Arena Master Gladiator Warrior PvP Guide

[keliann21]

Arena Master Gladiator Warrior PvP guide----

thought I'd write a basic warrior guide, coming from an arena master / gladiator warrior.
Currently holding the top 5v5 on my server by ~250 points, 16th on battlegroup. Farmed terrible backpeddaling dk/druids to 2250 in 2s and stopped because class imbalances are a lot more obvious and blizzard refuses to fix their game.

--NEW WARRIORS----
feel free to skip over this if you're experienced, this is fairly basic. Shields- It is impossible to PvP successfully as a warrior without a shield. Spell reflects, melee mitigation, and very important defensive cooldowns all stem from your use of shields.

Locking down healers (and certain casters)- In order to lock down healers, you'll need to rotate your interrupts / stuns / fear. you start with a charge, followed by a pummel or shield bash on their next cast, followed by an intercept, into a fear right before the next cast would have finished. After that, you just need to keep applying MS and overpowering their casts whenever a silence or stun isn't up.

Bladestorm - NEVER bladestorm without mortal strike up against healers. NEVER. It doesn't matter how low they are, if they can get heals off without MS up they will easily outheal your bladestorm damage, which means you just wasted your most important offensive cooldown and gave the healer a big advantage.

Rend - Keep it applied constantly, no matter what you're fighting.






--Specs--
60/11/0
offers a few more talent points in arms, which is very nice because of the stupidly bloated tree.


57/14/0 (bloodcraze)

only difference is you have to drop those few talents from arms for better survivability. This is the build I generally run with. Blood Craze really does make a difference, especially outside of arenas.

That's it for specs. Fury isn't good at all now, prot is stupid in arena.

--Duels/1v1--
Just as a heads up, don't expect to win very many duels as a warrior against equally geared / skilled opponents. Warriors are arguably the worst class to 1v1 with, and consequently are arguably the best with a healer.


[[Rogue]]- Good rogues can be very, very rough to beat. I have around a 1-3 win/loss against the best rogue on my server, and he's not even in PvE gear. Start out in defensive stance with a 1h/shield on to mitigate their initial burst. If they can keep you defensive the entire fight, though, you'll never put out enough pressure to outdamage them if they're using any cooldowns. It's *very* important to keep rend up so they can't reset the fight. Keep them slowed with piercing howl if evasion is up, because otherwise it's very unlikely you'll land a hamstring. Try to save disarm until after evasion is down, unless you can get behind them for half a second to guarantee it won't be dodged or parried. Keep up thunderclap / demoralizing shout / rend / slows as much as possible. If you're in a fairly good position (30-40% health or above while keeping them slowed) you can go offensive. battlestance with your 2h on, start overpowering / use retaliation (if you aren't really low on health. In that case you'll want to go back defensive and shield wall / use whatever else you have up), but always keep them slowed. I usually pop battlemasters / enraged regeneration at this point. If you feel like you have to trinket a kidney, bladestorm immediately after you trinket so they don't blind you and reset. If you allow them to make you eat a full blind after their initial burst, it's very, very unlikely to come away with a win. While bladestorming, keep on them as best you can, but if they sprint away from you far enough (8 yards or more away) right click or use a cancelaura bladestorm macro and charge them. Immediately hamstring, and if rend isn't up (it should be), try to reapply that / put out enough damage into them before they're out of the stun. After that, may the overpower spam be with you. Most of the rogues I fight don't anticipate the bladestorm immediately after my trinket, so they blind me while bladestorming and the blind is completely wasted. If you've gotten them into a charge stun and their blind is down, you *should* be alright. (keep in mind this is assuming you're fighting a good rogue. If they try to sprint away while you're not bladestorming, charge / intercept asap. If you can catch rogues in stuns they drop extremely fast.)
((COMMANDING SHOUT))


