reasons in yourself.

Practice, Think, Learn. It's true of anything; if you pay attention to something, if you try to use your mind, if you try to understand it you'll have far better results than if you would do it brainless, without considering the circumstances. If you are about to maximize your performance-possibilities, it's not even close to enough if you play twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because it will only pay itself if you think about the thing you do. Simple as that, you must know the reasons of every thing happens to you while you do PvP, if you invest the time and energy in summarizing, you have the chance to learn from it, and be better, find a way you can solve the problems you meet.

Some people are not capable of it, they are playing the game since beta, they are managed to get PvP Rank14 and they still lose to most opponents, and without the right attitude and self-criticism, they start to look for the excuses and problems in the other classes and the game. What I'm pointing out: you must force yourself (if it doesn't go by itself) to think over everything. Pay attention to all the fights you play in, to what your enemies do, when, why.

That's the key, and If you get that, the next step is the time. The more you invest, the better results you get. Be objective.

People use this word (balance) many times on forums, most of these times they claim that something is not matching that word. Also, a lot of players like to talk around about the World of Warcraft's "Rock-Paper-Scissor" mechanism, like "Mage beats Warrior, Warrior beats Rogue, Rogue beats Mage". I hardly pretend that both of these are false.

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Continued...

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Q u o t e:
It's not even possible to ask for some kind of a perfect harmony between the classes, hopefully I don't have to point the reasons. It been a very long time since something crossed the line so much that it made some aspects of the game unenjoyable. Today we have more matterful factors that classify the balance (like we have more abilities, new stat system, the Resilience, and so on) of the game, and in my view there's nothing that would need a radical change, otherwise it will continue ruining the game. Naturally there are some things that would require little changes. I've seen many good ideas that would bring some new colors to the gameplay (or into the Warrior class), some that would fix the current issues, and probably a few of them will have a place in the game in the future.

The whole thing is truly subjective, because even if I say that I do have a chance against any kind of enemies, you might say that I haven't faced opponents that were good enough - and to continue the line, I could ask something similar from you when you say you can't win against anyone. But just because there's someone who is satisfied with something, but the other 99.99% of the people not, it's not wise to make the decisions according to the first one. And that's what makes World Of Warcraft a great game in my eye, like all the time, with minor problematics, Blizzard could manage to keep things at the right side of the edge, everyone has their own chance to find the levels they enjoy the game on. What causing the problems then?

Many countless people don't have any idea about what level they play on. You can name these levels by any details of the game and the players; how well they can play ; how good their gear is ; talent specializations; dedication ; and the list goes on. Now, if you are playing PvP casually, you have only average gear for it, why would you want to win against someone that has the full gear, and far more experience than you in PvP? There are numberless opponents that would match your criteria better, therefor if you don't put the maximal effort in the thing you do, don't expect sucess without problems.

Why all of these things are important? Because apart from subjectivity, we do stand a chance against any kind of opponents. Other opinions are based on skill-difference, gear-difference, and other things that builds PvP on the surface. Also, don't forget there are many differences between an average and average player, between good and good, also between the insane and insane. And that's the reason why the "Rock-Paper-Scissor" fails in my mind, there are some classes that have minor (or not only minor) advantages against another, but the way these two players play the game is far more important in most cases. Basically we can stand proudly in every Arena team-bracket, though we have some limitations to what our partner has to be.

So what do we have to do to be viable in solo situations? What do we have to do to be useful in team fights? It's very simple, and insanely complicated at the same time - just as with other classes.

The fact is, you can learn to play quite fast, but that's only enough to have some fun for the same level you play on. But if you provide some dedication, and start to work on getting better, you'll see that we do have abilities that can be used in wrong and good ways, even if the difference is hardly noticable, it's there, and it's important.

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Specs

After the 3.1 nerf to fury, Arms has once again become the PvP Spec.

57/14/0- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrubfIt0brRzGuioGx0s - A few people prefer to put points in Improved Hamstring or Tactical Mastery.

60/11/0- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LcrIdfIt0brRzGuioGx0o - A few people prefer to put points in Improved Hamstring.

