So the new beta build came out today and even tho it’s still buggy here and there, one of the biggest changes that shocked me was the change to Berserker Rage.

Berserker Rage is a tool used by Warriors in all their stances now. For Prot it’s nice to break out of fear when tanking a boss that does fear (like Onyxia). For Prot it’s usefull for PvPing because it enables you to break out of fear effects (Fear/Howl of Terror/Psychic Scream), Sap and Repentance without having to switch stances. For Fury PvE it’s a tool to gain rage and break out of the fear that a boss does. However with the change they made to it at the moment, Berserker Rage is only a viable option for the Fury warrior. To explain why, we need to dig into the past.

Way back in Vanilla (and the start of TBC) Berserker Rage was only usable in Berserker Stance. To use this ability the Warrior had to do something called “stancedancing” which means you switch to another stance very fast to use an ability and then change back to your original stance as soon as possible. For Prot warriors this meant that they had to switch to Berserker Stance 1 or 2 seconds before Onyxia (for example) did her Fear. This required timing, and extremely good healers since giving up Defensive Stance for Berserker Stance meant an increase in damage taken by 15%. For Arms Warriors it meant that when fighting Warlocks they had to be in Berserker Stance for a fair bit of time to anticipate the incoming fear. Again, not handy because Berserker Stance increases damage done to you, something you also do not want in PvP.

With the introduction of Nightbane in Karazhan Blizzard decided to make Berserker Rage a tool to use in any stance.This meant that the Prot Warrior who was tanking the dragon now could press Berserker Rage without having to take increased amounts of damage from having to switch to Berserker Stance. It also gave an Arms warrior some more viablity in Battlegrounds because they could now break out of stuff like Fear and Sap without having to switch stances.

Now however, Blizzard has decided to make Berserker Rage back into the way it was. This means that once again Prot Warriors will have to change to Berserker Stance to handle an incoming Fear and Arms Warriors are more susceptible to CC’s. I really hope that Blizzard will not go through with these changes. I feel like I’m being transported back into the past. I know some other classes will be happy about this change (Priests and Warlocks can now Fear Warriors again without having to calculate Berserker Rage in) but I think Blizzard is making a big mistake. I hope they themselves realize this too, preferably before the Warrior Community decides to roll Fury en masse because the other speccs are just too hard (trust me, Stancedancing isn’t easy, especially as tank and with the game being as simple as it is today, people will turn away from the Warrior when effort is required).

So last night was the Developer’s Q&A from Blizzard on the new Class/Talent/Mastery stuff. I actually stayed up all night to throw some questions at them. Sadly the ones I would really loved to see answered, didn’t get answered. So I’m still in the dark about the viability of Titan’s Grip now that 2-handed weapon specialization is Arms only and I still don’t know why the hell Improved Slam is still in the Arms tree (I mean, come on! No one ever speccs that -.-). Anyway I would like to make a post here about the Warrior Q&A where actually one of my questions came through!

Q. Will rend (sigh) be refreshed by Thunderclap on all targets used with Blood and Thunder?
A. Yes. The idea is that you Rend once and then Thunder Clap from then on. We still hope it’s an optional talent, not the only way warriors can AoE tank.

I think this is a big sigh of relief by prot warriors. Having to apply Rend is consuming a global cooldown which could be used on a more usefull ability (think Heroic Strike or Shield Slam).

Q. Slam’s design is pretty archaic and not very fun. Is there any chance of Slam becoming an instant-attack baseline ability?
A. We think it makes the ability feel different. Slam as an instant attack isn’t very different from some of the other attacks. As it’s designed though, Fury shouldn’t use Slam at all without procs and Arms should only use it with the Improved Slam talent. We tried (briefly) making Slam a low-level ability, but weren’t happy with it.

I have to agree with the blues on this. Slam is an optional attack. Not required for the rotation of Arms and only usable when procced for fury. It stands out for being a “casted” attack. I like it the way it is because it makes you more alert to your procc on it as fury (aka when you see a castbar Slam, take a step back immediatly!).