[[Mage]]- Mages are currently the easiest class for me to beat 1v1(don't get me wrong, they still make me rage the hardest in arena, especially running druid/warrior).The only mage who gives me trouble anymore is a human engineer with pyro rockets / GLG / nitro boosts (lolol). Gone are the days of warriors countering rogues, and mages countering warriors. Just use your charges and intercepts every time they're off cooldown. If you're frozen (79.367% of the time you will be, lawl) and anticipate burst, go defensive and be ready to reflect if you aren't deepfrozen. Don't immmediately use spell reflect, time it right before a frostbolt goes off so they don't icelance your reflect and make you eat shatters. If you start to get low, use enraged regen and battlemasters (if you use bmasters). Save your fear for their water elemental and/or mirror images. Second wind combined with bloodcraze heals will keep you up due to all of the constant frost novas, and shield wall / ER will help as well if you need them. A lot of the time mages will reset the fight with a polymorph if they failed to kill you or they run low on mana. There's usually not much you can do about this, as reflect has a long enough cooldown and you will almost never be close enough to them to pummel / shield bash the polymorph. If they have to do this, though, they will probably not be able to drop you, since poly healed you to full and they will have probably used cooldowns during the first attempt. The main problem for mages against warriors is their mana. Beat their mana pool and water elemental + icy veins + trinkets burst at the start, and you should be good to go. Also, if you need to during the fight you can use spell reflect and then quickly bandage yourself. This way you will be guaranteed a few bandage heals to tick, since I doubt they're right next to you and thus can't aoe to interrupt it, and using direct target spells will take an extra global to stop the bandage because of spell reflect. Do this as much as possible.
((COMMANDING SHOUT))

[[Warrior]]- Comes down to RNG, gear, and skill. For the purpose of this guide, RNG isn't completely smacking you around and your gear is equal to theirs. Start with spamming charge on them. You'll usually end up both charging each other. Once the stun wears off immediately switch to berserker and intercept. Apply hamstring and swap back to battle stance and put rend up. If you got an improved hamstring proc, kite him for a second or two out of melee range but still within charge range (known as 5-8 kiting) while putting demoralizing shout / thunderclap up. Just start to pump as much damage into him as you can. If he bladestorms, *immediately* go defensive stance + 1h/shield and shield block. This will mitigate almost all of his bladestorm's damage, provided you're facing him so he can't get behind you to avoid the blocks. It's also a good idea to use retaliation. Be sure to keep him slowed and stay on him so he can't get a charge or intercept on you. Disarm whenever you want. The best thing to do for learning class v class duels is practice, practice, practice.(didn't include vs prot because prot is dumb and you have very little chance of outdamaging / outlasting a prot warrior. The best advice I can give is get behind them as often as possible so they can't block or parry and jump / run around them a lot to try and mess up their shockwave, but that's about it.)
((EITHER SHOUT IS FINE. I PREFER BATTLE))


[[Warlock]]- Destruction - Warlock duels vary greatly in my experience. They'll usually have succubus out for duels, and if they don't it'll make it a lot easier. Inspect them beforehand and if they don't have the improved succubus talent in demonology, you can interrupt seduces fairly easy. If they don't have that talent, I'd open with a charge, trinket the first seduce since the succy will have been invis'd before that, then make sure the warlock's slowed and watch for the succubus to be casting another seduce. Switch to berserker if you weren't already in it, pummel seduce, then immediately get back onto the warlock. After that the warlock will probably have distanced himself from his succy, so pummeling it will no longer be a good option. Interrupt / run around + jump the warlock's casts trying to mess him up, particularly immolates and chaos bolts. Chaos Bolts and conflagrates (conflagrate requires immolate or shadowflame to be on the target) are the highest damage dealing spells he will use on you. If he gets another lengthy seduce off on you, gains distance and starts casting a chaos bolt or immolate, as soon as you're out of the seduce, spell reflect whatever you can and then immediately charge or intercept him and stick to him, interrupting and messing up casts as much as you can. try to save bladestorm until after he teleports, but if you can't, use it and be ready to rightclick or cancelaura it and charge or intercept him at his portal (knowing where he put it down before the duel begins is helpful). Good destruction warlocks can be pretty rough. You can also try charging then opening with bladestorm if the original strategy doesn't work out well. If you think the warlock isn't very good, you can try to spell reflect at other times as well, but good warlocks will stop casting and use an instant to remove it.

