WoW Classic Era Warrior Leveling Guide (vanilla)

Introduction

Warriors in WoW Classic are the cherry on top when it comes to DPS (damage per second) or tanking. They excel at both roles — when played correctly at max level.

With a massive upside there’s always a downside and for warriors it is leveling. Let me tell you, you are yet to experience a grind like you are about to start. As the true warrior you are looking to become, your journey to max level will test your endurance, skill and dedication. You will have a hard time fighting mobs, doing damage in dungeons and you are likely to be tight on gold. Despite all the challenges it is an enjoyable journey from 1 to 60.

In this guide I will introduce you to the warrior class alongside tips to lessen the pain during leveling and before you know it, you will ding 60 and be happy with your accomplishment. Let’s dive right into it.

Gameplay: How to play a Warrior

Dual Wielding

At times it is very tempting to opt in to Dual Wielding simply for the reason of it looking really cool. What you don’t realise at first, however, is that Dual Wielding increases your miss change to 15%. In order to make Dual Wielding worth it, your one-handed weapon options have to be much, much better than your two-handed weapon to achieve quicker mob-kill times, due to missing most of your swings (miss, parry, dodge) on top of leveling one-handed-weapon skill.

Tanking

Do not hesitate to sign up for dungeon groups as a tank even though you are talented into Arms or Fury. In fact, you are just fine tanking in any spec up until level 55+. Equipping a shield, together with the fact that you have lots of armor from wearing mail / plate makes you a sufficient tank.

Additional tips

Do not fear to buy items off the auction house if they are a big upgrade for your character, especially weapons. Actively check for upgrades whenever you are in a major city.

Get your Whirlwind Axe as soon as possible. You can buy the Elemental Charms off the auction house, it is worth every copper.

Many abilities don’t scale much with increasing rank. Therefore, do not train abilities past rank 1 while leveling except: Heroic Strike, Mortal Strike, Shield Bash, Revenge.

• Don’t use Rend — it is a waste of rage.
• Try to group up as often as possible
• Always kill mobs while going from point A to point B, you will need it.
• It is more beneficial towards your leveling speed to fight green mobs — always.

Talent trees and builds/spec

For the fastest and easiest leveling experience you will want to start as a Fury warrior until level 40 and then respec into Arms. The reason behind this is that Fury offers a lot more raw damage in the early levels but Mortal Strike is a massive DPS (damage per second) gain over Bloodthirst.

Leveling talent spec 10-39

Warrior talents at level 39.

Leveling talent spec 40-60

Warrior talents at level 60.

Professions

Professions play a big part in WoW Classic. They provide a source of gold, really good gear, tools to cutting edge damage and tank play, major quality of life improvements while leveling and are fun to do.

First aid – First aid is absolutely mandatory as a warrior. Always stay on top of your profession skill to craft the best bandages available to your level. The amount of times an Intimidating Shout + bandage combo will save you from certain death do add up quite a lot during your journey.

Cooking – Cooking is an easy gold saver while leveling and provides a steady income at level 60. Do get this profession as early as possible and try to stay on top of your profession skill, just like you do with first aid. Treat it as a portable food vendor, just without being a gold sink.

Fishing – Unlike first aid and cooking, fishing is not mandatory but nice to have. Usually while leveling you are not looking to spend time stationary, not getting any experience, but at times you simply can not avoid it. For example, you can kill time while waiting for a boat by fishing up some fish to cook afterwards.

Skinning – Skinning is probably the best profession to get while leveling a warrior. Yes, you do not wear leather but skinning every beast you come across and selling all the materials you collected on the auction house, will passively net you about 25g at level 40 and 150g-200g once you ding 60. The gold per level can easily go up depending on how much time you choose to grind beasts.

Herbalism & Mining – Herbalism and mining allow you to rank up a crafting profession while leveling. If you choose to pick alchemy as your primary profession, absolutely train herbalism, otherwise pick mining for an increased gold income, due to ore typically selling better than herbs and you will have the option to save up your ore to level up engineering.

Alchemy – Alchemy is handy for leveling as it provides you health potions, that you will find yourself using quite often, and elixirs for an overall easier time during the leveling period.

