Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Everyone is always debating this. Arms vs dw Fury vs 2h fury? They are all wrong.

Prot? Prot is wrong too.

In honor of the pve server about to launch, I present the best way to level a warrior, especially on a pve server:

sword'n'board Fury.

Why fury? Fury prevents death. Piercing howl saves so many corpse runs it would probably be better than arms even if it was the only thing in the fury tree.


Why sword'n'board. The overwhelming majority of a leveling warrior's dps is from autoattack and heroic strike. 1h autoattacking is not that much lower than a 2H or DW (about 80% as much if you do all your maths). Heroic strike favors fast weapons, so that brings sword'n'board closer to equal. Shield armor and block evens it up completely. Sword'n'board does slightly less dps, but it does slightly more dps done /dps taken.

Finally, what gives sword'n'board the edge is that "dps taken" is not the same as "net health lost per second". Due to bloodcraze and natural regen (when briefly out of combat, or all the time if you are a troll), your health is going up at the same time as its going down. Your dps done / net health lost per second, can go extremly high, or even to infinity.

Suppose you are dual wielding or using a 2H dealing 40 dps and taking 40 dps worth of damage. You are also regenerating an average of 20 health per second.

dps done/dps taken = 1

dps done / net health lost per second = 2

Now suppose you put a shield on. Now you do 35 dps (30 with autoattacks, heroic strike evening it up slightly), you take 33 dps, and your health regen is still 20.

dps done/dps taken= 1.06

dps done / net health lost per second = 2.7


If you are fighting weak mobs, your dps done / health lost can realistically reach infinity because you regen as much health as you lose. This means you have 0 downtime. This is much easier to attain with a shield on.

sounds interesting, but are there examples with real numbers?
talent spec? what gear?

You're nuts. Reminds me of the poison rogue guide.

The armor from a shield does reduce damage quite a bit, lets say 10/15% DR so 15-30% relative reduction. If you pit that against an extra offhand, you get 50/62.5% additional offhand dps. Your miss chance goes up by 16% so lets say we end up with 1.625-0.16*1.625 = 1.365 ie. 36.5% more damage assuming your offhand does the same dps as your mainhand. Now since we're talking fury we have to add the enrage modifier. Any decent warrior will sit to proc it and get near 100% uptime. So .365*1.25 leads to 46% more damage.

It doesn't end at that either, more white connects due to offhand leads to much more dodges (overpower) and more crits (flurry uptime). If you have WF you add 20% to the 146%, the crit/ap/hit on your gear it scales similarily.

50% added DPS vs 30% relative DR (best case scenario) leads to 50% longer kills and 20% more downtime.

i think he compares 2h fury with 1h+shield fury

flowison wrote:sounds interesting, but are there examples with real numbers?
talent spec? what gear?

Just standard fury spec. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LZVVzu0xo snapshot at level 30.


Its very tough to have real numbers because of all the variables. For example "health regen" as a described, depends on your total health, depends on how much time between pulls, depends on race and buffs, etc.

The 1H do 80% as much autoattack dps as 2H is a real number though. Check http://db.vanillagaming.org/?quest=1053 for a random example of a 2h and some 1hs of the same quality.

flowison wrote:i think he compares 2h fury with 1h+shield fury

I did focus on the 2H vs 1h+shield, but I think 1h+shield is also better than DW. Heroic strike is perfectly usable when DWing, so that particular part of my comparison does not apply to DW.

vido wrote:You're nuts. Reminds me of the poison rogue guide.

The armor from a shield does reduce damage quite a bit, lets say 10/15% DR so 15-30% relative reduction. If you pit that against an extra offhand, you get 50/62.5% additional offhand dps. Your miss chance goes up by 16% so lets say we end up with 1.625-0.16*1.625 = 1.365 ie. 36.5% more damage assuming your offhand does the same dps as your mainhand. Now since we're talking fury we have to add the enrage modifier. Any decent warrior will sit to proc it and get near 100% uptime. So .365*1.25 leads to 46% more damage.