Q: Will Whirlwind still be a part of a Fury warrior’s rotation on single mobs or will it be multi-mobs only?
A. Multiple mobs only.

This ^ was my question. Since the new ability isn’t implemented yet you do still use Whirlwind on single targets in the beta. Good to know that by the time Cataclysm hits it will be for trash only and the new ability will be implemented. Speaking of which…

Q: Are Fury Warriors still going to see a new attack to fill the loss of Whirlwind? Any insight?
A. Yes! It’s called Raging Blow (at least for the moment), because we wanted to distance is a little from the old Enraged Assault. It’s Fury-only and can only be used when Enraged, but does not consume the Enrage. It does indeed strike with both weapons (including the animation).

I like! Not only will this replace the loss of Whirlwind but it will be the replacement talent of Impending Victory too. Basically this talent will be up when you use any of your “enrages”. Bloodrage, Berserker Rage, Death Wish and Recklessness are all considered Enrages. I think this is also Blizzards way of saying “Specc into Enrage!” for Fury warriors since it will probably be up 24/7.

Q: Concussion Blow is rarely used these days outside of PvP. Any plans for it? Will you unlink it from Vigilance?
A. It’s pretty useful on Mr. Lich King….

Apart from the fact that it is pretty useful on the Valkyrs in the Lich King fight, it’s  an useful talent to have as Prot warrior overall. What if there’s no CC and there’s healers in the instance? You as warrior then have an ability to stun them. And trust me, there are a lot of healy things in the dungeons in Cataclysm. I see a revival of this talent. Maybe not now, but it will definately come in handy in Cataclysm.

Q: How is Heroic Leap working so far? Is it progressing better than your last attempt at putting it in-game?
A. We’re pretty happy with it so far. The version we have right now lets the warrior target where they want to leap, so they can use it as an escape tool as well. We all know paladins would never retreat from a battle, but warriors have been known to do so.

I like this. I was squeeling with joy when I saw this ability would be available to Warriors. Looks like Blizzard is working hard on the ability to make sure it doesn’t only have an offensive feel but also a defensive feel. Escaping from enemies = good. Crushing that healer 20 yards away = also good. I definately like where this is going.

Q. Why does fury have two 31-point talents? Wouldn’t it be simpler to merge them so one doesn’t have to re-specialize when new weapons drop?
A. We feel the decision on which of these two talents to choose is based on play style (two fast weapons, or two slow two-handed weapons), not based on which weapons most recently dropped (like the former Arms weapon specialization talents which have been cut).

We expect the player to decide which type of dual wielder they are and collect weapons and gear that fit that type.

This question was a double, I just took the one that explained most to me. Essentially going for 1handers or 2handers is your own choice. However in my opinion Titan’s Grip HAS to change before you can even make that choice. At the moment I myself are leaning towards using 2handers because they just look better. However we’ll see what is better when Cataclysm hits. As far as viability/usability for leveling goes (as far as I’ve seen in the beta atleast) it’s safer to stick with 1handers and just see what the Dungeons/Raids will drop.

Q: Hi, it’s me Rend! I’m sort of terrible, but if tanks are having to use me in Cataclysm, may I be a good ability now?!
A. Get back to the back of the bus, Rend.

In all seriousness, though, we don’t want Rend to be the answer to Protection warrior threat. It isn’t going to keep mobs glued to you. We do think we have room to boost its damage though, even for warriors with a DPS specialization. One change we’ve made is letting it do a tick of damage immediately, so that you see and feel damage right on the application instead of waiting for the first tick.

Basically the same answerish as the first question in the Q&A. What I like is that it does immediate damage. Not only useful to Prot warriors but also to Arms in PvP.