- Affliction - 1v1 against affliction warlocks is fairly simple - kill them before their dots drop you. Interrupt unstable affliction / drain life as much as you can. Just unload as much damage into him as is possible. The only real difference about destruction / affliction is that destruction damage is somewhat avoidable / interruptable, but most of affliction's damage isn't, so the only option left is to kill them first. Overpowering his casts to get unrelenting assault debuff on him helps a lot. The bladestorm / teleport combo still holds true, but don't hesitate to bladestorm early against affliction.
((Depending upon the destruction warlock, i switch between commanding and battle. Affliction, use battle))



[[Death Knights]]- The reason I hate 2v2. Dks can chain 7k+ froststrikes into plate with 850+ resilience, every 1-2 mins while your healer (or you, whoever they're focusing) is hungering colded or cc'd by whatever healer they roll with. literally. Anyway, a deathknight equally geared / skilled is near impossible to beat due to superior kiting abilities, vastly superior heals, and most of their attacks being unmitigated by armor. A good deathknight will start the duel out by kiting you with chains of ice and using icebound fortitude to ensure you have zero chance of stunning them to catch up. While they build up runic power kiting you, there's almost nothing you can do to stop them without blowing cooldowns early on while they have icebound fort up, so it's best to eat the chains spam until they're ready to close in or icebound wears off. When they get in, keep slows up and demoralizing shout if possible. I generally use enraged regen immediately after I have them hamstrung, rended, MS'd and demo shouted, then use retaliation and bladestorm. After bladestorm fades, keep them slowed and charge / intercept to close distance if they try to kite you again. If you start to get low, go defensive and do what you have to do. Seems like disarm gets parried 2/3 times, although maybe I have terrible rng. Revenge spamming them while keeping them piercing howled is not bad damage, it's just nowhere near as good damage as them, and will probably not win the fight for you unless you have quite a bit more health than they do all of a sudden. It is possible to beat deathknights, just not very likely or very easy.
[[Battle / Commanding, either one.]]


[[Paladins]]- Ret - Ret paladins are second on the hardest-to-beat list for warriors. Very difficult to kite due to Pursuit of Justice / Freedoms, vastly superior heals and defensive cooldowns and, once again, a good amount of their damage is unmitigated by armor. Start with a charge, slow them and keep rend / MS up. Retaliation and bladestorm early. Trinket their first Hammer of Justice / save berserker rage for repentances. You'll want to have the duel over within 40 seconds. If you don't, and you have to eat a HoJ, it's very, very hard to survive the damage. If you can make the ret bubble, shatter it as fast as you can and try to charge if you can (or fear, I tend to use this a lot to interrupt a holy light out of bubble since I usually wouldn't have the time to back up and charge his heal before it goes off. After bubble is down, use any defensive cooldowns you have and revenge spam for decent damage. Some time after that, one of you will have lost. Good luck, very hard fight.

- Holy - Holy paladins are pretty straightforward. The most important thing is to keep mortal strike up at all times. As soon as you let it fall off, the paladin holy shocks for a nice 7-9k crit followed by a 4-6k flash of light, which is bad and puts you behind. Make sure rend is always up, stick to him as best you can, hamstring whenever freedom isn't up, and overpower / interrupt any casts possible. When he uses aura mastery, it's usually a good time to back out and rotate charge / intercept if they aren't on cooldown, then fear.it's possible to not let them get a single cast off even with aura mastery up. If you can't stun him enough or fear, just keep MS up and overpower any casts you can. If you keep rotating stuns and interrupts, eventually he'll fall behind in health and mana and will have to bubble. I'd recommend getting away and bandaging if you don't think you can shatter --> interrupt, since one holy light without MS up will give him 80% or more health anyway. Use your trinket wisely - if he stuns you in the beginning of the duel and has nearly full health, don't waste your trinket. Save it for when he stuns you later on with <20% health to finish him. If you drop below 20-30% health, use enraged regen. Good holy paladins can be fairly challenging. The same concept is used against holy paladins as is mages, run them out of mana before they run you out of health. (no guide for prot paladins because you have almost zero chance)
[[BATTLE SHOUT]]


