tips and tricks for level 1-10 dwarf warriors
Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 8:23 amIn the past two months I've levelled more than 30 dwarf warriors as far as level 11...but when they died for the first time, I deleted them and started over. That's a playstyle some people tell me is called "hardcore," and on Vanilla it's very difficult, especially with a warrior. But from playing and talking to other players I've learned some things that every newb dwarf warrior should know.
1. Rage management, more rage management and always rage management. Rage is unique among class abilities. The others, such as mana and energy, start at a maximum value and get depleted as you use them. Rage starts at 0 and builds up as the warrior hits things and gets hit, being consumed through special abilities. The important thing is that enough rage is needed for those special abilities, because they are what hits harder than the attacks of almost any non-elite opponent. With proper rage management, a level 5 warrior can be at 30% of his max health when he starts attacking an opponent of the same level that is at full health, and still kill the opponent before it kills him. (I've done this by starting the fight against that opponent with 60 rage and using three Heroic Strikes and then one Rend within the span of a few seconds, before the oppoent had a chance to hit me much.)
So, if rage starts at 0, how do you build it up that high? There are two schools of thougth on this. One is that you use a one-handed weapon with a fast attack speed because it hits more often and therefore builds rage faster. Another view is that you use a slow two-handed weapon; the slower the weapon speed it is, the higher the maximum damage it deals. For a dwarf a two-handed slow axe is ideal. A weapon speed of 3.20 or higher is best, with base damage being a lesser factor. Although it generates rage more slowly, it hits far harder than any fast one-handed weapon and can save your butt many, many times.
But how do you generate enough rage with a slow weapon? Simple: attack multiple opponents at the same time. When you're first starting out (levels 1-3) the opponents at your level or one level higher are usually so weak that you can afford to take on two, maybe three of them. The ideal number is three same-level opponents or two opponents one level hgher. (Three opponents one level higher tends to be fatal.) After level 5, in either Dun Morogh or Elwynn (if you go there), two opponents of the same level are usually appropriate, but two opponents one level higher works too. The ones you don't attack keep hitting you, which gives you tons of rage for your Heroic Strike. Yes, you lose health fast, but see the next item.
2. Don't be afraid of bad health! As a warrior you're almost never going to be at full health even when STARTING a fight. As a dwarf warrior with a good enough axe, you hit so hard that you don't need to be paranoid about your health dropping if you keep up your rage. Of course, sometimes you whiff several times in a row, in which case the next point becomes relevant:
3. Stay calm! With any race or class, when you panic and start randomly mashing buttons, you are almost guaranteed to die. Spend the extra half a second to seek out and press the right button for the situation. Okay, but how do you know what button to press that fast? Well, that's the next point.
4. Use levelling to gain experience. Your abilities become available to you two or three at a time, every two levels. When you get a new ability, spend some thinking about how you intend to use it, maybe spend half an hour pretending you're in a fight and slowly training your fingers. SLOWLY. Remember "paint the fence" from _The Karate Kid_? If not, look it up. Doing things slowly for a prolonged time teaches muscle memory, which means things click and you end up doing it correctly, very fast. It's sort of like learning how to touch type, back before everyone typed with their thumbs.
There are other things you can do while levelling to gain experience. When you reach a new level, find a helpful mage to give you an intellect buff, because intellect helps with skill acquisition. You have Two-Handed Axes and Defence skills, and they increase as you fight, with 5 more points being unlocked every level. So start off by getting that intellect buff and fighting some groups of opponents that are one level lower than you in order to increase your weapon and defence skills before taking on dangerous opponents.
Alas, all of that is not enough, so you need some help...and the best way is to help yourself, as per the next point.
5. Focus on keeping your weapon as powerful as you can. Your armor isn't nearly as important as your weapon. Sure, upgrade your armor when you get a chance, but not at the cost of a better axe. Build up your silver and buy a green axe from the auction house. They cost as little as 5 silver and as much as 25, and the stats bonuses are not all that important at your level because ANY stat bonus helps you at your level in some way. The important thing is that the axe does one heck of a lot more damage than any quest drop, mob drop or vendor axes.
