TWP: Part 2

Part 2:  Talents
Or, “ZOMG!  I’m protection specced, I can’t friggin’ kill anything, what do I do!?

You’re level 60.  You haven’t done any quests in months because you’ve spent all your time farming instances and/or farming reputations.  You became complacent and lazy when your warrior hit the level cap.  You thought you were tough shit because you got a few pieces of epic loot from Molten Core. 

You are not prepared.

No matter what your talents look like now, you must respec in order to get any enjoyment out of questing again.  Technically, you can do quests while protection specced, but I’d personally rather be forced to have sex with Ragnaros. 

Also, I’m sure that there are some of you out there who will disagree with my talent choices, call me a noob for not choosing to go fury, or laugh at me for putting points into improved rend.

Let’s get one thing clear: this is not, as I said before, a “Thodin knows everything about warriors and therefore this guide is the only choice!” kind of guide.  I’m writing this to help people who are just getting back into playing their warrior alt, or who are fairly new to the game and haven’t had time to sit around at level 60 and ponder the mysteries of the class. 

You can do whatever the hell you want to do when it comes to talents.  Please mix and match, experiment, that’s great.  I encourage it.  I’m basically just telling you what helped me make the most of my experience because I think it will help you.

That said, let’s move on to what we’re all here for: the talents.

Click here for a sample talent tree. 

This Arms spec (34/17/0) is what I would encourage you to try out as your level 60 starting point for questing.  Obviously, if you plan to do no quests whatsoever and just grind your exp through instances, you’d probably be better off going Protection spec.  Though, you’d also be better of quitting the game right now and saving yourself the trouble of committing suicide later.

Allow me to explain some of my choices.

Two talents that every warrior should have, no matter what talent specialization they chose, are Deflection and Cruelty.  When you don’t use a shield, and you can’t dodge like a rogue, why not try to parry some of those incoming hits?  If nothing else, the clink and animation of a successful parry is an incredibly satisfying thing.  And everyone could use more critical strikes, right?  Yes.

Now we come to our first couple of choices.  As you can see, I go with Improved Rend, Improved Charge, and Improved Thunderclap.  I personally don’t use Heroic Strike enough to improve that, and I tend not to be a pussy and let people stun/charm me.  Well I guess you can’t really help it, but it doesn’t seem that important to me.  Also, now that it’s usable in Defensive Stance, Thunderclap will help you immensely while tanking. 

Next up we have Improved Overpower and Deep Wounds.  When you can use it, Overpower is an awesome attack, why not increase the chance that it will crit?  Deep Wounds gives you another damage over time (DoT) ability, and I find that combined with Rend it really helps you kill mobs faster.  Besides, it leads to Impalewhich increases the damage dealt by your critical strikes.  Remember kids, more crits = more damage; more damage = badguy dies faster; badguy dies faster = happy warrior. 

We’re going Arms spec, if you haven’t been able to deduce that already, so it’s obvious that we’d put five points into Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, because, well, that’s what we use as Arms warriors.

When it comes to choosing your weapon specialization, it’s pretty much up to personal preference and the type of weapon you have at the time.  I went with Poleaxe Specializationbecause 1. it gives you more of a chance to crit, (does anyone see the theme with all this critical strike talk?) and 2. if you don’t have a great two-hander when you come into Outland one of the first good rewards you get is the Rage Reaver.  Besides, maces are for paladin babies and swords are for human goons.  You did roll a dwarf, didn’t you?

Moving on we come to the bread and butter of your damage dealing as an Arms warrior: Sweeping Strikes and Mortal Strike (MS).  I like Sweeping Strikes because it allows you to quickly kill more than one thing.  It’s like Cleave but you can use it to hit with Execute and MS, thereby doing more damage.  MS is just a no brainer if you’ve gone this far into the tree.  High weapon damage plus 300 = pwnage (there’s your algebra for the day).

To finish off the Arms tree for now throw two points into Blood Frenzy.  We’ve already spent points improving Rend and buying Deep Wounds, so why not make the most of these abilities and do more damage whilst they’re applied?  It doesn’t just affect you either, it affects all melee damage done to the target; very nice if you’re in a group.

Phew, that was a lot.  I’ll understand if you need to take a break now.  Go grab a glass of Cold Milk and come back when you’re ready to continue.  Oh, what’s that?  You’re not a wee little mana junkie?  Damn right you’re not, let’s get back to it!

After putting 34 points into the Arms tree and five into the Fury tree, we’re left with 12 points.  Where shall they go? 

You could go with Booming Voice and Improved Demoralizing Shout, but you shouldn’t.  Why shouldn’t you?  Because you’d rather go with Unbridled Wrath.  Having longer shouts and reducing attack power is all well and good, but while you’re leveling you’re more concerned with killing things quickly and moving on to the next quest.  To kill things, you need rage.  To kill things quickly, you need more rage.  Unbridled Wrath gives you more rage.  Need I say more?

Your next five points go into Commanding Presence.  This is because more attack power means you (and your group) will be putting out more damage.  This is a good thing.  You won’t get the Commanding Shout bonus until you move on in levels, but I think the attack power bonus is worth it.  If you want, you could also put two points into Commanding Presence and three points into Blood Craze.  The health regen might not be thatmuch, but while you’re out questing you don’t want to have a lot of downtime.  If you’re able to regen a bit of health while you fight, that cuts down on downtime.  This is a good thing.

The last two points should go to Improved Execute.  If you haven’t discovered this by now, execute is a very valuable ability.  Improved Execute shaves a couple points of rage off of the cost, which allows you to use Execute faster if you’re at the end of a fight and you don’t have a lot of rage left.  It’s really the only reason I’d go 17 points into the fury tree.

Oh, and when you hit 61 and get your first TBC talent point, toss that little guy into Anger Management.  Like I said before, more rage is a good thing.

So there you have it.  That’s how I think you should spend your 51 talent points.  Of course, feel free to do more research into this and do what suits you the best.  The forums are a good place to look, but they’re also a wretched hive of scum and villainy, home to some of the most vile creatures you will ever encounter on the internet.  If you can handle the forums, you’re a braver soul than I.