Q: What do you think warriors will be more unique for in PvP now that Mortal Strike is available to other classes and reduced to 20%?
A. We don’t think warriors need a unique ability that is so awesome that you just have to have a warrior on your Arena team. That is bad mojo for all the other classes. We do want warriors to be useful in PvP, however. One ability we are trying out for Arms is “Throwdown,” which lets them knock an opponent to the ground for five seconds. Since it’s usable in Battle Stance, they can also use it as a Pummel in a pinch.

THANK YOU! THANK YOUUUUU. Interrupt in Battle Stance HELL YEAH. THIS IS GOD. No longer having to switch to Berserker Stance to interrupt. THANK YOU GHOSTCRAWLER. Best announcement so far.

Q: You mentioned “Disarming Glare isn’t likely to make it. Could you expand on this a bit?
A. We cut it in exchange for the Throwdown talent above.

Ok this is a  bummer since a 10 second unbreakable fear after a Disarm would be awesome but I do get why it’s too overpowered. They’re replacing it with a really good ability though so not that much complaining here.

This was the Warrior section on the Blizzard Q&A. They’ve enlightened a lot, made me even more enthousiastic about Arms PvP in Cataclysm and took away some Prot tanking worries of my boyfriend. All in all a lot of new information to ponder.

The quoted questions are copied of wow.com who have put them all nicely under their respective category.

Today the new talent trees were released on the beta and consequently on MMO-Champion too. Ofcourse I hurried to see what’s happening and stuff, filled in some talents and then contacted my boyfriend what else there was to see.
All talenttrees now come with a description that is unique to the talent tree and explain what the tree stands for. Under this descriptions are abilities that you unlock the moment you choose to specc into that Talent Tree. Here is a picture of the warrior descriptions.

Some things immediatly struck my eye. The fact that precision (aka +3% hit) is only available to fury and that 2handed weapon specialization is only available to Arms.
Particularly the last bit is something that quite shocked me. An explanation to why, starts back in TBC.

When WotLK was about to launch, new talent-trees were implemented. Fury Warriors got a new talent called Titan’s Grip, allowing the warrior to wield two 2handed weapons but against a penalty (which in the end turned out to be -10% damage). This penalty is quite huge, a 10% damage loss results in 1.5k dps less in an instance like ICC where a Fury warrior is easily able to pump out 15k dps. To soften the 10% damage loss blow, you could specc into 2handed weapon specialization in the arms tree. Currently this talent gives you 6% damage increase on your 2handers and therefore makes the dps loss of a Fury warrior wielding 2handers less significant. Titan’s Grip was the only viable way to dps as Fury and having two 2handed weapons instead of one just rocked. Blizzard was quite proud of the talent as a whole.

Now with the Cataclysm Beta running and Blizzard introducing 1handed Fury again and after overhauling the entire talent tree mechanics it seems that Titan’s Grip, the talent they were so proud of has become obsolete. Since 2handed weapon specialization is now Arms only, Fury warriors will suffer that 10% damage loss to the fullest. This suddenly becomes a huge penalty again, especially during the first few months where the new rage mechanic is still being adjusted and the gear overall is quite bad. It looked like at the start, 1handed Fury would be more viable than 2handed due to better scaling of damage with 1handers with bad gear. However as it seems now, 1handed Fury will be the ONLY viable specc for Fury warriors and that is something I don’t agree on. Why kill a talent that was not bad, gave great aestethics (come on, 2 huge weapons are awesome!) and made Fury more attractive to play?

So here is where I say WTH Blizzard? Why murder Titan’s Grip? WHY? I like running around with 2 huge 2handers, smacking all that dare oppose me.
I really hope that they will fix this and restore Titan’s Grip to be viable before Cataclysm hits. Either get that 2handed weapon specialization out of Arms only, or remove the penalty from Titan’s Grip. Give the Fury Warrior a choice, don’t force them onto 1handers!