Learn mining the second you have a chance and turn on your Find Minerals ability. Copper ore is extremely expensive on the auction house, so it is collected by vast numbers of characters looking to finance themeselves, and nodes are very hard to find. Collect both copper ore and rough stone and stockpile it. At level 7, train in blacksmthing and level it to 35 as quickly as you can. You can do this by using rough stone to make as many as 30 rough sharpening stones (which give a +2 damage bonus to your axe for half an hour of game time anyway) and you can craft other blacksmithing items for the remaining points. Craft the best piece you can for any empty slot on your body, or one that is a significant upgrade. Otherwise, craft items that use little copper and then sell them to the vendor to raise cash. When your blacksmithing reaches 35, you can craft a two-handed axe that is by FAR the best axe you can get for the lowest levels. You can equip it at level 8 and it will make you hit like a truck plus increase your stamina by 3 points (which means 30 extra health). It's hard to make because, along with 8 copper bars, you need 2 light leather and 2 malachite (as well as two rough grinding stones you can craft with 2 rough stone each, and weak flux you can buy from a blacksmithing vendor). Malachite drops from some copper nodes but it's extremely hit and miss, so you probably have to buy it on the auction house, and unless you have a character who's a skinner same with the light leather. It's totally worth it!
Thsi brings me to the next point:
6. Maximize your advantage. Either have an alchemist character or use the auction house to buy Lesser Healing Potion, Elixir of Lion's Strength, Weak Troll's Blood Elixir and maybe Potion of Minor Defence. Use those sharpening stones and make sure your weapon is always sharpened. Have random kind priests buff you with Power Word Fortitude (a plus to stamina that lasts half an hour). Have a random kind druid buff you with Thorns (any opponent who hits you TAKES damage as well as inflicting it on you). If you're almost ready to fight see if a kind paladin will buff you with Blessing of Might (lasts only 5 minutes but gives you a nice bonus to attack power). Refresh your potions when they are close to expiring, and refresh your sharpening stone too. Try to time your battles so that your buffs are still live, so check on them often, and change priorities in what you're doing in order to take advantage of them.
Something else that's important is to keep up your Battle Shout. It lasts 2 minutes but increases your attack power and damage, as well as that of any other meelee fighter within your range. If you have rage left over as your last opponent is going down, renew your battle shout before the rage depletes from the fight ending. Which brings up something I didn't mention before:
7. Don't waste rage. If you're fighting three mobs of course you're attacking only one of them. If it's down to 10% of its health and your heroic strike is available, don't use it! take the damage while making a couple of auto attacks on that dying mob and then launch your attack on the next opponent with the heroic strike. If your last opponent is close to dying and you don't have enough rage for heroic strike, don't be afraid to spam rend. And if your opponent is the kind that runs away when low on health and comes back with buddies, make sure you rend it just before it gets low enough on health to run, because chances are it will die as it's running away from the bleed damage and either not reach its buddies or at least not come back to add its (full) damage on you to theirs. If you have to move rapidly through a dangerous area, do your best to start every new fight with enough rage for an opening rend AND an opening heroic strike within the first two seconds of the fight, even if saving the rage cost you health with the last opponent. But:
8. Eat eat eat. Have lots of food. As your last opponent is falling hit your eat keybind immediately if your health is low enough. Don't loot first. The more you delay looting the slower mobs respawn. If you're in a fast-respawn area postpone looting as long as you can without losing the loot. Have plenty of food at all times. Even learn cooking for Spiced Wolf Meat, which gives you +2 to stamina and spirit for 15 minutes. Make sure it's up before every fight.
9. Despite your best intentions, things ARE gonna screw up. You will aggregate opponents who just happen to wander within range and they'll nail you from the rear while you're fighting something else...or just after you've killed something else. Or you walk into what looks like an empty area except some other "considerate" character killed everything and the corpses have disappeared and five of them are about to respawn right on top of you. Or someone you're helping is a moron who aggregates 10 opponents and they all attack you when you try to help. That's when you should consider running. To run properly, use Stoneform first, and when that runs out keep running while watching your health bar, and when it drops low enough use your healing potion. Of course, run toward safety--which means, before entering battle, always know which way safety lies. Which brings up the last point:
10. For a warrior the game is survival. Survival doesn't happen to those who play like their characters are ADD or ADHD. Never rush into things. Plan battles carefully. If someone you've partied up with shows signs of rushing around and not thinking or planning, leave party and let them die. It's not a nice thing to do, but better than having their bad play kill you as well as them.