[[Druids]]- Resto - Resto druids are very easy to beat in my experience. They'll have to sit in tree most of the game just to mitigate your damage and keep heals going. Keeping MS up here is even more important than against holy paladins. Half a second without MS and 2 or more hots tick and heal for a lot. They'll go for roots / cyclones to reset the fight so they can go drink or even just get heals off without MS on. Basically another mana bar vs health bar fight, stick to them as best you can, keep MS up, overpower / interrupt any casts (although druids don't usually have to cast heals to stay alive anymore with loltreeform, their only casts used against me in duels is cyclone / entangling roots, so interrupting or spell reflecting is much, much better). I like to save bladestorm for a point where they're fairly low and are casting a cyclone or roots on me (as long as they are fairly close to me and have mortal strike applied). They'll usually travel form away unless they're REALLY low, and if they are really low you should finish them easily. If they get away with travel form, you got in at least 2 hits in on them from bladestorm, and you now need to rightclick or cancelaura bladestorm and charge / intercept them before they're out of range and MS falls off. Another thing to watch out for his nature's grasp (the root that is applied to you by hitting them). Nature's grasp is reflectable, so if you're sitting on them and they've just used it, try to put spell reflect up immediately and hit them. They'll be rooted and have to shapeshift out, and it'll save you from another nature's grasp for 45+ seconds.

- Feral - Feral druids have always been infamous for curbstomping warriors easily. I think we have a fairly good chance against them now with enraged regen / bladestorm though. I like to start out with a shield/1h on in battle or defensive to mitigate their pounce / cat opener burst. Keep rend / demoralizing shout / thunderclap / hamstring (or piercing howl) up as much as possible. After their initial burst, go offensive with a 2h and start overpowering. They will usually have already gone bear at this point to stop your damage. You will not outlast a feral druid in bearform. Use retaliation here and try to put out as much damage as possible. The main thing you're going for here is to make them bash you and then pop out into caster form to try and cyclone you so they can get heals off. Once they bash you and get into caster form and are casting the cyclone, trinket the bash and immediately bladestorm and stick to them. If they travel form or cat dash away, cancelaura or rightclick bladestorm and charge / intercept. Druids in caster / travel / cat form get hit by melee like rogues without the high dodge chance, so get in as much damage as you can before they go back to bear. If you sucessfully stopped them from getting a cyclone on you and they haven't healed, they're back in bear or trying to get another cyclone or root on you. Try your best to interrupt / reflect / fear any cyclones from this point out. If you can do that you should have an easy win (unless your gear sucks and you failed to put out enough damage to them in bear form).

- Balance - Pretty simple fights. Avoid cyclones using reflect / interrupt / bladestorm, keep rend / slows up. Try to jump / run around him to mess up the typhoons, and fear his treants when he uses them (pretty sure they can be feared - not much experience vs balance druids, almost never see them). Aside from that, interrupt as many of his casts as possible and you should be fine.
[[BATTLE SHOUT, if battle isn't working against ferals, try commanding]]

[[Priest]]- Discipline - I tend to have trouble with good disc priests. They can heal through our damage pretty easily, and because of reflective shields and constant SW:Pains we die quickly. Again, keep MS up at all times. Don't waste shield bashes / pummels on shadow spells. Try to interrupt penance as quickly into the cast as you can, that's where the major heals come from. If you can anticipate when his next penance will be, back out and charge or intercept stun it before it gets 1-2 ticks off. This will help keep him low on both mana and health. If he has to use his shadowfiend, fear it immediately. Overpowering priest casts will help immensely, because it slows the damage on you as well. When you bladestorm doesn't particularly matter, but I like to save it for right after a penance when he has MS on. Need decent RNG for this fight to be able to put out enough damage imo.