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

Common Arena Set-ups

2v2-

Arms Warrior/ Restoration Druid

3v3-

Arms Warrior/ Retribution Paladin/ Restoration Druid
Arms Warrior/ Holy Paladin/ Unholy Death Knight
Arms Warrior/ Unholy Death Knight/ Restoration Druid

5v5-

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

Gear To Aim For

Most warriors run with 5/5 PvP set.
Some warriors run with 4/5 PvP set with a PvE in the 5th slot.
Make sure you have the PvP Gloves
You can also substitute in some more PvE gear for higher damage. Just make sure you are comfortable with your level of resilience .

Stats

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 a good read and pretty much sums up what Armor Pen does for warriors: http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=75925

Enchants

Helm: Arcanum of Torment/ Arcanum of Triumph
Shoudlers: Greater Inscription of the Axe/ Inscription of Triumph
Cloak: Major Agility
Chest: Powerful Stats/ Exceptional Resilience
Wrist: Greater Assault
Hands: Crusher
Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Icescale Leg Armor
Feet: Tuskarr's Vitality
Rings: Assault
2 Hander: Berserking

Gems

Meta

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (Requires two blue gems)

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

Major Glyphs

Some of these come down to personal preference but here are viable Major Glyphs:

Mortal Strike
Bladestorm
Sweeping Strikes
Rending
Hamstring

Minor Glyphs

Charge
Battle
Bloodrage

Races

Alliance:

Dwarf: Stoneform "While active, grants immunity to Bleed, Poison, and Disease effects. In addition, Armor increases by 10%. Lasts 8 sec."

Gnome: Escape Artist "Escape the effects of any immobilization or movement speed reduction effect."

Human: Passive Increased stealth detection. Sword/Mace Expertise. Every Man For Himself "Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects."

Horde:

Tauren: War Stomp "Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yds for 2 sec." Endurance "Base Health increased by 5%"

Undead: Will of the Forsaken "Removes any Charm, Fear and Sleep effect."

Troll: 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." Da Voodoo Shuffle (Passive) "Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%. "

Orc: Blood Fury "Increases attack power by 322 at 80. Lasts 15 sec." Hardiness "Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 15%." Command "Damage dealt by pets increased by 5%." Axe Expertise.

Professions

I'm going to list the direct benefits from using each profession:

Blacksmithing: 2 free sockets.

Jewel Crafting: 3 BoP epic prismatic gems.

Mining: +50 stam, not affected by percent based buffs.

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.

Herbalism: Gives a heal for 2k/5 sec on a 3 min CD.

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.

Macros

Spell Reflect:

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

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Just replace the weapon/shield names with the ones you use and it should be good to go.

Pummel/Shield Bash:

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

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This pummels if you have a 2 hander, and switches to zerker stance if you're not already in it. But if you have a shield on it will shield bash.

Intercept/Focus:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Intercept
/cast berserker stance
/cast [target=focus, modifier:shift] Intercept; Intercept

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Casts berserker stance if you're not in it. Casts intercept. Hold shift and it intercepts your focus target.

Charge/Focus:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Charge
/cast battle stance
/cast [target=focus, modifier:shift] Charge; Charge

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Casts battle stance if you're not in it. Casts charge. Hold shift and it charges your focus target.

Bladestorm Start/End:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Bladestorm
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/cast Bladestorm

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First use will cast bladestorm. Second use will cancel it.

Full Execute:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Execute
/script if (UnitHealth("target")/UnitHealthMax("target") < .2) then CancelUnitBuff("player","Sudden Death") end
/cast Execute

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This will remove the sudden death buff if a target is below 20% health so you can get a harder hitting execute cast.

Enraged Regeneration Cacenlaura:

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Q u o t e:
/cancelaura Enraged Regeneration
/cast Berserker Rage

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This will cancel Enraged regeneration so that berserker rage can be cast.

Rend:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Rend
/cast [stance:1/2] Rend; [stance:3] Battle Stance

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This will perform rend if you are in battle or defensive stance and will switch you to battle stance if you are in berserker stance.