So… This weekend we had quite a surprise. My boyfriend who had opted in for the Cataclysm Beta, actually got in! This means that not only he, but also I can play and experience new zones/quests/BG’s/dungeons/abilities. You name it, I’ll play it.
I’ll be starting a series, mostly theorycrafting, about the various things that the next expansion has in store for us (and most of all my warrior). Which speccs are the most viable, how stats are getting altered, what the best place for starting is and stuff like that. I won’t be able to provide with actual screenshots or too much info since I do not want my BF to get kicked from the beta, but I’ll give some hints here and there.

You can count on Cata theories if my post starts with “An Exclusive Look”. If you are not interested in Cata, or don’t want to get spoiled do not read these posts! Untill next time.

-x- Sassiej

One of the most sought after and despised weapons in the game: Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter. This 2-handed weapon drops from the first boss in Icecrown Citadel 25 man mode and has, as you can see, no stats other than a lifestealing procc. I’m linking the heroic one, because that’s the one I have obtained.
Why is it loved and despised? Well to be fair, the droprate of that thing has been insane for our guild. It dropped almost every week when we raided Icecrown and I think it’s getting disenchanted or given to offspeccs currently because they have no clue what to do with it. Some people tend to whine that it drops over more usefull items, something to which I agree partly. For our guild’s paladins and DK tank this thing is almost best in slot and so they didn’t have any problems with needing it. There’s only one more class that can do something with this weapon: the Warrior. And there is where my focus lies.

I needed this weapon over my 251 weapon that I picked up in a pug or an altrun once, Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling. As you can see that weapon has quite some expertise on it and the moment I replaced it, I knew I would be in trouble. My expertise fell down to 15 where it should be 26 and so I had to switch some gear around, downgrade a ring and eat expertise food to stay on that cap. Apart from the extra socket I recieved, I hoped that the lifesteal would come in handy aswell. I was unfortunately very very wrong. The lifesteal proccs like shit for a fury warrior. Not only that, I really resented giving up stats for a procc that sucked in PvE. The first chance I got to replace the thing was on a Lich King kill where he dropped his shiny sword which solved all my expertise problems and some more. The guild couldn’t understand why I would downgrade my heroic Bryntroll to a normal Glorenzelg. I kindly explained that it wasn’t only a DPS increase, but it also fixed my immediate stats problem that had arised with replacing Ramaladni. Afterwards I got told that that particular sword is practially Best in Slot as Mainhand and if you get a beter mainhand as Offhand for a warrior. Bryntroll however is almost number one on the sucky list. Well it is for fury, because for Arms PvP…

THIS WEAPON IS GOD! GOD I TELL YOU! HELL YEAH BABY. I might have to switch my specc around again, because my boyfriend recently found out that if you spam hamstring, the lifesteal proccs like an insane thing. What can you possibly wish for more than a weapon that heals you as warrior? Not only is it awesome in Arena, when used properly you can even survive in a Battleground a bit longer without getting healed. In that regard, Bryntroll is Best in Slot for warriors pvp wise. Not only because of it’s high damage and 3 socket spots, but because of the lifesteal that is so worthless in PvE. So where it’s a big thumbs down for a fury warrior, it’s a big thumbs up for Arms pvp.

Bryntroll is a weapon with two faces. Hated by fury warriors because it’s the last resort you take for your dps, but loved by arms warriors to pvp with because it’s the same lifesteal that is useless for fury that makes it the cutting edge for arms. I’m very happy I obtained this weapon. And I have to admit, the Battlegrounds look ever more luring if you know that you have that awesome weapon to kill people with…

We are all thrilled when our beloved character dings level 80 and we can start collecting gear and do shiny dungeons and raids. After a while tho, you find out that there is more than doing dungeons and raids and when you can’t gear up anymore often you look for something else to do. One of these “something elses” is PvP!
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, the average new player will not commence in PvP activity during levelling (a lot), since it’s not the easiest way to level up and since most people rather just kill animals, murlocs and the like. This is especially so on normal servers where you also do not have to deal with world PvP and ganking. So when you’re 80, and have time to spare, you can turn your attention to PvP and discover an entire new world in the World of Warcraft!