Hope this helps.
1. Rage management, more rage management and always rage management. Rage is unique among class abilities. The others, such as mana and energy, start at a maximum value and get depleted as you use them. Rage starts at 0 and builds up as the warrior hits things and gets hit, being consumed through special abilities. The important thing is that enough rage is needed for those special abilities, because they are what hits harder than the attacks of almost any non-elite opponent. With proper rage management, a level 5 warrior can be at 30% of his max health when he starts attacking an opponent of the same level that is at full health, and still kill the opponent before it kills him. (I've done this by starting the fight against that opponent with 60 rage and using three Heroic Strikes and then one Rend within the span of a few seconds, before the oppoent had a chance to hit me much.)
So, if rage starts at 0, how do you build it up that high? There are two schools of thougth on this. One is that you use a one-handed weapon with a fast attack speed because it hits more often and therefore builds rage faster. Another view is that you use a slow two-handed weapon; the slower the weapon speed it is, the higher the maximum damage it deals. For a dwarf a two-handed slow axe is ideal. A weapon speed of 3.20 or higher is best, with base damage being a lesser factor. Although it generates rage more slowly, it hits far harder than any fast one-handed weapon and can save your butt many, many times.
But how do you generate enough rage with a slow weapon? Simple: attack multiple opponents at the same time. When you're first starting out (levels 1-3) the opponents at your level or one level higher are usually so weak that you can afford to take on two, maybe three of them. The ideal number is three same-level opponents or two opponents one level hgher. (Three opponents one level higher tends to be fatal.) After level 5, in either Dun Morogh or Elwynn (if you go there), two opponents of the same level are usually appropriate, but two opponents one level higher works too. The ones you don't attack keep hitting you, which gives you tons of rage for your Heroic Strike. Yes, you lose health fast, but see the next item.
2. Don't be afraid of bad health! As a warrior you're almost never going to be at full health even when STARTING a fight. As a dwarf warrior with a good enough axe, you hit so hard that you don't need to be paranoid about your health dropping if you keep up your rage. Of course, sometimes you whiff several times in a row, in which case the next point becomes relevant:
3. Stay calm! With any race or class, when you panic and start randomly mashing buttons, you are almost guaranteed to die. Spend the extra half a second to seek out and press the right button for the situation. Okay, but how do you know what button to press that fast? Well, that's the next point.
4. Use levelling to gain experience. Your abilities become available to you two or three at a time, every two levels. When you get a new ability, spend some thinking about how you intend to use it, maybe spend half an hour pretending you're in a fight and slowly training your fingers. SLOWLY. Remember "paint the fence" from _The Karate Kid_? If not, look it up. Doing things slowly for a prolonged time teaches muscle memory, which means things click and you end up doing it correctly, very fast. It's sort of like learning how to touch type, back before everyone typed with their thumbs.
There are other things you can do while levelling to gain experience. When you reach a new level, find a helpful mage to give you an intellect buff, because intellect helps with skill acquisition. You have Two-Handed Axes and Defence skills, and they increase as you fight, with 5 more points being unlocked every level. So start off by getting that intellect buff and fighting some groups of opponents that are one level lower than you in order to increase your weapon and defence skills before taking on dangerous opponents.
Alas, all of that is not enough, so you need some help...and the best way is to help yourself, as per the next point.
5. Focus on keeping your weapon as powerful as you can. Your armor isn't nearly as important as your weapon. Sure, upgrade your armor when you get a chance, but not at the cost of a better axe. Build up your silver and buy a green axe from the auction house. They cost as little as 5 silver and as much as 25, and the stats bonuses are not all that important at your level because ANY stat bonus helps you at your level in some way. The important thing is that the axe does one heck of a lot more damage than any quest drop, mob drop or vendor axes.