Blacksmithing – Blacksmithing is good on paper, since you are wearing plate gear, which you can craft by yourself. However, every major benefit that comes from blacksmithing can be bought off the auction house. You can choose blacksmithing if you want, but I wouldn’t typically recommend it.

Engineering – Engineering is the King of WoW Classic professions since the tools it provides are plentiful. Big AoE grenades? No problem. You need a range stun? We got that covered. Trinkets? Yes, sir. Engineering adds a lot of utility to your character for various PvE and PvP situations.

Enchanting – Enchanting saves you gold, as materials for high-end enchants tend to be expensive. If you don’t feel like being a miner or alchemist next to your engineering degree, absolutely go for it.

Leatherworking & Tailoring – No noteworthy benefits for warriors. You are better off, staying away from these professions.

Addons for warriors

Addons are a big part of WoW Classic. To enjoy smoother gameplay, check out these addons.

Joana’s Leveling Guide is a step-by-step leveling guide addon for leveling a warrior, or any other class in WoW Classic, incredibly fast. Created by a true professional gamer and world record holder for speed leveling in WoW. The guides can be viewed inside WoW with the addon that is included. There are also web guides with maps and step-by-step instructions. As of this writing, there is a small monthly fee to access the guides.

Azeroth Auto Pilot – Azeroth Auto Pilot helps you navigate your way to 60. It is an automatically updating leveling route with many quality of life features such as an on-screen arrow for your quest objective, or mob spawn locations.

Leatrix Maps – Countless improvements to your in-game minimap. Blizzard’s basic map is impractical for leveling. Leatrix Map removes the fog of war, adds coordinates to your map to make finding certain spots much easier, downsizes the full screen version and fades out during movement for easier navigation.

Vendor Price – In case you find yourself with no empty bagspace and you wonder what items you should throw away – the cheapest one of course. Vendor Price adds an item value to the tooltip.

Weakauras2 – An addon that can be highly useful. With Weakauras it is possible to create custom display icons, bars and timers. You can import ready to use packages as well.

Questie – This addon is free and does many helpful things for questing and leveling. For example, Questie adds information to your minimap and world map regarding current and available quests for your level, as well as objectives and turn in points. You can also search for NPCs and find their location and which quests they start. Another way to find quests is to select a continent and zone, which brings up a list of available quests and their appropriate level.  If you combine Questie with TomTom, another addon, you can get an arrow inside WoW that shows you where to go to complete the quest objective you’re doing. Another neat feature is the tooltips, which enables you to hover your mouse cursor over an available quest on the map and see more information, like how much XP that quest gives you. Quests for seasonal events, like Hallow’s End (Halloween) show up on the map when the event is active. There are many other features as well so definitely check it out.

ElvUI – ElvUI is a customizable and skinnable interface. It adds crucial information and possibilities to tailor an interface more suitable to your liking.

Macros for warriors

Once you are happy with the way your interface looks, you will want to open up the macros tab by typing “/macro” into your chat window. Copy and paste the following macros and drag them to your bars.

Defensive Stance + equip your tanking weapons

#showtooltip Defensive Stance

/cast defensive Stance

/equip YourShield

/equip Your1h

Note: change YourShield and Your1h to the name of your shield and your one-handed weapon, respectively.

Berserker Stance + equip your Two-handed weapon

#showtooltip Berserker Stance

/cast Berserker Stance

/equip Your2h

Note: change Your2h to the name of your two-handed weapon.

Battle Stance + equip your Two-handed weapon

Macro 1:

#showtooltip Berserker Stance

/cast Berserker Stance

/equip Your2h

Note: change Your2h to the name of your two-handed weapon

Macro 2:

#showtooltip Shield wall

/cast defensive Stance

/equip YourShield

/equip Your1h

/cast Shield Wall

Note: change YourShield and Your1h to the name of your shield and your one-handed weapon, respectively.

Helpful Startattack Macros

Macro 1:

#showtooltip Mortal Strike

/startattack

/cast Mortal Strike

Macro 2:

#showtooltip Revenge

/startattack

/cast revenge