The first things you want to look at:
Speccs.
Every class has atleast one specc to commence in PvP with. To give some examples, for a warrior this is Arms, for a mage it’s Frost and for a priest it can be Discipline. When you start to PvP search on the web what is the most suited specc to play PvP with for you. If you’re unexperienced I say go for the easiest specc or the most common specc since the most advice is given on these speccs. Just find out what specc you want to play in PvP, read up on how it works and specc it. For some classes this will be harder than others, for instance a hunter can PvP with all three speccs whereas a mage is best off as Frost. It’s all about personal preference tho, but again I’d choose for the easiest/most known PvP specc per class.
After you’ve specced your favorite specc, it’s time to get practicing it because no one is a miracle player overnight. It’s taken me 2 years to perfect the play on my own warrior and I still feel that I can improve a whole lot! So don’t be afraid to spam the battlegrounds, the more practise you get in, the easier and more fun it (hopefully) will become to play your class in PvP.

Gear.
Gear is an important issue when starting to PvP. Nowadays you can PvP in your regular gear pretty well, but you will be an easy to kill target since normal gear lacks Resilience. What exactly is this resilience? Resilience is a stat only to be found on PvP gear. What it essentially does is reduce the chance you will get critically hit and reduce all damage taken by a certain amount. The more resilience you stack, the less damage you take sorta speak. This is important because if you ever encounter an Elemental shaman who’s popped all his cooldowns and casts Lava Burst at your face you know that it will hurt a lot. As in up to 17k crits a lot. When you have resilience this damage will go down together with the chance that they crit on you as a whole!
The way to obtain this PvP gear is, yet again, by doing battlegrounds. There are currently multiple PvP sets with Furious Gladiator being the lowest and Wrathful Gladiator being the highest. The difference between these sets is if you choose to play Arena or not. But since this is a Basics guide I will stick to doing battlegrounds only so that means you can get a full Furious Gladiator mainset with some Relentless and Wrathful offparts. The difference between mainparts and offparts will be shown below!
Sidenote! All of the parts below are bought with honor or emblems in the mainset case, if you click on the links you will see how much honor/emblems the parts are. The honor cap per character is atm 75k so decide wisely what gear you purchase!
The Main Set
The main set consists of a headpiece, shoulders, gloves, chest and pants. This is currently the Furious Gladiator set. For convenience I’ll link the warrior set below.

• Furious Gladiator’s Plate Helm
• Furious Gladiator’s Plate Shoulders
• Furious Gladiator’s Plate Chestpiece
• Furious Gladiator’s Plate Gauntlets
• Furious Gladiator’s Plate Legguards

As you can see, the main set consists of five parts. If you obtain two parts you will get a setbonus just like on PvE gear and on four parts you will also obtain a setbonus. The gloves have an additional bonus that is different for every class and is class based.
The Offset
The offset is in fact all other parts that do not belong to the mainset. So that’s neck, cloak, bracers, belt, boots and rings. Trinkets and weapons are a category of their own since most PvPers have a PvE weapon and one or more PvE trinkets.
The offset obtainable for a warrior who only does Battlegrounds will look a little something like this:

• Wrathful Gladiator’s Bracers of Triumph
• Relentless Gladiator’s Girdle of Triumph
• Relentless Gladiator’s Greaves of Triumph
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Cloak of Victory
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Pendant of Victory
• Wrathful Gladiator’s Band of Triumph
• Relentless Gladiator’s Band of Victory