- Shadow - Kind of similar to affliction warlocks, you need to outdamage him before he kills you. Get momentum early on and lock him out as much as you can. If you can pummel his shadowtree, he can't do anything to you for 4-6 seconds. It's also very easy to overpower a shadow priest's casts, so do that as well. Try to save bladestorm for after dispersion, but a good shadowpriest probably won't let you do that. Use charge / intercept stuns every time they're off cooldown. Shadow priests aren't as hard as they used to be in my experience, but they're still a challenging fight.
[[BATTLE SHOUT]]

[[Shaman]]- Resto - Good resto shamans will attempt to kite you around and let MS fall off. Stick to them using everything necessary. It's pretty easy to overpower shaman heals, but they're the hardest healer to get interrupts on. Just play offensively, since going defensive against a resto shaman does almost nothing to mitigate his damage outside of a reflected shock every 10 seconds. enraged regen if you start to get low. pretty straight forward fight

- Elemental - I tend to have a 50/50 win/loss against good ele shamans. The number one thing against them is to not let them hit you with lava bursts. Watch out for fire nova totems and earthbinds. If you can get away from, or kill the, fire nova before it goes off you'll have a slight advantage, because the stun allows them time to freecast whatever they want into you. When they earthbind root you, be ready to spellreflect, because they're most likely going to try and pump whatever damage they can into you while you're unable to move. I usually bladestorm when I see a fire nova totem down and/or I'm earthbind rooted, and then try to jump / run around the shaman enough to mess their casts up. Note that while bladestorming, thunderstorm doesn't throw you back. Overpower any casts that you can, and try to mess them up as much as possible by running around them while casting.

- Enhancement - Geared, skilled enhancement shamans can be pretty rough. Fear the wolves and try your best not to let the shaman kite you. Retaliation is very nice against them, as long as you aren't being kited. Keep demo shout / thunderclap up (and of course rend / MS). Not much strategy to this fight, just outdamage him and make sure you fear the wolves.
[[BATTLE SHOUT]]

[[Hunter]]- Good hunters will without a doubt give you trouble. You NEED to stick on him as much as possible. If you see a trap go down and walking around it would take way too much time, spell reflect before you walk over it. If you can't get back onto the hunter because you're waiting for charge or intercept cooldown to finish, go defensive with a 1h/shield and shield block, which will mitigate a lot of his damage and buy you enough time for another charge or intercept (make sure you're facing him, otherwise the shieldblock will have been wasted). Keep him slowed as much as you possibly can, and disarm him after a charge or intercept. Keep in mind you can overpower through deterrence. Having line of sight helps immensely against hunters. Use fear as a distance closer. Use shield wall / enraged regeneration fairly early if you have to (25-35% health).
[[Try both shouts, use whichever works best for you]]






--- MACROS ---

If you don't use macros as a warrior, you will not get very far in competitive pvp. All of these macros are very helpful / important to me, at least.(a lot of these can vary, this is what I use)


<<Defensive Stance with 1h/shield>>

#showtooltip Defensive Stance
/equip ONEHANDER
/equip SHIELD
/cast Defensive Stance

<<Spell Reflection>>

#showtooltip Spell Reflection
/cast [stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Spell Reflection;
[stance:3] Defensive Stance
/stopmacro [equipped:shields]
/stopcasting
/equip ONEHANDER
/equip SHIELD

-This macro will equip your 1h/shield and cast spell reflection if you are in battle or defensive stance. If you are in berserker, it will auto switch you to defensive (you can make it switch you to battle if you want, just make the
[stance:3] Defensive Stance part say battle stance.

<<Shield Bash>>

#showtooltip Shield Bash
/equip ONEHANDER
/equip SHIELD
/cast Shield Bash

-I much prefer shield bashing over pummeling, as it saves rage and is less noticable to the enemy as to when you're going to try to interrupt.

