If you’re serious about playing WoW Classic as a Warrior, you’re probably looking at those talents and wondering what to do — especially if you didn’t play in Vanilla and have no idea what all those talents are. Well, I did play in Vanilla — in fact, I talk about it way too much as one might expect of an old crotchety sort who wants these kids off his lawn — and so now you get the chance to profit from my barely healed trauma as I talk about the popular talent specs that Warriors used back in the day, just in time for you to climb on up into WoW Classic when it comes out.

A gouge in case you like a speedy interrupt or to end a cooldown. It is likely certainly one of the biggest reward a rogue has, his(her. Varian Wrynn is an iconic warrior in World of Warcraft. If you are looking to make a warrior, it can be overwhelming to try and pick a race. Overall, the differences between race selection in Battle For Azeroth are pretty minimal, but if you want to know the differences and how they rank I am here to help! Other rogue races High elf rogues. For the high elves, such a profession is an alien concept and therefore rare (if not-existent) among their people. In World of Warcraft there are high elven Theramore infiltrators. In the pen-and-paper RPG, infiltrators are a special prestige class, and are like a multi-classed rogue. Watch fullscreen.

This is not going to be a talent by talent breakdown, although I might well sit down and write one of those if there’s interest. This is me giving you a look at various talent builds you can adopt once WoW Classic is out, and get an idea of what to aim for. In general, while leveling you should use your primary talent tree as your first one to spend points in — get up the tree to 31 and that big, primary attack (Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst or Shield Slam) as fast as possible. That’s a spec defining ability and you want to get it ASAP. From there, you can start spending points in the other trees.

Let’s take a look at the builds.

Damage

The Selfish Arms-Fury 31/20 build.This build is all about a 2h weapon. It hasn’t made any concessions to expecting to tank, and it’s purely about doing as much damage as possible with a 2h weapon, specifically a sword in this case for the Sword Specialization chance to proc another attack. This build could easily change based on what the best 2h weapon you happened to have access to is — most players would probably use Axe or Polearm spec since those seemed easier to get than swords. This particular spec doesn’t even use Deflection, which is a decent survivability talent, choosing instead to focus on Improved Overpower for more crit chance when dealing with annoying Rogues trying to dodge everything you do. This is as close to a glass cannon build as Arms Warriors ever got, back in the day. Arms with proper gear for the time (basically, the best PVP gear or raid gear from BWL or up) would go with this spec and just annihilate people in BG’s, trusting in a pocket healer to keep them alive long enough to ruin people’s days. If you saw an Arms Warrior with the Might of Menethil and Mace Spec, you knew you were in for a bad, bad time.

The Frantic Fury — Arms 11/Fury 40. This is the classic DW Fury build. There are variants, of course — there were always variants — but this is a standard build that makes sure to get Bloodthirst, full Flurry, and Improved Heroic Strike. Many a Fury Warrior hated those 2 points in Deflection, but there was no way to move down the Arms tree without them. Quite a few Warriors used this variant, that traded away the Improved Berserker Rage talent for Improved Intercept. I was a 2h Fury, but I raided with quite a few Fury Warriors who loved Imp Intercept.

Slam Fury Build — 19/32 or 20/31 Fury. This build comes in several varieties. This one makes sure to get Bloodthirst, the signature Fury attack, but it doesn’t include Improved Execute and it doesn’t have full 2h Weapon Specialization from the Arms tree. This variant, which is the one I used, doesn’t go full into Improved Slam so the cast time is a bit longer, but it has Improved Execute and full 2h Weapon Specialization. You can do without Bloodthirst entirely if you prefer, and still get Improved Slam, Flurry, and 2h Weapon Spec all maxed out, which some players preferred. All of these builds used 2h weapons in PVE content, as Fury was basically untenable in PVP, although I still did PVP in my variant of the spec. By the end of classic WoW my gear allowed me to do fairly well, but it was a handicap and I knew it.

The Mixed Blessings

Jack of all trades — Arms/Fury/Protection 31/5/15.This build was the meat and potatoes Warrior build of classic WoW. This was the build you picked if you were going to do some tanking, some PVP, and you weren’t the main tank of your raid guild or just didn’t want to have to switch specs around constantly. It does a little bit of everything — it has Mortal Strike for those bosses that had a self heal, it lets you switch to a big 2h weapon (although you don’t get 2h Weapon Specialization) in your off hours, it’s basically the I’m not going to be the best at anything but I can do anything you need spec. There are variants for players who wanted to do more damage — swapping out Improved Thunder Clap and Hamstring for 2h Weapon Spec, for example.

The Dedicated Offtank — Arms/Protection 31/20. This build still allows for some oomph when you’re not tanking but focuses more heavily on tanking, with a full 20 points in Protection for picking up some Defiance and Improved Shield Block. It’s still not a main tanking build, but it gives you options for when you’re not raiding or running a dungeon and a lot of Warriors used it in classic. You can vary it up by altering how many points you put in Defiance vs. other talents, like this version that gets you Last Stand, which many tanks swore by.

