Warrior is a fairly versatile class, with each spec having a very different playstyle. It’s often said that Fury is the best for leveling, but in my opinion this is an outdated idea; recent changes to the trees have pushed Arms to a new height as far as leveling goes.
The basic Arms Warrior Leveling Spec is as follows:
You should put all your points into Arms at first, until you get all the high level talents completed.
Improved Heroic Strike – Rank 3/3
Improved Rend – Rank 2/2
Improved Charge – Rank 2/2
Tactical Mastery – Rank 3/3
Improved Overpower – Rank 2/2
Anger Management – Rank 1/1
Impale – Rank 2/2
Taste for Blood – Rank 3/3
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – Rank 3/3
Deep Wounds – Rank 3/3
Sweeping Strikes – Rank 1/1
Weapon Mastery – Rank 2/2
Improved Hamstring – Rank 1/3
Trauma – Rank 2/2
Mortal Strike – Rank 1/1
Strength of Arms – Rank 2/2
Improved Slam – Rank 2/2
Juggernaut – Rank 1/1
Improved Mortal Strike – Rank 3/3
Unrelenting Assault – Rank 2/2
Sudden Death – Rank 3/3
Endless Rage – Rank 1/1
Blood Frenzy – Rank 2/2
Wrecking Crew – Rank 5/5
Bladestorm – Rank 1/1
Then, move on to Fury to finish up:
Armored to the Teeth – Rank 3/3
Cruelty – Rank 5/5
Unbridled Wrath – Rank 5/5
Improved Cleave – Rank 3/3
Improved Execute – Rank 2/2
Now that you’ve got your warrior leveling spec, it’s time for the real meat: The warrior leveling guide!
First, a few general tips for WoW players of any class:
Use hotkeys for skills, and your mouse for movement; using your keyboard to move and mouse to use skills is slower by FAR and will really cut into your playing ability at higher levels.
Don’t bother with professions if you’re in a real hurry to level. The gear they give is mostly not good enough to be worth the investment of time; instead, sell every white or better quality item on the Auction House by mailing stuff to an alt sitting in a major city, then use the gold to buy good gear.
Don’t forget to log off in an inn; the extra Rest XP is nothing to sneeze at!
Use a good questing guide! I’ll link my review of the most popular ones at the end of the article.
Don’t let your supply of Food items run low or fall behind you in level; it cuts leveling time a LOT.
On to the warrior leveling guide specific tips!
Always keep your gear up-to-date; Warriors are VERY gear-dependent. Your weapon especially is important; keeping a good blue equipped at all times is recommended. This also means getting all your weapon training ASAP so you have more options.
Don’t forget your cooldowns! Warriors have a lot of good cooldowns that allow for big pulls, and not using them is a huge waste of your time.
Learn to kite! If things go bad, being good at kiting can keep you alive long enough to finish your enemies off.
Keep you First Aid skill up: Having a way to heal yourself is a MAJOR advantage for any melee DPS class.
Go for Hit Rating, Strength and Attack power over other stats! Stamina is a decent secondary stat, but don’t go for it over the others!
Now, how exactly do you play your warrior? It depends what level you are!
1-9: Warrior starts rather rough and pretty boring. Charge to start, keep Battle Shout up, keep Rend on the enemy, Heroic Strike with extra rage. Once you get Victory Rush, make sure to move to the next target fast enough to use it; the extra damage will speed things up.
10-11: Bloodrage will help you a bit with keeping Battle Shout up and give you more rage for Heroic Strikes, but otherwise things are the same.
12-15: Now you get Overpower, which will really define you as a Arms warrior in the future. For now, the Glyph will be a major boon, letting you use this powerful ability much more often.
16-23: You get Mocking Blow at 16, which is mostly for tanking later but for now is another extra damage attack. Then nothing much changes until level 24.
24-25: Execute is a great skill, allowing you to pretty much instantly finish off any mob once it’s health is low enough.
26-29: You should have a few points in the talent Taste For Blood now, and more than any other talent this one turns your Arms warrior into a killing machine; the proc effect should be allowing you to use Overpower pretty much every time the ability comes off cooldown. You can drop the Overpower Glyph now since it is useless.
30-39: At 30 you get another defining ability, Slam. Slam is basically your autoattack, so why is it good? Because it is so much faster than your actual autoattack with a two-hander. This is your filler, more or less, and if you aren’t using any other ability you should be using Slam.
40-51: At 40, you can get Mortal Strike, arguably the defining ability of an Arms warrior. After Overpower and keeping Rend up, Mortal Strike is next in importance.
52+: You should get Sudden Death somewhere around here, giving you the last thing you need for your complete Arms DPS rotation. Arms uses a priority system, meaning you don’t use abilities in a set order: You use whatever the best ability not on cooldown is. Here’s the final priority list:
Overpower (If Mortal Strike > Overpower > Execute > Slam. Heroic Strike at 80+ Rage. Every GCD should be used for something; waiting for a cooldown or proc is lost DPS.
With all of this, you should be ready to play a warrior at the highest level possible while leveling. But to really pick up your speed, you need a questing guide. Click here to check out my review of the top questing guides.
And when you DO reach eighty, give my Warrior gold farming guide a try.
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