As you can see, some of the items called Victory have hit on them instead of crit. This is because as a warrior you need 5% hit in PvP. This goes for all melee, I’m not sure about the spellhit tho so you have to look it up for yourself. Apart from the belt/boots/bracers there are many variations with stats on the cloaks, rings and necks. You have to look for yourself which of these will suit your character best or which ones are recommended to take. When you are unsure, you can alway ask a more experienced PvPer what he or she would do.
Trinkets and Weapons
Unfortunately good PvP weapons are only available to those that play arena on high rankings. Therefore your PvE weapon will do just fine in PvP. As for trinkets, the only trinket I recommend that you take is Medallion of the Horde/Alliance. This trinket will let you escape from stuns, polymorphs, cyclones and the like. The only two races that essentially can do without the trinket are Humans due to their “Every Man For Himself” racial which provides the same escape or as Undead who have “Will Of The Forsaken”.
Gemming and Enchanting
Unfortunatly I can’t say anything useful about this either since it differs per class. Again, look it up for yourself and see what other people say or what the community says to gem and enchant on your gear. You can always experiment later, but at the start it’s better to go with the mainstream.
Is a full PvP set that necessary?
Well, some people don’t have to have a full PvP set. When you raid endgame content, you can swap out some PvP stuff for PvE stuff for increased damage and healing and the like. However if you do not have the chance to obtain these items I strongly advise to take a full PvP set. It will make you tougher but will also keep your damage at a decent level.

The PvP itself!
Now that we’ve discussed the gear and specc section, let’s talk about the actual PvPing that takes place. If you press your “H” button a PvP screen will pop up and you can select battlegrounds. If you want diversity, just select “random battleground” and join the queue! It will put you in a random battleground, so you never know where you will end up.
Now let’s discuss some important and basic stuff for PvPing:
Practice, practice, practice!
When you first walk into a Battleground you can’t expect everyone to just drop dead on when they see you. No, most likely you will be the one facing the floor for the majority of time. This is ok, since hey, you’re just a newbie who’s learning to play his or her class for the first time in PvP. Just remember not to give up because you will get there, you will get better and you will be able to eat people’s faces if you just practice enough!
Stick with the group.
Especially when you don’t have enough gear yet, stick with a group of people. You are less vulnerable in a group than when you are singled out. It’s most likely that you will get singled out anyway since the trained PvP eye can scout bad gear, but still your chances are higher, especially if your group has a healer with them who can heal you up while you spam your frostbolt button at that warrior who wants to eat your face. So really, just stick with the group!
Figure out what you need to do to win the Battleground.
At this point I would like to refer to the lovely Cynwise from Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual who has made marvelous in depth battleground guides. For almost all the Battlegrounds it’s really obvious what to do to win. If you obtain better gear you can go for the flag in Warsong Gulch yourself or you can defend a base in Arathi Basin, a tower in Alterac Valley or a wall in Strand of the Ancients. If anything, just go with the flow. Cap bases if you have to cap bases, and kill flagcarriers to obtain that flag. Once you figured out how it works and what you need to do to win everything becomes a lot easier. And ofcourse the best way to find out, is just by heading out and doing it!
And most importantly….
Have fun!! If you are not having fun while PvPing, ok ok some frustrations are allowed, you shouldn’t PvP. Just go do something else for a while or choose not to PvP at all anymore. It’s about the game you want to play and have fun with, so try to do so. Losing can be stupid, but if you fought the hardest you could or was the only one that managed to steal bases back and had fun doing it, you’ll see that it’s not so bad after all.

I hope to see all of you in a Battleground someday. Go out and punch faces!

With more and more stuff from Cataclysm coming out in public I feel that it’s on our doorstep. I like to know some stuff, but not too much since I do wanna stay curious.
There is a beta opt in, but since I prefer not to have a programm by Blizzard running on the background to collect data I’ve chosen not to opt in.