Shield Wall:

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

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This will equip your shield and cast shield wall. Replace the weapon/shield names with your own.

Shield Slam:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Shield Slam
/cast [equipped:Shields] Shield Slam
/equip [modifier:ctrl] Nameoftwohanderhere
/equip nameofshieldhere
/equipslot 16 nameofonehanderhere

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This will equip your 1 hander and shield and cast shield slam. Replace the weapon/shield names with your own.

Thunder Clap:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip thunder clap
/cast [stance:1/2] thunder clap; [stance:3] battle stance

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This will cast thunder clap if you're in battle or defensive stance. If you are in berserker stance, it will cast battle stance.

Intervene Healer:

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Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Intervene
/cast defensive stance
/cast [target=healername]intervene

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This will cast defensive stance if you're not in it and cast intervene to your healer.

Other macro's I use:

I use macro's to make stance switching easier. Basically I have a macro for every spell that is single stance specific.

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Q u o t e:
#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

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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.

Interface

Everyone's is different. This is what my DK's looks like:

http://s.wowinterface.com/preview/pvw27252.jpg

I've uploaded my UI to Wowinterface for anyone who is interested (Just Pretty much can be used for warrior except for Acherus):

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13082-UWUI.html

http://pvptutorial.com/ - This guide explains how to create a PvP UI through video tutorials.

When you download addons, make sure they are up to date(with the current patch), because if they aren't you will run into too many errors.

To quote Pharaunmizz:

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Q u o t e:
Never underestimate the power of having more space and less clutter. PvP is pretty dynamic, so being able to see clearly can seriously help you out. Don't bother using Addons if they aren't doing anything for you. Periodically evaluate each of your addons and see if they're actually worth their screen space.

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You should design your UI using a minimalist design. Basically just show what you need to see. A good way to save space in your UI is to go into your video options and click use UI scale. Tune it up and down until you think everything is just the right size.

If you have a large screen, try not to put anything important along the right/left edges. It is important to be able to see everything you need to without taking your eyes off of the main action. Also don't be afraid to scale things up. On a larger screen it is easier to forget to look at soemthing if it isn't scaled up.

Gladius is an enemy arena frame mod. You can download it here:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11447-Gladius.html

Afflicted is also useful to track enemy spells:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8063-Afflicted3.html

SpellAlerter is customizable to show any spells that you want:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8221-SpellAlerter.html

Here is a list of wrath updated popular mods:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f120/42484-wrath-mod-list-read-before-asking-mod.html

Keybinds

I wrote a guide on keybinding effectively on tankspot here:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/41865-keybinds-you.html

TL;DR= WASD Movement with A and D a strafe. Turn with your right mouse button. Keybinds= `12345QERTF combined with Shift/Ctrl/Alt.

I cannot stress how much using keybinds will improve your play. Even if you think you're a great clicker, you should make the switch.

These were my keybinds (Pre 3.1):

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t103/bloodwraith816/Keybinds.jpg

Article on keybinding: http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/yes/207-how_you_can_become_gladiator_keybindings_part_i.html

Useful Links

http://www.arenajunkies.com/
http://elitistjerks.com/f38/t39080-warrior_pvp_arena/
http://www.arenajunkies.com/showthread.php?t=81705

not a bad collection

Thanks

/sticky? kgo

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Q u o t e:
/sticky? kgo

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Glad you like it :)

Last I checked, the top 2k+ warrior team in 3s was war/warlock/druid.

The teams are in no certain order. They switch around a lot so I just put them into the common or less common sections.

I saw 'Cookie Cutters' and immediately thought it was for Fury. I am solemnly disappointed.
Good collection although.

thanks alot , this should be sticky

Glad you guys like it :)

Reported for teh stickyness. I watched the ui vids, even if you are good at making UIs still check it out I learned about a few helpful mods.

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Q u o t e:
Reported for teh stickyness. I watched the ui vids, even if you are good at making UIs still check it out I learned about a few helpful mods.

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Yeah I thought the UI vids were very helpful, I built my UI around them once I watched it.