<<Focus Charge>>

#showtooltip Charge
/cast [target=focus] Charge

-very useful for stopping casts / heals in 2v2, not so much for 3v3 and 5v5. you'll probably have to charge what you want manually.

<<Focus Intercept>>

#showtooltip Intercept
/cast [target=focus] Intercept

-same use as focus charge.

<<Cancelaura Bladestorm + Shield Bash>>

#showtooltip Shield Bash
/cancelaura Bladestorm
/equip ONEHANDER
/equip SHIELD
/cast Shield Bash

-very useful for stopping a big heal or important cast while bladestorming - almost nobody can react fast enough to stop the cast, since nobody expects you to cancel it.

<<Intervene>>

#showtooltip Intervene
/cast [target=PARTNERSNAME] Intervene

-very useful for getting out of tight spots / giving your healer a few second breather as whatever melee was on you has to catch up - also try to get your partner to line up an intervene for you if you're being kited (have him stand by the hunter/mage/dk etc and intervene to him. used like an extra charge).



---Arena Basics---

Watch your line of sight on your healer, warriors are easily gibbed in stuns, and if you los'd your healer, you're now in a very bad spot.

If you can anticipate burst, (mage with icy veins + water elemental + trinkets popped targeting you, rogues with colblood, warriors with recklessness, DKs hungering cold both of you and pop deathchill, etc) go defensive as soon as possible, and use whatever cooldowns are necessary to stay alive.

always keep rend up on rogues to prevent a reset, allowing them to restealth in arena can easily be gamebreaking

have your healer call out when he needs to drink, then do all you can to prevent the other team from reaching him / go defensive so they can't force him back out due to having to heal you

against double dps it's a good idea to bladestorm early (unless you're being focused, don't bladestorm at 20% health, lololo). Also good to fear and/or disarm as soon as you can, and use charge / intercept stuns and slows to help your partner escape

don't roll with under 700 resil, especially in 3s/5s, unless you have access to pve armor pen gear, which will generally make it worth it

keep demo shout up against melee / hunters, it's close to a 10% attack power reduction

don't let enemies drink



---AddOns---

Gladius
Spell Alerter
Natur Enemy Castbars
Quartz
SEXYMAP
SEXYMAP
SEXYMAP
SEXYMAP
sexymap is a must have btw


I guess that just about wraps this up, if you have any questions or whatever feel free to comment, I may write an actual arena guide from a warrior/paladin (possibly warrior/druid) 2v2 perspective (don't ask for 3s or 5s, they're both just "OK KILL THE ____... SWEET GJ")

[Beyy]

Not a bad basic guide, how to imagine yourself playing a warrior, i mean some players check guides first, before actully trying a class, and this guide basically provides the information needed to start playing well.

[praggers1124]

are u a moron this guide is old since when did warriors have shield bash in mop?

[0wn3r]

This guide is from 3 1/2 years ago...that's why Shield Bash is in there. Beyy just necroed it.

[Dante]

Maybe he plays on a 3.3.5 server or something

[Muhammad.R1]

thought I'd write a basic warrior guide, coming from an arena master / gladiator warrior.
Currently holding the top 5v5 on my server by ~250 points, 16th on battlegroup. Farmed terrible backpeddaling dk/druids to 2250 in 2s and stopped because class imbalances are a lot more obvious and blizzard refuses to fix their game.

^^ Read that.

By the looks of it, seems like he directly copied and pasted it from another site and just posted it here.

[alucard1]

Not a bad basic guide, how to imagine yourself playing a warrior, i mean some players check guides first, before actully trying a class, and this guide basically provides the information needed to start playing well.

Except this guide was made in 2009.... bit outdated....

[phantom325]

Not a bad basic guide, how to imagine yourself playing a warrior, i mean some players check guides first, before actully trying a class, and this guide basically provides the information needed to start playing well.

how did you even find this thread to necro? It's from 2009

[Rappelleh]

very wellwritten guide! Made me wanna play warrior, gonna create one now LOL!

[Unscrupulous]

Rappelleh, this guide is 3 years old, basically nothing in it is relevant lol