Some other choices I did make and am in the process of making. As you might have noticed the activity on my blog has gone down a bit. I have the same thing as Chas from Righteous Orbs, the more I play WoW, the less time I spent blogging about it. Because in all honesty, I just don’t have much to say about most of my chars. My hunter is still raiding (I kinda gave up PvP on her because she’s boring me) and the rest of my chars are still tumbling around. One of the chars I’m paying a lot of attention to is my beloved Troll Warrior: Sassiej.
She has been around since the start of my WoW career, I’ve been playing her for 3 years now, and she was the first char on my own account. I’ve done a lot of things on her, experienced 3 Brewfests eventho my FoS only show the last one since I deleted the yellow and blue mug on a huge bank cleanout in TBC, I still regret doing that to this day. Yes I’ve ticketed a GM about it but “It’s too long ago”. I’ve got the original Yellow/Red Clockwork Rocket Robot and also saw the Spirit of Competition Event which I thought was “OMG LAME!” at the time.  So now I’m trying to get her as many other achievements as possible. I’ve done Loremaster on her, I am Chef and Salty on her, fished up the Giant Rat and have a nice starting collection of rare mounts. I’ve got the Swift Zulian Tiger, Swift White Hawkstrider, Red AQ mount and the VoA passenger mammoth. Me and my boyfriend are still farming Zul’Gurub for a tiger for him and a raptor for me and I hope to pick up farming for Baron Rivendare’s mount soon(ish). I’ve been farming money on her to get a Mechano Hog and I’m on 85/100 mounts for the 100 mounts achievement.
Her pet collection shows to the right of the page and she is my main PvP/Arena character.
I’m also trying to get Shadow’s Edge on her.

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out why I am beginning to dislike my hunter, kind of the same way I started to dislike my priest. I like playing both classes, but after a while it starts to bore me and I don’t feel like playing at all. I rolled my hunter after quitting on my priest because I thought that she would be more viable to raid with, my warrior was heavily undergeared as prot with an arms offspecc so I passed on the idea to roll to her. Something that when I think back to has been a stupid decision. The reason I get bored with my hunter and priest is the same reason I farm achievements like hell on my warrior, I want to reroll my warrior. I’ve never been able to play her properly, back at the start due to my very old and very bad PC which couldn’t handle melee range animations but could handle healer range animations which made me roll my priest. When WotLK came out, I just stuck to my priest out of convenience and when I rolled horde I took my hunter because I was used to playing ranged, but just wanted to DPS this time. It’s all coming back to bite me in the ass now. Now that my guild is progressing on heroic ICC 25 man, I find myself more eager to spend time on my warrior than on my hunter which makes me underperform as a hunter and dislike raiding as a whole.

For me Cataclysm can’t come soon enough. I can roll the char that I’ve been meaning to play all along, but only just found out that it’s her where my passion lies. Good thing I did tho, because it would suck if I got bored 3 months into Cataclysm but not being able to reroll due to the gear that I have gotten from raiding.
Now only to make my guild stop with troll jokes…

Today I would like to cover the first 2v2 team of the new series I’m starting about Arena Setups with you: Holy Paladin & Arms Warrior.

Paladin/Warrior has been an ancient Arena Combo dating back to the times of early TBC when Arena first came out. It’s the combo I’ve played from the start with my boyfriend in TBC and in WotLK. We have gotten as far as reaching 14** rating which earned us both the title: Challenger. Now that we’ve both faction changed to troll and bloodelf we’re starting to arena again after a season’s break.