Learn mining the second you have a chance and turn on your Find Minerals ability. Copper ore is extremely expensive on the auction house, so it is collected by vast numbers of characters looking to finance themeselves, and nodes are very hard to find. Collect both copper ore and rough stone and stockpile it. At level 7, train in blacksmthing and level it to 35 as quickly as you can. You can do this by using rough stone to make as many as 30 rough sharpening stones (which give a +2 damage bonus to your axe for half an hour of game time anyway) and you can craft other blacksmithing items for the remaining points. Craft the best piece you can for any empty slot on your body, or one that is a significant upgrade. Otherwise, craft items that use little copper and then sell them to the vendor to raise cash. When your blacksmithing reaches 35, you can craft a two-handed axe that is by FAR the best axe you can get for the lowest levels. You can equip it at level 8 and it will make you hit like a truck plus increase your stamina by 3 points (which means 30 extra health). It's hard to make because, along with 8 copper bars, you need 2 light leather and 2 malachite (as well as two rough grinding stones you can craft with 2 rough stone each, and weak flux you can buy from a blacksmithing vendor). Malachite drops from some copper nodes but it's extremely hit and miss, so you probably have to buy it on the auction house, and unless you have a character who's a skinner same with the light leather. It's totally worth it!
Thsi brings me to the next point:
6. Maximize your advantage. Either have an alchemist character or use the auction house to buy Lesser Healing Potion, Elixir of Lion's Strength, Weak Troll's Blood Elixir and maybe Potion of Minor Defence. Use those sharpening stones and make sure your weapon is always sharpened. Have random kind priests buff you with Power Word Fortitude (a plus to stamina that lasts half an hour). Have a random kind druid buff you with Thorns (any opponent who hits you TAKES damage as well as inflicting it on you). If you're almost ready to fight see if a kind paladin will buff you with Blessing of Might (lasts only 5 minutes but gives you a nice bonus to attack power). Refresh your potions when they are close to expiring, and refresh your sharpening stone too. Try to time your battles so that your buffs are still live, so check on them often, and change priorities in what you're doing in order to take advantage of them.
Something else that's important is to keep up your Battle Shout. It lasts 2 minutes but increases your attack power and damage, as well as that of any other meelee fighter within your range. If you have rage left over as your last opponent is going down, renew your battle shout before the rage depletes from the fight ending. Which brings up something I didn't mention before:
7. Don't waste rage. If you're fighting three mobs of course you're attacking only one of them. If it's down to 10% of its health and your heroic strike is available, don't use it! take the damage while making a couple of auto attacks on that dying mob and then launch your attack on the next opponent with the heroic strike. If your last opponent is close to dying and you don't have enough rage for heroic strike, don't be afraid to spam rend. And if your opponent is the kind that runs away when low on health and comes back with buddies, make sure you rend it just before it gets low enough on health to run, because chances are it will die as it's running away from the bleed damage and either not reach its buddies or at least not come back to add its (full) damage on you to theirs. If you have to move rapidly through a dangerous area, do your best to start every new fight with enough rage for an opening rend AND an opening heroic strike within the first two seconds of the fight, even if saving the rage cost you health with the last opponent. But:
8. Eat eat eat. Have lots of food. As your last opponent is falling hit your eat keybind immediately if your health is low enough. Don't loot first. The more you delay looting the slower mobs respawn. If you're in a fast-respawn area postpone looting as long as you can without losing the loot. Have plenty of food at all times. Even learn cooking for Spiced Wolf Meat, which gives you +2 to stamina and spirit for 15 minutes. Make sure it's up before every fight.
9. Despite your best intentions, things ARE gonna screw up. You will aggregate opponents who just happen to wander within range and they'll nail you from the rear while you're fighting something else...or just after you've killed something else. Or you walk into what looks like an empty area except some other "considerate" character killed everything and the corpses have disappeared and five of them are about to respawn right on top of you. Or someone you're helping is a moron who aggregates 10 opponents and they all attack you when you try to help. That's when you should consider running. To run properly, use Stoneform first, and when that runs out keep running while watching your health bar, and when it drops low enough use your healing potion. Of course, run toward safety--which means, before entering battle, always know which way safety lies. Which brings up the last point:
10. For a warrior the game is survival. Survival doesn't happen to those who play like their characters are ADD or ADHD. Never rush into things. Plan battles carefully. If someone you've partied up with shows signs of rushing around and not thinking or planning, leave party and let them die. It's not a nice thing to do, but better than having their bad play kill you as well as them.
Hope this helps.