It doesn't end at that either, more white connects due to offhand leads to much more dodges (overpower) and more crits (flurry uptime). If you have WF you add 20% to the 146%, the crit/ap/hit on your gear it scales similarily.

50% added DPS vs 30% relative DR (best case scenario) leads to 50% longer kills and 20% more downtime.

You included DW talents (maxed at level 35ish), and I believe the miss penalty is 19% not 16%. Excluding the DW talent and with 19% penalty: 1.5-0.19*1.5=1.215. With enrage 0.215*1.25=0.27, so 27% more damage.

For simplicity, lets say shield DR is also 27%.

So shield is 27% slower kills, and identical downtime. But wait! While you are grinding, you take alot of damage, but you also regenerate alot of health from bloodcraze and brief moments between pulls. Shield DR does not act on your net health, it acts on your raw damage taken.

If your raw damage taken is very large compared to your health regeneration, then wearing a shield is not very useful. For a 10:1 ratio: DW: 100-10=90. Shield: (100-0.27*100)-10=63. 27/90=30% 3% less downtime. Not worth it for 27% slower kills

If your raw dmg taken is not as large compared to your health regen, then wearing a shield reduced downtime enormously. For a 2:1 Ratio: DW 100-50=50. Shield: (100-0.27*100)-50=23. 27/50=54% 27% less downtime. At the cost of 27% slower kills

Bandages are certainly downtime, but they are better than having to sit down and eat. With bandages included in health regeneration, the ratio will go even less than 2:1.


One other thing, flurry is not biased towards DW. DW will proc it more often, but it will also use it up faster. Some of the charges on flurry will be wasted on the offhand too. If anything flurry favors single/slower weapons because each of the 3 charges is used on a valuable attack.

Cute. Take HS out of the equasion. You will be rage starved and get only 1 or two off on a fight. So weapon speed has nothing to do with this.

Shields give about a 10 % damage reduction to PHYSICAL damage. What is going to hurt you is magic as a warrior, but they also have low armor. Rock a 2h and wreck face. Use intercept as well.

Do a slow white hit, run away while they cast, ur swing timer is still goibg, intercept and boom! another strong white hit.

Grind things 3 levels below you to minimize down time greatly. Grinding humanoids so you can use the bandages as you go and typically have less armor than beast.

Its not a bad choice 1h fury, as it increases the effectiveness of rend by 20% which is your best damage to rage while leveling pre 40, but it isnt the best.

Just keep a 2h and sword board, as you should always for tanking 5 mans. If you are fighting heavy melee nobs or a high lvl quest mob, go sword n board. If you are gringing things lower level than you, or casters put the two on.

There, both sides win.

Undertanker wrote:Cute. Take HS out of the equasion. You will be rage starved and get only 1 or two off on a fight. So weapon speed has nothing to do with this.

Shields give about a 10 % damage reduction to PHYSICAL damage. What is going to hurt you is magic as a warrior, but they also have low armor. Rock a 2h and wreck face. Use intercept as well.

Do a slow white hit, run away while they cast, ur swing timer is still goibg, intercept and boom! another strong white hit.

Grind things 3 levels below you to minimize down time greatly. Grinding humanoids so you can use the bandages as you go and typically have less armor than beast.

Its not a bad choice 1h fury, as it increases the effectiveness of rend by 20% which is your best damage to rage while leveling pre 40, but it isnt the best.

I fully endorse swapping weapons against spellcasting mobs. Although using shieldbash every cooldown seems prudent aswell.

And, if you have a very good 2H weapon (whirlwind axe) but a shitty 1h and/or shield, then I endorse using the better weapon!

I find that fury + a strong 2h + Slam leads to pretty fast killing. From 20-30 I dual-wielded, but once I got Whirlwind Axe and Slam at 30, I found that to be much faster.

Charge -> first melee hit -> sit down for Enrage -> next melee hit -> 2x Slam -> mob should be either dead with crits, or around 20-30% with no crits -> melee swing and execute from there

As long as you fight mobs 1-3 levels below you, it'll be smooth sailing. With Retaliation and Death Wish, you can easily solo elite quest mobs.