Team Pro’s and Cons
Pro’s: A Warrior/Paladin team has a lot going for them. The biggest advantage they have is the fact that both characters wear Plate. Plate mitigates the most damage and therefore requires more damage output to get shut down. Usually an Arms warrior will walk around with about 14/15K armor in Furious/Relentless gear. A paladin will have even more due to the fact that they wear a shield.
Another big pro for the team is that Arms Warriors potentially have the biggest burst damage in Arena ingame at this very moment. They have very powerful attacks like Overpower (which is triggered on a tick from Rend or when the opponent dodges), Execute (always available below 20% health but also available after a crit due to talents), Mortal Strike which not only does massive damage but also applies a 50% healing reducement on the target and Bladestorm, probably one of the most hated abilities out there. Especially Bladestorm deals a lot of damage, but it’s also easy to avoid. Most skilled warriors will not use Bladestorm untill their opponent is about to die, or as opener when multiple people are standing together so they can do damage to all of them and force the healer to heal.
This team also has enormous survivability. Paladins can ofcourse bubble, but can also make themselves or their warrior partners very mobile. Warriors are essentially the most mobile melee there are at this moment, but Blessing of Freedom from a paladin helps them overcome many many obstacles.
Not to mention the fact that Paladins have the biggest mana pool ingame and are less likely to go oom soon and when they do they can activate Divine Plea and get all their mana back in no time. They can dispell diseases, magic and poison and can save their partners with Blessing of Protection or Hand of Sacrifice. Their heals are fast and cost hardly any mana and they can put up a shield without cooldown on their partners to protect them from incoming damage (Sacred Shield). Beacon of Light is a tool for them to heal both themselves and their partners and that makes them a very viable class in Arena.
Con’s: There are also some downsides to Warrior/Paladin teams. One of the major struggles of the team is opponents with lots of CC opportunity. You can literally chaincc a Warrior/Paladin team to death. Just chaincc 1 and nuke down the other. Warriors are very squishy without their healer so the strategy most CC teams use is CC the paladin and nuke the warrior as fast as they can.
Another weakness of the warrior/paladin team is spellcaster teams. Both classes are very fragile when it comes to spellcasters and most of the times mage/priest, mage/warlock, warlock/priest and any other combination of that will kill the Warrior/Paladin team. The reason I’m not mentioning Moonkin Druids and Elemental Shamans is because the first is hardly seen in Arena due to their squishyness and the latter’s damage is easy avoidable by a well timed spellreflect of  a warrior. It also helps that neither can steal mana from the paladin or dispell magic.
Something that is a Pro aswell as a Con in Warrior/Paladin teams that a lot depends on the gear and weapon of a warrior. Warriors have the hightest scaling when it comes to obtaining new gear and especially new weapons. Upgrading from a ilevel 232 weapon to an ilevel 251 weapon can mean 300-400 damage increase per white swing which doesn’t crit. These numbers are quite high, higher than any other class in game. This makes a warrior with a really good weapon a feared opponent, but also makes a warrior with a shitty weapon easier to kill and avoid damage from. For a paladin gear is much less of an issue than for a warrior seeing as they don’t do the majority of the damage in Arena.

Warrior/Paladin Behavior in Arena
A sidenote: I can only say this out of my own experience, please comment me on it if I say it wrong.
Warrior/Paladin teams rely heavily on the melee damage of the warrior. They will always try to be on their opponents ass and usually will drag the fight into the open where they can stay in eachothers line of sight. The best distance kept between them is the distance a warrior can still use Intervene on the paladin. This is needed to get out of tough situations like 2 melee pounding on the warrior or another warrior that is bladestorming.
Warriors/Paladins are best to fight close to eachother on a spot where there is no LoS and the warrior can pound while the paladin can still heal him. The only time they benefit from LoS is when they get a caster team and when they’re smart enough to kite them around. Separation is something a warrior/paladin team fears and so it’s best if they stick together so that they can get eachother out of trouble. Mostly they will go after the melee in a melee/caster team. If not it’s just pray on the weakest and drag it out into the open. Due to the mobility of the team it’s most likely that they can get into melee range quite easily and the only way to possibly avoid this is running around in circles around an obstacle kiting the warrior around. Some warriors will follow you till the ends of the earth, other’s will decide to stop chasing something they can’t catch and bash the other’s face in. When you’re in charge range of a Warrior be sure that you will get charged/rended and possible eaten alive. It’s hard to avoid but the warrior will take full advantage of his mobility and therefore he will less likely get into trouble when people run away from him.

All in all warrior/paladin teams are very very strong. But they can also very easily be countered by smart teams. It still stands that in the top 20 at Arenajunkies, there are atleast 7 or 8 warrior/paladin teams. That is how strong they are and that is why they should not be underestimated.