The Main Tank

The Armadillo — Arms/Fury/Prot 11/5/35.This was a main tanking build that basically traded away offense for defense. There were too many variants to list, but the biggest wasn’t a variant at all, but was instead this Arms 11/Prot 40 build that traded away the 5 points in Fury for Cruelty with full 1h Weapon Specialization and Improved Taunt. Neither of these builds could generate much DPS — this was purely about threat and survival, and any farming or otherwise playing outside of a dungeon or raid would often require you to spend gold on a respec (no multiple talent specs back then) or to have friends who would come kill stuff while you tanked it.

The Anvil – Protection 51. No, really. This is a build that the first MT in my first raiding guild used, and with it we cleared several realm first kills all the way up to Naxx 40. This build sacrifices pretty much all damage and Deflection over in Arms, which was a hard sell at the time — when I started main tanking I ended up going with a variant Arms 5/Protection 46 build that gave up Improved Taunt and One-Handed Weapon Spec for those 5 points in Deflection. Either way, this is a spec that says I tank, and I don’t do anything else without either spending gold or bringing a lot of friends with me. But they have a ton of survival in them.

You should play a Warrior.

Thanks, we’ll see you next time!

That’s not enough for a whole column, Rossi

What? Why not?

Alright, fine, I’ll talk about all the classes and why you might want to play one. But just remember that I’m doing this with a big sign that says Warriors are better than everyone else, okay?

Class and race combinations were extremely limited

For starters, there are certain choices you can’t make. You can’t play a Paladin Horde side, and you can’t play a Shaman Alliance side, so if you decide to play one of those you’re locked to a specific faction. If you’re absolutely unwilling to play a Horde character, you can’t play a Shaman, and if you’re absolutely unwilling to play an Alliance character, you can’t play a Paladin.

You were locked to one of nine options, with each faction getting eight due to that Shaman/Paladin restriction listed above. Of those options, some races couldn’t play some classes. So if you’re absolutely married to the idea of playing a Hunter, you’re not going to be able to play as a Human. If that’s important to you. I don’t know why it would be. I mean, look at that guy. That up there is an exact recreation of my first character and I’m embarrassed to admit that I ran around with that pony tail for years.

On the Alliance side, Humans could play Warriors, Paladins, Rogues, Priests, Mages and Warlocks, giving them the most options. Horde side, Trolls could play Warriors, Hunters, Rogues, Priests, Shaman and Mages, matching the versatility of Humans. Tauren and Gnomes only had four options apiece, while everyone else — Dwarves, Night Elves, Orcs and Forsaken — had five options apiece. And if you wanted to play a Druid, you only had a single race choice: the class was restricted to Night Elf and Tauren.

But okay, let’s assume you have your faction and race picked out. What next? What should you start playing?

A Warrior. I covered that already. In all seriousness, Warriors had one standout reason to play as one: every single race could play as a Warrior. So if you weren’t sure what class you wanted, but knew you wanted to play a Gnome or a Forsaken or a Troll, you were always safe picking a Warrior.

Rossi, you still have to talk about the other classes

Ugh, fine.

Druids were limited to Night Elves and Tauren, but since those are the two coolest races in WoW Classic anyway, you’ll be fine. If you like being versatile, Druid is by far the closest to a Swiss Army Knife in the game. They can be tanky or be like a Rogue by shifting into Bear or Cat forms, and they also have healing and ranged DPS options.

Play a Druid if you like the idea of turning into a kitty to sneak around, becoming a bear to hold aggro off our your friends in dresses, or shifting back to your normal form and standing in the back with the folks in dresses (and potentially getting into arguments with them over said dresses). The downside of Druids is that very few groups wanted you to be any of those roles back then — hopefully WoW Classic players will be more willing to experiment with Druid tanks and melee/ranged DPS.

Hunters were the choice if you wanted a pet of your very own. They could melee to some extent, but were mostly focused on ranged DPS. They were excellent as a leveling class because they had their pets to tank for them, so were usually able to move from encounter to encounter with less downtime. Also, you could tame a wide variety of animals out in the wild, giving you more options to be distinctive and unique even though everyone tamed the same really fast cat or Lupos.

Only two Alliance races could be Hunters, but every Horde race except Forsaken could be Hunters, so it was a reasonable choice for most races. Plus, except for plate armor, almost everything that dropped from ranged to melee weapons could be justified as Hunter loot. Hunters were extremely popular in the original game for a reason.

Mages were the original glass cannons. This is the OG conception of the class, so the focus is pretty much entirely on picking a school of magic — raw Arcane, seething Fire or withering Frost — and going to town with it.

Pros include doing a boatload of damage and being able to crowd control with the exceedingly cool Polymorph spell. Cons include being made of tissue paper — seriously, you do not want to get hit as a Mage — and the extremely annoying times you’ll run into something that is completely immune to Fire or Frost damage (or is just resistant to it), or has high Spell Resist so you’ll watch as your spells do nothing. And seriously, when I say you’ll be made of tissue paper? I am not exaggerating.

Paladins were a solid leveling choice. They could kill stuff reasonably well, had self healing to reduce the down time between fights in the world, and had a variety of tricks to keep from dying if things went bad. Also, you could start with a big -handed hammer, so you didn’t have to spend money picking one up later or learning how to use one, a big advantage in early leveling. If you were okay playing as a Dwarf or a Human, Paladins were a solid choice to level.

Unfortunately, while leveling up most groups would insist you take the healer role and at level 60 it was unheard of for Paladins to tank or DPS despite them having talent trees dedicated to those roles. So if you don’t want to heal on a character, Paladin might not be the choice for you. I’m a little hopeful that WoW Classic players will let Ret and Prot Paladins do more than they did back in 2004 to 2006.

Priests are, on paper, possibly the coolest class in WoW and there’s a lot to like. Solid healing abilities and the ability to spec into the Shadow tree to deal damage, plus the amazing Mind Control spell that lets you CC enemies or even other hostile players. I remember watching Priests chain MC Horde outside Blackwing Lair and running them into the lava. It was awesome.

But Mind Control means you lose control of your own character, who just stands there while you use it. In general Priests suffer from a similar problem as Mages: they can be glass cannons, although being able to shield and heal themselves helps. Also, the problem Paladins had with being expected to heal is ever more pronounced for Priests — some groups would bring along one Shadow Priest for Mana regen, but otherwise if you were a Priest in a dungeon you were expected to heal.

Rogues. The only melee class that’s just a DPS, Rogues have a lot of neat tools. Stealth is amazing for getting in and out of a questing area without having to fight every mob in the place, Sap can CC mobs, plus poisons and the ability to unleash a lot of damage. If you want to play a lightly armored skirmisher who sneaks in, kills everything, and sneaks out again, Rogues aer a solid choice.

But being melee means they often took more damage than ranged DPS because they were up close where there was AOE damage and Rogues really couldn’t take much of a beating. Compared to other melee options, if a Rogue got a boss’ attention and Evasion wasn’t up, the Rogue was dead. But make no mistake — Rogues were a solid choice for both PVE and PVP content. And in terms of racial choices, only Tauren couldn’t be Rogues in classic.

Shaman were the Horde only class that fulfilled a lot of the same roles as Paladins, but did it entirely differently. They have a lot of cool flavor options with their Totems, buffing their groups in various ways, and Horde groups would absolutely love Shaman for the ubiquitous Windfury totem, which buffed melee DPS and was prized by Rogues, DPS Warriors and Paladins. Shaman could drop totems that ensnared enemies, dispelled fear effects, and damaged enemy targets in range in addition to their own spells and attacks. Plus you could turn into a Ghost Wolf, that’s really cool. But like Paladins, Shaman were often relegated to the healing role in dungeons and at endgame, and they were legitimately not as good at tanking as their Alliance counterparts. Still, in terms of versatility, only Druids have more, with offtanking, ranged DPS, healing and melee DPS all being options for Shaman in those days.

Warlocks were the ranged DPS class if you wanted to have a lot more survivability than Mages. They used Life Tap, an ability that traded health for mana, so generally speaking most Warlocks prized stamina on gear and stacked it and they had pets in the form of various demons — more limited than Hunter pets, perhaps, but more than most people got and each pet had a specialty that made them better for specific roles. There was the Voidwalker for tanking, the Succubus for CC, and you could troll your own group with a big demon that would eventually break free of your control and likely wipe your whole group. Warlocks offered soulstones for wipe protection, healthstones for a free extra healing potion that wasn’t on the same cooldown back then, the ability to CC some mobs that were demons or elementals and solid DPS in the form of damage over time spells, but they were somewhat limited in terms of which races could play them. Still, if you don’t mind making deals with demons? Warlocks could do all sorts of stuff, like give you the ability to breathe water.

Warriorswere, as I mentioned, the only class every race could play back in the day. They were generally accepted as the only tanking class, even though both Paladins and Druids had dedicated tanking options and Shaman were designed to at least tank in leveling content. They were extremely strong PVP choices with Mortal Strike as a healing debuff and a lot of damage from a big, slow 2h weapon because of how attacks were calculated back then. But they had some significant drawbacks — no form of self healing or CC meant that pulls could go badly for them fairly quickly, and you will spend a lot of time stopping to eat and/or using bandages on your Warrior. And if you want to DPS in dungeons or at max level? Warriors were still expected to tank, no matter what their spec was. Still, back in the day, playing as a Warrior meant you could tank on pretty much any spec and still could DPS or PVP, and many raids brought multiple Warriors to switch between those roles as needed.

See, you had stuff to say about other classes

Wow Rogue Vs Warrior Talent

So I did! Honestly, class choice really comes down to what you find the most fun. If you love the archetype of the grizzled veteran or bloodthirsty Barbarian, then in all seriousness Warrior is a great choice. But if you want to be sneaky and get in and out unseen? Rogues and Druids are by far your best option. A shining knight who defends and heals? Paladin all the way. It really comes down to that idea you have of what you imagine your character to be — there are limitations to every class that will help you decide which one comes closest to your ideal.

All kidding aside, there’s a lot of options and all the classes are fun in their own way.

Wow Rogue Vs Warrior Bis

But play a Warrior.

Fury Warrior Or Rogue